incivility

Bad Neighbor, Uncivil Citizen and Christmas Jerk, But Sarah Childs Knows Her Rights!

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

christmasfinger

Sarah Childs decided to give her neighbors a bird that wasn’t mentioned in “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” The neighbors, for some reason, weren’t charmed, and in response to their complaints, police ordered Sarah to turn off the lights.

But U.S. District Judge James Brady granted  Childs’ request for a temporary restraining order blocking the City of Denham Springs in Louisiana from interfering with her  vulgar Christmas display on the roof of her house, giving a large, bright, middle finger to everyone within sight.  Marjorie R. Esman, the Executive Director of ACLU of Louisiana rejoiced, “This is a victory for the First Amendment and for the rule of law. We are gratified that Ms. Childs can express herself as the law permits without further risk of interference by the police.”

Yup, the First Amendment allows Sarah Childs to be an uncivil and intentionally offensive jerk, and to flip off her neighborhood with a Christmas flair. “Peace on Earth, and Up Yours! ” A better example of how conduct can be legal, Constitutionally protected, and completely, utterly, wrong would be hard to find. Apparently Childs was angry at her neighbors over an ongoing dispute, and this was her kind, polite, classy, Christmas-y way of handling the situation.

It is times like these that one really, really wishes there was a Santa Claus, so he could leave something appropriately disgusting in a deserving stocking.

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Pointer, Graphic: Volokh Conspiracy

Facts: Louisiana ACLU 1, Louisiana ACLU 2

Worst Dinner Guests Ever

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

If you are invited to dinner with these two, be sure to bring popcorn and a camera.

Jeremie Calo and Tiffani Lynn Barganier decided to have sex on top of their table  at Paddy Murphy’s, an Orlando, Florida restaurant. The fact that many families were there trying to eat didn’t faze them a bit, apparently. The manager  summoned the police after he “was notified by several patrons that a couple was having sex on a table in view of minor children,” according to an Orlando Police Department report.

You can read the report here, at The Smoking Gun.

If anyone has any theories how two adults could be raised in a civilized country and think this is responsible, respectful, tolerable behavior, please pass them on.  My assumption is that anyone with this little respect for others and civilized norms is dangerous, and certainly not trustworthy. Outside of a purveyor of live sex shows in Vegas, what sane employer would hire either of these creatures?

The question of most import is whether they are just outrageous outliers with no greater significance, or whether public manners are in the process of reaching depths we never thought possible?

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Facts and Graphic: The Smoking Gun

Ethics Dunce (and Unethical Tweet of the Month): Donald Trump

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Stay classy, Donald.

Well, I’m still trying to get that Todd Akin post up, but greater stupidity keeps intervening. Speaking of greater stupidity: here’s the Donald!

Everyone, even Mitt Romney, must know that Trump is a boor, an ass, and an Ethics Dunce Extraordinaire, an embarrassment to such already embarrassing fields as casinos, real estate development, politics and even reality TV. Still, one would think that he would be shrewd enough—and Trump is often shrewd—to avoid rearing his ugliest side during the Republican National Convention and reminding the media, undecided voters and lurking blog-snipers that Mitt hasn’t shown the sense, courage and integrity to separate this slimy birther from his campaign. But no. Trump is, after all, only interested in Trump, so he had to send out this despicable tweet insulting Adrianna Huffington, who must have said or written something critical of him, Whatever it was, it couldn’t have been critical enough. Here is the tweet:

Trump is no gentleman, no statesman, and no fit ally for a man running for President. I assumed everyone knew that already, but this is another reminder. Let’s see if Mitt Romney has standards that go beyond dollar signs.

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Pointer: Hypervocal

Graphic: Brooklyn Mutt

Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at  jamproethics@verizon.net.

Unethical Quote of the Week: DC Radio Talk Show Host Chris Plante

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

“(MSNBC host) Chris Hayes is like (MSNBC host) Rachel Maddow, but with a smaller penis.”

—-WMAL syndicated conservative radio talk show host Chris Plante, riffing on the anti-Fox MSNBC’s new star, Chris Hayes.

