lies

Lance Armstrong and Oprah: First Impressions

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Lance Armstrong, Oprah Winfrey

I just finished watching the first installment of the Lance Armstrong-Oprah interview–almost twice, in fact. I’ll be watching tomorrow’s installment too (I am scheduled to talk about Lance on NPR’s “Tell Me More” on Monday, to be broadcast Sunday) and maybe it will alter some of my initial impressions.

But I doubt it.

Impressions:

1. Armstrong is not apologetic in the least, in any way, despite the occasional nod to apology-like langauge. He is not somewhat like, but exactly like, a mob hit man testifying before a Senate committee on organized crime. He is doing what he has to do, and if there is any genuine regret or contrition, I couldn’t discern it. Frankly, I am stunned at how unapologetic he is.

2. Most damning moment: Right off the bat, Oprah asks Lance “Why now?” It’s a superfluous question; everyone knows the answer is “Because I’m trapped; because the lies don’t work any more; because this is my best chance of persuading some people, the gullible ones, but we know how many of them there are, to give me a second chance.” I didn’t expect Armstrong to be that candid, of course, but I did expect him to have an answer, probably a contrite, self-serving one, prepared. He didn’t. “That’s a great question,” he said, stalling. Incredibly, he said he didn’t really have a good answer. “I know it’s too late,” he offered. Yes, I’d say thirteen years, marked by lying, doping, posturing and attacking is too late. That’s the best Armstrong could muster. Heck, if he just kept up with current movies, he would have had some great answers, like Denzel Washington, in the climax of “Flight,” confessing a career of flying commercial airlines drunk by saying, (I’m paraphrasing) “I just couldn’t stand telling one more lie.” Or that old stand-by, “It was the right thing to do.”

The sign of a completely unethical person is that they can’t even imagine what thinking ethically is like. On the evidence of this interview, that’s Lance Armstrong.

3. Most telling quote: while explaining that his 2009-2010 comeback is what opened the floodgates of attention and investigation that led to the explosion of his long campaign of deception and lies, Armstrong said, “Without the comeback, I wouldn’t be here now.” Translation: “Without the comeback, I would have gotten away with it, and I sure as Hell wouldn’t be sitting here spilling the beans to you.” He then terms his comeback a “mistake.” Armstrong is sorry he let himself be caught, and he is sorry for the consequences of his lies being discovered.

Continue reading →

Is It Fair that Manti Te’o’s Dead Girlfriend Hoax Might Make Him A Less Attractive Draft Choice?

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Don’t be silly. Of course it is.

You'd think the green skin would have tipped him off....

The non-existent girlfriend. You’d think the green skin would have tipped him off….

If you are not aware of the particulars of this weird and confusing tale, read the extensive account here, and good luck to you. From an ethics perspective, all that matters is:

  • Somebody perpetrated a web hoax, creating an imaginary online girlfriend for Notre Dame football star Manti Te’o.
  • The young man told the media a touching story about how his grandmother and girlfriend had died the same day.
  • Without checking any aspect of the story, outlet after outlet repeated and embellished the tale, despite the fact that the girlfriend never existed.
  • In his comments to the press, Manti Te’o never revealed that he had not, in fact, ever met the woman face to face. Indeed, many of his comments suggested otherwise.
  • As of this writing, no one is certain who created the fake girlfriend, or whether Manti Te’o was in on the deception. Continue reading →

“Lance Armstrong and the Cheapening of Indignation”

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

At NPR, Linda Holmes writes about  a little noted reason why Lance Armstrong is particularly despicable, and why the manner of his dishonest denials were especially harmful. You can read it here.

Danger! Shameless Opportunists At Work!

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments
Lance Armstrong wouldn't understand this movie at all.

Lance Armstrong wouldn’t understand this movie at all.

Less than two weeks after Ethics Alarms wrote about the ethics-free deliberations in the Lance Armstrong camp about whether or not to finally tell the truth and “apologize,” Armstrong prostrated himself in a 90 minute confession to Oprah Winfrey, who has branded herself as America’s confessor, capable of washing away sin and shame with a hug, a tear, and a stern word.

It makes me want to vomit, frankly.

I saw this coming, of course, as did you. One thing we could count on with Lance (and Bill, and Pete, whose odious club Armstrong joins with the Oprah tactic) was that he would do whatever was necessary to benefit him. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, in common with a genuine confession and a real apology in Armstrong’s 180 degree reversal with Oprah, or in the necessary preparations for it he engaged in, like apologizing to the cycling community and the Livestrong staff. When Armstrong thought he could continue to fool some of the people all the time by lying, posturing, and viciously attacking—sometimes with lawsuits—those who he knew were telling the truth about his cheating, he continued to lie. Now that the jig is up and he has no other options, he’s going to come clean and weep softly with the Big O. Sociopaths are usually very good actors. Some of them have won Academy Awards. Continue reading →

The Newtown Massacre Ethics Train Wreck Picks Up An A-Lister!

