Al Sharpton and Tawana, ruining lives. Nice hair, Al.
Tawana Brawley was 15 when she was championed by the Rev. Al Sharpton after she falsely claimed that she had been kidnapped, raped, and smeared with fecal matter by a group of white men. Now Brawley, 40, going by the name of Tawana Gutierrez, and employed at a Richmond nursing home, has received a wage-garnishment order to collect the $431,492 judgment against her in a 1997 defamation case brought by one of those men, Steven Pagones, who at the time of her 1987 accusation was a state prosecutor in New York.
Good!
Sharpton, who also was hit with a large damages verdict in the case, has already paid up. His outrageous race-baiting at the time was worth it to him, since it set set the race huckster on the road to celebrity that culminated in his being anointed as a respectable MSNBC host and commentator. Respectable for MSNBC, that is. Brawley still has public support, as the tender-hearted raise all sorts of arguments why she shouldn’t have to pay Pagones such a large amount. She is poor, they say. He should forgive her. She was only 15. She was disturbed. Now she is a single working mother, and we are really punishing her child. It was all Sharpton’s fault. And so on. Continue reading →
Normally the result of a tiff between Donald Trump and Bill Maher would interest me about as much as I would be invested in the winner of a battle between Godzilla and Megalon. Trump’s lawsuit against Maher in retaliation for an obvious joke, however, is unethical and indefensible no matter how much I enjoy seeing Maher, who could only avoid being the most obnoxious human being in world containing the likes of Trump, suffer.
Maher joked to Jay Leno last month that he would pay $5 million to Trump’s charity of choice if Trump could prove that his birth wasn’t the result his mother having sex with orangutan. I missed it, Jay having joined David Letterman and Jimmy Kimmel in my talk-show host Hall of Ethics Shame, but the line did make me laugh, I confess. Maher’s faux challenge was an obvious riff on the offensive offer Trump made to President Barack Obama during the presidential campaign, in which Trump raised the birther canard again and offered $5 million to the President’s charity of choice if Obama released his college records and definitive proof that he was really born in the U.S.A.
Nonetheless, Trump decided to behave as if it were a real offer. He had his lawyers send the verification to Maher (Trump’s father, the brains of the family, was a legendary real estate innovator and mogul), and now Trump is suing for the $5 million on the pretense that the comic welched on a legitimate and enforceable unilateral contract. “I don’t know whether this case will be won or lost, but I felt a major obligation to bring it on behalf of the charities,” Trump said. Continue reading →
Last week, I wrote about how fake statistics become “true,” after Gabriella Giffords’ husband Mark Kelly asserted as fact that “85% of all children killed by gunfire worldwide die in the U.S.” while ABC’s Diane Sawyer tut-tutted approvingly. Credible advocate, shocking statistic, passive, lazy and biased journalist, politically correct objective—all the elements were in place. We will hear this lie for decades now, probably in a future Presidential debate.
Now the perceptive and watchful James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal has found a smoky gun that tells us much about why we get so many bad statistics, and why the media supports them. A U.S. World and News Report article combined the recent passage of the Violence Against Women Act with the upcoming Super Bowl, to get this:
“Urban myths rarely have a useful purpose other than to confound, outrage, and frighten people into passing them along. But there’s a silver lining to this one—the idea that Super Bowl Sunday is linked to the highest incidences of domestic abuse in the country. While experts in the field dismiss that theory, they value the increased attention paid to domestic violence on the occasion.
“‘The Super Bowl does not cause domestic violence, and it doesn’t increase domestic violence, but it does increase the public’s awareness of the issue, which will help victims learn about help and resources,” says Cindy Southworth, vice president of development and innovation at the National Network to End Domestic Violence.'”
“Don’t you think it would be better for them to have a happy successful flight and die unexpectedly during entry than to stay on orbit, knowing that there was nothing to be done until the air ran out?”
—–Space Shuttle Columbia mission operations chief Jon Harpold in 2003, talking about the Shuttle crew then in flight, as quoted by former NASA flight director Wayne Hale on his blog this week. Harpold was musing on a hypothetical situation (he thought) where NASA had determined that the Shuttle couldn’t safely return to Earth.
Days before Columbia disintegrated on re-entry due to a damaged heat shield, NASA officials met to determine whether Columbia was safe to land despite some damage after takeoff. They decided, wrongly, as it turned out, that the Shuttle was safe. In the course of the meeting, Jon Harpold raised the hypothetical dilemma of a doomed Shuttle and an unaware crew.
Hale tells the story to make the point that NASA’s culture at the time was organizationally and ethically flawed. I agree.
Harpold’s position is kind but monstrous. It presumes to withhold the truth from those most effected by it, on the theory that it is better to die suddenly and unexpectedly than to have the opportunity to fight and strive to the end to solve what might be an impossible problem. Nobody should feel that he has the right to make that decision, to give up on life itself, for another who still has the capacity to think and act. This is disrespect for the values of personal liberty and autonomy, both much in the public mind today.
