ick vs. ethics

Not Unethical, Just…Ick. And Sad.

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

I don’t know how to categorize this. Perhaps the issue is how popular culture and show business make attention junkies out of people, making them do what former “Baywatch” (and “E.T.” !) actress Erika Eleniak is doing: making an exhibition of herself for sickos and fetishists, exchanging any shred of dignity for money.

I confess to always haveing a warm place in my heart for Erika. I first saw her as the girl Elliot kisses like John Wayne kissed Maureen O’Hara in “The Quiet Man” because he was psychically linked to E.T. who was watching the movie on TV. Next time I saw Erika she popped out of a cake naked in “Under Siege,” and then it was on to playing Ellie May Clampett in the movie version of “The Beverley Hillbillies,” then to “Baywatch.” Next came middle age and the fast slide to Hallmark films, then reality shows. Erika had some star power, but she wasn’t exactly Meryl Streep.

Now TMZ brings the depressing report that at 56, Elliot’s true love joined OnlyFans to let foot fetishists pay to see her apparently still-comely feet. Soon she was enticed into more daring peep shows. Erika is earning $10,000 a week, with 1,100 ill people who are eager to pay to gawk at an over-the-hill actress as she debases herself.

I wrote about this phenomenon in April in one of the “Confronting My Biases” posts. But then the OnlyFans sellout was Shannon Elizabeth, whose career, if you can call it that, makes Erika seem like Katherine Hepburn by comparison.

Today Erika has arms covered with tattoos, which, as I wrote recently, is often a symptom of someone coping with deep emotional pain. I can’t find anything exactly unethical in this scenario, except to think that if there weren’t an OnlyFans, someone like Erika would have to find a more promising, nurturing, productive way to find fulfillment in her post-celebrity existance. Now she’s at a dead end, a lucrative one, perhaps, but still perilously close to a life nadir.

In “Nightmare Alley,” Tyrone Power ends up as a carnival geek, biting the heads off of live chickens. That’s worse, certainly, but then his character only starts out as carnival barker who once said of the geek, “I can’t understand how anybody could get so low.”

I wonder what Erika Eleniak, when she was young and gorgeous with what seemed like a vibrant career ahead of her, would have said about women who expose themselves to creepy men, alone, through a video camera in their bedroom.

I’m really sorry, Erika.

So is Elliot.

Ethics Quiz: The “Incestuous” Candidacy

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Troy Jackson, the latest un-democratically selected candidate being offered to the public by Maine Democrats, is the Great White Male Hope for the unprincipled party as it tries to take over the U.S. Senate “by any means necessary.” You will recall that he became a necessary means after much-heralded lying, Nazi woman-abuser Graham Platner was revealed to be…well, a lying, Nazi woman-abuser. Oopsie!

Jackson has little in his record or character to suggest fitness to serve as a U.S. Senator, but what conservative critics are focusing their fire on is this, as the New York Post reports:

“Maine Democratic Senate candidate Troy Jackson is in a long-term relationship with his high school sweetheart — who is also his second cousin, according to a new report. Jackson, 58, and Lana Pelletier share two adult sons and the same great-grandparents, according to Thursday’s report by independent journalist Steve Robinson, who notes that such relationships are both legal under state law and not uncommon in the rural North Maine Woods region, near the Canadian border.While Jackson, a onetime logger and the former president of the Maine State Senate, has described Pelletier as his wife in the past, locals tell Robinson the couple has never been legally married.

“Jackson grew up in the village of Allagash (population 237 as of the 2020 census) and attended nearby Fort Kent High School with Pelletier.According to geneological records unearthed by Robinson, Jackson’s maternal grandmother — Albertine Pelletier O’Leary — and Pelletier’s paternal grandfather — Louis A. Pelletier Sr. — were siblings, making Jackson’s mother, Colleen McBreairty, and Pelletier’s father, Louis Jr., first cousins.Since 1985, Maine law has prohibited marriages to an individual’s parents, grandparents, children, grandchildren, siblings, nieces, nephews, aunts, or uncles.”

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of this Weekend:

Is this a legitimate campaign issue?

Legal Insurrection concludes, “All Maine Democrats had to do after Platner dropped out was find a normal person to take his place. It’s amazing that such a simple task was a challenge.” The conservative site reposts many contemptuous tweets, such as conservative pundit Jim Treacher’s…

OUT: Third Reich

IN: Second cousins

and Stephen L. Miller’s “The plan? We convince them to drop an abusive Nazi and then replace him with someone married to his own cousin.”