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

I know—I need to settle on a consistent name for this particular train wreck. I’ve used at least three. Luckily, it is clearly going to be rolling along, causing ethics havoc in its wake, long enough for me to be consistent.

Hey, everybody! Bubba's on board!

Hey, everybody! Bubba’s on board!

Wow! They must be all-tingly on the Newtown Massacre Aftermath Express–Bill Clinton! The architect of one of the great ethics train wrecks of American history has deigned to come on board! What other A-listers will follow? Oprah? David Letterman? Even the President himself! Now, anything is possible.

The nation’s grandmaster liar bought his ticket with this Newtown-inspired statement, uttered at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Jan. 9, 2013

“Half of all mass killings in the United States have occurred since the assault weapons ban expired in 2005, half of all of them in the history of the country.”

This was classic Bill, false and self-glorifying. After all, that ban that expired had been signed into law by Bubba himself. But as the Washington Post’s fact-checker, Glenn Kessler confirmed, his striking “fact” was a whopper. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: MLB Players Union Chief Michael Weiner

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

“Today’s news that those members of the BBWAA afforded the privilege of casting ballots failed to elect even a single player to the Hall of Fame is unfortunate, if not sad….To ignore the historic accomplishments of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, for example, is hard to justify. Moreover, to penalize players exonerated in legal proceedings — and others never even implicated — is simply unfair.”

—-Major League Baseball players union executive Michael Weiner, in a formal statement released after the news that the Baseball Writers Association of American had denied Hall of Fame admission this year to all-time home run leader Barry Bonds, pitching ace Roger Clemens, and several other players who have either admitted to steroid use or are strongly suspected of being users. No player was on the requisite number of ballots this year.

It takes a Harvard lawyer to be that unethical in so few words.

It takes a Harvard lawyer to be that unethical in so few words.

It’s not easy to pack so much bad ethics into one statement, but we should not be surprised that the baseball players’ union chief was up to the task. The union shares responsibility with baseball’s “see-n0-evil” management during the steroid era and the willful blindness of the sportswriting community for allowing steroids and other performance enhancing drugs to permanently scar the game’s integrity and distort its records beyond repair. Small wonder Weiner is eager to rationalize his organization’s complicity with an absurd, deceptive and corrupting assertion that none of it should make any difference:

  • The writers did not “ignore” Bonds’ accomplishments. To the contrary, his “accomplishment” of blatantly abusing steroids, launching a late career surge of power and prowess that was alien to the career arc of every other player who ever set foot on a field as he morphed into baseball’s version of the Hulk, all while lying his head off and convincing other players that drug-assisted cheating was the accepted way to achieve fame and fortune, was exactly why he was on less than 40% of the ballots ( 75% is required for enshrinement.) Continue reading →

The Fourth Annual Ethics Alarms Awards: The Worst of Ethics 2012 (Part 2)

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

reid

The 2012 Ethics Alarms Awards for the Worst in Ethics continues (you can catch up with Part I here , and the Best is here), and yes, it gets worse…

Worst Friend and Relative

Lori Stilley, who faked cancer to get sympathy, favors, parties and money from those who cared about her.

Most Unethical Advice

Emily Yoffe, Slate’s “Dear Prudence,” wins for a year of bad advice in kinky situations, the bottom of the barrel being when she advised a daughter who observed her mother illegally filling out her invalid grandparents’ 2012 absentee ballots to reflect the mother’s electoral preferences to do nothing about this combination of elder abuse and voter fraud.

Shameless Bad Character Division Continue reading →

Now THIS Is Bad Lie…

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment
"Help!"

“Help!”

…bad, as in “if you can’t come up with something better than this, why bother?”

Adding useful data to the time-honored debate over whether police frequently lie under oath comes this decision from 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which reinstated a 6-year-old civil rights lawsuit filed by a Vietnam veteran and former pilot John Swartz, who contended that he was unconstitutionally stopped and arrested after expressing his displeasure by extending his middle finger to a cop.

After the stop, he and the officer, Richard Insogna, got in a headed argument that culminated in Swartz’s arrest for disorderly conduct. Insogna said in a deposition that he regarded Swartz’s gesture as an attempt to get his attention, not as an insult, and he that he only followed the car to ensure the safety of passenger and driver, who, he surmised, might be embroiled in a domestic dispute.  The 2nd Circuit was, we are told, “skeptical of the explanation.”

