Octomom

PETA’s Unethical Treatment Of Human Beings

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments
"You keep using that word, "ethics." I don't think it means what you think it does."

“You keep using that word, “ethics.” I don’t think it means what you think it does.”

From whence comes PETA’s compulsion to periodically make the organization look as unethical and/or deranged as possible? If I were not charitable by nature, I would say that it was because the leadership of the organization is constitutionally unethical, and nuts. I suspect that the real answer is close to that, but it’s not exactly right. I think that PETA’s concept of ethics begins and ends with “the ends justfy the means,” that they are so besotted with the rights of animals that they dehumanize people, and that arrested juveniles run the organization.

The latest jaw dropper from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is to use money to induce poor people in Detroit to comply with PETA’s vision of an ethical lifestyle. From the PETA website:

“With jobs in Detroit disappearing, many residents are struggling. As they’re forced to choose which bills to pay, the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department has chosen for them―shutting off water and leaving many people high and dry. The department put the shutoffs on a temporary hiatus, but people’s water bills are mounting. So with the help of a generous PETA member, we have come up with one small way to assist Detroit residents and save animals, too.Thanks to this donor, PETA will be able to pay off the water bills for 10 families who commit to going vegan for one month. We’ll also help them get started by giving each family a basket of healthy vegan foods and recipes.”

In other word, PETA is exploiting the most vulnerable citizens of the urban wasteland known as Detroit to turn them into human billboards for the group’s utopian vision of an animal-friendly world. Continue reading →

The Despicable Nadya Suleman and Ethics Estoppel

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Nadya Suleman, a.k.a. Octomom, strikes a dignified pose

From the beginning, the only thing keeping Nadya Suleman from being unequivocally despicable has been the lingering suspicion that she was mentally ill. It might be more than a suspicion, to be fair: having octuplets by artificial insemination when one already has six young children and no viable means of support could be called “proof.”  Now even that malady is an insufficient defense: the issue is settled, and she is despicable beyond redemption. One cannot call her the worst mother on the world, sadly, because every day brings the story of another infant thrown down a laundry chute or left in the care of a six-year-old while mom goes partying or looking for drugs. She may be, however, the worst mother ever to become famous for being a mother.

In the latest issue of InTouch magazine—the rag is one full step down from Us magazine, and one half-step up from The National Enquirer—Suleman confesses that she now reviles her octo-brood. “I hate the babies, they disgust me,’ she says. “My older six are animals, getting more and more out of control, because I have no time to properly discipline them.” Elsewhere in the article she bellyaches about how hard it is being a single, unemployed, narcissistic, absurd, irresponsible mother of fourteen children. “The only way I can cope is to lock myself in the bathroom and cry. Sometimes I sit there for hours and even eat my lunch sitting on the toilet floor. Anything to get peace and quiet,” she laments. Yes, Octomom says she regrets having all the children. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Ethics Quiz: The Home as Billboard…”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Jeff Hibbert sets a record for pithy and concise with his comment on the Ethics Quiz about the company that will pay your mortgage if you’ll let them turn your home into a billboard. Besides, it made me laugh, and I needed a laugh.

“Eventually, everything flat will have advertising on it. This is why I think a flat stomach is overrated.”


			

	


			
				


	

							
Ethics Quiz: The Home As Billboard—“Ick!” or Unethical?
						

			 / Jack Marshall						 / 4 Comments
								

			


		

		
The Ad firm Adzookie will make their monthly mortgage payments for people willing to turn their homes into billboards. According to the company’s  CEO, it has received over 1,000 applications from people willing to have their houses turned into something like the eye-sore in the photo.


Your Ethics Quiz: Is this unethical conduct by the company, or merely disgusting, provoking our “Ick!” reflex?


