hypocrisy

Anti-Bullying Mis-steps: The Perils of Changing Cultural Norms (Part I)

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

It's a simple rule, really: if they call you a jerk, thy're bullies; if you call them jerks, you're a hero.

The efforts to reduce bullying in schools has already shown the dangers inherent in using the heavy hand and and often empty skull of government authority to adjust social norms. The laudable goal has already led schools to impose their wills where it emphatically does not belong: in the private interactions and communications among student over the internet. This week, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius provided another example of the perils of the government trying to impose a social taboo where it didn’t exist before.

Sebelius was a guest of the Stuart-Hobson Middle School in Washington, D.C., whose students were shown  a new anti-bullying video from the Cartoon Network that among its messages urged children not to call people names like “stupid,” “fat,” and “jerk.”  Immediately after the screening,  CNN’s Don Lemon moderated a panel discussion of the issues raised by “Stop Bullying: Speak Up.”

“What do you think is the best advice for people who are going into watching this film and anyone who is watching?” Lemon asked.

Sebelius answered, in part: “I think, very important, is for kids to understand how powerful you really are. You might feel like you’re not big enough, not strong enough, not–don’t have enough tools. But just saying, ‘Stop it! You know, you’re being a jerk!’–walk away, get away from this person can make a huge amount of difference.” Continue reading →

The Process Can Be Ugly, And Sure Was This Time, But This Is How Cultural Ethics Standards Change

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

Greta was the tipping point.

The Rush Limbaugh-Sandra Fluke Ethics Train Wreck is over at last, but unlike with many such debacles, something positive occurred. I believe that an emphatic cultural standard was established that calling a woman—any woman, famous or not, liberal or conservative—a derogatory term designed purely to denigrate her by denigrating her gender will not be considered acceptable in political, quasi-political or arguably-political commentary henceforward. If such rhetoric occurs in a comic or entertainment context, no politician or elected official can appear to endorse the individual who utters the offensive words.

I’m not arguing right now whether this is a good or a bad development, but merely that it happened, and that it is a real change. For this to happen, a conservative radio talk show host had to use the terms “slut’ and “prostitute” to make the botched satirical point that a feminist law student activist who argued that free contraceptives were a woman’s right was the equivalent of women who wanted to be “paid for sex.” If pundits and bloggers had merely declared this statement uncivil and cruel, nothing more would have happened, and the incident would have been quickly forgotten. But sensing political points to be scored in an election year, and with the added incentive of being handed what was seen as powerful ammunition to attempt a frontal attack against a detested partisan critic, Democrats,  progressives, feminists, activists, Obama strategists and left-biased journalists decided to cast the Limbaugh’s poor judgment in extreme terms. Continue reading →

Is Obama Ethically Obligated To Reject Bill Maher’s Million? Don’t Be Ridiculous!

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Classy, Bill...but don't worry, your money's still good, even if you aren't.

Confirming the Ethics Train Wreck status of the church-run institutions/health care/ religious freedom/contraceptives coverage/Rush Limbaugh-Sandra Fluke mess, the Weekly Standard and other conservative pundits are playing the hypocrisy card and arguing that if Limbaugh is so reprehensible, then the Obama super-pac should apply the same standards to serial misogynist Bill Maher and return his recent $1 million contribution.

Idiots. As long as campaign contributions aren’t the fruits of a crime, the whole concept of rejecting “dirty money” is silly beyond belief. Do Republicans really want to stand for the proposition that only contributions from the pure of heart and word can be accepted by those running for office? Jerks like Bill Maher have rights too; he should have the same opportunity to support political candidates of his choice no matter what offensive and crude things he says to his cheering lap dog audiences on HBO. Politicians are not accountable for the character, words, beliefs and misdeeds of his supporters, nor should they be. This is not a standard that Republicans, of all people, want to establish. Nor should any of us.

Absolutely: Democrats and feminists who are furious at Limbaugh’s despicable misogyny  show themselves as hypocrites by appearing on Maher’s show. But his money is as good as anybody’s, and he has not forfeited his right to support candidates of his choosing. Nobody should be trying to take that away from him.

Ethics Dunce: Rep. Debby Wasserman-Schultz

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Honestly, if you had told me that the Democrats could find someone to chair their national organization who was as big a buffoon, hypocrite and embarrassment as Michael Steele, I would have said that it was impossible. And then along came Debby...

On “Meet the Press,” the Democratic National Committee Chair. Rep. Debby Wasserman-Schultz (D-Fla.), reacted indignantly to the Rush Limbaugh-Sandra Fluke incident, saying in part,

“…And the bottom line is that the leading candidate on the Republican side for president couldn’t even bring himself to call Rush Limbaugh’s comments outrageous and call him out and ask him to apologize… Rush Limbaugh, in that apology, said that he was trying to be humorous. I don’t know any woman in America, David, that thinks that being called a slut is funny.”

