mothers

A New Low, Until The Next One

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments
The horrible mother with her son, who does not have cancer. There does seem to be something amiss with his face, though...

The evil  mother with her son, who does not have cancer. There does seem to be something amiss with his face, though…

I thought the woman who tricked her lesbian crush into marrying her by faking an illness and pretending to be her own doctor in e-mails to her romantic target was about as low as a human being could stoop. Before that, it was the various compassion thieves whose scams have been discussed here. In the category of despicable mothers, I thought ground zero was reached by Torry Hanson, who decided that her adopted Russian son was just too much trouble, so she bought him a one way plane ticket to Russia and shipped him back all by himself, with a note renouncing her parenthood. But then I learned about Wanetta Gibson, and I think I have abandoned the quest for the absolute worst ethical behavior, useful as it would be for establishing a scale for ethical misconduct. Human ingenuity regarding the despicable is just too vast.

Nevertheless, Susan Stillwaggon allegedly pulled a scam that could only be devised by someone whose ethics alarms are not only inoperable, but work in reverse, warning her to stop and change course when she is about to do something good.

In order to pull off a fake illness scam, the New Jersey mother told her family, friends and community that her elementary school age son had cancer. And just so he wouldn’t blow a sweet deal—you know how kids are— she told him he had cancer too.

I’m sure I will eventually hear about something more unethical and heartless than this. I’m not looking forward to it.

_______________________

Facts: CBS (Philly)

Graphic: The Coming Crisis

New Year’s Ethics Quiz: Is It Ethical To Order A Woman Not To Have Children?

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments
(This is my favorite judge picture, and I like to use it every year)

(This is my favorite judge picture, and I like to use it every year)

Kimberly Lightsey, 30, was being sentenced on four counts of child abuse for leaving her four children, ages 2 to 11 at the time, at a hotel while she went out to play. She had an arrangement with another mother in the hotel to watch the children, but that woman also was partying hard, it seems—so hard that she forgot what room Lightsey’s children were in. Meantime, one of Lightsey’s children, who was confined to a wheelchair, rolled out into the hallway and fell over.

Prosecutors asked for a 32-month jail sentence, but Judge Ernest Jones Jr. offered Kimberly a chance to avoid jail time. He would give her two years of house arrest and 13 years of probation, provided this aspiring Mother of the Year agreed not to have any more kids during that period.

She took the deal, but now The American Civil Liberties Union and her lawyer are wondering if the sentence is legal. My guess: it’s not, but that isn’t the issue. Let’s say this is within a judge’s power, and the sentence is legal. Your Ethics Alarms Quiz Question, the first of the new year, is this:

Is it ethical? Continue reading →

Introducing “The Marmion Award” and Its 2012 Honorees, Lavera Irene Hammond-Jackson and Stella Hammond-Jackson

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments
Don't be so gloomy, Sir Walter! Here, let me cheer you up by telling you about the tangled web woven by the

Don’t be so gloomy, Sir Walter! Here, let me cheer you up by telling you about the tangled web woven by the Hammond-Jacksons!

I may never award this particular prize again, but a spectacular episode of incompetent mendacity like this needs to be immortalized. The Marmion Award is named in honor of “Marmion,” the long epic poem by novelist and poet Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832). The work is best known for its lines:

Oh! what a tangled web we weave

When first we practice to deceive!

A Palmer too! No wonder why.

I felt rebuked beneath his eye.

I don’t know what Palmer has to do with it, but the reasons for the award will be immediately apparent when one reads the hilarious and deadpan Oconee County Sheriff’s Office account of the shoplifting arrest of a mother-daughter team at a Walmart’s in Oconee County, South Carolina. While it is refreshing, in an era when so many teens are estranged from their parents and reject their values, to see a mother and daughter so close in interests and ambitions, I cannot help reflect on how the daughter in this case never had a fighting chance to join the ranks of honest, respectable, productive members of society, since her mother has obviously raised her to be a shameless thief and a liar, and by the evidence of this report, succeeded in her goal. The report also shows, unfortunately, that a proud mentor’s offspring is unlikely to become a convincing liar if her mother and teacher is this inept at it herself.

Here is the report, reprinted in the Oconee Patch. I want to thank the patch, Fark, which flagged it, the Oconee County Sheriff’s Office, which preserved it for posterity, and especially the Hammond-Jacksons for giving me, in my depressed holiday state, the best laugh I’ve had in a long, long time.  Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: The New York Post

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

Autumn Pasquale appears to have been murdered by the two boys who lived next door because they wanted her bicycle.