My view? I find this the kind of right wing “gotcha!”pearl-clutching that loses conservatives credibility. It’s mainly (Mainely?) Ick rather than ethics. He didn’t marry his cousin, he sort-of married his second cousin, which isn’t illegal incest in Maine or as far as I can find, anywhere else. Franklin D. Roosevely married and had children with his distant cousin (you’ll notice that they had the same last names). Thomas Jefferson and John Adams married third cousins; John and Abigail’s line was eventually stuffed with geniuses and high achievers. I have a long-time friend (well, she used to be a friend until Trump Derangement caused her to cut me off, and I was a particularly good and generous friend…grrrrrr!) who chose her first cousin as her third husband, which my late wife found disgusting. They were past the children stage; I found it interesting but hardly scandalous.

Ethics Quiz: Harvard’s Human Skin-Bound Book

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

As if it doesn’t have enough to worry about, Harvard University announced yesterday that its copy of Arsène Houssaye’s “Des Destinées de L’Ame,” or “The Destiny of Souls” had been stripped of the very feature that made it unusual enough to be worth collecting. The book (above) had been bound in human skin, just like the book in “The Evil Dead” movies. Its first owner, Dr. Ludovic Bouland, a French doctor, had inserted in the volume a handwritten note saying that “a book about the human soul deserved to have a human covering.” The alumnus who gave the book to Harvard in 1934, the American diplomat (and the famous hat family heir) John B. Stetson, had informed the Houghton Library (Harvard’s rare book collection), that Bouland had taken the skin from an unknown woman who died in a French psychiatric hospital.

Harvard removed the binding and said it would be exploring options for “a final respectful disposition of these human remains.” “After careful study, stakeholder engagement, and consideration, Harvard Library and the Harvard Museum Collections Returns Committee concluded that the human remains used in the book’s binding no longer belong in the Harvard Library collections, due to the ethically fraught nature of the book’s origins and subsequent history,” the university’s statement read.

Incidentally, the word for binding books in human skin is anthropodermic bibliopegy.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Was this really ethically necessary?

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“Ick” vs. Ethics: The Nazi Gems Collection

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Once again, we encounter the conundrum of so-called “dirty money.”

In May, the auction house Christie’s sold a collection of jewels and jewelry from the estate of Heidi Horten, an Austrian philanthropist. The auction earned $202 million, establishing the Horten sale as the biggest precious gem sale ever. There was, however, an ethics controversy: all that jewelry had been bought with a fortune amassed by Horten’s husband Helmut, a Nazi who bought up Jewish businesses in forced sales during the Holocaust.

The Holocaust Educational Trust called the May auction a “true insult to victims of the Holocaust.” Yoram Dvash, president of the World Federation of Diamond Bourses, wrote, “In a time of Holocaust denial and the resurgence of antisemitism around the world, we find it especially appalling that a world-renowned auction house would engage in such a sale.” David Schaecter, president of Holocaust Survivors’ Foundation USA, which represents support groups for victims’ families in the U.S., called the sale “appalling” and said it had perpetuated “a disgraceful pattern of whitewashing Holocaust profiteers.” But Christie’s officials argued that the proceeds of the sale would go to the Heidi Horten Foundation, which supports medical research and a museum containing her art collection. The auction house also pledged to donate some of its own profits arising from the sale to Holocaust research and education.

Since May, however, attacks on the collection, Chistie’s, and the money paid for the jewels at auction have escalated. Christie’s announced this week that a scheduled November sale of more lots of jewelry from the Heidi Horten collection would be canceled, citing the “intense scrutiny” from Jewish organizations and some critics. The Jerusalem Post reported that other Jewish groups had rejected Christie’s donations from the May auction.

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Not Unethical, Just Narcissistic And Stupid, But Criticism Goes With The Territory

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

31-year-old Theresia Fischer, who starred on Germany’s “Celebrity Big Brother,” has paid $160,000 for two painful surgeries that added five and a half inches to each leg. Now she is six feet tall in her stocking feet, six-four in those platforms.

The doctors inserted adjustable telescopic rods into her tibiae. I believe that this is a violation of medical ethics, as she had no actual malady that required medical intervention, and the procedure involved risk, as all medical procedures do. However, cosmetic surgeons tend to be live on the bottom of the ethics barrel.

In her publicity campaign celebrating being turned into a freak, she extols what the operation has done for her sex life, but also complains that she has been the target of “hate” on the web, where she is well-followed on TikTok and Instagram. “Why am I subject to so much hate?” she lamented to the New York Post.

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‘Ick Or Ethics’ Ethics Quiz: The Self-Repossessing Car

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

This one has my ethics alarms ringing, but I can’t seem to find anything unethical about it.

A recently published patent application from Ford describes a system that would lock drivers out of their vehicles for nonpayment and allow the vehicle to repossess itself.

The patent document was formally published on February 23. Titled “Systems and Methods to Repossess a Vehicle,” it outlines different methods that could be taken if the vehicle’s owner misses payments. This would trigger a”repossession system computer,” which would be capable of disabling “a functionality of one or more components of the vehicle,” including the air conditioning, and radio.” “Incessant and unpleasant sound” could be turned on “every time the owner is present in the vehicle.” Finally, the car could be placed in a “lockout condition,” unable to be driven except in the case of an emergency.