Gee, Chris, do you REALLY want to emulate Bill Maher?

As someone who often talks extemporaneously for a living, and who has slammed both legs up to the hip into my mouth more than once, I am genuinely sympathetic to the perils faced by radio and TV talk show hosts who have to be edgy, insightful and witty for three hours a day without a script, knowing that words, once out of their mouths, are irretrievable, and can lead to career meltdowns with the speed of Chernobyl. It’s a tough job that is akin to walking a high wire over a pit of crocodiles, and I usually have great sympathy for those who fall.

But there is no excuse for this. Continue reading →

Rush’s Misogyny: No Defense

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

This is one of Rush's ugly pictures. He's earned it.

Any idiot, except Rush Limbaugh, apparently, could identify Rush’s outrageous, uncivil, mean-spirited, and ignorant (does he really think a woman has to take more birth control pills the more she has sex?) rant against Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke (who testified before Congressional Democrats to advocate insurance coverage of contraceptives) as indefensible. That is why I wasn’t going to insult anyone’s intelligence by stating the obvious by posting to that effect. But a commenter here reminded me of the Ethics Alarms post about Bill Maher’s misogyny when he called Sarah Palin a “dumb twat” on his HBO show, and I decided that it should be made clear that as despicable as Maher’s statement was, Rush’s was worse. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Unethical Website—and Readers— of the Month: The Spearhead”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Bill Price, who operates the website I criticized in the post “Unethical Website—and Readers— of the Month: The Spearhead,” offers this response in the Comment of the Day. Among other things, he mentions some new revelations about Victoria Liss (whose story I wrote about here) , the Seattle bartender whose inept and excessive web-shaming brought infamy and abuse down on the head of the wrong man. It seems that she has wrongly accused men before. It’s not exactly a surprise. Bill post raises many issues, and I’ll have some responses at the end. Here is his Comment of the Day:

“Hi Jack, noticed the post, and have to say I’m a little disappointed.

“Your article on Amanpour was indeed quite good, and much appreciated. But I’d like to point out that The Spearhead is very lightly moderated, and therefore many of the comments are indeed very radical. Additionally, those who comment and rate the comments are the most radical of all — less than 5% of readers are regular commenters. This always happens on any politically oriented board with a large readership, so it should be no surprise. Continue reading →

Unethical Website—and Readers— of the Month: The Spearhead

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Ironically, the site's typical reader is better described as "The Cement Head"

I don’t want to seem ungrateful: it is usually a welcome discovery when I find a popular website sending readers to Ethics Alarms, as has been the case the last two days with a site called The Spearhead. Nor do I have any ethical objections to The Spearhead’s theoretical mission, which is to stand against “misandry,” the mistreatment, cultural denigration of and discrimination against men. The phenomenon The Spearhead and its various bloggers rail against certainly exists in the U.S., as Ethics Alarms most forcefully pointed out after ABC’s Christiane Amanpour led a male-bashing roundtable on her Sunday show and did so as if she was having her guests name the state Capitals.

Unfortunately, the tone of most of the articles on The Spearhead is decidedly paranoid, misogynist or worse, echoing the dialogue in old movies and TV comedies in which rejected (and often repulsive) men would band together in a “Woman-Hater’s Club.” Its article (“Waitress Reacts to Insult With Online Lynch Mob”) that linked to Ethics Alarms, for example, weighing in on the Victoria Liss affair in which an aggrieved waitress used Facebook to invite Internet Avengers to heap abuse on a cheap and insulting customer but carelessly fingered the wrong man, took this from the episode:

“How many men would be so petty, so vindictive, and so morally depraved that they would launch a personal vendetta over a minor slight suffered in the course of a day’s work? Very few, obviously — such men would be instantly fired, and likely castigated by the courts (if not jailed) for harassment.”