From today’s New York Post:

“A New Jersey mom ratted out her teen sons for the murder of a 12-year-old girl after reading a Facebook posting hinting that one of them wanted to go on the lam, law-enforcement sources told The Post.”

Wrong. A courageous mother made the most difficult ethical decision of all, placing her duties as a citizen,  a member of the community and a neighbor above her duties of loyalty and love as a mother, to report her two sons for the murder of the 13-year-old girl who lived next door.

The Post’s use of the term “ratted out” is irresponsible and offensive. “Ratting out” is a pejorative term for reporting crimes to the police, and the foundation of a resilient and warped ethical code that works to the benefit of inner city thugs and gangs while undermining efforts to combat crime. The mother is an Ethics Hero, and deserved respect and admiration from the Post, not derision as a “rat.”

You can read the Post story here. A more responsible version is here.

The Breast-Feeding Professor

/ Jack Marshall / 73 Comments

“Uh, Captain? Captain? We really need you up in the plane, now—we’re under attack…”

This story reads as if it were invented just to cause arguments on Ethics Alarms.

Adrienne Pine, a professor at American University, was faced with a choice: stay home and care for her baby, who had a fever, or take the child to class. She chose to take the infant to the first meeting of her “Sex, Gender and Culture” course, where the child spent her lecture alternately on her mother’s back or crawling around the room, or, at one point, being breast-fed by the professor. Pine’s Full Mommy breast-feeding act was commented upon by the school newspaper, and Prof. Pine responded to inquiries by a student reporter with a dismissive, “…the baby got hungry, so I had to feed it during the lecture. End of story,” and a defensive and defiant  blog entry. She sees nothing wrong with her conduct, and regards the controversy as proof that ” a feminist anthropology course is necessary at AU.”

That’s playing the ol’ Mommy Card with gusto, Professor Pine.

She is dead wrong, as a matter of professional ethics. As a college professor,Pine has limited demands on her time, and the one thing that she is required to do is to devote full attention to her students in class. With an infant, an ill infant at that, in her care, she could not do that. She had a pure and unresolvable conflict of interest, and it was a breach of her duty to her child (at one point a student had to tell her that the baby had a paper clip in her mouth) and a breach of duty to her students (if they were watching the baby, and later that breast-feeding exhibition, they were not able to give full attention to her lecture). She had a choice to make: do one job or the other, because it is impossible to do them both at the same time. Continue reading →

And While We’re On The Subject Of Adults Exploiting And Warping Toddlers, Let’s Talk “Toddlers & Tiaras”

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Wait! I’ve got an even better idea! How about having toddlers in fake boobs and butt pads FIGHTING EACH OTHER!!!

Bill Verst has asked a Kentucky court to grant him sole custody of his daughter Maddy Verst, now 6, who gained infamy on TLC’s vile reality show“Toddlers & Tiaras” when her mother had her appear in a kiddie beauty pageant dressed as Dolly Parton, with a padded bra and butt pads.

Good. I hope he wins.

This is nothing short of child abuse, and represents exploitation of the very young for an adult’s own (sick) gratification. It may not be quite as despicable as having toddlers duke it out at day care, but it’s close. A court-appointed psychologist agreed with Verst that his estranged wife’s sexualization of their daughter showed she was an unfit parent, and recommended that a judge make Verst the girl’s sole custodial parent.

I’m sure it will not surprise you to hear that Maddy’s Mom, Lindsey Jackson, doesn’t get it. She told reporters, Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “How To Raise An Irresponsible and Dangerous Child”

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

“I know my precious angel crashed her car, but it’s her own fault: she left the keys in it!”

Michael, who is the reigning champ in the Comment of the Day Division, scores another with this comment, a rebuttal of ampersand’s plea that a mother’s efforts to deflect blame from her joy-riding teenager, now in a coma after causing a high speed police chase and an accident that closed down a major highway, shouldn’t be held against her. “The mother’s statement was stupid,” ampersand wrote, “but… if there’s any time when we should refrain from attacking people for saying stupid, regrettable things, it’s right after their 14 year old son has been in a terrible, tragic car accident. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to give this woman the benefit of the doubt, and suppose that how she acts on the worst day of her life might not be a representative sample of how she generally acts.”  I’m generally in favor of the benefit of the doubt, although I personally doubt whether any responsible parent would try to blame joy-riding on the owner of the car her son stole, or would try to minimize the offense by suggesting that “maybe he wanted to go farther than he felt like walking.”  I cannot imagine any tragedy that would have made my parents say something that absurd.  Still, I acknowledged that the context of the mother’s comments should be taken into consideration. Michael was tougher, and makes a powerful case that he should be. Here is his Comment of the Day on the post How To Raise An Irresponsible and Dangerous Child.