We each must have the right to make our own decisions about our fates, and must always have the information we need to make those decisions as wisely as we can. Those who fear the truth have insufficient reverence for it. Even the worst information may contain the seeds of victory.
I’m not going gentle into that good night, and damn anyone who tries to trick me into doing so out of misplaced kindness.
Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at jamproethics@verizon.net.
Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, the silly, sick man who hoaxed his alleged friend, Notre Dame star Matti Te’o, into a public humiliation that will shadow the rest of his life, has everything he wants now. “Dr. Phil” is featuring him on his show with a long interview—a match made in the stars, since Phil achieved his fame as a fake doctor, and Ronaiah his as a fake girlfriend to the most gullible college athlete in captivity. More interviews for the hoaxer will follow, with a book and movie deal near certainties. He behaved abominably, and now the American celebrity machine will reward him for it. I predict he’ll travel the same road as other bottom-feeders who have parlayed a lack of principles into fame, however brief. Joey Buttafuoco. Jessica Hahn. Octomom Nadja Suleman.”Tanning Mom”Patricia Krentcil. Levi Johnston. They all were boosted to semi-star status by being slimy, foolish, or both, and Tuiasosopo fits right in. Continue reading →
Ethics Alarms has had an influx of new readers lately (Thanks, “O’Reilly Factor”!) and many have been visiting and commenting on older posts that I hadn’t thought about for a long time. “Evangeline” found one of the saddest and strangest, my post in December of 2011 about the death of Judy Lewis, who was the love child of Hollywood legends Loretta Young and Clark Gable. Gable, the “King of Hollywood,” never acknowledged her as his daughter, and Young, who like Gable was married and afraid of harming her reputation, pretended to adopt the girl, never revealing to her that she was her real mother, and the top leading man in movies was her father. (Judy was a dead ringer for him, too, as you can see in the photo above.) You should read the original post, here.
Evangeline apparently knows her Golden Age of Hollywood history, and makes a case that I was too hard on “Rhett Butler.” I’ll be back at the end for a rebuttal. Here is her Comment of the Day on the post, “Clark Gable, Loretta Young, and the Betrayal of Judy Lewis.” Continue reading →
The Daily Beast, through the words of columnist David Frum. calls the latest disgraceful example of the news media bending the truth to manipulate public opinion regarding gun control, “The Newtown Heckling Controversy,.” This places that website on this train wreck as a Big Lie player. The classic formula for a Big Lie smear, for those of you who have read your Goebbels followers, is to make a blatantly false assertion, make the target of the unfair accusation deny it, and then treat it as a legitimate “controversy.” There is no controversy here, only liars and those who want to benefit from the lie, because there was no “heckling.” The real news story here is that the United States has not only developed an arrogant and ethics-free media establishment that no longer can tell true from false, it is getting more brazen by the day. There must be accountability.
The incident—or, as journalists who have decided that their jobs are not to report the news but to drive public policy in their favored direction would call it, the opportunity—occurred during the testimony before the Connecticut legislature by a parent of one of the Sandy Hook victims. [Note:I believe strongly that such testimony is itself unethical. Sorry. Legislation should be based on research, analysis, balancing, and objective analysis of what is in the best interests of the the public. There is literally nothing these parents contribute to this process, other than confusion, emotion, and dramatic video footage. They are not experts on guns, violence, the culture, the Constitution or the law. Their position is the epitome of bias. Their opinions are accorded undeserved weight by the media and mush-headed lawmakesr because they have suffered a personal , as if suffering confers sudden wisdom and balanced perspective. I know the practice is virtually routine, but it does no good, a lot of harm, and should be opposed by anyone interested in competent government.] Tearful and distraught, the grief-stricken father, Neil Heslin, said,
” I don’t know how many people have young children or children. But just try putting yourself in the place that I’m in or these other parents that are here. Having a child that you lost. It’s not a good feeling; not a good feeling to look at your child laying in a casket or looking at your child with a bullet wound to the forehead. I ask if there’s anybody in this room that can give me one reason or challenge this question: Why anybody in this room needs to have an, one of these assault-style weapons or military weapons or high-capacity clips.”
He waited, and glanced around the room. Then he said, “Not one person can answer that question!” Whereupon one clear voice with a several others behind it call out,“The Second Amendment shall not be infringed!”
A moderator then says, “Please no comments while Mr. Heslin is speaking. Or we’ll clear the room. Mr. Heslin, please continue.”
