hypocrisy

Bud Selig Is The Barry Bonds Of Baseball Commissioners…So Why Was He Just Elected To The Hall Of Fame?

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments
Bud. I had a more descriptive caption, but decided that it wasn't professional...

Bud Selig. I had a more descriptive caption, but decided that it wasn’t professional…

Let me state my bias up front: I detest Bud Selig.

He became Major League Baseball’s first non-Commissioner Commissioner when baseball’s owners decided that Fay Vincent was doing the job of independent, uncorrupted overseer of the game’s welfare and integrity too literally for their tastes, fired him, and installed one of their own. That was Selig, a wealthy auto sales impresario who owned the Milwaukee Brewers and never saw a dollar he wouldn’t debase himself for.

The owners suspected that Vincent, a smart and decent man, might use his power to block the looming baseball labor-management impasse, benefiting the players. They dumped him just in time to give the job to an “independent overseer” who had the Mother of All Conflicts of Interest in the upcoming war: he was management. . Sure enough, under Bud’s fair and balanced leadership, the most devastating work stoppage in baseball history arrived in 1994. It stopped the season late and wiped out the World Series. It killed the Montreal Expos, for all intents and purposes, crushed the baseball card and memorabilia industry (it still hasn’t completely recovered), and nearly sent the sport itself into a death spiral. Baseball was saved, not by Selig, but by a combination of luck, the inherent greatness of the game, and Cal Ripken, who broke Lou Gehrig’s consecutive game streak (I was there to see it!) in the season after the strike to remind fans and the nation of baseball’s glorious past and why they cared about it.

From that point, Selig oversaw explosive growth in the game’s revenues, exposure, merchandising, player salaries and popularity, He shattered a lot of traditions to do it: the elimination of any real distinction between the leagues, expanded play-offs, wild card teams (which I hate, since they allow second place teams to become champions over the teams that defeated them during the season, but then there was the 2004 World Champion Boston Red Sox…) inter-league play, instant replay, penalties for big-spending teams, baseball in November, and more. If you are an ends justifies the means fan, Selig’s your man. He ended his more than two decades as the sport’s top executive with the game stronger and richer than ever.

He did this, however, despite and in part because he quietly enabled the scourge of steroid use among players, permitted cheating to go on right under his nose, and was shocked…shocked! to discover that all those players who began topping their previous best seasons at advanced ages when virtually all athletes go into decline, and all those players who turned up at spring training 25 pounds heavier and looking like Lou Ferrigno, and a few of those players breaking career and season records that hadn’t been approached in decades, were using illegal and banned performance enhancing drugs.  When this dawned on him, two steroid users, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, had shattered Roger Maris’s record for home runs in a season in the same year—what a coinkydink!—and another, the grotesquely inflated Barry Bonds, had not only broken the new record but was on the road to surpass Hank Aaron’s career homer record. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Week: Harry Belafonte

/ Jack Marshall / 39 Comments

“In a few weeks from now, if there is a platform on which I will be privileged to stand and speak, my opening remarks will probably be something like “Welcome to the Fourth Reich.”

–—Legendary singer and long-time civil rights activist Harry Belafonte, now 90, speaking at a “Democracy Now!” event with an audience of 2000.

Harry Belafonte radiated sunniness and spirituality when he sang in his unique, whispery voice, but his political activism was always angry, radical, and with the passing years, increasingly bitter and paranoid. It was predictable that, health allowing, “The Banana Boat Song” artist would be in his element in the 2016 Post-Election Freak-Out and Ethics Train Wreck, and, sadly, he did not disappoint.

In his remarks, Harry mentioned with affection Paul Robeson, the late actor and singer who left the U.S. for the worker’s paradise of  Stalinist Russia, and America-hater Noam Chomsky. He might have mentioned Fidel Castro, for whom Harry frequently expressed his admiration in the past. Back in 2012, Belafonte told another one of his pals, Al Sharpton, that since the evil, racist Republicans wouldn’t do Barack Obama’s bidding, “The only thing left for Barack Obama to do is to work like a third-world dictator and put all these guys in jail!”

But Donald Trump is a Nazi. Continue reading →

It’s Time For That Exciting Ethics Alarms Game Show,”Spot The Hypocrisy!”

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

time-to-play

Are you ready?