For the Unethical side, consider: Continue reading →

			

	


			
				


	

							
Leona Gage: A Celebrity Liar Ahead of Her Time
						

			 / Jack Marshall						 / 2 Comments
								

			


		

		
Leona Gage died last week, and there are people who love her and will miss her. But Gage’s obituary would have never been deemed worth of mention in major newspapers had it not been for a series of lies she concocted in 1957 because “she needed the money.” She was Miss USA that year, until contest organizers discovered that, contrary to what she had said,  she wasn’t single ( a requirement then); wasn’t waiting “until she was 26” to have a boyfriend (she had been married twice at 14, and already had a child), and wasn’t 21…she was just 18.  Continue reading →

			

	


			
				


	

							
Child Exploitation or Great Adventure: What We Need To Know About “The Biking Vogels”
						

			 / Jack Marshall						 / 94 Comments
								

			


		

		
America was just introduced to the biking Vogel family, as they embark on a charm offensive seemingly with a potential reality show in their sights. They appeared on ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Labor Day, and expect to get a boost in publicity thanks to a typical softball interview by a beaming stand-in for George Stephanopoulos. (Video taken and selected by the Vogels themselves accompanied the interview, further allowing them to present their trip in the most favorable light.) It would be have been both responsible and right, however, if the Vogels had been asked more pointed questions, probing the serious issue of whether John and Nancy Vogel may be exploiting and even abusing their children in pursuit of fame, fortune, and  an “Easy Rider” life-style that being parents of young children ought to preclude. Continue reading →

			

	


			
				


	

							
Octomom and PETA: a Match Made in Ethics Hell
						

			 / Jack Marshall						 / 5 Comments
								

			


		

		
I didn’t think anything could make me feel sorry for Octomom, a.k.a. Nadya Suleman, the serial baby-machine who is a one-woman bioethics seminar with some child exploitation thrown in for spice. Then along came People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the ethically-challenged animal rights fanatics. PETA believes that no person or thing on earth deserves consideration, fairness or respect if he, she or it can be used to advance its message. A few months ago, it plastered the First Lady on some of the organization’s ads without her permission, because it knew that the publicity over this obvious violation of Michelle Obama’s right to be consulted before being used this way would get PETA in the news. And it did.


When you turn off the ethics alarms that are supposed to sound before you violate a person’s dignity, autonomy and self-respect, it is amazing what schemes you can come up with. So when PETA learned that Suleman was about to lose her home  in a foreclosure, its brain trust thought, “Wow, she must be desperate. And she obviously has no shame. I bet she’ll do anything for money! It probably won’t even have to be much money, either.” Continue reading →

			

	


			
				


	

							
Of Presidents Day, Atticus, a Congressman’s Dilemma and Serial Moms
						

			 / Jack Marshall						 / 8 Comments
								

			


		

		
Short Alarms:


    

  • With increasing numbers of young Americans knowing embarrassingly little about our nation’s past, the wrong-headedness of President’s Day rankles worse than ever. Rather then designate the February birthdays of our two greatest presidents—Washington, the “indispensable man” who made the United States a reality, and Lincoln, the brilliant leader/philosopher who kept it from tearing apart—as yearly commemorations of their remarkable lives and our debt to them, Congress lumped them into a generic “Presidents Day,” thereby demonstrating that it deemed a three-day weekend and consumer merchandise sales more important than our heritage. Worst of all for ethics fans, George, who “wouldn’t tell a lie,” and Honest Abe are the only U.S. Presidents remembered for their truthfulness. Yet here they are, forced to share their “day” with the likes of Woodrow Wilson, Harding, J.F.K, L.B.J., Tricky Dick and Bill Clinton. The right thing to do would be to go back to celebrating February 12 and 22. Washington and Lincoln deserve it, and so do the values they stood for.
    • 



    

  • Speaking of ethics icons, one of my wife’s favorites,”To Kill A Mockingbird’s” Atticus Finch, has been under attack in some quarters for being passively acquiescent in the Jim Crow morality that convicts his black client despite overwhelming evidence that he is innocent. Continue reading →
    • 


			

	


			
				


			
				


	

							
Ethics Dunces: NBC and the Today Show
						

			 / Jack Marshall						 / 3 Comments
								

			


		

		
NBC has announced that the couple that crashed the White House dinner, thus breaching national security as well as basic standards of honesty and manners, will appear on the Today Show. This adds one more reason to detest the two, who by combining the two things the news media can’t resist—the Obamas and reality show wannabes—have inspired the irresponsible news media to once again neglect genuinely important news events in favor of trivia. But the real ethics miscreants are NBC and the Today Show. Given two self-involved, irresponsible fools who break into the White House in order to become celebrities, the network and its morning show decide to make certain that their plan achieves its goal.  And if this motivates the next, slightly more unhinged would-be celebrity to do something more harmful to innocent people or the nation?  Hey, as long as the ratings are boffo, why should the Peacock Network worry about irrelevant issues like the President’s safety?  Continue reading →