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
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Philly’s “Webcamgate”: No Ethics Controversy, Just Unethical
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
NPR Abandons Abortion Issue Spin
It shouldn’t have taken so long for National Public Radio to join many other news organizations in concluding that the terms “pro-life” and “pro-choice” were deceitful misrepresentations expressly designed to allow advocates to de-emphasize the problems with their positions. Nevertheless, the decision of the organization to stop using the euphemisms was both welcome and correct. After a column on the subject by NPR ombudsman Alicia Shepard called for the change, Managing Editor David Sweeney sent out a network-wide memo aimed at ” He continued:
On the air, we should use “abortion rights supporter(s)/advocate(s)” and “abortion rights opponent(s)” or derivations thereof (for example: “advocates of abortion rights”). It is acceptable to use the phrase “anti-abortion”, but do not use the term “pro-abortion rights”.
Next, the public should insist that advocacy groups and their obsequious political allies follow the same policy. The position of Ethics Alarms, for example, will be that any elected official who uses the deceptive terms “pro-life,” “pro-choice,” “anti-choice,” or “anti-life” is either intellectually dim or intentionally attempting to misrepresent the position he or she claims to be supporting.
“It’s Just Sex”? No, It’s Betrayal
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
Making Sure Your Shrink Has Only Your Needs in Mind
Psychiatry and psychoanalysis were supposed to transform humanity for the better by allow us to understand what makes us happy, sad and crazy and to control it, rather than to let it control us. But after a century that witnessed Woody Allen undergoing intense treatment for decades that resulted in his marrying his step-daughter (and feeling darn good about it!), the profession is increasingly resorts to a shrug and a prescription. The good news is that many of the new drugs seem to do the job a lot better than Dr. Freud’s couch; the bad is that psychiatrists are often conflicted by their financial ties to drug companies.
Writing in the current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. Thomas Insel, Director of the National Institutes of Health, states that American psychiatrists need to reform a “culture of influence” that has been nurtured by too many goodies offered to doctors by pharmaceutical companies and happily accepted, including big ticket items like research grants, trips, fees for writing friendly journal articles and entertainment, and smaller trinkets like coffee mugs. Continue reading
Rep. Bart Stupak: Double-Reverse Ethics Dunce
Michigan Democrat Bart Stupak has been wrong in so many ways lately it is hard to keep count. If you are going to be wrong, however, the ethical way is to have integrity and at least be consistent in your wrongness. He couldn’t even do that right. He did manage to become Ethics Alarms’ first Double-Reverse Ethics Dunce. That’s something.
First, Stupak staged a revolt in the House to insist that the original House health care reform bill didn’t wouldn’t mandate the use of taxpayer funds for abortions.
What was wrong with this? Oh, only everything…. Continue reading
So Much For “Don’t Be Evil”: YouTube and Google Ethics on Display
The Business Insider has posted evidence gathered by Viacom in its lawsuit against Google, consisting primarily of e-mails and instant messages. It is far from conclusive on the legal issues, which revolve around YouTube and Google’s unauthorized use of copyrighted material. It is very conclusive, however, regarding how often any ethics alarms went off with various Google and YouTube executives as they contemplated bottom line issues: rarely.
Here is a startling example. In a 2005 e-mail exchange YouTube co-founder Steve Chen reasoned thusly: Continue reading
Remember Davy Crockett (and thank you, Fess Parker!)
If you don’t remember Fess Parker, who died this week as an 85-year-old winery owner, you missed the Fifties. Parker played Davy Crockett in Walt Disney’s TV miniseries about the lively Tennessee frontiersman, and did it with such sincerity and style that he not only turned coonskin caps into a national craze, he also rescued Davy Crockett from creeping obscurity. Continue reading
Ethics and Irony: the Postman Rings Twice for ACORN
“The Postman Always Rings Twice,” James M. Cain’s novel that is better known as a 1946 film noir classic starring Lana Turner and John Garfield, has a famous ironic twist. The story’s hapless drifter narrator escapes punishment for a murder he helped commit, but gets executed anyway for a death that was really an accident. Cosmic justice is done, if not legal justice. It turns out that the postman rang twice for ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, too. Continue reading
The Sestak Affair, the White House, and the Corruption of America
The Rep. Joe Sestak affair, still playing out, is a depressing reminder of how the process of corruption works, and more depressingly, how corruption spreads like a virulent flu, leaping from individuals to organizations to institutions and finally to our culture itself.
Back in September, the Denver Post ran a well-sourced article stating that in order to protect Democratic Sen. Michael Bennett from the threatened primary challenge of popular former state Colorado House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, the White House, in the person of Jim Messina, President Barack Obama’s deputy chief of staff, told Romanoff that a plum position in the administration would be his if he avoided the primary. The Post’s sources said that Messina offered specific suggestions, including a job at USAID, the foreign aid agency. Romanoff, who apparently turned down the deal and is currently opposing Bennett in Colorado, refused to answer any questions.
This was treated as a local story, and the national media ignored it. Then, last month, a similar story surfaced, this time from a Congressman. Pennsylvania Congressman Joe Sestak, gearing to to run against party-switching U.S. Senator Arlen Specter in the Pennsylvania primaries, told a Philadelphia TV news anchor that “someone” at the White House tried to discourage him from running, and also offered him a job (rumored to be Secretary of the Navy) if he would back off. Like Romanoff, Sestak refused.
Again, hardly anyone paid attention, because all the national media wanted to do is talk about health care reform, the economy, and really important stuff like how Ellen was going to do on American Idol. Continue reading
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