James Cameron, whose ground-breaking film “Avatar” will soon be the top-grossing movie of all time, is currently being bashed in some of the more obscure corners of the blogosphere for plagiarism. This time the criticism is not based on his blatant borrowing from Russian science fiction, but for his lifting of ideas from an American master of the genre, Poul Anderson. Anderson wrote a novella in 1957 entitled “Call Me Joe” that chronicled the adventures of a paraplegic who becomes telepathically merged with a manufactured alien life form created to explore a planet. He is exhilarated by the sensations and power of his artificially-created body, and eventually is seduced into abandoning his humanity completely to become a significant figure in the development of a new civilization. Along the way, he battles vicious alien creatures. Sound familiar? Yes, these are major components of “Avatar” as well. Continue reading
fairness
“The Ethicist” Strikes Out Again
I’ll make a deal with Randy Cohen,”The Ethicist” of The New York Times Magazine: I’ll stop criticizing his column when he stops justifying dishonesty. Lately, Cohen has not only been advising his correspondents to avoid telling the truth but headlining the questions where he does so.
Lie proud, Randy!
This week’s endorsement of forked tongues surrounded the sensitive issue of designating a guardian for one’s child. Parents had asked their good friends, another married couple, if they would agree to care for their daughter in the event that the parents perished while she was a child. After the couple enthusiastically agreed, the parents learned that their friends were not sufficiently responsible with their finances, and liked to “live large.” They no longer trust the couple with their daughter’s welfare, and want to re-assign the responsibility of being emergency guardians to relatives. This will require the parents to change their wills.
Their question to “The Ethicist”: Do they have to tell their friends? Continue reading
Believe it Or Not: An Unethical Sorority Dress Code
Abuse of power comes in all shapes and sizes. Witness the sorority Pi Phi, which apparently is hell-bent on proving that “Mean Girls” was a documentary. The fashion website “Fashionista” got its cyber hands on the sorority’s dress code, which makes West Point look lenient.
Here are some examples from the six page manifesto, the invention of Pi Phi’s rush chair: Continue reading
Pennsylvania’s and Delaware’s Disgrace: Risking the Poor to Balance the Budgets
Delaware and Pennsylvania, facing state budget deficits that would require political courage and citizen sacrifice to address, has taken the craven route of other states (with more sure to follow) by legalizing casino gambling.
In Pennsylvania, State Republicans, the majority party in the state senate, had opposed the expansion of gambling , but capitulated when faced with the reality of having to choose between cutting jobs and services or raising taxes. Instead, the Republicans joined with Democrats, those champions of the weak and powerless, to victimize the poorest people in the state for profit. Continue reading
Hell Freezes Over: Olbermann Relents
If any of the talk radio and cable news demagogues (Rush, Glenn, Laura, Ed, Michael, Marc, Bill, Monica, Rachel, Chris and the now-unemployed shouters over at Air America) have ever publicly admitted their rhetorical excesses, I’ve missed it. Thus I was stunned to witness just such an admission from arguably the worst offender of all, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann. Continue reading
Final Ethics Alarms on the Coakley-Brown Race: Fairness and Honesty Take a Holiday
Some concluding Ethics Alarms from the Brown-Coakley Senate race, many with the same dispiriting lesson: hyper-partisan zealotry is causing many Americans to abandon their senses of fairness, proportion, and common sense : Continue reading
Roshomon Ethics: Capping Jury Damages for Malpractice
Critics of the Democratic health care reform proposals routinely raise capping jury awards for medical negligence and malpractice as a missing ingredient that would lower health care costs by making doctors’ malpractice liability insurance premiums less costly. It’s a legitimate issue worth debating, but cap advocates typically cite jury awards of outrageous damages in cases where the doctor’s conduct was defensible, while ignoring cases like this one. Continue reading
Ed Schultz Shows How to Be Wildly Unethical in Fifty Words Or Less
The pattern is distressingly clear now. Fox News finds an arrogant, doctrinaire talking head on the Right, Bill O’Reilly, and soon its Left-tilted rival, MSNBC, has recruited an even more arrogant, doctrinaire talking head on that side of the spectrum, the assaultive Keith Olbermann. O’Reilly uncivilly calls those he disagrees with “pin-heads,” while Olberman calls them “the Worst Person in the World.” This motivates Fox to find a commentator on the Right who makes O’Reilly seem modest and measured, Glenn Beck. This, naturally, pushed MSNBC to look under every rock to find a liberal host who can out-Beck Beck.
The bad news: they succeeded, and found Ed Schultz, who is louder, cruder, more uncivil and less fair than any of the above-mentioned blowhards. The worse news: if you out Beck Beck, no responsible station should put you on the air. Continue reading
Was Brit Hume Unethical?
I’ve been thinking about Brit Hume’s controversial remarks on Fox News about Tiger Woods for two weeks now, trying to identify what was wrong with them. Not whether I agreed with them, or whether I would have said something similar myself, but what was wrong with them: did his comments suggesting a Christian path for the troubled golfer constitute a breach of professional ethics, or ethics generally? Continue reading
On Hoaxes, Avatar, and More Late Night Ethics
Hoax Update
- Singer, model, television personality and inexplicable celebrity Tia Tequila announced in December that she was engaged to the heiress to the Johnson and Johnson fortune, Casey Johnson. The troubled Johnson turned up dead in squalid circumstances in January, prompting a grief-stricken online statement from Tia in which she spelled her beloved’s name wrong. Shortly after this, it was revealed that the engagement was a publicity stunt by Tequila, who barely knew Johnson. Fake romances for publicity purposes are as old as the Tudors, but this sort of thing further trivializes truth for an entire generation. Continue reading
