fairness

Charles Leerhsen’s Unethical Pit Bull Vendetta Continues

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

You have to hand it to Charles Leerhsen. He is determined to get revenge for the mauling of his beloved Wheaten Terrier, Frankie, if he has to wipe out an entire dog breed and thousands of other people’s beloved pets to do it. To this end, the Daily Beast has, for some reason, decided to give him a second column to make the illogical, historically flawed, intellectually bigoted argument that pit bulls should be wiped off the face of the earth.

This time, he has abandoned any pretense of fair argument, and simply ridicules and insults his critics. Using the logic of his articles, this would be sufficient evidence to argue for sending writers to extinction. Astoundingly, he accuses critics of relying on “anecdotal evidence,” when his entire crusade was inspired by a single incident. His rebuttal of non-anecdotal evidence, such as studies showing that the supposed excessive viciousness of pit bulls over all other breeds is a myth? “Fabricated by pit bull lobbying groups, according to at least one commenter.” Well, I guess that settles it then! Continue reading →

Dubious Ethics Studies, Part I.

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Thanks to Malcolm Gladwell (Blink) and the one-word titled books he has inspired, we are being exposed to more social science research than ever before, much of it with relevance to ethics. I’ll admit to using some of these when they support my point of view, and that is the problem: what such studies supposedly signify often tell us more about the biases of the analysts than the behavior of the subjects. Two recent studies illustrate the point. Continue reading →

Philly’s “Webcamgate”: No Ethics Controversy, Just Unethical

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Ethics Alarms has not discussed the Lower Merion School District’s “Webcamgate” scandal, in part because its facts are still somewhat in doubt, and because I found it difficult to believe that what had been reported was true. High school student Blake Robbins sued the District after officials reprimanded for him for conduct inside his Pennsylvania Valley home. Apparently he was caught on the webcam of the Apple MacBook that the district supplies to its 2,300 high school students. Following an investigation by the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office and the FBI, it was confirmed that the cameras were programmed to be turned on remotely by school officials, but, say those officials, only to track down stolen computers, not to spy on students, their friends and their parents. Continue reading →

“Lawmiss” and the Plain Dealer’s Dilemma

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

The Cleveland Plain Dealer made one of those fateful first steps that ends in a journey to ethics no-man’s land when it decided to check the e-mail address of a repeat anonymous commenter on the paper’s website. “lawmiss” had been especially abusive in comments about one of the newspaper’s reporters, so instead of just deleting the comment for violating the site’s rules against personal attacks, an enterprising editor tracked down its source. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Sen. John Ensign

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

John Ensign, the GOP senator from Nevada, recently gave an interview to the website Politico that was unhinged from reality. He is either shameless, desperate, or in need of treatment. Ensign decried a “gotcha” mentality in the press and implied that the news media has treated him unfairly. Is he kidding? Continue reading →

“It’s Just Sex”? No, It’s Betrayal

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

There isn’t much good that can come out of the sordid infidelity Trifecta of John Edwards, Tiger Woods, and Jesse James, but maybe there will be this: Perhaps after the public has observed and measured all the pain and suffering the outrageous conduct of these three men has inflicted on innocent third parties, especially those who depended on them and trusted them, it will not be so quick to accept the facile argument, perfected during Bill Clinton’s ordeals, that adultery is “just sex.”

The latest flagrant celebrity dog, Jesse James, is an especially powerful case for leaving the Clinton Excuse with Clinton. He had a wife who clearly adored him, the late-marrying Sandra Bullock, who touchingly paid a tribute to her supposedly devoted husband in one of her several Best Actress acceptance speeches this year by saying that she knew he “had her back.” Now tattoo models and strippers are coming out of the woodwork to say they had affairs with the chopper-maker, and the revelations may end up sending his six-year old daughter back to her porn star mother, though James and Bullock had been awarded custody.

Destroy a family, devastate the woman who loves you, uproot your child. But hey, it’s only sex. Continue reading →

Octomom and PETA: a Match Made in Ethics Hell

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

I didn’t think anything could make me feel sorry for Octomom, a.k.a. Nadya Suleman, the serial baby-machine who is a one-woman bioethics seminar with some child exploitation thrown in for spice. Then along came People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the ethically-challenged animal rights fanatics. PETA believes that no person or thing on earth deserves consideration, fairness or respect if he, she or it can be used to advance its message. A few months ago, it plastered the First Lady on some of the organization’s ads without her permission, because it knew that the publicity over this obvious violation of Michelle Obama’s right to be consulted before being used this way would get PETA in the news. And it did.

When you turn off the ethics alarms that are supposed to sound before you violate a person’s dignity, autonomy and self-respect, it is amazing what schemes you can come up with. So when PETA learned that Suleman was about to lose her home  in a foreclosure, its brain trust thought, “Wow, she must be desperate. And she obviously has no shame. I bet she’ll do anything for money! It probably won’t even have to be much money, either.” Continue reading →

Proof of Faulty Ethics Alarms in the Business World

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

We tend to think that unethical conduct by individuals in business arises from “bad” individuals, people who either have no ethics alarms at all, or those whose alarms are merrily ringing loudly while they go about their corrupt ways. Certainly there are people like this, but it is increasingly clear to me that most people behave unethically because they have been completely confused by the rationalizations and unethical arguments all around them. Combine this with the absence of ethics training in the schools, and you have a large segment of the public with ethics alarms that are like digital alarm clocks carelessly set to go off at 7 PM  instead of 7 AM. (An analogy that occurs to me now because that’s exactly what I did last night.)

A stark example was on display over the weekend at Computer World, where Mark Gibbs helpfully presented an ethics quiz to his readers entitled “Seven ethical questions.” Continue reading →

Cool It

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

To listen to the conservative talk radio circuit and read the Right’s wing of the blogosphere, one would think that the United States is in the midst of a coup right out of “Seven Days in May,” or a foreign take-over like the one portrayed in “Red Dawn,” or even an alien infestation by disguised lizards, as in the sci-fi mini-series “V.” Hysteria is everywhere. Dark threats of revolution are not being whispered, but shouted. “I really think civil war is inevitable,” one blogger wrote yesterday.

Holy Gamoly! Continue reading →

Intolerance Plus School Cowardice=Cultural Deprivation

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The Supreme Court has refused to reconsider a Ninth Circuit decision agreeing that a school could forbid the school band from playing Franz Schubert’s “Ave Maria”.

I don’t want to argue about the legal issues (you can read Justice Alito’s dissent here), although I suspect tha the law favors the school’s absurd conduct. But although self-righteous intolerance can effectively bully people and institutions in an atmosphere of school administration cowardice and timidity, it still is wrong, and we all suffer for it. Because one student objected last year to a musical piece at her graduation that mentioned God and angels, the pusillanimous administrators at the school decided to nix an orchestral rendition of “Ave Maria,”  because the title might offend some other intolerant and insufferably self-centered child. Continue reading →