gaffes

Whether It’s A Double Standard Or A Biden Exception, It’s Media Bias and It’s Wrong

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

On CNN, the gang was discussing and chuckling over one of Joe Biden’s lesser gaffes, not that the same gaffe wouldn’t have had them screaming and shaking their fists if, say, Chris Christie had spoken similarly. In this case (with Biden, gaffes should be given case numbers; I’m guessing this one would be about #6,782,304), Biden used the uncivil term “bitch” when referring to the role of Vice President. This provoked Chris Cuomo to express his affection for Lunch Bucket Joe, saying…

 “I still love Biden for what he is. I just do. I think his candor is refreshing – and when he is insensitive to something, he owns it. What more can you ask for? Perfection?”

What does this even mean? Let me rephrase that. What the hell does this even mean? “For what he is”? Does Chris mean “an ongoing embarrassment”? A gaffe machine a heartbeat away from the Presidency? An unapologetic clown in a position of high responsibility and influence? You know what Chris really means, don’t you? He means nothing more nor less than, “I love Joe Biden because I love liberal Democrats, even silly, inept, dumb ones.”

Is that an admission that we should take lightly? Does it matter? Yes, I think it matters. Continue reading →

Bulletin: It’s Unethical For Government Officials To Use Twitter

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

no-twitter

Many law firms and other companies specifically prohibit their employees from using social media.  The reasons should be obvious: social media use is inherently reckless and unacceptably risky for professionals and those with high profile jobs. This is especially, and I would say fatally true of Twitter. It is an accident waiting to happen, and the more powerful the user, the more damage the accidents will be.

The latest example is the saga of Richard Stegel, Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs at the U.S. Department of State. He used his personal Twitter account yesterday to comment on the crisis triggered by the downed airliner in the Ukraine, prefaced the tweet with the State Department’s Twitter handle, and ended it with the hashtag #UnitedForGaza, which would appear to indicate his support of the Palestinians in its violent clash with Israel.

This is disturbing and diplomatically harmful for several reasons: Continue reading →

Political Correctness Delusions #3: A Grovelling TV Anchor, An Archaic Term, A Dishonest Apology, And…The Redskins

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments
And by the way, what is this "hair" they were discussing?

And by the way, what is this “hair” they were discussing?

Really, creating this kind of singled-handed, one passenger Ethics Train Wreck takes some kind of talent; I’m just not sure what to call it.

Here is how Atlanta CBS affiliate morning show host Michelle Burdo managed to turn a hair care segment on her morning broadcast into a controversy for the station, a self-proclaimed racial incident, a pathetic example of political correctness groveling, and, on top of it all, a demonstration of the lack of courage, skill  and candor that now infects her profession:

1. In a hair treatment feature on Monday’s installment of Better Mornings Atlanta, Burdo said to her African American guest, “Let me tell you something. I’m not a colored woman but I have kinky hair just like her and when you straighten it every day, it’s…” I’ll let you guess what it is; I don’t really care. The point is that she said the dreaded “colored woman” phrase that was the approved genteel and sensitive word for African-Americans by the 1920s at least. The phrase was out of favor by the Sixties, although blacks and whites of earlier generations would still use it, like older Americans today will still call women girls, gals, broads and similar anachronisms of a less gender-sensitive time. Continue reading →

Ethics Observations On Rep. Braley’s Anti-Farmer Insult

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments
A farmer, a framer, a farmer (and law school drop-out), and a lawyer. Final Score: Farmers 3, Lawyer 1.

A farmer, a farmer, a farmer (and law school drop-out), and a lawyer. Final Score: Farmers 3, Lawyer 1.

You wouldn’t know it if you read only mainstream media sources (Translation of ” mainstream media sources”—“supposedly objective and neutral news outlets that edit the news to do minimal damage to candidates, parties and policies that their overwhelmingly left-leaning staffs support”), but the presumptive Democratic candidate for Sen.Tom Harkin’s soon to be vacant U.S. Senate seat in Iowa insulted farmers (this is Iowa, remember) in a speech and was caught on video.

In a private fund-raising appearance before Texas trial lawyers, Rep. Bruce Braley warned of the consequences of a  Republican Senate majority by saying…

“You might have a farmer from Iowa who never went to law school, never practiced law, serving as the next chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Because, if Democrats lose the majority, Chuck Grassley will be the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee.”

Some observations:

  • The insulting characterization of farmers (as well as  Grassley) is being compared to Mitt Romney’s infamous statement to some big money donors about “the 47%,” which was captured surreptitiously by Jimmy Carter’s son-in-law and used to stir up the Democratic base. As in the case of Romney, I will point out that surreptitious recording and publicizing of what is said at any private event is unethical, flat-out wrong, no matter who does it, or for what reason. Private functions should be respected, as should what is said there, unless there are criminal conspiracies afoot.

Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Alex or Alexis?

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments
Actually, his friends called him "Alex"...

Actually, his friends called him “Alex”…

The Daily Caller believes it has caught the White House in an attempt to erase a Presidential gaffe from history:

“White House officials have quietly changed an official transcript to hide President Barack Obama’s embarrassing historical error during his international press conference with French President Francois Hollande. Obama’s error came when he misnamed Alexis de Tocqueville, a clear-eyed Frenchman who explained the subtle miracle of American culture and democracy in the 1830s. His book is a classic, partly because his insights about Americans’ social equality and civic society have become commonplace among centrists and conservatives. But Obama called him “Alex” in front of the French and U.S. press, and while facing banks of TV cameras. The White House’s official transcript, however, hides the presidential error by using the correct name. It now says that Obama declared: “Alexis de Tocqueville — that great son of France who chronicled our American democracy.

“Obama’s error was slight, but badly timed, partly because Obama is holding a state dinner for Hollande tonight.”

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz:

Is the White House transcript alteration of the President’s shortened version of de Tocqueville’s first name a mere edit of a trivial and immaterial miscue by President Obama (ethical) or an attempted cover-up, as the Daily Caller argues, of “an embarrassment for a President who claims to have been a constitutional scholar, and a judicious student of American history” (unethical)?

My answer: Continue reading →

The Ethics Of Amateur World Leadership

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Student Driver

The only rational way for any American to respond to the absurd and unprecedented bungling by President Obama and his tight circle of incompetents is sheer terror. If this was the level of care, seriousness, responsibility and professionalism employed by—oh, pick one; let’s say President Kennedy and his all-star advisors during the desperate efforts to avert nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis, we might all be cockroaches today. That this particular series of inept maneuvers, verbal gaffes and brain-numbing rationalizations may not be the one that sinks the United States like Titanic Jr  should not be the cause of cheering by anyone. We are stuck with this, because the news media of the United States conspired with well-meaning ideologues to place the fate of the nation in the hands of an arrogant amateur without even the ability to realize how little he knows what he is doing. Now we are awaiting what must be the most surreal Presidential speech in U.S. history—or at least we can hope it is—by a leader who has only one skill, and is once again relying on it to bail him out of a mess of his own making. Continue reading →

Regarding The News Media Covering For The President: Will Democrats Ever Have The Integrity To Admit How Dangerous And Wrong This Is?

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

Nothing to see hereThis was going to be a completely different post. This week President Obama went on the Tonight Show, since, in this civically complacent, lazy and ignorant country, far more voters will watch him there than in his press conferences. In the process of his relaxed chat with Jay, the President made a number of surprising gaffes, verbal, factual, geographical and historical: 1) he confused the Summer with the Winter Olympics, 2) he incorrectly said that Russia’s Putin had been the head of the KGB (he was a long-time mid-level KGB official), 3) he seemed to say that Savannah, Georgia, Jacksonville, Florida and Charleston, South Carolina are on the Gulf of Mexico, when in fact they are on the Atlantic Coast, and 4) he mangled his words so that he appeared to be wishing that more people were killed in terrorist attacks, when he meant to say, pretty obviously, that too many people were killed in traffic accidents. Naturally, the conservative media went crazy with “we told you so’s” after this, recalling the President’s infamous “57 states” mistake and hammering its long-held contention that the President’s vaunted brilliance and mastery of knowledge are carefully maintained, teleprompter-aided myths.

My post was originally going to point out that this is nothing but “tit for tat,” two-wrongs-don’t-make-a-right unfairness melded with confirmation bias by conservatives and the right-leaning media. Yes, it’s true: these are exactly the kinds of mistakes that the liberal news media (but I repeat myself *) have roasted and mocked various Republicans over, from Eisenhower to Reagan through Dan Quayle, both Bushes, Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney, and those attacks were excessive and unfair, at least most of them.** True, Obama is more arrogant than any of these, and it is somewhat satisfying to catch him saying something that would be corrected by a seventh grad teacher, but that’s a petty motivation to claim significance for what is more likely the result of fatigue and poor briefing. I think its fair, indeed necessary, for the media to point out the blunders, if only so the public isn’t actively misinformed, and if the fact of his giving out flawed information lessens the tingle up the legs of some Obama supporters, so be it. Still, it’s not a big deal, and shouldn’t be represented as otherwise, regardless of the clear double standard at work.