Thus Victoria, in the view of the author, isn’t merely one inept Facebook user and an unusually vindictive waitress, but a typical representative of her gender and proof of the fairer sex’s inadequacies when compared to men. This is bigotry.  But the real ugliness arrived in the comments to the article, most of which heaped abuse on Liss and hatred on women generally, condemning the waitress not only for what she did, but for her appearance. Thanks to the site’s like/dislike feature, it was  possible to gauge which of the comments were representative of the majority. The verdict does not speak well for The Spearhead. Here is a representative sample:

  • “In today’s America, it is assured one will get undeserved shit, for speaking Truth.The customer spoke truth about her fatness, and now, the fat one is the one indignant…with a crowd of supporters defending her uncontrolled behavior. America = truth avoidance”

This endorsement of gratuitous rudeness and cruelty was approved of by the readership by a margin of 56 to 9. Continue reading →

Unethical Web Post of the Week: “Screw Civility” by Rick Robinson

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Tell Alexander Hamilton how much fun incivility is...

That an ethics dolt like Rick Robinson has spent so much time advising those in the Halls of Power speaks volumes about why our government institutions are dysfunctional and corrupt. His biography says he even ran for Congress. With ethical values like his—weak, dubious, and confused—it is a miracle he wasn’t elected.

In an essay for Tucker Carlson’s conservative news site The Daily Caller, Robinson defends the uncivil rhetoric of Jimmy (““Let’s take these sons of bitches out …”) Hoffa Jr and Rep. Joe ( “You lie!”) Wilson on the historically false and ethically idiotic grounds that “America was built on a solid foundation of uncivil political discourse.” It is ethically idiotic because this is consequentialism (“Everything turned out all right, so it was the right thing to do”) and a rationalization (“They did it, so we can too!), and it is historically false because no nation, indeed no functioning organization of any kind, was built on incivility….especially this one. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

A symptom and a cause

“You name it, they’re there to diminish it, destroy it.”

—-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal.), quoted in the Washington Post today, describing the Republican Party.

If you listen to talk radio, as I, unfortunately, must, you hear statements like Pelosi’s all the time. Conservative talk show host Mark Levin, for example, will say, every day, usually more than once, loudly, that liberals/Democrats/ Obama “want to destroy America.” (Then he plugs his book. Or says, “Just like identity thieves want to destroy your credit!” and does an ad for “Lifelock.”)  It is irresponsible, hateful and ignorant for Levine (and Rush, and Monica Crowley, and lots of others) to make this and similar statements, though in Levine’s case, at least, not insincere, for he clearly believes every bit of it.

These are just talk show hosts, however. They are at least 50% entertainers, and 100% partisans, though they still have ethical duties of honesty, fairness, civility and responsibility which they regularly toss to the winds in the interest of ratings. They don’t meet their profession’s ethical standards, even though those standards are  low.

Pelosi’s are much, much higher, for she is an elected official of the United States of America. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce, Ethics Hero: Name Calling and One-Way Civility On the Left

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

John Boehner was just like this during debt ceiling negotiations. Well, sort-of. OK, he really wasn't like this at all, but I don't like him, so it's not uncivil for me to say he was.

The popular Democratic, progressive, liberal and news media (I know I’m being redundant here) slur for the Republican House and its Tea Party warriors during and after the budget ceiling debate was “terrorists,” suggesting an analogy between the GOP insisting on major expenditure cuts in the budget as a condition for raising the debt ceiling, and political and religious extremists who threaten to kill people if they don’t get their way. Needless to say, it’s a disgraceful, dishonest, illogical and slanderous comparison. Whether the GOP’s negotiating stance was fair, reasonable or right can be debated; that the intent of the strategy was to strengthen the nation’s financial health is not.

To many of the Republicans involved, incurring more debt without a guarantee of serious deficit and debt reduction in the future was more dangerous than allowing the nation to default on its obligations. Add to that the fact that many in the Tea Party  leadership believe that the consequences of not raising the debt ceiling was overblown, and it is clear: the Republicans were using their control over the immediate fate of something progressives  wanted more than conservatives as a bargaining chip in a political disagreement. It may have been irresponsible; it may have been a risk; it may have been a bluff. But it was not terrorism. It was politics. Hardball politics no doubt, but well within accepted standards

Oh, I forgot: there is another reason the Republicans weren’t acting like terrorists. They weren’t threatening to kill anybody, and they didn’t kill anybody. Continue reading →