Stop Cruelty To Children—Or To Put It Another Way, Stop Jimmy Kimmel

Bulletin to Jimmy Kimmel: Enough is enough, you sadistic jerk.

Also known as "Jimmy Kimmel Cruel!" and "Jimmy Kimmel Sadistic!"

Flush with his “success” of persuading his most irresponsible viewers to make their own children cry by lying to them about eating all their Halloween candy and then posting the videos of their kids’ emotional distress on YouTube, ABC late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel has told the same warped people to traumatize their children again, this time by granting the kids the special treat of opening a Christmas gift early, but having a terrible gift (like a half-eaten sandwich) inside. The emotional reactions of the children thus deceived are also, per Kimmel’s directive, videotaped for posterity  to inspire mirth on the part of  his similarly warped viewers who don’t have children (and thank God for that), because, as we all know, disappointing kids at Christmastime is fun.

This has got to stop. It doesn’t matter if some, like Mediate’s Jon Bershad , think this is “the cruelest, funniest joke ever,” and others, like the Huffington Post’s reviewer, think the pranked children’s misery is “hilarious.” Children are not props for Jimmy Kimmel’s sadistic amusement, and parents who are willing to use their children this way, intentionally spoiling their Christmas anticipation for the entertainment of sadistic strangers, are, to be blunt, rotten, despicable, and untrustworthy parents. Something important—Compassion? Kindness? Empathy? Loyalty? Responsibility? Love? — is absent in their parental make-up, and that void is being cynically exploited by Kimmel, who has crossed the threshold from arrested adolescent to full-fledged villain. Continue reading

Alec Baldwin, Something of the Year

I should have known I was going to regret naming Donald Trump the Ethics Alarms “Jerk of the Year” in May. True, The Donald has only burnished his credentials since then, but other worthy candidates have charged into what would be contention for the crown, had I not rashly bestowed it on Trump, confident that nobody could be a bigger jerk than a man who sided with the birthers while using the crucial presidential nominating process as a crude promotion for his cheesy reality show.

But 2011 has been a banner year for jerks, uber-jerks, and beyond-jerks. There was Rev. Terry Jones, for example, who got people killed by threatening to burn a Koran. He blew right past jerk to asshole, so Trump was spared having to compete with him. There was Leroy Fick, the despicable lottery millionaire who kept getting food stamps after his bonanza, because of a loophole in the Michigan food stamp regulations. He inspired a whole new category for himself,  fick, which describes an especially shameless jerk.

Now, however, I am faced with a serious dilemma. What is an appropriately severe designation for actor (and alleged New York mayoral hopeful, which is disturbing on so many levels) Alec Baldwin, who in addition to revealing himself as a 9-11 conspiracy theorist earlier this year, just behaved like a spoiled child on an American Airlines flight, got himself kicked off to the inconvenience of his fellow passengers, and insulted the airline and the plane’s crew afterwards on Twitter?  Continue reading

The Donald Trump Follies: An Integrity Check for GOP Presidential Contenders

Some of the people more qualified to moderate a presidential debate than Donald Trump.

Donald Trump is staging yet another debate among the increasingly depressing field of Republican presidential contenders, with The Donald as the moderator, in Des Moines on December 27. This is extremely useful in assessing the field, and everyone in America owes him a debt of thanks, for anyone who agrees to participate in this offensive farce is unqualified to be President of the United States. Trump has created an excellent integrity test.

Several candidates have already flunked.  Newt Gingrich has agreed to participate—granted, there weren’t many questions about his integrity, so this is no surprise. So has Rick Santorum. I am somewhat surprised at this: Santorum holds some truly objectionable views, but integrity has never been one of his ethical  weaknesses. Well, the Trump Debate is a judgment test too—if you agree to go, yours is none too good. Now that I think about it, Santorum’s decision was predictable too. Continue reading

Ethics Dunce: Alec Baldwin…and Anybody That Sympathizes Or Defends Him In Any Way, Shape or Form

"I'm a certified jerk, AND I play one on TV!"

Like Ashton Kutcher and Charlie Sheen, Alec Baldwin is a mega-jerk actor who plays mega-jerks superbly.  Designating him as an Ethics Dunce is like shooting fish in a barrel. Still, there is a material difference between portraying a fictional jerk that people laugh at and behaving like one in real life without apology. Baldwin’s stunt on an American Airlines flight yesterday and his subsequent comments about it mark him as a very special breed of self-entitled jerk, and should, in a culture that understands that admiring jerks is the equivalent of endorsing their warped values, lead to his decline in popularity.

We shall see.

Baldwin was quite properly tossed off an American Airlines flight when he repeatedly defied a flight attendant’s request, then command, that he turn off his iPad, on which he was playing a game. The actor, like the arrested development case he apparently is, retired with his game to the plane’s bathroom, slamming the door, and also verbally abused the attendants. Continue reading

Stupid Religion Tricks

Efforts by religious and anti-religious interest groups to push their beliefs and agendas are unavoidable, if often annoying. When their machinations threaten real harm, they ought to be condemned, opposed, and told to behave. In its response to two recent incidents, our government is batting .500.