By Wasserman-Schultz’s own conduct, however, we may apparently conclude that she thinks it is funny when a woman is called a “dumb twat” and a “cunt,” both of which vulgarities were directed at Republican women by HBO’s Bill Maher. Continue reading →

“No Tolerance,” Expulsion, and Poisoned Coffee

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

A post this weekend discussed the case of an elementary student who was expelled for showing a pocket knife to friends on school grounds. Dig around in the Ethics Alarms archives, and you’ll find many other “no tolerance” stories in which schools levied harsh punishment for perceived student infractions such as describing murderous fantasies about teachers on Facebook; a pizza bitten into the shape of a gun; taking possession of a knife from another student in order to turn it over to school authorities, and even more outrageous examples. In several of these incidents, the police were called in. You may recall the case from last year in which a Spotsylvania (Va.) high school student was expelled and charged with criminal assault for the equivilent of blowing spit-balls at a student in class.  Now we have a shining example of why this decade-long trend is not only devoid of justice and common sense, but also counter-productive. It undermines the school’s ability to send a coherent message to the students who need it—the truly dangerous. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Charles M. Blow’s Anti-Mormon Tweet, Chapter 2…”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Michael, who is now the Ethics Alarms all-time leader in the Comment of the Day category, scores another with a thought-provoking post inspired by the New York Times’ stunning disinterest in its columnist tweeting a religious slur about Mitt Romney. I’ll have some added reflections at the end. Here is his Comment of the Day on “Charles M. Blow’s Anti-Mormon Tweet, Chapter 2…”:

“I remember an article about this when I was in college. In analyzing how the news media treated different races, they came up with the PC Hierarchy. Anyone higher on the hierarchy can criticize or be insensitive to anyone below them. If there is a conflict between two groups, the one higher on the PC scale is assumed to be right”

PC Hierarchy of Races… Continue reading →

Charles M. Blow’s Bigoted Anti-Mormon Tweet, Chapter 2: Ironies, Regrets, and Hypocrisy on the Left

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Charles M. Blow, trapped in regret-apology hypocrisy. Fortunately for him, his paper doesn't care.

Charles M. Blow, the New York Times columnist who sent his followers an uncivil, unprofessional and bigoted tweet regarding Mitt Romney and his faith during Wednesday’s debate [“Let me just tell you this Mitt ‘Muddle Mouth’: I’m a single parent and my kids are *amazing*! Stick that in your magic underwear.”] issued a fascinating…something...today in response to criticism, which did not come from the supposedly bigotry-sensitive left. He tweeted:

“Btw, the comment I made about Mormonism during Wed.’s debate was inappropriate, and I regret it. I’m willing to admit that with no caveats.”

It is fascinating to me that this is being called an apology by Blow’s supporters and conservative critics alike. If it is an apology, and that is open to dispute, I’d like someone to explain to me how Blow can use “regret” as a stand-in for “I apologize,” and yet the same commentators who are interpreting the word that way have insisted that President Obama’s repeated use of “regret”to refer to past U.S. foreign policy actions was not the equivalent of apologizing, and have in fact stated that this interpretation by conservative critics is “a lie.”

Among those who have defended the President in this way, I believe, is Charles M. Blow. Continue reading →

Cleavage Etiquette

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

"FOCUS!"

The husband of the President of Finland is being widely ridiculed in the news media after being caught by a journalist’s camera as he plainly ogled the cleavage of  Princess Mary of Denmark and was seemingly caught in the act by the Princess as well. Unfair. He allowed his gaze to linger a bit long, perhaps, and one’s manners are supposed to be somewhat elevated, theoretically, in the presence of royalty, but Pentti Arajarvi was mostly a victim of the sad reality that being discrete, once the primary etiquette requirement of men relentlessly drawn to a woman’s comely assets, is no longer possible in public and often in private as well. President Obama, you will recall, was caught doing a classic male turnaround to catch the spectacle of a perfect female butt passing by.

Even more unfair, and ridiculous, are the opportunistic women’s rights warriors who use such incidents to show how women are still treated as sex objects by men in the workplace and elsewhere. Continue reading →

Ethics Alarms Recap: A Long Weekend of Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

If the long Presidents Day weekend took you hither and yon and away from ethical dilemmas and controversies, welcome back! Here is what went on here in a lively three days:

The Broadcast Media’s Golden Rule: “Do Unto Others What You Will Use Cronyism To Stop Others From Doing Unto You”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Two Denver TV stations are feuding, and why? Because one of them refused to allow the other to suppress news footage that was embarrassing to a news anchor.

On February 8, KUSA-Channel 9 news anchor Kyle Dyer was interviewing the owner of Max, an 85-pound Argentine Mastiff, and the firefighter who had rescued the dog from an icy pond. I saw the video. Dyer had me wincing throughout the interview, showing herself to be the most dangerous kind of dog lover, someone who is fond of animals but naive and ignorant about their behavior.  She kept rubbing the dog’s ears and face during the interview, and the mastiff was obviously stoic but stressed by the strange environment, the cameras, and this women talking and running her hands all over him.  Mastiffs are gentle dogs, but very shy;  it was clear to me that Dyer was not according sufficient respect and caution to a powerful creature. As the interview ended, she suddenly moved in to kiss the dog on the muzzle, and the dog reacted defensively, biting her on the face and taking off part of her lip. She was seriously injured, and she had to have 75 stitches. Continue reading →