Here comes…

Hypocrisy Challenge I

The New York Times

Like much of the mainstream news media but more so, The New York Times is flogging the “fake news” narrative. In part there is something legitimate to report, as with the crazy conspiracy theory about a pedophilia ring run out of a Washington, D.C., pizza place by John Podesta and Hillary Clinton that culminated in a nut case showing up there with a gun “to rescue children.”  (Most of the “fake news” crisis is really the “Stupid people” crisis.) The media’s excessive enthusiasm and daily fulminating about fake news, however, appears to be a desperate effort to make its own incompetent, inaccurate, slanted and dishonestly selective reporting during the campaign and election just completed appear more palatable by invoking Ethics Alarms Rationalization #22, Comparative Virtue, or “It’s not the worst thing.” This story, for example, was on today’s Times front page, where its headline read, “As Fake New Spreads Lies, More Readers Shrug At Truth.”

Meanwhile, tucked away at the bottom of the op-ed page of the same issue, was this “Correction”:

Because of an editing error, an Op-Ed essay on Friday about Donald Trump’s efforts to keep jobs in the United States misstated the change in auto sector employment in both the United States and Mexico between 2007 and 2015. In Mexico, jobs grew to 558,000 from 405,000, not to 675,000 from 174,000. In the United States, auto jobs declined to 762,000 from 828,000. The article also misstated plans by Detroit car companies in Mexico. Ford and General Motors plan to invest a combined $9.1 billion and hire 12,200 more workers; Detroit car companies are not planning to invest $30 billion and hire 30,000 more workers.

Now…

Spot the Hypocrisy!

Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Liberty University

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments
That's McCaw on the left, Starr on the right, with the Baylor women's basketball team.

That’s McCaw on the left, Starr on the right, with the Baylor women’s basketball team.

Football is a sport, but in American culture its primary impact is as an ethics corrupter. The latest revolting example of this is occurring at Lynchburg, Virginia’s Liberty University, a prominent Christian fundamentalist institution founded by Jerry Falwell, the late TV evangelist and Religious Right icon. The school  is supposedly dedicated to imbuing its students with moral values, but if it comes to choosing between the Ten Commandments and pigskin glory, guess what comes out on top?

Last week, with great fanfare, Liberty hired Ian McCaw as its new athletic director. “My vision for Liberty is to position it as a pre-eminent Christian athletic program in America,” McCaw said during a news conference.

This is his first paying assignment since May, when he left his job as the athletic director at Baylor, also a Christian university. His departure was made essential after a thorough investigation that found that those overseeing Baylor’s  football team as well as the management of  the athletic department—that is, McCaw— had been informed of multiple gang rapes and sexual assault by team members and had ignored it, as any good football-loving Christian would….especially when a star was involved.

Baylor’s summary of its confidential investigation, overseen by the law firm of Pepper Hamilton, found that athletic program administrators and football coaches learned of accusations of gang and date rape over many years and did not report them or take appropriate action. This, the report found, “reinforces the perception that rules applicable to other students are not applicable to football players.”

Ethics Alarms calls this “The King’s Pass,” or “The Star Syndrome.” It is antithetical to moral and ethical principles, and, in theory, religion.

The report concluded that the “the choices made by football staff and athletics leadership, in some instances, posed a risk to campus safety and the integrity of the University.” Continue reading →

Ethics Observations On This Kind Of Post-Election Hate, Those Who Write It, And Those Who Believe It [UPDATED]

/ Jack Marshall / 109 Comments

thanksgiving-conflict

The piece in question is one published in The Daily Banter. The author is Justin Rosario, self-described as a “center-left Jewish-Puerto Rican atheist liberal.” His essay came out just before Thanksgiving, and he titled it, Yes, You Should Shame Your Trump Voting Relatives At Thanksgiving Dinner
(They’ve gone beyond politics and should be treated like the pariahs they are).

Here are the guts of it, when he explains exactly what your Trump-voting relatives “are”:

They’re the people in Germany who stood by and watched the Jews be herded into concentration camps and murdered. Except they’re worse because at least the Germans had never seen anything like the rise of Hitler before. They had no frame of reference to understand what was happening to their country. Your Donald voting relatives have heard and read about Nazis their entire lives. They know and they didn’t care.

