fairness

Ethics Dunce: Nancy Pelosi

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is currently engaged in a demonstration of how the objectives of public service can become so distorted in the minds of those with power that they lose their ethical bearings completely.

By many standards of legislative success, Pelosi’s tenure as the leader of the House of Representatives has been a triumph. Nevertheless, she has become the face of the epic rejection of Democrats at all levels of government in the recent election. Her personal approval rating outside her native San Francisco hovers in single digits, and the Republicans successfully made “Fire Pelosi” a successful campaign slogan. Voters did fire Pelosi. Fairly of unfairly, she came to symbolize the arrogance of power, a contempt for the opinions of ordinary citizens, and runaway government. Like Harry Reid, her counterpart in the Senate, Pelosi’s talents lie in getting things done behind the scenes, not making herself look good in front of them. Now, with the country no longer mesmerized by Barack Obama and souring on the Democratic leadership and agenda, she needs to get off the stage.

But she refuses to go. Historically, most speakers whose party has been turned out of power accept responsibility for the defeat and allow new leadership to emerge. It is the logical course: only raw ego argues for anything else. Many believed that Pelosi would resign her seat and leave the House altogether. To the surprise of political observers, however, she announced that she would seek the post of Minority Leader, setting off a power struggle in her party. Current Majority Leader, Steny Hoyer, announced that he would seek the #2 power role of Minority Whip, pitting him against current whip James Clyburn,  and also pitting Democratic moderates, represented by Hoyer, against the influential African-American leadership in the party, represented by Clyburn.

Meanwhile, Republicans are rejoicing. Pelosi’s return will look like one more Democratic refusal to respect the will of the public, and the prospect of having the same leadership trio of Obama, Reid and Pelosi leading the party after its electoral dressing down seems like a dream come true.

Pelosi’s decision is bad for her party and her colleagues, who have been loyal to her. It is also bad for the country, even if one believes, as many do not, that her imperious leadership style is justified by the legislative success it produces for progressive policies. Washington and the public trust are being poisoned by anger, cynicism and partisanship, and Pelosi shares the blame for all three. The Democrats desperately need a new style and a new symbol in Congress, and most in and out of the Democratic Party know it.

Nancy Pelosi’s refusal to step aside places her own ego above the needs of public service and country, and is as blatant an example of power corrupting judgment as one can imagine. At a time when all ethical considerations argue for her to swallow her pride and let others take over, she is willing to jeopardize not only her party’s comity, unity and image but her own legislative achievements.

In politics, having one’s most dedicated adversaries  cheering your decision is a strong clue that you are missing something. In this case, what Nancy Pelosi is missing are accountability, humility, fairness, and common sense.

Ethics Advice to Joe Miller: At Least Lose With Integrity

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Republican Senate candidate Joe Miller, who helped sink his candidacy by stonewalling and dissembling about his misconduct while working as a municipal attorney, is now trying a Hail Mary law suit to stave off a write-in victory by current GOP Senator Lisa Murkowski.

Miller has asked a judge to stop the state from making a judgment on a voter’s intentions if the voter wrote in something other than “Murkowski” or “Lisa Murkowski.” Alaska is about to start counting the more than 92,000 write-in ballots cast in last week’s election. The state counted about 27,000 absentee and early votes Tuesday, and at the end of the day, Miller remained 11,333 behind the write-in total.

The Alaska law covering write-ins states:

“A vote for a write-in candidate, other than a write-in vote for governor and lieutenant governor, shall be counted if the oval is filled in for that candidate and if the name, as it appears on the write-in declaration of candidacy, of the candidate or the last name of the candidate is written in the space provided.”

Miller’s argument embraces the dubious theory that a misspelled name isn’t the name it’s intended to represent, even if it is obvious who the voter intended to vote for. Such an interpretation would make it disproportionally difficult for candidates not named “Smith,” “Brown,” or, naturally, “Miller” to prevail as write-in candidates, and nearly impossible for candidates named Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carl Yastrzemski, or, just to pick a name out of a hat, Lisa Murchowski. Or Murkowski. Whatever.

In other words, it is unfair, and an effort on Miller’s part to undermine the intent of the voters and the democratic process so he can achieve a dirty, unprincipled, undeserved victory. If  Tea Party enthusiasts like Sarah Palin, who promoted Miller’s misbegotten candidacy, believe in core American values as much as they claim to, they need to shut down Miller’s disgraceful law suit by informing him that he’s embarrassing himself, the movement, his party, and Alaska.

