[An Ethics Alarms reflection on the Christmas Eve Senate vote passing that esteemed body’s version of health care reform…in the tradition of “A Visit From Saint Nicholas,” because 1) you haven’t read enough parodies of that poem this year, 2) it seemed appropriate, but mostly 3) the version Sen. Burris read on the Senate floor was so terrible that I had to get its taste out of my mouth.]
integrity
Ethics Dunce: Tag Heuer
Swiss watch company Tag Heuer announced today that it would drop Tiger Woods from its advertising. The CEO of the company told Swiss paper Le Matin, “We recognize Tiger Woods as a great sportsman but we have to take account of the sensitivity of some consumers in relation to recent events.”
Translation: We, of course, would never presume to question the character and integrity of a husband and father who engages in serial adulterous affairs with any cocktail waitress, lingerie model, porn star, reality star or other owner of two x chromosomes as long as she had the physical dimensions of Jessica Rabbit, but such conduct apparently displeases some of our customers, heaven knows why, and though we’d use Martin Bormann as a spokesperson if he sold enough watches, our guess is that Tiger won’t. So he’s out.
This is called “doing the right thing for the wrong reasons.”
But these are the Swiss, after all. They wouldn’t even take a stand against Hitler.
The Leaked Exam: Teaching Ethics Unethically
Some University of Oregon law students preparing for exams when the full text of an exam for one of their classes, Administrative Law with Professor John Bonine, inexplicably appeared on a university list-serve. Someone in the registrar’s office had pushed the wrong button.
Oops! Yay? Uhhh…now what? Continue reading
Self-Castration Ethics
Ouch.
A Colombian man whose wife refused to have sexual relations with him castrated himself to remove any temptation to become the next Tiger Woods.
This is in some ways admirable, don’t you think? Continue reading
An Ethical Compromise on Climate Change Policy?
A Canadian economist, Dr. Ross McKittrick, has written a paper suggesting that carbon emission penalties be set to rise or fall according to climate indicators. He wants to tie carbon penalties to the temperature of the lowest layer of the atmosphere —the troposphere, which extends from the surface of the earth to a height of about 10 miles. His paper advocates using temperature readings near the equator, because that is where the global warming models forecast the greatest increases. Continue reading
Ethics Dunce: Nike
I promise: this is the last post related to Tiger Woods for a while, at least.
BUT… Here is Nike’s statement regarding Tiger’s hiatus from golf and his other, uh, issues:
“Tiger has been part of Nike for more than a decade. He is the best golfer in the world and one of the greatest athletes of his era. We look forward to his return to golf. He and his family have Nike’s full support.”
This raises several intriguing questions: Continue reading
The Ethics of Ignorance and Apathy: Gore’s Million Degree Gaffe
I didn’t watch Al Gore when he appeared on the Tonight Show a couple weeks ago. What he said then while hobnobbing with Conan should be old news, but in fact it was no news at all, because virtually no news media gave it more than a passing mention. Then, by purest accident, I heard a talk-radio host ranting about a shocking statement Gore had made on the show, and I checked to see if he could possibly be quoting the former Vice-President correctly.
He was. Here is the exchange: Continue reading
The Ethics of Ghost-blogging and Ghost-tweeting
A year ago, the term “ghost-tweeting” would have been nonsense. Today, it’s an occupation.
Susan Esparza has posted an opinion that while ghost-writing articles and books for traditional publications is ethical, having someone author one’s blog posts and tweets is deceptive and wrong. Continue reading
Tiger Woods Ethics, Part II: Yes. It Matters
There are two main strains among the culturally corrosive arguments in support of Tiger Woods. One, discussed in Part I, is the “great athletes don’t need to be great human beings,” a contention that chooses to ignore the inescapable fact that they are paid to behave like great human beings, whether they are or not. While this argument is mostly obtuse, the second strain is the more ethically offensive. Washington Post columnist Michael Wilbon embraced it with both arms in his defense of Woods entitled, “Some context on Tiger.” Its thesis: virtually all big-time athletes cheat on their wives, and if you had the opportunities and temptations they do, you’d cheat too. Translation: “It’s no big deal”: Continue reading
Tiger Woods Ethics, Part I: Betrayal’s Not for Heroes
I wasn’t planning on commenting on the Tiger Woods soap opera. Its ethical lessons seemed obvious, and merely xeroxed themes that I have, in the eyes of some, thumped to death. I do feel that the apparent glee with which some in the sports media have attacked Woods for revealing his true character is damning…of them. Golf’s Golden Child finally outed himself as a phony “good guy” and a classic case of the prodigy who won’t or can’t grow up, a man who has been carrying on multiple adulterous affairs while using his bottomless checkbook to cover his tracks. It seems that many reporters have long known that Tiger’s public image was a fraud, and had chafed over the adulation heaped on him as they witnessed the golfer being mean, petty and boorish, often to them. Now these journalists feel it is “safe” to skewer Woods, and are doing so with gusto. Cowards. They were parties to a mass public deception, and their duty was to let us know Tiger was playing us for suckers when they knew it, not when his lies became National Enquirer headlines.
As for Tiger’s own conduct, however, I presumed most could see the ethics issues clearly. Then the apologists and rationalizers started writing their columns. Continue reading
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