I was in Boston recently, and naturally the topic of Tom Brady and Deflategate came up often. I kept hearing the same defenses of Brady with a growing sense of déjà vu. Yes, many of the rationalizations on the Ethics Alarms Rationalizations List raised their ethically-muddled heads in Beantown, all-purpose classics like “Everybody does it,” “It’s a bad law/ stupid rule,” and “No harm, no foul,” but there were others that clearly came out of some secretly published “Cheater’s Handbook.”
These are going to enter the list as a group, like #6,The Biblical Rationalizations. They will be trotted out for other purposes, no doubt, but no set of excuses better defines the unethical mindset of a cheater’s defenders than these three.
If you told me ESPN COULD make my head explode, I wouldn’t have believed you…
ESPN has been foundering in a sea of ethical ignorance for some time now, but this was shocking even for them.
In a petty exercise to express its disdain and and anger at dismissed baseball commentator Curt Schilling, the sports network excised an entire section of its documentary on the legendary 2004 American League Championship play-offs when it was shown last night prior to the scheduled Red Sox-Yankee game. I cannot think of a single example of unethical journalism by a major outlet so blatant and so offensive.
Let’s go back a bit. Schilling is an outspoken religious conservative, active on social media. He was suspended from his baseball game broadcasting duties last season after comparing Islamic radicals to Nazis in a Twitter post—not all that unreasonable, actually, but if ESPN has a policy against its employees making controversial political statements on social media, and apparently it does, Schilling was asking for trouble.
Indeed, Curt has nothing if not integrity when it comes to expressing himself, and he could not resist commenting on the transgender bathroom controversy, re-tweeting a particularly ugly meme on the issue:
ESPN fired Curt. He had earlier in the year opined in a radio interview that “If I’m gonna believe, and I don’t have any reason not to believe, that she gave classified information on hundreds if not thousands of emails on a public server after what happened to General Petraeus, she should buried under a jail somewhere.” Allowing for hyperbole, that’s a perfectly legitimate position to take, but again, if ESPN doesn’t want Curt, who it was paying a million bucks or so, to take shots at someone it believed its audience members were fond of, it can instruct its employees accordingly. It expressed its objections to Schilling, and he tweeted the meme anyway. Continue reading →
“I am deeply ashamed to be standing here,” former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert told a judge yesterday at his sentencing hearing. “I know why I am here … I mistreated some of the athletes that I coached.”
Wait…what? That’s not why Hastert was in court at all. He was before a judge for one reason: he violated banking laws and lied to the F.B.I.. The fact that he was a sexual predator and molested members of the wrestling team he coached many years ago is not the reason he was in court. It couldn’t be. The statute of limitations on all of those crimes, horrible crimes all, had expired. Hastert couldn’t be charged, tried or convicted of any of them.
I don’t understand why this hasn’t been the focus of the coverage of Hastert’s ordeal yesterday. Why did the judge think it was appropriate to “angrily” lecture him about his crimes that in the eyes of the law he must be considered innocent of by the legal system, because he cannot be found guilty of these crimes any more?
“‘If Denny Hastert could do it, anyone could do it,'” U.S. District Judge Thomas M. Durkin said. “Nothing is more stunning than to have the words ‘serial child molester’ and ‘speaker of the House’ in the same sentence.” Well, that’s very interesting, Judge. If the late Ted Kennedy had been before you to be sentenced for, say, just a wild hypothetical, a drunk driving charge, would you lecture him about letting Mary Jo Kopechne drown in his car?
I may have missed it, but when O.J. Simpson was sentenced for burglary, I don’t recall the judge asking him to confess to murdering Nicole and Ron…did that happen?
Earlier this month, the judge and prosecutors allowed the trial to become a proxy trial for a crime that wasn’t on the docket, with prosecutors hammering at graphic details about the sex-abuse, describing how Hastert would sit in a recliner in the locker room with a direct view of the showers. The victims, prosecutors said, were boys between 14 and 17. Hastert was in his 20s and 30s. This is relevant to the charges against Hastert how, exactly? Answer: They aren’t. Continue reading →
I am going to add “authentic frontier gibberish” (or AFG ) to the Ethics Alarms glossary of special terms. It comes, of course, from a memorable moment in “Blazing Saddles,” but on Ethics Alarms it is usually used to describe either intentional or incompetent blather from politicians or others attempting to confuse the public, duck a question, or mislead everyone. It is deliberate communication malpractice, with the motive of not communicating but pretending to.
Seldom will you encounter a more ringing example of AFG than the foregoing. Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a master at AFG, was asked by Fox News’ Chris Wallace why she called the FBI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton’s possible national security violations in her handling of official e-mails “ludicrous.”
What Brady doesn’t get: When people think you cheated, the smirk is does as much damage as the conduct.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit appeals court reinstated the NFL’s four-game suspension of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady yesterday. This overturned last year’s ruling by U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman, who had nullified the league’s suspension of the superstar quarterback. The three-judge panel of the appeals court wrote…
“We hold that the Commissioner properly exercised his broad discretion under the collective bargaining agreement and that his procedural rulings were properly grounded in that agreement and did not deprive Brady of fundamental fairness.”
