hypocrisy

“We Understand One Of My Colleagues Raped You. Here, Have A Taco, And Shut Up”

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

taco

Some sadistic and none-too skilled cynic appears to be writing the news, and I don’t appreciate it, especially the news about how our justice system deals with rape.

Felipe Santiago Peralez, a La Joya, Texas police dispatcher, repeatedly assaulted, raped, terrorized,  and forced a woman into performing various sex acts during an “all night invasion of her body” while she was in the custody of the La Joya police department for a misdemeanor probation violation. Even after Peralez’s colleagues and superiors saw the jail security video, they refused to take his victim to a hospital for an examination as required by Texas law for all rape investigations. One of them was  kind enough, she says, to offer her a taco. (It is unknown if she actually ate the taco, or if it was yummy.) An officer also told her that if she breathed a word about what happened, she was liable to go “missing.”

This happened in 2014. The La Joya police chief at the time also saw the video, and reported it to city authorities. As a result, a Hidalgo County grand jury charged Peralez with three counts of civil rights violations and one count of “official oppression”—yes, I would agree that a cop sticking various objects, organic and otherwise, into a confined woman’s vagina without her consent qualifies as “oppression”— and he was sentenced to a whopping 6 months in state jail and 30 days in county jail after a plea bargain.

See? Those Texas types know how to handle rapists with rough, effective frontier justice…none of this lame California sentencing, with a rich kid Stanford swimmer getting just six months because he promises that he’ll devote his life, well, some time anyway, to telling other rich kids not to drink so much that they think unconscious women are blow-up sex dolls. Yup, none of that slap on the wrist nonsense in Rick Perry’s domain! There, a police rapist gets six months AND another month. It serves him right! Don’t mess with Texas!

All of this comes to light in a law suit filed by the victim, referred to as A.R., that names Peralez, the City of La Joya, its former and current police chiefs, its city administrator, several La Joya police officers, the city of Peñitas, its police chief and two more officers there, and asks for 70 million dollars in damages.

I feel like I’m losing my mind. How can an entire community become so corrupt that it would behave this cruelly and unjustly? The police officer who warned A.R. to keep her mouth shut was a woman. The whole story reads like the screenplay of a lurid revenge fantasy like “I Spit On Your Grave,” except that it’s missing the fun part where the victim meticulously tracks down her abusers and tortures them to death in the most ingenious and disgusting ways possible. Of course, it appears that A.R. would have to track down the whole town, including its police force and the grand jury. And the local news media. When the justice system delivers this kind of outrage, isn’t the media supposed to report it, and loudly? Maybe reporters were told that they might go missing too.

Or someone offered them tacos.

The absence of any national reporting on this two-year-old horror is just one of the aspects of the story I find disturbing. Such as… Continue reading →

Observations On Donald Trump’s Anti-Judge Rant (And The Selective Outrage Regarding It))

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

donald-trump

If I was still doing an “Unethical Donald Trump Quote Of The Day,” it certainly would have qualified. Here is Trump, blathering on, as usual,  at a rally about the case that is currently pending in federal court regarding the alleged charges that Trump University was a scam:

The trial, they wanted it to start while I am running for President. The trial is going to take place sometime in November. There should be no trial. This should have been dismissed on summary judgment easily. Everybody says it, but I have a judge who is a hater of Donald Trump. He’s a hater. His name is Gonzalo Curial. And he is not doing the right thing. I figure what the hell? Why not talk about it for two minutes. Should I talk about it? Yes? [cheers and applause] so we should have won. . . .

I am getting railroaded by a legal system, and frankly they should be ashamed. I will be here in November. Hey, if I win as president, it is a civil case. I could have settled this case numerous times. But I don’t want to settle cases when we are right. I don’t believe in it. When you start settling cases, do you know what happens? Everybody sues you because you get known as a settler. One thing about me, I am not known as the settler.

