lies

The Principal Who Helped Gaby Rodriguez Fake Her Pregnancy Just Won “Principal of the Year.” The Frightening Thing Is, He Might Have Deserved It.

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Note that it says "Principal." It doesn't say anything about "principles."

I received this news from Ethics Hero Harris Meyer, the journalist who has been trying to preserve some semblance of integrity in his profession by reminding it what ethical investigative journalism is not, through his efforts to rebut the praise for Gaby Rodriguez, the high school student who deceived her family and classmates by pretending to be pregnant as her senior project. The news: Trevor Greene, the principal who helped devise Gaby’s unethical stunt and assisted her in lying to the rest of the school, has been named the state’s top high school principal by the Association of Washington School Principals.

He received this  honor, the release says, by virtue of his organizing a system of student-teacher mentorships, and guiding the school’s effort to expand and improve its science, technology, engineering and math curriculum. The fact that he also mentored a student in a blatantly unethical exercise that was, as I wrote in my original post about Gaby’s scam, Continue reading →

The Curse of Michael Steele: The Republican National Committee’s Shameful, Outrageous Supreme Court Lie

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

Michael Steele, when he was its Chair, brought Republican National Committee operations to a new ethical low that might have been favored by Michael Corleone. He never did anything this despicable, however, perhaps because he was replaced just as he was getting warmed up. Or maybe, just maybe, it was because even Steele knew that some political tactics were just too despicable to engage in.

In a web ad circulated this week designed to attack the health care reform law, the Republican National Committee excerpts the opening seconds of the March 27 presentation to the Supreme Court by Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, defending the law’s constitutionality. In the ad, he is heard struggling for words and twice stopping to drink water. “Obamacare,” the ad concludes, in words shown against a photograph of the high court. “It’s a tough sell.”

The transcript and recordings, however, give a different impression. Verrilli took a sip of water just once, paused for a much briefer period and completed his thought — rather than stuttering and trailing off as heard in the ad. In short, the tape was edited by the RNC to misrepresent what occurred inside the halls of the U.S. Supreme Court.

It is a lie, and a particularly heinous one, even by political ad standards, which are a cut below Shamwow and the Fishin’ Magician. Even by Michael Steele standards—he who twice approved fundraising appeals disguised to look like U.S. Census documents. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunces: Belvedere Vodka and Arnell

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

“Ethics Dunces” doesn’t really do these two organizations justice. Try “too dumb to live” and “too unethical to be trusted with sharp objects.”

Or vice-versa.

Marketing whizzes Arnell devised this hysterically funny vodka ad for Belvedere Vodka, showing a happily horny man sexually assaulting a terrified female victim. What fun! And such a witty tag line: “Unlike Some People, Belvedere Always Goes Down Smoothly.”

Goes down, get it?

It took about an hour after this juvenile, rape-friendly offal was posted on Twitter and Facebook for there to be such a negative reaction that even the bombed cretins at the vodka company were able to figure out something was wrong. So they pulled the ad, and apologized, kind of, tweeting,

“We apologize to any of our fans who were offended by our recent tweet. We continue to be an advocate of safe and responsible drinking.”

Uhhhhhh…no. “We apologize to those who were offended”–a non-apology apology. Ethics strike two. “We continue to be an advocate of safe and responsible drinking”—what? These idiots still didn’t understand what they were supposed to be apologizing for!!!   Ethics Strike THREE! Continue reading →

A Question For President Obama and His Campaign: Why Lie?

/ Jack Marshall / 48 Comments

I have an iron-clad rule for all Presidents, regardless of party, ideology and political philosophy: Don’t use deception as a tool of governance. I have a related rule for Presidents who get elected by pledging honesty and transparency in government: Especially you!