This is a big deal, however: The Associate Press actively and intentionally set out to cover for the President, and hide his most significant gaffe rather than report on it.  In quoting the President’s erroneous statements about the Gulf ports that aren’t actually on the Gulf, the AP’s version was this:

‘”If we don’t deepen our ports all along the Gulf – (and in) places like Charleston, S.C., or Savannah, Ga., or Jacksonville, Fla. – if we don’t do that, these ships are going to go someplace else and we’ll lose jobs,’ Obama said.”

That’s a blatant partisan clean-up job, not reporting. After several blogs blew the whistle on the AP, it issued a retraction and apology: Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Month: Oprah Winfrey

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

 “I always think of the millions of people who heard that as their last word as they were hanging from a tree.”

–—Oprah Winfrey, in an interview with Parade Magazine, discussing race in America, the use of the word “nigger,” and how young people in the U.S. don’t know “diddly squat” about the civil rights movement.

Yes, Parade Readers, it's true, whites tried to wipe us off the face of the map.

Yes, Parade peaders, it’s true, whites tried to wipe us off the face of the map.

Now, thanks to Oprah, those young people think they know that “millions” of blacks were lynched in the United States.

Oprah Winfrey, one of the most admired, respected and trusted public figures in the nation, decided to join the recent concerted effort to magnify racial hate and fear, this time by grossly misrepresenting U.S.history. Not only that, but she did so in the context of representing herself as knowledgeable about the history of race relations in America, while others know “diddly-squat.” The recklessness, lack of responsibility, and ignorance that Winfrey’s statement represents is staggering. Continue reading →

Of Unfairness, Petards, and the Golden Rule

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Here is the problem.

When you become desperate, and spring to manipulate gaffes, misstatements, over-heard comments and poor choices of words into unfair and disproportionate campaign attacks, you set the ground rules for your opponents as well. Unless you really have a bombshell—I’d say Romney’s 47% comment was a bombshell—the tactic is a poor risk, as well as being unethical. No candidate, nor any of his or her supporters, should try to make political points from off-the- cuff remarks, unless they reach Todd Akin-like levels of offensiveness and stupidity. They should apply the Golden Rule, for their own protection, as well as the principle’s ethical virtues.Indeed, Presidential candidates should pledge—to each other and to the public—to run campaigns about substance, not slips of the tongue.

I would have thought the Democrats would have learned this; I would think any politician would have learned this. But they are worried, and falling in the polls, so when Mitt Romney awkwardly talked about his “binders full of women” in the second debate, liberal pundits and Democrats decided to make this the latest way to ridicule Mitt, taking its place aside “I like to fire people,” and “corporations are people,” but sillier than either, though no more unfair. The attacks on those statements were unethical; this attack was outrageous. More important, it re-emphasized that in this dirty campaign, intentionally warped and unforgiving interpretations of statements that the candidates wish they had said better are acceptable weapons of choice, as unfair and misleading as that choice is.

So, as a result, when their candidate makes a far, far worse gaffe, as Obama did by telling “the Daily Show’s” Jon Stewart that “If four Americans get killed, it’s not optimal,” they can expect no mercy from the media, their conservative adversaries, or anyone else, including me. Is the statement as bad as it sounds? No. Does it show that Obama doesn’t care about the death of his ambassador and three other Americans? No. Will it be perceived that way anyway? Yes, absolutely, and because it will, the Republicans will run with it hard, and no Democrat who harped on Romney’s more trivial foot-stuffing exercises can credibly complain.

So they are going to have to live with the mother of one of those slain in Benghazi, telling the press,

“It’s insensitive to say my son is not very optimal – he is also very dead. I’ve not been “optimal” since he died and the past few weeks have been pure hell.”

And they are going to have to put up with this:

‘

Continue reading →

“You Didn’t Build That” Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

“If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that.”

With those words, President Barack Obama handed the Romney campaign a rich and evocative phrase more ripe for political exploitation than even his Republican opponent’s juiciest gaffes, like…

  • “I like being able to fire people “
  • “I’m not concerned about the very poor “
  • “Corporations are people”

Since every one of these quotes were misrepresented by both pundits and Democrats, taken out of context and unfairly characterized, it’s hard to blame Republicans for jumping on President Obama’s provocative rhetoric, and using it for all it’s worth…which, I suspect, if you want to paint the President as a socialist who wants to punish success and give the fruits of  risk-taking and hard work to the slack and unsuccessful, is a lot.

Here’s the Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto:

“The president’s remark was a direct attack on the principle of individual responsibility, the foundation of American freedom. If “you didn’t build that,” then you have no moral claim to it, and those with political power are morally justified in taking it away and using it to buy more political power. “I think that when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody,” Obama said in another candid moment, in 2008.”

And here’s Mitt, making the most of it: Continue reading →