And people understand with this whole thing, with this whole deal with the lawyers, class action lawyers are the worst. It is a scam. Here is what happens. We are in front of a very hostile judge. The judge was appointed by by Barack Obama – federal judge. [Boos]. Frankly he should recuse himself. He has given us ruling after ruling, negative, negative, negative. I have a top lawyer who said he has never seen anything like this before. So what happens is we get sued. We have a Magistrate named William Gallo who truly hates us.

The good news is it is a jury trial. We can even get a fully jury. We are entitled to a jury, and we want a jury of 12 people. And you are going to watch. First of all, it should be dismissed. Watch how we win it as I have been treated unfairly. . . . So what happens is the judge, who happens to be, we believe Mexican, which is great. I think that is fine. You know what? I think the Mexicans are going to end up loving Donald Trump when I give all these jobs. I think they are going to love it. I think they are going to love me. . . .

A lot of people said before you run you should settle. I said I don’t care. The people understand it. And they use it. So when I have 10,000 people, and when we have mostly unbelievable reviews, how do you settle? And in fact, when the case started originally, I said how can I settle when I have a review like this? Now I should have settled, but I am glad I didn’t. I will be seeing you in November either as president. And I will say this. I have all these great reviews, but I will say this. I think Judge Curiel should be ashamed of himself. I think it is a disgrace he is doing this. I look forward to going before a jury, not this judge, and we will win that trial. We will win that trial. Check it out. Check it out, folks. You know, I tell this to people. November 28. I think it is scheduled for. It should not be a trial. It should be a summary judgment dismissal. . . .

It is a disgrace. It is a rigged system. I had a rigged system, except we won by so much. This court system, the judges in this court system, federal court. They ought to look into Judge Curiel because what Judge Curiel is doing is a total disgrace. Ok? But we will come back in November. Wouldn’t that be wild if I am president and come back and do a civil case? Where everybody likes it.

Ok. This is called life, folks. . . .

Now, we are told, “legal experts” are concerned that this rant “signals a remarkable disregard for judicial independence.” Freaking out entirely, Washington Post writer David Post (I guess he’s the paper’s son?) wrote..

“No, this is called “authoritarianism.” It’s what Berlusconi sounded like, what Chávez sounded like and what Perón sounded like — for that matter, it’s what Sulla and Caesar and the others who helped destroy the world’s first great republic sounded like: I am bigger than the law, I AM THE LAW.”

I have searched and I have searched, and darned if I can’t find Post expressing similar horrors when President Barrack Obama attacked the Supreme Court of the United States while misrepresenting its decision in Citizens United to its face, during the televised  State of the Union address in 2010.  The New York Times Adam Liptak, however, wrote at the time, Continue reading →

Asian-American Students Take Aim At What’s Unethical About Affirmative Action

/ Jack Marshall / 79 Comments

Good.

The ethics problem with affirmative action is that its utilitarian trade-off is undeniably unfair and hypocritical. In order to admit African-American students whose test scores and grades would not normally allow them to be admitted to elite institutions, racial preference is used to justify not admitting white students whose credentials would otherwise qualify them for entry. Diversity justifies racial discrimination.

Asian-Americans have long been an embarrassment to this theory. Even though it is another minority group that was the target of institutional and social prejudice in this country, and despite added disadvantages of language and culture, Asian Americans as a group have better test scores and grades than the supposedly privileged whites. Not only does this fact call into question some assumed explanations for the consistently lagging performance of African-Americans, it also threatens diversity policies by raising the possibility of a student body disproportionately Asian American, with whites students being squeezed out at one end by  superior Asian-Americans  and on the other by Affirmative Action-assisted blacks.

How have universities avoided this problem thus far? They have avoided it by applying quotas to both Asian-Americans and African-Americans. The problem is that the quotas on Asian Americans limit their numbers, regardless of their qualifications. Continue reading →

The Unethical Ethicist And Yale: If Bill Cosby Were A Famous Ethicist, He’d Be Prof. Thomas Pogge

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments
The Accuser and the Ethicist

The Accuser and the Ethicist

Here is the short version:

Yale’s Thomas Pogge is a world famous Yale professor of philosophy and ethics who is especially renowned for condemning the terrible human rights effects caused by disparity of resources between rich countries and poor ones. His books, lectures and a well-recieved TED talk argue that the power imbalance between rich countries and poor countries is so great that poor countries cannot reasonably be said to “consent” to agreements between them. Pogge has also accumulated many credible accusations of exploiting, harassing, and taking sexual liberties with his female students in multiple institutions. In the case that has led to this contrast becoming public, Yale offered a female accuser, a Yale graduate named Fernanda Lopez Aguilar, $2000 in exchange for ending the matter and keeping the story out of the news media.