The Memorial Power Play

The Obama administration announced its objection to a Republican-backed proposal to add President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s D-Day prayer to the World War II Memorial in Washington. This would block the intent of Congressman Bill Johnson’s bill, the “World War II Memorial Prayer Act of 2011.” Continue reading

The Real Meaning of Manny Being Manny

The only surprising aspect of the news yesterday that former baseball slugger-savant Manny Ramirez had been arrested for allegedly slugging his wife—the one alleging being said wife—is that any baseball fans were surprised. If anything was written in the Book of Fate, it was that this man, so completely lacking in respect for basic ethical values, was destined for trouble with the law.

While he was playing, of course, Manny’s uncivilized and cheerful contempt for basic rules and principles of right and wrong were tolerated by his employers, amused sportswriters and evoked cheers from fans. He was a great, great hitter, you see: who cares if he was habitually rude, unprofessional, slovenly, careless, disloyal, disrespectful and above all, selfish to his core? Look! He’s having fun! Isn’t that charming? Stop harping on little details, like hustling, sportsmanship, or being honest. Let Manny be Manny! Continue reading

Ethics Quiz: Truck Nutz vs. Schweddy Balls

Remember Truck Nutz? That may the name of Ben and Jerry's next flavor, if Schweddy Balls catches on...

I’ve been driving or lecturing all day and may be a little punchy.  Yet having last posted on Ethics Alarms about Ben and Jerry’s crude homage to Alec Baldwin (FULL DISCLOSURE: I would be likely to find any homage to Alec Baldwin offensive, since I find Alec Baldwin offensive) and juvenile word-play, I found myself wondering: which is more uncivil and disrespectful, Ben and Jerry’s new Schweddy Balls ice cream, or the large, red, swinging plastic scrotum decorations that some truckers hand at the tail end of their rigs, Truck Nutz?

So that’s your Ethics Quiz, dear readers, as we head into the weekend: Which is more arrogantly disdainful of public decorum, decency, and respect for one’s fellow community members? Continue reading

A Pause To Spew My Hatred of Spam

A typical day at Ethics Alarms!

One reason, not the only one, but one of them, that I was foiled trying to respond to a series of critical posts on an online forum was that fear of spam had caused the administrators to make it insanely difficult for me to post there—just another way for online spam to plague me. According to Akismet, WordPress’s excellent spam detection service, I now have reviewed and deleted over 45,000 pieces of spam since Ethics Alarms began. (I have to check the spam because occasionally it traps a genuine comment, kind of like dolphins getting caught in tuna nets.)

Let me be clear: I hate these people. I hate the people who send spam, the people who employ spam services, the people who write the deceitful, stupid spam messages, and the spamming outfits that make their grimy living off of it. There is no such thing as an ethical spammer or an ethical company that assists in spamming. By definition, spam is dishonest, as it pretends to offer content when there is none, and purports to represent genuine interest in the site, when it is only interesting in planting a link that will maximize a commercial site’s SEO.

Spam is not only dishonest, but it is insultingly dishonest, because it is so obvious. Continue reading

Ethics and the Right to Truck Nutz

Classy!

The provocative T-shirt issue? Kid’s stuff. If you like your public civility quandaries straight and not watered down by such matters as political speech, get ready for the Great Truck Nutz Controversy.

Truck Nutz (also known as “Bull Balls”) are a…decoration?… favored by people whose sense of humor runs to farts, loud burps and titty-twisters, whose favorite films are the “Jackass” series and Farrelly brothers movies, whose idea of the perfect woman is Kim Kardashian, and whose idea of a genius is Howard Stern. They are large, usually red, approximations of male testicles that are hung (well-hung, you would have to say) on the back of trucks. They say, “I’ve got a big, scary, motherfucking truck here!”

Or, if you prefer, “I am a moron.”

A South Carolina woman named Virginia Tice was given a $445 ticket for displaying Truck Nutz on her truck, and she’s going to trial to protest the ticket. Blogger Ellie Mystal of “Above the Law,” which brought the adornment  to my attention and which I will never forgive for doing so, commented, Continue reading

An Appropriate Limit on the First Amendment Right To Be A Total Jerk

"Pardon? I'm not sure I understood that last remark."

If you peruse the various debates on Ethics Alarms, you will note that every time someone writes or says something cruel, dishonest or uncivil that appropriately brings down criticism or worse on the miscreant’s noggin, he and his defenders  will argue that the First Amendment should render them immune from the consequences of their words. This is not what the First Amendment is about, however. It is about the government not being able to punish them for what they say, with some exceptions. Even then, it is possible to be so inarticulate in your jerkish expression that your utterances are beyond even that constitutional protection.

For example, when you bark like a dog.

Or to be more accurate, when you set out to tease and annoy a police dog by barking. Mason, Ohio has an  ordinance making it a crime to “willfully and maliciously taunt, torment, [or] tease … any dog used by the Police Department in the performance of the functions or duties of such Department.” That’s exactly what Mason Police Officer Brad Walker found a drunken Ryan Stephens doing to Timber, a K-9 German Shepard behind a screen in his police cruiser. Continue reading