kindness

Alek and the Amazing Controllable Christmas Lights

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

I haven’t plugged my friend Alek O. Komarnitsky in quite a while, and since I’m having a hard time keeping up with all the abuse ( and repetitious rationalizations) from the NORML  crowd over on the “Distracted Driving…” thread, this is a good time to re-introduce him.

Back in 2004, Alek received national attention for his whimsical holiday website that allowed people all over the world to turn his elaborate Christmas lights on from their home computers. Everyone had fun, which was clearly Alek’s design. Still, when it became known that his site was a hoax and that the lights going on and off were only an illusion, I weighed in (on The Ethics Scoreboard) with the opinion that perpetrating such a large-scale deception was wrong, no matter how well-intentioned. Alek objected to my criticism, and we had a spirited e-mail debate.

Then, at a significant cost in time and money, Alek devised a way to really let people all over the world turn on his lights. He has done this ever since, and uses the site to raise money to cure Celiac disease. This year, he writes: Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “The Compassion Bullies Strike Again!”

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Beware that slippery slope!

Ethics Alarms is blessed with an unusually wise, articulate, philosophically diverse and often cantankerous readership. One of the luxuries this affords me as that I do not have to raise every single relevant issue in an ethics commentary, because I can be reasonable certain that a commenter will raise it, often with a perspective that I had not considered. Among benefits, this keeps my posts from being even longer than they already are. An example of this phenomenon  is this comment from Mike Martin, on yesterday’s post regarding the family that bullied US Air into refunding non-refundable tickets because the mother was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer. My first draft of the post had discussed the important  issue Mike raises, but I decided to stick to the main topic, the conduct of the Compassion Bullies.

Here is his Comment of the Day, on “The Compassion Bullies Strike Again”:

“The question now is: how does US Air like its position on the proverbial slippery slope? Continue reading →

The Compassion Bullies Strike Again!

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

(I know everyone is going to hate this.)

"Be compassionate, damn you!!! This thing is loaded"

Having a terminal illness does not justify bullying corporations into waiving fair and valid contracts, and using the media and public opinion to extort money out of companies that they have no obligation to surrender is unethical.

Sorry. But it’s true.

US Air has capitulated to a classic example of compassion bullying and agreed to refund the non-refundable airline ticket Lynn McKain purchased as part of a family vacation to Belize. This occurred after the McKain family sicced the media on the airline when a recurrence of breast cancer caused Lynn to cancel the trip on doctor’s orders. She requested a refund based on her misfortune, although there was nothing in the deal that suggested that there were exceptions to the ticket’s non-refundable features. Then, after the airline politely declined to waive the terms the McKain’s had agreed to in order to pay discounted ticket fees, the family alerted the media, with predictable results. There were heart-wrenching stories about McKain’s cancer treatment, making out the airline as an avaricious, mean-spirited cabal of inhuman monsters.

Finally, the airline gave in. It had no choice; the media and the McKain’s would keep the pressure on, making the episode a full-fledged public relations catastrophe, unless it did. The Compassion Bullies won, as they almost always do. Don’t think for a moment that this is good triumphing over wrongdoing, however. It is the opposite. Continue reading →

An Ethical Holiday

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I’m going to concentrate on trying to make the beginning of the holiday water-slide (which always starts on November 23, my wedding anniversary—this is our 31st, as I was married when I was 13) as memorable as possible, so unless something earth-shattering occurs, Ethics Alarms will be at status quo until sometime tomorrow. In the meantime, I want to wish all of you a very happy Thanksgiving.

Like many holidays, Thanksgiving is firmly rooted in ethics. One doesn’t have to be religious to acknowledge the fact that we have much to be grateful for, even in difficult times personally, nationally, and culturally. Gratitude is closely linked to modesty, humility and proportion in the hierarchy of values. American tradition urges us never to be satisfied with things as they are, but we should always be humbled by the fact that there are so many ways things could be far worse. There is no better time to begin a personal tradition of kindness and generosity toward others to last the year, or a lifetime.

In Southwest Washington, D.C., a section of town plagued with poverty, crime and violence, convenience store owner Ephrame Kassayegave out 375 turkeys as gifts to the community, in thanks and recognition of their loyalty. He said he was grateful for his patrons, and wanted to show it. That’s what Thanksgiving should mean, and that’s why it isn’t just a way-station between Halloween and Christmas. If nothing else, we all have each other in our families, communities, nation and world to make our lives richer, and if one day on the calendar helps remind us of that when we are feeling angry, anxious, envious and sad, it’s a day well spent. Life’s worth the trouble. Pass it on.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving, everybody.

Can’t Someone Be Appreciated for Being NICE Anymore? Even Michele Bachmann?

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Yes, a video of the last Republican presidential candidates debate (in Iowa) shows Rep. Michele Bachmann voluntarily filling the water glasses of her fellow contenders before the event, since apparently the organizers expected them to pour their own. The Horror.

The Huffington Post is sure this is a significant and unseemly display of subservience to men by Bachmann, whose fundamentalist Christian beliefs suggest that she accepts the concept of women submitting to their husbands in the marital relationship. Over at The Frisky, Jessica Wakeman accuses Bachmann of staging the whole thing for the cameras, so she will be perceived as nicer than she really is…and she thinks it gives women a black eye: Continue reading →

Henry James, Mis-Matched Neighbors and the Naked Silhouette

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Like most people, I grew up being told that it was dangerous to hitch-hike, because of the many predatory drivers waiting to pounce, and also never to pick up hitch-hikers, because some of them were serial killers. I always seemed to me that the odds favored an eventual convergence in which a psychopathic motorist picked up a murderous hitch-hiker. I wonder what happens then.