Yes, they will have a million excuses for why they voted for someone they knew was a monster but they’re all bullshit. It wasn’t the economy. It wasn’t ISIS. It wasn’t unemployment. It wasn’t Hillary’s emails. It wasn’t Bill’s affairs. It wasn’t Washington corruption. Every single reason they give is a lie and they know it. They wanted one thing and one thing only: To take “their” country back from that fucking n*gger in the White House. That’s it. End of line. Full stop.

Your Donald voting relatives were so freaked out that a black man was president that once Donald told them it was not just permissible to be racist but necessary, they leapt at the chance to put Those People back in their place. And in doing so, they knowingly elected a man that will be all the things they were so afraid Obama was going to be: A tyrant. A dictator. A bully. An autocratic pig that will disregard the rule of law and treat America like his own personal playground. A brutal despot that will silence the media, arrest his political opponents and use the full power of the government to destroy his enemies.

Observations: Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Ethics Quiz: Trump’s Tweet On Fidel’s Demise”

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

trump-tshirtThe Democratic/progressive/news media freakout over Trump’s election has become an ethics story itself, as the foes of a man whose lack of impulse control and respect during the campaign drew deserved rebukes now emulate him. This is, Ethics Alarms will soon explore, an effort at deligitimzing Trump’s presidency before it begins, just as the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bush v Gore was employed by Democrats to legitimize Bush, and the various Muslim and birther smears were aimed at Obama by conservatives to undermine Obama. The tactic is un-American and despicable, and never has it been so thoroughly embraced by so many, with such smug self-righteousness.

My thanks to Steve-O-in-NJ for his Comment of the Day on the post, Ethics Quiz: Trump’s Tweet On Fidel’s Demise, which is timely and helpful:

I thought I was done with ranting about the election. I also thought everyone else was mostly done and the fire of outrage and self-pity that had followed had burned itself out. It probably didn’t hurt that most students had gone home for Thanksgiving.

Now Jill Stein, an extreme leftist who wasn’t even on the ballot in several states and had zero chance of winning, decides to demand a recount in not just one, but three states. Hillary pretends not to want to join in, but then says, well, ok, if we’re doing it anyway.

Keep a few things in mind: Continue reading →

Short Takes As The Left’s Unethical Post-Election Freakout Continues

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

freakoutI admit it. I can’t keep up with all the progressive/Democrat/Hillary Corrupted/journalist and pundit freakouts over Donald Trump’s election, and I don’t want to. There is more to ethics and life than pointing out how completely so many have abandoned reason, fairness, proportion and their own previously stated principles because Donald Trump won the election. Well, that’s another beneficial effect of the result: Trump has inadvertently exposed how thin the veneer of decency and fairness was for a large number of institutions, occupations and individuals. Among the examples about which I could and probably should write complete posts, but won’t, are these:

New York Times columnist Charles Blow, he of the anti-Mormon slurs against Mitt Romney before the 2012 election. Remember how Rush Limbaugh was excoriated by journalists, progressives and Democrats for saying, after Obama’s election, that he hoped the new President would fail? Here is Blow, in my print Times this morning, declaring in advance his irrevocable hate:

I have not only an ethical and professional duty to call out how obscene your very existence is at the top of American government; I have a moral obligation to do so.I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything, but rather to speak up for truth and honor and inclusion. This isn’t just about you, but also about the moral compass of those who see you for who and what you are, and know the darkness you herald is only held at bay by the lights of truth….

So let me say this on Thanksgiving: I’m thankful to have this platform because as long as there are ink and pixels, you will be the focus of my withering gaze.I’m thankful that I have the endurance and can assume a posture that will never allow what you represent to ever be seen as everyday and ordinary. No, Mr. Trump, we will not all just get along. For as long as a threat to the state is the head of state, all citizens of good faith and national fidelity — and certainly this columnist — have an absolute obligation to meet you and your agenda with resistance at every turn.

This is the theme of the unethical response of the Angry Left—which increasingly appears to include everyone on the that side of the political spectrum. The double standard reigns. Conservatives should accept election results with grace and patriotism in the interests of national unity, but liberals can scream, protest, attack the system and claim fraud indefinitely. Republicans shouldn’t use fear as a political weapon, but Democrats can. Americans should give elected leaders a chance to  progress beyond the uncivil and excessive rhetoric on both sides during a campaign, with the exception of this President. Continue reading →

Note To Conservatives On The “Hamilton” Cast’s Harassment Of Mike Pence: I’ve Got This. You’re Not Helping.