“I think ampersand is exactly wrong. So much that is wrong and wasteful is done because of this kind of sentiment. She should be confronted about this, because the alternative is to go along with it. She said it, it was published. It must be refuted. Not refuting it, publicly, leads to this being considered a valid opinion. Considering this a valid opinion means possibly arresting and convicting the owner’s boyfriend. It also means that it is OK to “borrow” someone’s car (however you have to) if you are tired of walking.

“Some examples of what happens when you go along with it because you don’t want to confront someone who has suffered the loss or injury of their child: Continue reading →

How To Raise An Irresponsible and Dangerous Child

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

After a 14-year old Pennsylvania lad stole Jeep Grand Cherokee and led police on a high-speed chase that ended with him clipping another vehicle and causing a crash that closed the highway and left the boy in a coma, his mother told reporters that her son wasn’t the only one to blame for the accident.

“I’m not downplaying my son’s role in taking something that didn’t belong to him, but I am saying they actually left their keys in the car and the vehicle could have been taken by anybody,” she said. The mother, who has not been identified in press accounts because, I guess, her son is a minor and some people think that teenagers who steal cars, defy police and endanger lives should have their identities shielded (not me!), also found fault with the Jeep’s owners boyfriend, who followed the vehicle after the kid started driving it away: Continue reading →

Bad Mother, Bad Football Coach

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

RUN AWAY!!!

Item: Arkansas athletic director Jeff Long fired stellar Arkansas football coach Bobby Petrino, the married father of four, for having an affair with Jessica Dorrell with a comely 25-year-old subordinate and lying through his teeth about it to Long and the University of Arkanasa. Commenting on the scandal, ESPN’s Calvin Cowherd described Petrino as a “great football coach.”

Wrong.

Item: In White Plains, NY., Jessica Vega, 25, has been indicted on charges of fraud and grand larceny for falsely claiming that she was dying of leukemia to inspire her friends and the community to donate money, gifts and services to her for her”dream wedding” in 2010. Later, her husband, Michale O’Connell,  discovered that the doctor’s letter she used as a prop was fake, and he divorced her. Now he’s living with her again, in Virginia, and the couple has had a second child. “She’s a good mom,” O’Connell explained.

Even more wrong.

We see this mistake all the time: observers separate core character and trustworthiness from an individual’s job performance. That cannot and should not be done, and to do it is dangerous and irresponsible.

Bobby Petrino, whose record since being hired at Arkansas had indeed been remarkable, is a miserable college coach, and not just because he is an untrustworthy and dishonest employee. In the incident that led to his dismissal,  he conducted an inappropriate on-campus relationship with a woman, who was not his wife, and who Petrino had personally added to his football staff. Petrino did not disclose he was in a relationship with the woman when he hired her, raising various issues including misuse of University funds, and after he hired her, sexual-harassment.The two were in motorcycle accident, and Petrino attempted a cover-up by calling a friend in law enforcement, leaving the scene with his mistress,  insisting to university administrators that she was not on the motorcycle with him at the time of the crash, and maintaining the lie that there was no relationship between them.   He called a press conference to “clear the air” about the accident, and continued the falsehood.

As Arkansas knew when it hired him away from the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons, Petino had a long, long record of untruthfulness, mostly exhibited in his surreptitious job hunting while being under contract, including when he jumped from the Falcons mid-season.

Okay, he’s a liar—but doesn’t his football record prove he’s great at his job? No…because he’s an educator; he coaches students, young men, in whom he’s supposed to imbue the principles of good character. Petrino can’t do that, because his own character is swill. Having someone with Petrino’s propensity to lie and break laws, rules, and commitments when it suits his needs to do so can only warp young minds, and a coach that wins games at the price of nurturing liars and cheats doesn’t belong on any college campus. He’s not a “great coach,” but an ethics corrupter.

But he’d be a better mother than Jessica Vega, I think. What kind of monster tells everyone including her husband-to-be that she has terminal cancer so she can have a glamorous wedding? A very, very sick one, I assume. Someone whose values are rotted through, and for whom the depths of her perversity and heartlessness are incalculable. She not only shouldn’t be raising children; she shouldn’t be permitted in the same room with them, lest her vile, sociopathic sensibilities and utter contempt for others seeps into their young souls like industrial pollutants contaminating ground water.

Sure, she’s a good mother… if the objective is to raise Lucretia Borgia, Joseph Mengele, Pol Pot and Voldemort.

 

 

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 →