Again.

Dishonoring Honors: Tina Fey, Derek Jeter and the Death of Award Integrity

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

We should have seen this coming. Once the most prestigious award of all, the Nobel Peace Prize, was bestowed on President Obama because, to paraphrase Sally Field, “They liked him! They really liked him!,” it was clear that the whole concept of maintaining the integrity of awards was being abandoned. More dispiriting proof arrived yesterday in the fields of comedy and baseball, when the Mark Twain Prize, given to artists who have made major and significant contributions to American comedy, was awarded to Tina Fey, and the Gold Glove Award for the American League’s best fielding shortstop went to New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter. Continue reading →

Texas Cheerleading Ethics: Cheer Your Rapist!

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

In the current issue of Sports Illustrated, Selena Roberts relates the tale of an ethical outrage, one that will makes your heart sink at the realization that there is so much incompetence, lack of common sense, cruelty and irresponsibility in the world…and that so much of it resides in high school administration.

A Silsbee (Texas) High School cheerleader, identified in the story only as “H.S.”,  had told police that she had been cornered in a room by three school athletes during a party, and sexually assaulted. Her screams were heard by others at the party, and charges were filed.  Roberts writes, “In a town whose population is 7,341 and whose high school football stadium seats 7,000…the alleged assault prompted two questions: How would it affect the girl? And how would it affect the team?” Continue reading →

Flunking the Keith Olbermann Test

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Every so often there is a news story that exposes the serious deficiencies in the ethics comprehension in the public and the media. The Clinton-Lewinsky scandal was one such story; Major League Baseball’s steroid controversy was another. I confess: I didn’t see the Keith Olbermann suspension for making political donations as having the potential to be another test of ethical competence, but it is. And almost everyone is flunking it.

The facts of the Olbermann incident are deceptively simple. The rant-prone, self-annointed champion of the Angry Left violated an NBC ethics policy that forbade its reporters and commentators from making political contributions, on the theory, absurd when applied to Olbermann,  that it compromises their reputation for objectivity. Olbermann has no objectivity, or reputation for it either. Nonetheless, he intentionally and flagrantly violated his employer’s policy. That alone justifies his suspension, whether or not the policy is idiotic. And it is.

But Olbermann’s fans and critics alike are all over the internet attaching rationalizations and flawed ethical reasoning to the episode. Such as: Continue reading →

Drudge, Obama’s “$200 Million a Day Trip” and How The U.S. Public Gets Stupid

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

One of the many themes running through the many teeth-gnashing, garment-rending attempts by angry progressive columnist and bloggers to explain why the Democrats got their heads handed to them on Tuesday is that the voters are just stupid, that’s all. (In doing so, they duplicate the exact same arrogance that helped put all those heads on the block in the first place, but I digress.) The public is not stupid, of course, but it is often wretchedly misinformed by a news media that has lost most of its scruples and a lot of its professionalism. Once a rumor, misconception, distortion or myth gets enough publicity, it can lodge itself in people’s brains like shrapnel. Examples: Obama’s “Muslim faith” and his “foreign birth.” Other examples: the “50% divorce rate” and women only  getting paid “75% of what men are paid for the same jobs.”

We should all thank Matt Drudge for giving us a wonderful lesson on how this happens, both for our future reference and protection. He recently linked to a story in an Indian newspaper that reported, based on anonymous sources, that President Obama’s trip to Mumbai was going to be accompanied by about 10% of the U.S. fleet and cost $200,000,000 a day. Continue reading →

Oscar, Jean Luc-Godard, and the Ethics of Honoring Talented Creeps

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

The Academy of Motion Picture Sciences will be giving an honorary Oscar to French director Jean-Luc Godard, and nobody who knows anything about film can object to the award on the basis of merit. Godard is one of the most influential film makers who ever yelled “Cut!;”  there are dozens of film classes about his work in schools all over the country. He makes great movies, and has for decades. He deserves the honor.

Or does he? Mr. Godard, it seems, has also been resolutely anti-Jewish, at least in his sentiments, for almost as long as he has been making classic films. Some in the industry and without are questioning whether Hollywood should be honoring a likely Anti-Semite.

