intolerance

The ACLU Gives Us a Lesson in Principles

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Paul Scofield as Sir Thomas More

“What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?…And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide…the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down…do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!”—- Sir Thomas More [Played by Paul Scofield, scripted by Robert Bolt (in a speech adapted from More’s writings) in the film of “A Man for All Seasons” (1966)]

My opinion of Rev. Terry Jones is a matter of record; to summarize, I think he is well beneath Charlie Sheen, Donald Trump, Tom DeLay, Goldman Sachs, Nancy Pelosi, Eliot Spitzer, AIG, Charlie Rangel , Mark Sanford, Barry Bonds, “Ronbo” and most of the other members in bad standing on the Ethics Alarms Bottom 100. Determined as he is to sully the First Amendment with his disgraceful and hate-soaked use of it, however, he is an American, and he has rights. A Dearborn, Michigan jury, prompted by the city, has taken away those rights by preventing him and another fool from protesting outside a local mosque. Continue reading →

Terry Jones’ Next Irresponsible Protest: Legal? Sure. Stupid? Yes. Ethical? Of Course Not.

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

We have to permit the stupid demonstrations to protect the important ones.

The latest drama surrounding irresponsible publicity addict, Quran-burner and gonzo Islam-hater Rev. Terry Jones is his attempt to get a permit to demonstrate outside  the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, Michigan because, well, because it’s there, I guess.  Wayne County and Dearborn officials insist that he pay security costs that they estimate at about $46,000 before he will be allowed to incite more violence and riots overseas. These are a near certainty because a lot of people in other countries can’t understand why the United States lets its citizens say and demonstrate about any fool thing they want to. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Month: #1 American Asshole, Rev. Terry Jones

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

...or "The Rev. Terry Jones Story"

“If you want to be technical, I guess we broke our word. We thought twice about it.”

—-Rev. Terry Jones, agreeing with criticism that he had promised last September not to burn the Quran, but did so anyway last month when he felt that his anti-Islam campaign was not getting enough headlines.

If you want to be technical, Rev. Jones is probably the biggest asshole in the United States right now. I know, I know—civility. But there are rare situations in which only our crudest, most insulting words can fairly describe individuals and acts. Rev. Jones richly deserves the asshole label, indeed the U.S. Champion, Gold Plated, #1 Asshole label, because nothing else adequately describes his reckless, self-promoting, hateful, irresponsible, deadly, virtually treasonous conduct—all completely legal, of course.

What do you call someone who pours gasoline on a brush fire to get attention? Jerk is too mild. What do you call someone who intentionally makes a difficult problem of international perception even more difficult—intentionally? Fool is too kind.  Unethical, my staple, is too abstract. There just is no civil term for someone like Jones. Continue reading →

Lesson of the Asian-Bashing UCLA Video: Shunning and Intolerance Work. Good.

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Alexandra Wallace...cultural critic, YouTube star, pariah, GONE

Alexandra Wallace, the UCLA student who created an obnoxious and offensive video stereotyping her Asian colleagues as gibberish-spouting boors,  announced that she was leaving the school as a result of “being ostracized” by “an entire community.”  Yes, I’d say that was the idea, and it is how cultures enforce its values. And it works.

Wallace picked the day of the Japanese tsunami to post her anti-Asian rant on YouTube, where it promptly went viral. It also made her an instant pariah on her campus, where over a third of all students are of Asian heritage, and the rest of them, unlike Alexandra, have at least a vague concept of mutual respect and decorum.

You can read a complete transcript of the three-minute diatribe here, but this shortened version gives a sense of what infuriated Asians, UCLA, and just about everyone else: Continue reading →

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 →

The War On Gays: “Fair and Equitable” in Corpus Christi

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Some day, one hopes not too far in the future, when U.S. culture has unequivocally abandoned the ancient fear of gay human beings, when understanding, fairness and respect has banished ignorance and hate, when same sex marriages are recognized as manifestations of loyalty, commitment and love rather than perversions of nature, and when no American feels the need to hide his or her sexuality, and thus feels no compulsion to trumpet it either, we will look back on such societal embarrassments as the Flour Bluff Intermediate School District as we do now on past purveyors of child labor, forced sterilization, involuntary human experimentation, mistreatment of women, and racism, and wonder, “What was the matter with those people? How did they get that way?”

Or, come to think of it, we could ask that question right now.

Seventeen-year-old Bianca “Nikki” Peet, a senior at Flour Bluffs High School in Corpus Christi, Texas, high school senior requested the she be permitted to launch a Gay-Straight Alliance in her school. The Equal Access Act, a federal law passed in 1984, requires schools receiving federal funding to offer “fair opportunities for students to form student-led  groups, regardless of their religious, political and philosophical leanings.” If the school district was going to allow any extracurricular groups, it had to allow Nikki’s.

So it shut down all extracurricular clubs at the school. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Carl Paladino

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Carl Paladino now says he is a big supporter of gay rights, which in his case means that despite the fact that he considers their sexual orientation “invalid,” he still feels that, l ike child molesters and criminals, they deserve basic Constitutional rights…except gay marriage, of course.

The GOP candidate for governor of New York chose a day just barely removed from a series of vicious attacks on gay men, and just a couple of weeks after a gay Rutgers student was humiliated into suicide by a cruel “prank,” to proclaim to a gathering of Hasidic Jews that he does not want children to be “brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid and successful option,” and criticized his opponent, Andrew  Cuomo, for marching in the city’s Gay Pride parade, saying,”I didn’t march in the Gay Pride parade this year. My opponent did. And that’s not the example that we should be showing our children and certainly not in our schools.” But Mr. Paladino isn’t homophobic; oh no!  He just thinks  children should be taught that they shouldn’t hang around with gays, like, you know, lepers, winos, and cannibals. Continue reading →

Intolerance vs. the Constitution in Ashville, N.C.

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

To someone passionately devoted to the belief in God and Christianity, the thought of having one’s city governed by non-believers may be repulsive. Unfortunately for the sensitivities of those facing this dilemma, the founders of the United States of America were quite specific about the irrelevance of religious belief to civic participation and the rights of citizenship. That may not stop some self-righteous political opponents of Ashville, N.C. City Councilman Cecil Bothwell, who says he doesn’t believe in God but who was duly elected in November, from trying to sue the city for its failure to abide by an archaic, and undeniably unconstitutional, state law forbidding atheists from holding office. Continue reading →