It is important to note that the Court only ruled on whether NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell had the power to suspend Brady and did not violate the player’s rights as a players union member by doing so. The NFL’s current deal with the players gives Goodell the kind of power Major League Baseball gave to its first commissioner after the 1919 Black Sox Scandal, when gamblers fixed the World Series. Goodell, like Landis, can use his discretion to punish a player for “conduct detrimental” to the game and the NFL. They did this because a disturbing number of NFL players were getting headlines for doing things that don’t comport with what the public expects of its paid heroes, like sucker-punching women, shooting people, getting in bar fights, and engaging in assorted felonies. The game also has a very successful coach, Brady’s coach, in fact, who has made it very clear that he will cheat whenever he can get away with it..
I’m not going to rehash the “Deflategate” incident: I wrote enough about it when it occurred. Nobody knows for certain if Tom Brady in fact did conspire with Patriots employees to cheat when his team was behind in a crucial play-off game, but we know this: Continue reading →
Fortunately, we all know Donald Trump doesn’t operate this way…
This hasn’t come up before in party nominating conventions, because the last time there was a threat of a brokered convention no billionaires were running. Now, however, with Donald Trump likely facing a battle for delegates at the GOP battle looming in Cleveland, the specter has been raised of horribly unethical conduct being nonetheless legal: bribing delegates.
There are federal and state laws prohibiting bribery of elected officials, and laws making paying for votes illegal in elections. No laws seem to restrict what private citizens serving as delegates at their parties’conventions can take in exchange for their votes on a nominating ballot, however. The closest, suggests former Bush administration lawyer Richard Painter at the Legal Ethics Forum, is the “theft of honest services” statute 18 U.S.C. § 1346, and it isn’t close enough. Continue reading →
On ABC’s Sunday morning talking heads show, Hillary Clinton is being interviewed right now “one on one” by former Clinton machine insider George Stephanopoulos. This is, as I have pointed out before without rebuttal because there is no rebuttal, a grotesque example of unethical journalism, a screamingly obvious conflict of interest, and an insult to ABC’s viewers.
I resolved not to watch this inevitable loogie in the eye of respectable and fair campaign coverage, because until viewers refuse to be treated with such contempt, news departments will continue to be contemptuous. Some strange impulse forced me to light on ABC for exactly 23 seconds, and I got to hear Hillary go through the same focus group-tested talking points, rationalizations and lies she has been using to defend her e-mail machinations for a year—“Colin Powell did it too,” “national security wasn’t endangered,” “it wasn’t the best choice,” etc.—and to thank the President for compromising the integrity of the investigation while he was saying that he wouldn’t compromise the integrity of the investigation. There was enough ammunition in that single snippet to give any competent and objective interviewer an opening to expose her deceit for all to see. George’s response, delivered with a benevolent smile and the dreamy gaze of a true blue admirer…
[CORRECTION:The original version of this post erroneously identified Richardson as a Republican. He is a Democrat. Ethics Alarms apologizes for the error. As far as the assessment of the conduct goes, I do not believe it makes any difference, however.]
Billy Richardson’s rational-sounding, remorseful, full-throated endorsement of diversity and respect for LGBT Americans is the most disgusting and damning piece of political weaseldry I have ever seen, and, I desperately hope, ever will see. This man voted for the new North Carolina law that validates oppression against gays and transgender individuals, and now “upon prayer and reflection,’ suddenly sounds like Dan Savage on a polite day. The law is a travesty, he says. It undermines the right to be free of discrimination based on one’s sexual orientation, he says. I agree with him, but why did he vote for the bill in the first place, and why is he suddenly a passionate human rights advocate now?
I can answer both questions, because they have the same answer. Both his vote and his sudden reversal are the result of having no principles, not integrity, no core beliefs, no courage, no honesty, and no business holding high office. The law was not mysterious: it is blatant in its objective and philosophy. Voting for such a bill is signature significance: no one who has any respect of regard for LGBT citizens, their families, or the Constitution under which they live would consider voting for such a law, unless the official voting just casts his votes according to where he senses the winds are blowing, and regards politics as a game of profit, like playing the stock market. Once the law provoked violent opposition and the likelihood that the 1) the state would lose revenue and jobs and 2) the fools who voted for such a despicable measure would pay a dear price, Richardson was suddenly filled with contempt for those “who would demonize a group of citizens to gain political advantage and to advance an unjust agenda.” You know, like him.
“Instead of recognizing the right to be free of discrimination based on one’s sexual orientation, HB2 gives green light to this discrimination in housing, employment and other areas,” he writes. “To paraphrase Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, we must never make any group of citizens a stranger to the laws of their own state.”
Gee, who sent that quote to him, God? He does tell us he was praying about this, after all. Boy, Richardson is quite a walking advertisement for the power of prayor! Just like that, BOOM!, his entire political, sexual and civil rights philosophy changed, and his favorite songs became “Kumbaya,” “We Shall Overcome,” “This Land is Your Land,” and “YMCA.”