This is what happened..this is what obviously happened. Heslin asked the occupants of the room a question posed as a challenge. Pro-gun advocates did not answer, assuming that despite the ambiguous form of the query—Heslin is not a skilled public speaker—it was a rhetorical question. Apparently Heslin didn’t think it was rhetorical, however, because he waited, as if for a response, and then made a statement that concluded unfairly, inaccurately and misleadingly that nobody in the room “can answer the question.” Predictably, a few then did answer his question, only to get slapped down by the moderator.
The headline writer at the Connecticut Post described this scene—falsely—as “Father of Newtown victim heckled at hearing.” That is a lie. Anyone who watches the video and equivocates in calling it a lie is allowing their judgment to be completely liquified by confirmation bias, or trying to facilitate a deception. Continue reading →
As predicted, this ethics train wreck keep getting bigger.
There was a lot to wince about in Diane Sawyer’s “exclusive” interview two weeks ago with former Congresswoman Gabriella Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly. The Arizona couple announced their intention to launch a non-profit organization dedicated to more effective anti-gun violence measures, concentrating, predictably, on the prominent features of the maniac’s rampage in Tucson that left Giffords with brain injuries that will impede her for a lifetime. Nothing to wince about regarding the effort, but Giffords’ diminished state—she can speak in only short burst of words, cannot see well out of one eye, and has difficulty walking—is tragic. It reminded me how unconscionable it was that she held her post in the Congress for more than a year when it should have been clear that her disabilities precluded her functioning as a Representative. The disturbing feeling also arose that Giffords, in her current pathetic condition, is now like the children President Obama used as window dressing for his gun-related Executive Orders announcement at the White House, an exploited figure of sentiment and public manipulation being used in the anti-gun wars. Her name was listed as the author of a first person op-ed in USA Today that contained sentences and perhaps thoughts that she cannot possibly compose. Diane Sawyer told us that she will be dragged into Congressional offices with her husband to seek support from her former colleagues, who will be forced, as Sawyer said, to say no “to her face.”
The most substantive wince, however, came from a statement of “fact” by Mark Kelly, who told Sawyer this:
“You know, how do we get to the point where 85 percent of the children in the world that are killed with guns are killed in the United States. That is a sobering statistic.”
It shouldn’t surprise us that 14-year-old Bindi Irwin, a.k.a. “Bindi the Jungle Girl”, has the stuff of ethics heroism. After all, she is the daughter of Steve Irwin, the late lamented “Crocodile Hunter,” and his intrepid wife, Terri Irwin. She has also been hosting her own Australian TV show since she was 7, in which Bindi regularly faces-off with the same nasty critters that amused her father so.
But Bindi’s heroism doesn’t involve crocodiles on this occasion, but rather the treachery and deceit of American politics. She was asked to write an article about protecting the environment for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s e-journal. (I’m not sure why this is a topic for discussion by the Secretary of State, but never mind.) After spending many hours of school time writing the piece for the “Go Wild – Coming Together for Conservation” edition of the newsletter last month, Bindi received the edited version of her 1000 word essay from State and found that it was drastically changed to the point of being rewritten completely. ( You can read the original essay—which isn’t bad at all—here, and the re-written one, on a substantially different topic, here.) She refused to let it be published with her name as author, withdrew it, and called foul to the Australian press.
This is called integrity. It is a rare and exotic breed in today’s Washington, D.C. Continue reading →
“I deserve to be punished. I’m not sure I deserve the “death penalty.”
—- Lance Armstrong in his confessional with Oprah Winfrey.
In a word: Astounding.
Sure, why should you be punished any more than any other cyclist..wait, did you really just say that?”
Most of the second segment of Oprah’s interview with Armstrong was an anti-climax to the first, with one shocking exception.
Armstrong noted that all of the former team-mates who testified against him made deals that netted them, at most, six month suspensions from competition. Now that he was coming clean to Oprah, Armstrong implied, he deserved a similar deal. “I’m not saying [ how Armstrong is being treated] is unfair…but it’s …different,” he said. Then he uttered the statement about the “death penalty”—his lifetime ban from any professional athletic competition, biking or otherwise.
Armstrong “isn’t sure” that cheating to win the most important competition in his sport seven times, corrupting other cyclists, lying—defiantly, pugnaciously, flamboyantly— for almost two decades…bullying anyone who tried to tell the truth about his deceptions…using his money, influence and power to intimidate and silence…accepting millions of dollars in sponsorships based on lies and fraud…embarrassing sponsors and supporters by linking them to a conspiracy of lies and drug peddling…and arguably worst of all, building a charitable foundation on those lies, while inducing children and cancer survivors to embrace him as a hero…deserves a lifetime forfeiture of trust, not just as an athletic competitor, but as a business partner, associate, and friend?
Despite all his assurances to Oprah that he is a changed man, and that he is truly sorry, and that he understands the enormity of his betrayals, Lance Armstrong hasn’t learned a thing.
Ethics Alarms 