The President’s health care law, a.k.a. “Obamacare,” whatever its merits, was probably the most dishonestly sold, packaged and passed major law in U.S. history (if someone has another candidate, please submit it.) Not all of the dishonesty was due to President Obama’s personal efforts–he didn’t tell its House and Senate not to bother to read the various versions of the bill, for example, or submit to the CBO patently manipulated assumptions to ensure its projection of a net budget surplus from the law immediately prior to its passage, assumptions that were substantially revised later. He is the one who pledged over and over again that if you liked your current coverage, nothing the law did would stop you from keeping it, a promise that seemed dubious at the time and that has in fact proven to be either mistaken or deliberately misleading.

Still…the law was passed. Utilitarian justifications and rationalizations for various tactics and maneuvers to get it passed are unnecessary now. So why does the President and his campaign team feel that they have to skirt the truth in their public relations and re-election efforts?

The Tom Hanks-narrated Obama campaign film “The Road We’ve Traveled” has already been charged with truth fouls by objective analysts on many points, including Obamacare. In the assessment of FactCheck.org, the best and most objective of the various political fact-checking websites, the film dissembles regarding, among other things... Continue reading →

Here’s a Proposal: Republicans Stop Saying That Obama’s a Muslim, and Democrats Stop Saying that The Supreme Court “Stole” The Presidency For Bush

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Law professor/blogger Ann Althouse properly chastises The National Review’s Jonathan Cohn for designating “Bush v. Gore” as the most earth-shattering case of the 21st Century, and not just because the case, decided in December of 2000, occurred in the 20th Century.

“Ridiculous! I can’t believe Cohn doesn’t know that if the case had gone the other way Gore would still have lost in the end!”, Althouse writes, reminding her readers of the results of the objective, meticulous and multiple recounts performed by journalists in 2001, which showed—much to the surprise of the counters, who were dying to be able to report that Gore had been robbed—that “George W. Bush would have won a hand count of Florida’s disputed ballots if the standard advocated by Al Gore had been used.”

I can believe Cohn wrote what he wrote, because the claim that Bush’s presidency was “stolen” has been a cornerstone of Democratic political warfare and unscrupulous hard Left activists since the chad-counting stopped. It stoked the base, misled the public, increased partisan anger, divided the country and undermined Bush’s presidency, all good things from a partisan perspective (and the truth be damned), just as Republicans have been happy to allow the unjustified doubts about President Obama’s loyalty and citizenship linger among its most fanatic partisans. Continue reading →

Mike Daisey Follow-up: Behold! The Classic Response of the Self-Righteous and Unethical!

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Mike Daisey in China. Or, standing in front of a big poster. What difference does it make which, really?

Soon after I posted my article about Mike Daisey’s representation of fabricated events and facts as truth in his January feature on NPR, the actor/activist posted this dismissive explanation on his own blog.  It is Dan Rather’s Memogate excuse taken to the next level, the epitome of self-justification of the unapologetic zealot who believes that all is fair in the battle against (what he regards as) evil, employing a full battery of rationalizations for unethical conduct:

1) Daisey’s lies don’t matter, because they were used to expose a real problem (a.k.a “the ends justify the means”); Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Month: Mike Daisey

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

“Well, I don’t know that I would say in a theatrical context that it isn’t true. I believe that when I perform it in a theatrical context in the theater that when people hear the story in those terms that we have different languages for what the truth means.”

—Actor, writer, activist Mike Daisey, in an interview with NPR’s Ira Glass, exploring how Daisey was able to justify fabricating facts and accounts for the earlier aired—and just retracted—“American Life” installment called “Mr. Daisy  Goes To The Apple Factory.” NPR checked the particulars of Daisey’s first hand account of the human rights and labor violations he claimed to witness at Apple’s factory in China, and found that the writer had embellished, exaggerated,  and misrepresented much of what he reported. What NPR had broadcast as journalistic reporting was an excerpt from Daisey’s acclaimed touring one-man stage show, “The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs.”