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

grandstand-hamilton

The problem is that, as you might guess, Trump-supporting Republican and conservatives are as ethically clueless as the Democrats attacking them.

Now there is a backlash against the “Hamilton” actors who singled out an audience member (who happened to be the Vice-President Elect) for specific abuse last week, because, the theory goes, elected officials who a cast doesn’t like shouldn’t be able to attend live theater without entailing the risk of being harassed. Ethics Alarms has been very clear about why this is wrong in every way, and all rebuttals have boiled down to “But we don’t like Mike Pence or Donald Trump, so we should be able to suspend ethics!”

Keep telling yourselves that.

Now it has been discovered that some of the “Hamilton” grandstanders probably didn’t vote in the election, and the actor whose mouth was used to issue the lecture to Pence had himself authored some Trump-like misogynist  rhetoric in a tweet or two. This is supposed to prove hypocrisy, and undermine the legitimacy of the cast’s ambush.

It doesn’t do this, because the cast’s stunt had no legitimacy at all, votes or not, hypocrisy or not.

Is the whole Trump term going to be like this? I fear so, since the incoming President literally is bewildered by all concepts ethical, and his defenders appear to be similarly disabled.

Look: if it is per se unethical and wrong for a theatrical production to turn on audience members without consent or warning to humiliate, threaten or accost them, the qualifications of the cast members engaging in this harassment can’t make the unethical act more or less so. Continue reading →

Let’s Hear No More About Facebook “Values”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

china-facebook-1024x576

The New York Times reports that Facebook has developed software that will enable partner Chinese companies to monitor popular stories and topics that Facebook users share across the social network. Facebook’s partner would have power to decide whether those posts should show up in users’ feeds and suppress posts from  in specific geographic areas. The censorship and information-suppressing software  was created to help Facebook get into China, a lucrative market where the social network has been blocked. CEO Mark Zuckerberg is, sources say, full supportive of this effort by Facebook to make the subjugation of Chinese liberty easier.

One of Facebook’s core mission statements is “Make the world more open and connected.” Like so many mission statements, it is public relations deception. If Facebook was devoted to this mission, it would not even consider breaching its intent, letter and spirit by spending time and money to develop censorship software.

Facebook’s real mission is making a fortune by expanding into new markets. Let us not debase the topic of this blog by defaulting to Rationalization # 25. The Coercion Myth: “I have no choice!”

Facebook has a choice, the ethical one. That choice is to tell China it has a choice: either accept Facebook without censorship, of do without it. Google and Twitter, neither exactly paragons of virtue, have been blocked there for refusing to yield to the government’s  censorship requirements. Boy, when a company isn’t even as ethical as Twitter..wow.

This is the company we are going to trust to decide what is “real news.”  Ridiculous.

Prominent Democratic Party supporter Zuckerberg, like the party itself, is insufficiently allergic to the methods and objectives of totalitarianism.

From the Dead Ethics Alarms Files: New York Magazine Reveals The Ugliness Beneath

/ Jack Marshall / 37 Comments

eric-trump-heckled

New York Magazine saluted this treatment of Donald Trump’s son and his wife:

Last Thursday night, middle Trump-son Eric, 32, was out in New York City after leaving Quality Italian on 57th Street with wife Lara Yunaska when they reportedly ran into a gaggle of teens who recognized Trump and proceeded to heckle him.

As they crossed Sixth Avenue a group of about eight teens yelled, “Eric — fuck your father!” A more magnanimous heckler shouted, “Love Trumps Hate!”  Eric briefly turned to face them, but then moved on swiftly

The link online was promoted by the above graphic, saying that we should all “appreciate” that Trump and his wife were “heckled” by teens in public.

The more the left and and the media behave this way, the more it is dawning on fair and perceptive Americans how repulsive they are. These people were offended by Donald Trump and thought he was vulgar and boorish, yet they appreciate a man and his wife being harassed and verbally assaulted as they merely go about their lives? These are the people whining about how they are “in fear” of what a Trump administration might bring?

I fear people of influence who encourage punks to harass law-abiding people in public because of their last name or who their parents are.

From Ann Althouse regarding the same article: Continue reading →