Neighbor disputes are often like this: pure chance places very different  people side-by-side, one an inconsiderate boor, and the other an intolerant jerk. We know what happens then: exactly what has happened in Great Falls, Montana.

Brian Smith objects to the large decal on neighbor Shanna Weaver’s car. The decal portrays a white silhouette of a naked woman. To him, it’s pornography, and he objects to have to look at it.  “My upbringing dictates that the human body is a sacred thing, not something that should be put on display,” Smith said. Weaver, however, is not inclined to remove it. “It’s my freedom of speech, which he can’t take away,” Weaver says. “It’s no different than the mud flaps that you see on trucks.”So Smith filed a complaint against Weaver for violating the local anti-pornography ordinance, which was a stretch. [In an earlier version of this post, it wa stated that Weaver sued him for harassment, and was thrown out of court. That was in error, and Ethics Alarms apologizes for its mistake.] Continue reading →

Last Meal Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Sure, the dinner was great, but the after-dinner entertainment was terrible...

The dragging-death killer of James Byrd, Lawrence Russell Brewer, went to his Texas execution last week after ordering up a true pig-out for his last meal: two chicken fried steaks smothered in gravy with sliced onions; a triple meat bacon cheeseburger with fixings on the side; a cheese omelet with ground beef, tomatoes, onions, bell peppers and jalapenos; a large bowl of fried okra with ketchup; one pound of barbecue with half a loaf of white bread; three fajitas with fixings; a Meat Lovers pizza; three root beers; one pint of Blue Bell vanilla ice cream; and a slab of peanut butter fudge with crushed peanuts. When it arrived, he didn’t eat any of it. Texas authorities were annoyed, or insulted (“I make you a delicious meal, your favorite, and this is the gratitude I get?”), or something. Brewer’s wasteful order caused the state  to re-consider the appropriateness of the tradition of the last meal accommodation for the condemned, and legislators decided to eliminate it entirely. Other states have begun to debate doing the same thing.

It’s time for the question that needs to start most ethics discussions: “What’s going on here?” Continue reading →

Do Nicer People Earn Less Money? Of Course They Do. And That’s the Way it Should be.

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Leo Durocher figured out that "nice guys finish last" 60 years ago, and he never went to college. Now three academics, after extensive research, have "discovered" the same thing. Ah, scholarship!

A study by Cornell professor Beth A. Livingston,  Timothy A. Judge of the University of Notre Dame and Charlice Hurst of the University of Western Ontario study used survey data to examine “agreeableness” and found that disagreeable men made 18%, or $9,772 annually, more in salary than those who are more accommodating. The salary disparity was  less among women, with disagreeable females making 5% or $1,828, more than those who are easier to get along with. Does this shock you? It shouldn’t.

As is depressingly often the case, the academics who come up with such crack-brain studies—I read this one, and will want that wasted hour back when I’m on my death-bed so I can watch one last re-run of “Magnum, P.I.”—have so little experience with the working world and the reality of non-academic cultures that they don’t even comprehend their own research and draw absurd conclusions from it.

“The problem is, many managers often don’t realize they reward disagreeableness,” Livingston told the Wall Street Journal. “You can say this is what you value as a company, but your compensation system may not really reflect that, especially if you leave compensation decisions to individual managers.”

Oh brother. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “The Barefoot Contessa and the Compassion Bullies”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

He's young, sick, and poor. His mother must be right, then.

Gary, an occasional commenter, grabs the Comment of the Day with a provocative one on a post from quite a while back. To refresh your memory, a sick child named Enzo Pereda asked the Make-A-Wish Foundation to get him a one-on-one cooking experience with “The Barefoot Contessa,” Ina Garten. Garten refused, and the boy’s mother led an online shaming exercise, condemning Garten, encouraging boycotts of her Food Channel show, and launching other bloggers and media on an anti-Ina rampage. Ethics Alarms’ verdict was that the boy’s mother was engaged in compassion bullying, demanding that this cable celebrity do her child’s bidding, alter her own schedule and priorities, and grant her son’s arbitrary “wish” because he happened to be ill. Garten had no obligation whatsoever to do what someone, or even everyone, might consider a kind act, and the one who was acting unethically was Enzo’s mother.

Gary’s comment goes to the heart of what Ethics Alarms is all about. Here is his Comment of the Day on “The Barefoot Contessa and the Compassion Bullies.”  I’ll have some additional comments at the end: Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “The Folly of Sacrificing Integrity to Kindness in Competitions”

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Today’s Comment of the Day is on the post about using awards and honors to make the less fortunate and unqualified feel good, as Michael carries the issue into the related matter of grading:

“I run into this every semester. I can’t give anyone a C in a class. I can’t give anyone a B in a class. You have to earn it by demonstrating that you understand and can apply the relevant material. You may be the most attractive, most charitable, most loved person on the planet, but if you can’t do this work, you can’t pass. Usually, they still don’t understand, and I have to give a speech I title “What a C student does.”

“Where do my ‘C’ students go? What do ‘C’ students do after they leave? ‘A’ and ‘B’ students go to graduate school, medical, and dental school. They may hold people’s lives in their hands in their careers. But what about the ‘C’ student? Surely there is no harm in letting someone squeak by with a ‘C’? Well… they test your water to make sure it is safe. They determine what amounts of new pesticides can be used without causing harm. They run the tests that determine if you raped someone or if that really was a bag of cocaine in your car, or just some borrowed powdered sugar (as you insisted). My ‘C’ students work jobs where people die if they mess up. The ‘C’ stands for competence. If you don’t have it, you don’t get a ‘C’. Continue reading →