insults

Guess Who Invited Donald Trump to the White House Correspondents Association Dinner?

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

OK, who's the wiseguy that brought the skunk to the picnic?

I missed it, but the Washington Post of April 28 revealed who it was that invited Donald Trump, fresh from a month of trying to make the President’s citizenship a campaign issue while denigrating Obama’s integrity, legitimacy, and honesty, to the annual light-hearted White House Correspondents Association dinner, where the President is always a featured “performer.” It was buried in the gossipy Style section, but there was the culprit. Who invited him?

The Washington Post invited him, that who.

Inviting Trump to that event is in approximately the same good taste as inviting blogger Pamela Geller to a Park51 (a.k.a. “the Ground Zero Mosque”) controversy, or allowing a group of “Truthers” to crash a testimonial to Dick Cheney.

What could the Post have been thinking? “He’s a fascinating figure to Washington right now!” the Post’s representative breathlessly explained on the 28th. We are to assume, then, that if the dinner was being held this week and Osama bin Laden hadn’t been dispatched (most respectfully, of course) to Davy Jones’ Locker, the Post might have invited Osama’s bullet-riddled corpse to slump at its table.

The Post was stirring the pot, is what it was doing, and that is not the media’s proper of ethical role. If the intention was to set up Trump, who had been called everything from a joke to a fool to a thug to a racist by various Post writers only days before, to be insulted to his face by host Seth Myers and the President, that is taking sides in the news rather than reporting it. If it the intent was to position volatile elements together in the hopes of sparking a story, that is unethical  journalism too.

The paper got both results that it presumably desired: Trump was a sitting duck at the dinner, and then he embarrassed himself by later complaining about the skewering he so richly deserved. It also, not for the first time, showed how rusty those old ethics alarms are at the offices of Washington, D.C.’s most prestigious newspaper.

[Thanks to sharp-eyed Post reader Robert Sher.]

Kobe Bryant’s Two-Word Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

"Fucking" + "faggot"= ?

In the heat of an NBA game, Los Angeles Laker star Kobe Bryant shouted a two-word epithet at a NBA ref, estimated to be the 9,675,987, 555, 321,005, 349,674, 021st time a player has insulted a ref in hoops since they started keeping count in 1973. Unfortunately, the two words were “fucking faggot.”

And it was picked up by the TV microphones.

In rapid succession, the Gay Lesbian Transgendered advocates were all over the NBA,  calling a foul; Bryant was apologizing, and the NBA was fining Bryant $100,000.

Ethics train wreck. It’s a train wreck because whatever happens at this point, the result has ethical problems, and the lesson is ethically muddled. There is no question at all that if the remark by Bryant hadn’t been picked up by the mics, there would be no issue, no controversy. But it was, which means that a comment intended for one individual (if that) became a national display of incivility (or worse.) Continue reading →

Political Correctness Update: Regarding the Meaning of “Broad”

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

In the thread following my post regarding Bill Maher calling Sarah Palin a “dumb twat,” I was asked about where “broad” and “babe” fall on the spectrum of misogynistic insults. I replied..

“Babe” and “broad,”: unlike “twat” are almost always intended as a compliment. I would never use either of the first two in direct address of a woman until I was certain that she would take it the right way. In fact, compliments are determined by reasonable intent—some women are insulted, or claim to be, if you say they look nice. In sexual harassment law, it is indeed the object/victim/ accuser who gets to define the dispute (if she likes “broad,” there’s no complaint…if she doesn’t, you better apologize quickly.) That’s the law—that doesn’t mean that a comment reasonably intended as a compliment suddenly becomes uncivil because of a hairtrigger offense.”

This prompted indignant replies from several, reaching a crescendo that indicated that I was hopelessly archaic, and that “broad’ was now officially an insult, an offensive insult, and nothing but an insult. I gave up to the onslaught, and agreed that “broad” was, in fact, now an insult. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “The Barefoot Contessa…” (Again)

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Thank you for your comment, Sharon!

A classic. A commenter named Sharon Jones became outraged over an apparent counting error I made in one of the replies to a comment on the “Barefoot Contessa” post, but refused to be specific about what “seven words” I mistakenly called six. This sparked the abusive rant below, which contains so many of the standard sputterings of those who object to what I do for a  living—the fans of ethical relativism, and the “let he that is without sin” crowd, who often have no use for the Bible except when it can provide rationalizations for ignoring bad conduct—that it begged to be honored as a  Comment of the Day.

If you’re interested in my reply to this, it can be found in the comments to The Barefoot Contessa and the Compassion Bullies, which for the third time has generated a COTD, by Sharon Jones. Sadly, we won’t be seeing any more of Sharon around these parts…

“Apparently a Harvard degree gives you the right to be a self pretentious jerk with no accountability.

“Anybody who assumes the title of “ethics police” truly deserves to have his testicle hairs plucked one by one, followed by a hot sauce after-shave. Self righteous jerks, with an overinflated sense of self worth that gives them the feeling of entitlement to force feed the foul slop of “ethics” in a public forum. A self-worth, consequently, that is directly proportional to the balance of their checkbooks and IRAs.