Richardson is insulting his state’s citizens by showing that he regards them as gullible fools, and perhaps they are. I know that the foes of the bill will be happy to use him now as a politician who, mirabili dictu, has seen the light, even though he has outed himself as a cowardly, principle-free liar.
Does one of his bigoted colleagues who will fight like a rat to defend this awful law deserve more respect than Richardson? Absolutely! Richardson is the soldier who will switch sides as soon as it is clear that his own side is losing. He is the epitome of what Donald Trump’s supporters believe all politicians are–soulless, untrustworthy, craven, glib and able to wrap themselves in any disguise for a single purpose: their personal profit and survival. Such politicians are useless to anyone, and the scourge of democracy. Continue reading →
I just watched George Stephanopoulos grill Bernie Sanders on his Sunday morning show on ABC.
It was a fair, professional interview. It doesn’t matter. George Stephanopoulos has a bright, shining, unshakable conflict of interest of long-standing, and both he and his employer, ABC, pretend it doesn’t exist. He is a former Clinton staffer. He has a previous relationship with Hillary Clinton. He withheld the fact that he had contributed $75,000 to the Clinton Promotion Slush Fund And Under The Table Influence Peddling Machine, also known as the Clinton Foundation. In 2006 he was a featured attendee and panel moderator at the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI). He was also a 2008 panelist at the CGI annual meeting. In 2009, he served as a panel moderator at CGI’s annual meeting. In 2010 and 2011, he was an official member of the Clinton Global initiative.In 2013 and 2014, he served with Chelsea Clinton as CGI contest judges for awards.
This long, obviously close and supportive relationship with the Clintons would dictate Stephanopoulos’s removal from any reporting of the Democratic Presidential competition between his former patron and current favored candidate and Bernie Sanders, if ABC was the least bit interested in promoting fairness, professionalism and objectivity in its journalism. Obviously, it isn’t. It isn’t even interested in avoiding a giant, blinking, neon appearance of impropriety that suggests that the fix is in.
At the very least, Stephanopoulos should have been required to give viewers a full account of his ties to the Clintons, so viewers can decide for themselves how objective he is. At very least, if he was an ethical journalist, George should have done this on his own. Continue reading →
This most recent ethics thread commentary from Rick Jones (a.k.a. “Curmie,” who chronicles education fiascos, among other matters, during the year on his own blog) involves the recent kerfuffle over a high school production of “The Producers” having its Nazi decorations stripped away. I confess that I specifically requested Rick’s take on this one, knowing him to be a theater colleague as well as a teacher, and he did not disappoint….except that he uses the British spelling of “theatre.”
Oh, Jack… You couldn’t just let me have a spring break without feeling compelled to reply to one of your posts, could you?
And… as I suspect you may have been expecting if not hoping, I agree with your arguments but disagree with your conclusion.
First, let me confess to ignorance of the stage version of The Producers. I know the film, of course, but being neither a big musical theatre guy nor made of money, I’ve never actually seen the play. Assuming it to be substantially similar to the film, therefore, is for me (but not for those more informed) a risky proposition.
It is not clear whether the school’s administration formally signed off on the choice of play, but de facto they did: the rights and royalties for a musical will cost—depending on a variety of factors such as venue size, number of performances, and ticket prices—hundreds or (more likely) thousands of dollars, and no high school theatre director can just write a check on a school account for that amount of money. Expenditures of that size need approval.
So here’s where I agree with your point that cultural illiteracy was very much at play from the beginning of this saga. I’m not suggesting that every high school administrator should have seen the movie or the play, but certainly the “Springtime for Hitler” shtick has long since passed into the public consciousness. I was too young (in junior high, perhaps?) to have seen the film on its first run, but I knew about the campy production number long before I actually saw the film when I was in high school or college. Similarly, I know that “I will take what is mine with fire and blood” is a ”Game of Thrones” reference without ever having picked up one of the books or tuned in to the television show. A competent administrator would at the very least have known what s/he was signing off on. Or… you know… asked: that’s an option, apparently.
I was in Boston recently, and naturally the topic of Tom Brady and Deflategate came up often. I kept hearing the same defenses of Brady with a growing sense of déjà vu. Yes, many of the rationalizations on the Ethics Alarms Rationalizations List raised their ethically-muddled heads in Beantown, all-purpose classics like “Everybody does it,” “It’s a bad law/ stupid rule,” and “No harm, no foul,” but there were others that clearly came out of some secretly published “Cheater’s Handbook.”
Ethics Alarms 
This most recent ethics thread commentary from Rick Jones (a.k.a. “Curmie,” who chronicles education fiascos, among other matters, during the year on his own blog) involves the recent kerfuffle over a high school production of “The Producers” having its Nazi decorations stripped away. I confess that I specifically requested Rick’s take on this one, knowing him to be a theater colleague as well as a teacher, and he did not disappoint….except that he uses the British spelling of “theatre.”
Here is Rick’s Comment of the Day on the Ethics Quiz: “Springtime for Hitler” Ethics.