The long version is here. Because the publisher is BuzzFeed, which is not widely regarded as a sterling source of trustworthy journalism (to say the least), the detailed and apparently well-researched report will be easy for Pogge and Yale to ignore and shrug off. However, other publications, including the Yale Daily News, have investigated the work of author Kaitie J.M. Baker, and so far it has held up to scrutiny.

Pogge has responded, less than convincingly, I would say, to the Lopez Aguilar allegations here. I say unconvincingly because he does not address the previous accusations made against him at Columbia University, and if there is one common characteristic of sexual harassers and abusers that stands out above all others, it is that they are habitual and repeat offenders. Anyone who has spent any time in academia (like me) is well aware that the culture permitting professors, especially male professors, to use the student body and bodies as a sexual perk of the job is widespread and only weakly restrained, if at all. Does that prove that Pogge is one of the professors who partakes in the lusty opportunities presented to him as an object of trust and admiration? No. There is, however a lot of smoke surrounding him, and the smoke has been issuing for a long time.

Yale’s institutional conduct is more than smoke. Yale appears to be another example of a trusted institution deciding that it is preferable to cover up the possible, likely or proven misconduct of a valuable employee than to risk damaging the reputation of that institution, or alienating the loyalties of other employees, by addressing it openly and decisively. I’m sure you can name other infamous examples of this phenomenon, broadly covered by the rationalizations “The King’s Pass” and “The Saint’s Excuse” on the Rationalizations List. Among the most infamous of these are the Catholic Church’s decades, perhaps centuries-long enabling of child sexual predators in the priesthood, the Watergate cover-up by the White House, and Penn State’s failure to stop a known child predator from using the school’s football program and its campus as a base of operations. Yale’s particular variety of this unethical choice is an especially unsavory one, closer to the Joe Paterno/ Sandusky and “Spotlight”scandals, because it intentionally  places future innocent victims at risk of harm.

I accept that there is a possibility that Pogee is an impeccable  professional and as pure as the driven snow, and thus himself a victim of a smear, though this seems unlikely. What I am more interested in now is to address the questions asked in the BuzzFeed piece, which relate to how we should regard unethical ethicists as well as other prominent figures who defy, in their actions, the wisdom they are celebrated for dispensing to others—the Bill Cosbys of the world.

I have some additional questions of my own, but for now I will restrict myself now to those posed in the article. Continue reading →

“Grace And Frankie” Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

“Grace And Frankie”Grace_and_Frankie_Season_1_poster_9 is a mostly fun Netflix series featuring Jane Fonda (as creepily “Death Becomes Her”- like,  70-going on 40-looking Grace Hanson) and Lilly Tomlin (Frankie Bergstein, an old, adorable hippie) as an odd couple of septuagenarians  brought together when their respective lawyer husbands, Robert ( Martin Sheen, looking very old) and Sol (Sam Waterson) declare that they have been carrying on a 20 year gay love affair. It’s now Season Two, both couples are divorced but friendly, and Robert and Sol are preparing an elaborate wedding.

Ah, but at the end of last season, cleaning out their old house and being soaked in photos, regrets and fond memories, Sol and Frankie had one last sexual fling (they had a kid: this was not unprecedented). The final episode saw Sol in anguish, feeling like he had betrayed the love of his life (that is, Robert) and not knowing how or whether to confess that he cheated with his former wife.