Mike Daisey, lying to us for our own enlightenment

Daisey’s quote, which is both illuminating and chilling, argues that using made-up stories and personal accounts in a theatrical context qualifies as truth, even if the same misrepresentations in a journalistic context are inappropriately false. The problem with his argument, and the flawed ethical theory behind it, is that both the NPR audience and his theater audience believe that Daisey is telling the truth. Daisey’s solution to the problem is simple: his one-man show does tell the truth…it just uses lies to do it. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Glenn Kessler, Washington Post “Fact Checker”

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

President Clinton, in a famous "true but false" moment. No Pinocchios, Glenn?

It pains me, it really does, to make Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post’s “Fact Checker,” an Ethics Dunce. He is one of the best of an often incompetent breed that, as exhaustively and repeatedly shown by Wall Street Journal blogger James Taranto, frequently defines “fact” as “the way we see it.” Kessler is notable for at least trying to keep his political biases out of the equation, and generally does an outstanding job.

His most recent column, however, took on President Obama’s repeated use of the statistic that the U.S. uses 20% of the world’s energy but only has 2% of the world’s oil reserves. Kessler correctly points out that the statement is confounding:

“…But measuring the U.S. consumption against its proven oil reserves makes little sense. Europe, with the exception of Russia, Kazakhstan and Norway, has virtually no oil reserves. Japan, a major consumer, has zero. China’s oil reserves are about half the size of the United States. In fact, in the relative scheme of things, the United States is relatively blessed with proven oil reserves — and, given the U.S. technological advantage, also with potentially large resources of oil yet to be tapped.

 “That’s why we said the president is using “non sequitur facts.” It would make much more sense to note that the United States has just 4.5 percent of the world’s population and yet we consume 20 percent of the oil, which is a finite resource, in order to urge Americans that we need to have greater energy efficiency. But in the context of higher gas prices — which is how the president often uses these figures now — it just is not logical to compare consumption to “proven oil reserves.” This is a lowball figure that does not begin to describe the oil known to be within the U.S. borders.” Continue reading →

“Luck,” Causation, and the Complex Computation of Mixed Motivations

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Was it good luck, or bad luck?

HBO has announced that it is cancelling “Luck,” its well-reviewed series about corruption in the sport of professional horse-racing. Why? Well, that’s an interesting question.

The immediate impetus for the decision was the death of a one of the horses used in the series. It was the third horse to die, so the announcement took the form of a sensitive and humane decision based on concerns for the animals. “While we maintained the highest safety standards possible, accidents unfortunately happen and it is impossible to guarantee they won’t in the future,” HBO’s statement said. “Accordingly, we have reached this difficult decision.”

I was initially impressed, but a couple of things about the move, which seemed uncharacteristically ethical by show business standards, bothered me. “Luck” was much-praised but low-rated, despite a cast headed by Dustin Hoffman and Nick Nolte and a production team headed by respected film director Michael Mann. Though it had been renewed for a second season, some felt that the renewal was dictated by a corporate decision not to embarrass its Hollywood royalty. Continue reading →

The Beautiful Lie!

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Irony! Stupidity! Symmetry!  Elegance! Chutzpah! Redundancy!

Ahhhhh! Breathtaking!

Yes, this amazing lie, by the California State University System, has it all. This is the Sistine Chapel of lies, the Mona Lisa of mendacity, a true masterpiece of the liar’s art.

Consider…this is “Sunshine Week,” the annual campaign to raise awareness about the essential nature of open, honest and transparent government. So to celebrate,  CSU’s  public affairs office falsely announced on Monday that it had won the 2012 Sunshine Award for most transparent government website in the nation. It had not. It isn’t even eligible to win such an award.

Sunshine Review, the national nonprofit organization that sponsors the annual awards, has confirmed that this would be impossible, since they “do not grade state universities or colleges at this time, so it would be impossible for Cal State to have won an award.” Sure enough, the system is not included on the list of winners available online.

Why would the university system of the Sunshine State lie about receiving the Sunshine Award from the Sunshine Review, and do it on Sunshine Week, no less?  Clearly, this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to good to pass up. It may be unethical, but in the annals of lying, it’s beautiful!

[Thanks to James Taranto for the tip.]