Excuse me…did I miss something? When did the rest of the Oscars get junked, leaving only the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award? Continue reading →

WordPress Ethics, Or How Offensive Obama T-Shirt Ads Ended Up On My Blog

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

WordPress supplies a versatile and useful product that is user-friendly (if I can manage it, believe me, it is user-friendly), inexpensive, and well-serviced. It also seems to be diligent about supplying regular information, which is especially important to me. So many companies, and especially the government, regularly surprise me with unpleasant, disrupting, or costly changes in what they provide that I only learn about by accident, or when they start causing me trouble.

A few months back, for example, Direct TV gave me no-charge charge access to HBO, just a couple of months after I had canceled it. There was no notice about this, and as a result, we didn’t watch the network at all for some time, since we didn’t know we were receiving the signal. It was puzzling that the access to HBO just appeared, and when it had hung around a few months, I decided to look at the bill, which we paid automatically. Now, I discovered, we were being charged for HBO, which I had just canceled.

When I called Direct TV, the representative apologized, took off the charge, credited me with a past months charge before I had realized what had happened, and removed HBO. He also gave me a long explanation about why this had happened, which boils down to this: when your service is interrupted (as it was several months ago; I was late with a bill payment), it is my responsibility to tell Direct TV what channels I was getting before the interruption, or it might just slip in premium channels without telling me when it reconnects my service. Is this written anywhere? No, it isn’t.

I no longer trust Direct TV.

I don’t trust the Transportation Security Administration, either. Last week, in the middle of a trip that involved several flights, I set off the gate alarm, as is my custom (I have a metal hip), and prepared for the ceremonial wanding. But this time, it wasn’t a wanding; oh no no no! It was a bona fide, full-body, rough massage feel-up that included a sprightly hello to my throat, rear-end, and naughty bits. In many cities, such stimulation would have cost me a pretty penny, though only if it were not performed by a large, heavy, middle-aged guy named Carl, as mine was. Yes, in rapid response to the underwear bomber, whose attempted act of terrorism was more than a year ago, TSA has now instituted new pat-down procedures designed to determine, among other things, what’s in your BVDs. There was no advance notice of this to flyers, of course, until I was actually at the feel-up point of no return, having made my meeting schedule and bought my non-refundable ticket. In fact, the new procedures had been instituted mid-day, after I had taken a flight including the usual game of Wand Me.

Now, back on the ground, I learn that some readers of my WordPress blog see a string of Google Ads in the text, ads triggered by key words and automatically generated. Continue reading →

Obama’s “Enemies,” Pat Caddell, and the Cognitive Dissonance Misdirection

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

The Cognitive Dissonance Misdirection (CDM) is as old as politics. I’ve written about it here before, but finally have decided that it deserves a formal name–especially because it has been shamelessly employed by news media attempting to minimize, obscure or bury legitimate criticisms of Barack Obama and his Administration.

Cognitive dissonance is created when something an individual feels strongly about is associated in some way with something else. If the individual strongly likes, admires, or desires the first thing, cognitive dissonance will draw the second thing into his favor. If the individual intensely dislikes the first thing, he will begin to feel more negatively toward the second thing now linked to it. This why, for example, popular celebrities get product endorsement deals, and unpopular ones don’t. When Denzel Washington or George Clooney says he likes a car, people start liking the car too. If the same car were endorsed by, say, Lindsay Lohan or O.J. Simpson, a lot of people would assume it was a lemon…and they might not even realize why. Cognitive dissonance works its influence subliminally, and that’s why it is such an effective tool of persuasion…and bias.

The media’s version of this has been perfected over the last two years. When a legitimately troubling comment, action, incident or gaffe reflecting badly on the President, his Administration, or his staff occurs, the mainstream media has often not reported the issue straight, as in “This happened,” or “Obama said this,” but by immediately linking the story to the President’s presumably biased adversaries—Republicans, conservatives, and talk radio—and making the criticism the story, as in, “Republicans are attacking President Obama’s  communications director Anita Dunn’s comments that seemed to praise Mao Zedong.” The fact that a high-ranking White House figure praising the greatest mass murderer in history, even in jest, is news, and should be criticized by Left and Right, was muted by the reporting of it. Continue reading →