As Season Two gets underway, Robert has a heart attack, so the wedding is much reduced in grandeur with him still recuperating. Frankie officiates, having received her legal authority to do so over the internet. All is romantic bliss until Sol, after Robert, now recovered has prepared a romantic dinner and they have belatedly exchanged rings, can’t hold his terrible secret back any longer. He tells Robert about his one-night stand. [As he should. Everyone else in the extended family knows about his dilemma, and Robert and Grace’s children urge him to never reveal a secret that can only cause unhappiness. Sol, correctly, asserts that he can’t begin a marriage with secrets and lies. For better or worse, he has to come clean.]

And Robert throws him out! Continue reading →

The “Lying Hillary” Smoking Gun Video

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

I know it’s viral now, and perhaps not news. Indeed, the fact that Hillary Clinton is one of the most prolific, shameless, media-enabled and successful serial liars in United States political history is certainly not news, and is undeniable by anyone not yet corrupted by her scorched earth march to power. Nonetheless, this is an ethics blog, and one that has devoted an extensive effort, much criticized as obsessive, to document why the words “ethical” and “Hillary Clinton” must never be used in close proximity to each other. I have to post this.

Does it prove she is spectacularly untrustworthy? Of course it does. Does it prove she is unfit to be President? Yes, except in the horrible hypothetical circumstance that someone even more unfit is running against her, such as, oh, let’s pick someone that no sane and patriotic American would ever consider as a potential President, like Jessica Simps…no, worse, like Alec Baldwi…no, still not bad enough. Okay, let’s say..I know, I know, it’s ridiculous, but…Donald Trump. (I almost said Justin Bieber.)

The stunning thing about the video is that it isn’t nearly complete. For example,  it does not include that dozens, indeed hundreds, maybe thousands, of  instances when Clinton employed deceit, the family specialty. Of course, if it did, the video would be 13 hours long. Days, maybe.

I do have some questions and observations for Hillary Clinton supporters in light of the above. Continue reading →

MORE Gender Issues Confusion Monday, PART 3:The New York Times’ Hit Piece On Donald Trump And Women

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Trump girls

The New York Times assigned six reporters to interview over fifty women who have dealt with The Donald, and the resulting story proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he engages in routine sexual harassment, acts like a high school student, behaves like the archetypal male chauvinist pig, and habitually ogled women and made comments about their appearance. Of course, anyone who hadn’t been in suspended animation for the past decade or so would know or assume all this based on the Trump’s activities and words. This is the dilemma in trying to cover an obviously unfit and unqualified Presidential candidate like other Presidential candidates. For a traditional politician, the Times’s revelations would be devastating. In Trump’s case, we have learned so many worse things about his nature during the past six months that his misogyny is both old news and relatively trivial. It’s like a character “Jurassic World” warning  that the murderous Indominus Rex has bad breath.

It appears that the Times was also sloppy in its reporting, but never mind: the real mystery is how any Democrats thinks that what Trump has done can benefit Hillary Clinton in any way. Nothing Trump is accused of in the article approaches the conduct that women who  were involved with Bill Clinton claim he inflicted on them, only to have their claims dismissed or ignored by the news media and Democrats. That party went on record as believing that personal conduct, no matter how offensive or abusive to women, doesn’t matter, or at least didn’t matter in Bill’s case, because “Bill was on the right side of the issues, especially abortion. Indeed, one famous female journalist wrote that she would sleep with him anytime, just to thank him for supporting abortion.” Continue reading →

The Catholic Church, Its Rapist Priest, And Shattered Trust

/ Jack Marshall / 40 Comments
The graphic artist didn't place that halo over the rapist priest's head. The Vatican did.

The graphic artist didn’t place that halo over the rapist priest’s head. The Vatican did.

In the year after “Spotlight” focused renewed public attention on the Catholic Church’s horrific betrayal of its mission, its members and humanity by the enabling of child sexual predators within its ranks, how could the Church not realize that reinstating a convicted rapist priest, as it did this week, undermines all of its efforts to regain the trust and faith it had forfeited?

After months in which Pope Francis presumed to tell the governments of the world what its moral obligations were, how could he allow this to occur?

In short, how can a credible religion have broken ethics alarms? How can the Catholic Church preach morality while rejecting ethics?