“That being said, I fully grant the spineless bastard his first amendment right to say whatever feeble-minded drivel he can manage to scrape out of his Syphilitic skull and slap onto a blank canvas. More power to him. May he have a long and erectile dis-functioned life.”

Ethics Hero: Tampa Bay Rays Manager Joe Maddon

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Joe Maddon, fulfilling his duty to confront racist jerks

During a Sunday Spring Training game at Charlotte Sports Park in Florida, Tampa Bay Rays  manager Joe Maddon heard a fan berating Rays centerfielder B.J. Upton with a racial insult. Maddon summoned stadium security and had the fan thrown out of the park.

This may have happened before, but I can’t recall a similar incident. Racist catcalls and epithets are rarer at baseball games than they once were; they are far from gone. Baseball players have to endure a certain amount of abuse, true, but not this kind. Heaping racist insults on an athlete from the safety of the stands is cowardly as well as uncivil, and the First Amendment doesn’t extend to “fighting words” in a private venue.  Every manager, coach, usher and spectator should follow Madden’s lead.

The fan, by the way, denies Maddon’s account. Since baseball managers are not in the habit of ejecting fans for nothing, I find the denial less than credible.

The Bi-Partisan and Unethical Niggerizing of Political Discourse

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Marl Levin, virtuoso niggerizer

The ethics problem with the use of “nigger,” or “bitch,” or “fag,” or any of the other culturally disapproved denigrating labels for human beings belonging to particular groups, is not that they are insulting—adults should be able to  handle mere insults—but that they unfairly diminish the status of individuals, their character, opinions and deeds before they have had the opportunity to be judged on their merits. It isn’t the words, but the effect, in essence sticking a foot out to trip a runner at the beginning of the race—and the race may be a job, an election, a debate, an argument, or policy deliberations.

The No-Labels movement focuses on characterizations and civility, but these are far too vague as concepts to enforce culturally, and subject to easy manipulation for political ends. John Avlon, a leader of No-Labels, still calls politicians he disagrees with “wingnuts.” Why? Because, well, they are wingnuts! Just ask John. Niggerizing, however, goes well beyond labels, and fair people should reject it from either side of the political spectrum. It is a bully tactic, and it is a dishonest debating technique, completely delegitimizing an adversary before addressing his arguments, or giving them an objective hearing. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Facebook Wars II”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Though not strictly an ethics comment, Mary’s theory about why school administrators are engaging in so much ethically dubious conduct is provocative and has the ring of truth. Here is her Comment of the Day, on the post “Facebook Wars II: More School Abuse of Power and Privacy“:

“A number of years ago, while extracting myself from a bad relationship, a therapist friend told me that the more healed and “normal” I became, the more outrageous and pathological my ex-partner’s behavior would be, in a psychological attempt to pull me back into the relationship.

“I sometimes think the same thing applies to social relationships and organizations. As they lose their relevancy and people withdraw and move on to new social structures, those invested in the old organizations thrash wildly to maintain an ever crumbling status quo. Continue reading →

Facebook Wars II: More School Abuse of Power and Privacy

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

"Hello? ACLU? Anybody there?"

In January, Ethics Alarms weighed in on reports from Illinois and New York about students being disciplined by their high schools for postings on Facebook about the sexual proclivities of female students in the community. The ethics verdict: the schools were abusing their power and the students’ privacy:

“When did schools suddenly acquire disciplinary control over what students do when they aren’t at school? There is no question that the websites involved were inappropriate, disrespectful, cruel and hurtful, just as the rumors and insults included in high school graffiti were, in those glorious days before the internet. Students so abused need to complain to parents, and parents need to talk to the parents of the offending students, and if they can’t or won’t address the problem, then the courts or law enforcement may need to become involved.”

The rationale offered by the schools at the time was that the students had violated rules against cyber-bullying, that ever-vague plague, although there is no more legitimate authority for a school to decree what a student can say about another student on a personal website than there is for a school to restrict what a kid can say at the dinner table.

Naturally, when an institution exceeds the natural limit on its authority, there is nothing to keep it from even more egregious abuse. Thus two Georgia students were just suspended and one another was expelled for negative Facebook postings about a teacher. Continue reading →

Hypocrisy Follies: The Ribbing of the First Lady

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

What's wrong with this picture?

Americans are becoming almost as confused about hypocrisy as they are about satire.

Michelle Obama’s Vail, Colorado vacation included taking her daughters out to eat ribs at Vail, and conservative radio critics immediately resorted the “H” word, led by Rush Limbaugh, who reported that the First Lady, fully-involved in an anti-obesity campaign, joined her own children in “feasting on ribs — ribs that were 1,575 calories per serving with 141 grams of fat, per serving.” Continue reading →

Now THIS Is Incivility!

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Ethics Alarms continues its efforts to educate the public and the media regarding what constitutes unacceptable public discourse.

Please go here…

…and then take a side-trip to Aspen here.