Ya think? Continue reading →

Lance Armstrong and the Sociopath’s Dilemma: When Honesty Is No Longer Ethical

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments
Welcome to the club, Lance.

Welcome to the club, Lance.

Rose

In 2004, 15 years after he had been banned from baseball after a finding by the Major League Baseball’s Commissioner’s Office that he had violated the games rules against betting on Major League Games, Pete Rose publicly admitted that his denials over that time were all lies. Yes, he had bet on baseball, and he was very, very sorry. Rose’s admission did little to change the verdict in and out of baseball that he was a rogue and a liar. His confession was obviously part of a cynical and calculated strategy to get reinstated in the game, after the strategy of denial and waiting proved ineffective. In addition, Rose needed money, and the confession was part of the hook for his new autobiographical book, which was released at the same time he withdrew his protestations of innocence.

For Pete Rose, honesty was not an ethical value that he respected or returned to in penance after years of straying. It was just another means to an end.

Clinton

In 1998, President Bill Clinton was in the midst of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, denying that he had ever “had sex with that woman.” He called up his old friend, advisor and pollster, Dick Morris, and asked what he should do. Together they decided that Morris ought to take a poll to see what the public’s reaction would be if Clinton retracted his denials and admitted the affair. Morris reported back, after taking such a poll, that while the public would forgive the sexual relationship, anger over the President’s untruthful denials might sink his administration. Clinton decided that honesty would not work to his advantage, and continued to lie.

To Bill Clinton and Morris, honesty was just one of several tactical options to solve a political crisis. If had nothing to do with ethics, or doing the right thing.

Armstrong

It is 2013, and the New York Times reports that Lance Armstrong, now stripped of all his cycling titles, banned from athletic competition worldwide and separated from his commercial sponsors and the cancer charity that bears his name,

“has told associates and antidoping officials that he is considering publicly admitting that he used banned performance-enhancing drugs and blood transfusions during his cycling career, according to several people with direct knowledge of the situation. He would do this, the people said, because he wants to persuade antidoping officials to restore his eligibility so he can resume his athletic career.”

Armstrong, it is clear, is traveling in the well-worn and slimy footsteps of Rose and Clinton, fellow sociopaths to whom conscience, shame, contrition and remorse are alien concepts and for whom atonement and redemption are just games to win, with honesty being an indispensable, if unpleasant, tactic. When one is considering whether or not to be honest and admit what one has long denied based on cold calculations of personal costs and benefits, truth-telling is no longer a matter of ethics, or doing the right thing regardless of consequences. It is merely another weapon, along with lies, manipulation, deceit and posturing, in the arsenal of one of the lifetime predators whose sole goal in life is to prevail and profit over the rest of the trusting suckers who share the Earth with them, and who will do anything, even to the extent of briefly embracing ethical principles, to get what they want.

Should he decide to finally admit what everyone knows and he has long denied, even to the extent of suing those who declared his guilty, Lance Armstrong should be seen as no more ethical or noble than the criminal who pleads guilty in court on the advice of his lawyer, because the evidence is overwhelming, conviction is certain, and confession is the only route to a lighter sentence.

Individuals like Pete Rose, Bill Clinton and Lance Armstrong defile ethical values by their brief embrace of them.

Unethical Quote of the Week: Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal.)

/ Jack Marshall / 43 Comments

“It’s an accurate historical record of who the Democratic women of Congress are. It also is an accurate record that it was freezing cold and our members had been waiting a long time for everyone to arrive and that they had to get back into the building to greet constituents, family members, to get ready to go to the floor.”

—- House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, lamely and absurdly defending  her posting of a digitally altered photograph of female Democrats in the House, which added several members who were unable to attend to shoot to the members actually in attendance.

Except for the fact that a digitally-altered photo is not an accurate historical record and she knows it, Pelosi’s statement is completely reasonable and honest. The Washington Post published the unaltered photo.

A digitally altered photograph that misrepresents an event by inserting individuals who were not present is ethically indistinguishable from the old Soviet Union practice of excising the images of purged officials from official photographs. It is a lie. It represents an effort to alter history, and mislead viewers of the historical record. Which is more disturbing: that a high-ranking U.S. government official blandly endorses this deceptive practice with connections to totalitarian propaganda, or that Nancy Pelosi calls a doctored photo an accurate historical record?

She is and has ever been an ethically-deficient disgrace to her district, her state and Congress.

[And as an aside, I believe that a gender-segregated photo of female legislators is sexist, prejudicial and hypocritical. Every one of these women would scream if, for example, Republican House members posed for a photo excluding the women in their number.]

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Facts: Washington Post