Father Joseph Jeyapaul,  a Catholic priest from India, served in the Crookston, Minnesota diocese from 2004 to 2005. While he was there, he raped at least two adolescent girls. I say “at least” because he admitted to raping them to cop a plea. Who knows who else he may have assaulted?

After being charged with the crimes, including rape and forcing at least one of his victims to perform fellatio on him, Father Joseph  escaped to India, where an Interpol warrant got him extradited back to Minnesota.  There he confessed, and as part of a plea bargain, received an outrageously light sentence of a year and a day for pleading guilty to one count of molestation.

Don’t ask me to explain why any prosecutor whose law license wasn’t obtained by passing a quiz about “Law and Order” episodes would make such a deal. I assume that some kind of political pressure from the Church was involved, or that the prosecutors were Catholic, or that they had brain lesions or something. Frankly, I’d rather not talk about it.

Jeyapaul was suspended from the priesthood and served his time in Minnesota. The U.S. deported him back to India with a DO NOT RETURN TO SENDER label after his release last July.  Meanwhile, the Minnesota diocese had to pay millions in a civil lawsuit, during which we learned that the rapist priest had told one of his victims  in the confessional that she was at fault, and had made Jeyapaul “impure” by letting him abuse her.

Does the term “evil” come to mind, or would you call that too judgmental?

Now comes the amazing part. In February, the Vatican lifted  Jeyapaul‘s suspension and restored him to the priesthood. It then assigned him to a new parish in India, where he is now the diocesan head of its commission for education. 

I’m sure it’s also a great place to meet chicks.

Continue reading →

Comment Of The Day: “Update: This Is The Student’s Controversial Essay Emulating The Satire Of Swift’s ‘A Modest Proposal'”

/ Jack Marshall / 68 Comments

Grading

The indefatigable Charles Green delivered a tough critique of Connor Poole’s essay fulfilling the requirement of an assignment asking  high school students to emulate the satire in Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” and similarly propose an outrageous solution to a contemporary social problem. There are really two issues here, and Charles only deals with one: I believe Connor’s paper was an excellent attempt at Swiftian satire, especially for a high school student, and this is Charles counterpoint to that position. He does not, as far as I can perceive, try to justify the school, North County High School, turning the essay into a controversy and Connor into a pariah.

Good. That, which is the primary ethics issue, is beyond rational dispute. What the school and community are doing to Connor is the equivalent of ordering a kid to juggle flaming torches, and then attacking him when something gets scorched.

Here is Charles’ Comment of the Day on the post, Update: This Is The Student’s Controversial Essay Emulating The Satire Of Swift’s “A Modest Proposal”.

I’ll be back at the end.

Here is what I think Poole’s teacher should have written to him in response to his essay:

Connor, I’m giving you a grade of C+ on this paper. Here’s why.

Continue reading →

Pop Ethics Quiz: Is This Hypocrisy?

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments
"Do as I said, not how I wished they would have done before I said it, and definitely not to me now. Got that?"

“Do as I said, not how I wished they would have done before I said it, and definitely not to me now. Got that?”

In 2003, Dennis Hastert, then Speaker of the House and as yet unmasked as a child molester in his days as a High School wrestling coach,  said

“But it is equally important to stop those predators before they strike, to put repeat child molesters into jail for the rest of their lives and to help law enforcement with the tools they need to get the job done.”

The news media has labeled this statement hypocrisy. Is it?

It is not.

Hypocrisy is a statement of moral or ethical standards that an individual proves by his own actions that he does not believe. The actions that supposedly mark Hastert as a hypocrite had already taken place when he made that statement in 2003. There is no reason to assume that he did not believe that sexual predators should be stopped and prevented from doing harm to others, even though he had been one, and indeed even if he was still inclined to molest young men in 2003.

This is another version of the flawed argument that a parent who smoked pot as a youth cannot credibly demand that his or her own child not do the same. What makes a hypocritical statement is insincerity and pretense at the time it is made, demonstrated by conduct in close temporal proximity to that statement. Continue reading →