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I Don’t Know Exactly What This Story Signifies, But I’m Going To Write About It Anyway…

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Actress Jamie Lee Curtis posted about her chairs on Instagram for some strange reason, and in so doing, revealed the creepy photograph she has hanging in her home. Conservatives, who have been in an art critic mood thanks to “The Embrace” were triggered. “Why does Jamie Lee Curtis have a picture of a naked child stuffed inside a suitcase on her wall,” said rightish broadcaster Stew Peters. “Strong Epstein vibes.” Right-wing activist Rogan O’Handley tweeted in part, “Hollywood has-been Jamie Lee Curtis posted …an extremely disturbing picture she has in her home of a child stuffed in a suitcase. We have serious questions.”

Curtis then took down the post and photo, explaining,

What’s going on here?

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Dead Body Ethics: Why Is “Mind Your Own Damn Business!” Such A Difficult Principle To Grasp?

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

This post was almost titled “Stop Making Me Defend Governor Hochul!” Conservative pundits, bloggers and busybodies are freaking out over Governor Kathy Hochul (D-NY) signing into law legislation that makes New York the sixth state to legalize the composting human remains. The law adds “natural organic reduction” to cremation and entombment as legal ways to dispose of bodies. The new law defines the practice as the “contained, accelerated conversion of human remains to soil” in a “structure, room, or other space” in which decomposition can occur.

To all of which I say, “Fine.” Any time government increases individual autonomy and the liberty to do as citizens please as long as it doesn’t harm society or other individuals, or infringe on their rights, that’s an ethics win. It is especially encouraging to see a Democratic governor move in this direction, since her party has lately embraced a philosophy of seeking more restrictions on core American rights—like, say, freedom of speech— rather than fewer.

Never mind, though: some on the right are eager to bash Hochul anyway.

Here’s “Not the Bee”s” John Knox:

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Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 9/7/2022: Neil, Sam, Kwame, Mehmet And More

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

I took a wild guess that Neil had to have done this parody of his biggest hit because it was so obvious, and sure enough, I was right!

It’s not exactly an ethics story, but it does involve my home town of Arlington, Massachusetts: on September 7, 1813, a local newspaper in Troy, New York wrote about how Troy’s Samuel Wilson, a meat packer who supplied barrels of beef to the United States Army during the War of 1812, was being facetiously called “Uncle Sam” by soldiers because he stamped the barrels of meat “U.S.” The trivial story caught on and the nickname persisted. Decades later, brilliant 19th Century political cartoonist Thomas Nast (1840-1902) began using a character called Uncle Sam as the personification of the nation, giving Sam the white beard and stars-and-stripes suit that he still wears today. Troy, quite reasonably, later dubbed itself “The Home of Uncle Sam.” But Wilson was born in Arlington, Mass., and the town management, frustrated with its relative obscurity despite being in the midst of other Greater Boston tourist destinations like Concord, Lexington and Cambridge, decided a few decades ago to promote Arlington as “The Birthplace of Uncle Sam,” essentially horning in on Troy’s historical territory (Troy was not pleased). Arlington even paid to have a statue of Nast’s Sam designed, cast and erected.

Nobody cared.

1. More on “quiet quitting”:  Gallup estimates that at least half the workforce is “quiet quitting,” meaning that it does the bare minimum required to keep jobs rather than working to do their best. Gallup’s analysis blames management, which is certainly part of the problem. It does not address the serious cultural ethics issue of workers seeking to be excellent because it is beneficial for society as a whole and an embodiment of the Golden Rule, as well as a life habit that develops good character and justifies trust. Quiet quitters are just a few degrees better than freeloaders, an anchor on the nation, the economy and the quality of life. Continue reading →

Icky Or Unethical? Alexa Is Learning A New Trick

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

From Ars Technica:

Amazon is figuring out how to make its Alexa voice assistant deepfake the voice of anyone, dead or alive, with just a short recording. The company demoed the feature at its re:Mars conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday, using the emotional trauma of the ongoing pandemic and grief to sell interest.

Amazon’s re:Mars focuses on artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics, and other emerging technologies, with technical experts and industry leaders taking the stage. During the second-day keynote, Rohit Prasad, senior vice president and head scientist of Alexa AI at Amazon, showed off a feature being developed for Alexa.

After noting the large amount of lives lost during the pandemic, Prasad played a video demo, where a child asks Alexa, “Can grandma finish reading me Wizard of Oz?” Alexa responds, “Okay,” in her typical effeminate, robotic voice. But next, the voice of the child’s grandma comes out of the speaker to read L. Frank Baum’s tale.

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