…for manufacturing your own violation of The Second Niggardly Principle, clarifying what is wrong about the Ground Zero Mosque.
Beck has announced that he will hold a Tea Party rally at the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28, which just happens to be the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s iconic “I have a dream” speech, delivered at the same spot.
Does Beck have a right to hold his rally there?
Yes. Continue reading
Let’s see if I can make this both coherent and succinct.
President Obama was ethical, responsible, and brave to weigh in on the Ground Zero Mosque (more accurately called “The Two-Blocks From Ground Zero Mosque”), and reaffirm America’s commitment to freedom of religion for all faiths by declaring that the Islamic group has the right to build its planned Islamic center.
After being roundly (and predictably) slammed by conservative talking heads, blogging bigots, and ranting reactionaries for stating the obvious, however, the President (or his advisors; the advisors are the ones who thought this was a dandy time to send Michelle and the kids on a luxury vacation in Spain, and can be identified by the large dunce caps on their heads…) decided to come back and clarify his remarks, lest anyone think he was actually endorsing the idea of an Islamic monument so near the spot where thousands of innocent Americans perished at the hands of Islamic extremists.
“I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there,” Obama told reporters in Panama City, Fla. “I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding. That’s what our country is about.” This statement isn’t quite “I didn’t inhale” or “It depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is,” but it is still a solid candidate for the Presidential Weasel Words Hall of Fame. By saying he would not comment, President Obama was commenting, and implying, by saying what he would not comment about, that if he did comment, it would be that the mosque was probably not such a hot idea, since fairly or not, it was bound to be misunderstood as an insult to the victims of 9-11.
It was inappropriate and wrong for Obama to suggest this, in weasel words or otherwise. (It would be more honest and forthright to eschew the weasel word method, however.) Continue reading
Fine, reasonable, ethical commentators, not to mention Mayor Bloomberg, have argued that the moderate Muslim group seeking to build an Islamic center and mosque within a hand grenade’s throw of Ground Zero is blameless, persecuted, and as pure as the driven snow in its ethics.
They are ignoring the Second Niggardly Principle, which is understandable since I just formulated the Niggardly Principles One and Two today, after carefully reflecting upon what it could be about this matter that has led so many wise people astray.
Several years ago, a white Washington D.C. government worker, the Shirley Sherrod of his time, was fired for using the word “niggardly” in the work place, which was found to be racially insensitive to those whose vocabulary was so limited they didn’t know that the word had nothing to do with race. This incident embarrassed the D.C. government, which is used to being embarrassed, and inflamed pedants. Eventually the worker was reinstated, and the First Niggardly Principle was born, which is as follows: Continue reading
The proposed Ground Zero mosque should be a straightforward ethics issue, but it is not. Now it is bound up in a thoroughly confusing debate that confounds and blurs law, ethical values, history, rights, and human nature. Everyone is right, and everyone is wrong.
Yes, it’s an Ethics Train Wreck, all right. This one is so bad I hesitated to write about it—ethics train wrecks trap commentators too—in the vain hope that it would somehow resolve itself with minimal harm. That is obviously not in the cards, however; not when the Anti-Defamation League weighs in on the side of religious intolerance, thus forfeiting its integrity and warping its mission. The wreck is still claiming victims, and there is no end in sight. Continue reading
The Muslim extremist threat that cowed the Comedy Channel into censoring South Park has certainly spawned a bumper crop of unethical attempts at protest. First we had the juvenile “Let’s Insult Islam Because We Can Day” protest, better known as “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day,” which made a lot of completely innocent and law-abiding Muslims upset without accomplishing anything else—not even a good laugh. Now the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, admittedly never a bastion of fairness, honesty or integrity, has made its incoherent protest by nominating the two “South Park” episodes that were censored for. Neither has been viewed intact on Comedy Central, nor are either viewable online. Nonetheless, the Academy says these episodes are among the “best animated programs,” despite the fact that the programs, in the forms that supposedly warrant the honor, have never been seen. Continue reading
“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
—–Evelyn Beatrice Hall (describing Voltaire’s attitude toward freedom of speech.)
“We will defend to the death your right to say anything to get a laugh, unless you are threatened by religious zealots and terrorists, in which case we will fold like Bart Stupak in an origami competition.”
—–Ethics Alarms (describing Comedy Central’s attitude toward freedom of speech.)
I am a big fan of Tom Hanks’ work as an a comic, a dramatic actor, a producer, and in drag, but he has been reliably attached to what may end up being the most infuriating quote of the year. If not the most infuriating, then at least the most ignorant and irresponsible. In an interview with historian Douglas Brinkley in a Time magazine feature about his upcoming HBO series on World War II in the Pacific, Hanks said this:
“Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as ‘yellow, slant-eyed dogs’ that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what’s going on today?”
If you are not now running in circles, wide-eyed and screaming, you should be. Continue reading
A silly e-mail is circulating again, as it has this time of year since 2005, encouraging recipients to engage in a pointless and ignorant protest against the American Civil Liberties Union.
It reads: Continue reading
Ethics Alarms 