parents

Is Ronald Miller An Ethics Dunce? How Unethical Is Really, Really Stupid?

/ Jack Marshall / 51 Comments
Is stupidity a defense for unethical conduct?

Is stupidity a defense for unethical conduct?

The news report from Texas about a father posing as an armed intruder to test the security of his son’s school once again raises the thorny problem of how to distinguish ethically obtuse and dumb as a brick. From U.S. News and NBC:

Officials say Ronald Miller was unarmed Wednesday when he told a school greeter outside Celina (Texas) Elementary School that he had a gun… The greeter froze in panic when Miller said he was a gunman and his target was inside, Celina Independent School District Superintendent Donny O’Dell told NBCDFW.com. Miller was then able to walk into the school and entered the office. “He told them that he is a shooter and ‘you’re dead, and you’re dead,'” O’Dell [said.] Never showing a weapon, Miller then reportedly revealed his stunt was a test of school safety and he wanted to talk to the principal. School staffers knew Miller, who was a father of a student, and police were not called until he left the school, The Dallas Morning News reported. He was arrested Wednesday evening and is being held in lieu of $75,000 bail…”

Is Miller so stupid he doesn’t know why this is wrong? It is “the ends justifies the means” thinking personified: he was willing to risk a panic, scare school workers sick, possibly set off a violent incident (what if, as the NRA fervently wishes were the case in all schools, someone in the principal’s office was carrying a gun and decided the safest thing was to shoot Miller before he started his rampage?), and undermine what little rational trust there is left in schools these days, all to prove absolutely nothing, other than the fact that parents aren’t high on the list of suspected school shooters, since no parent has ever been one. Continue reading →

The Fourth Annual Ethics Alarms Awards: The Worst of Ethics 2012 (Part 1)

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Trayvon

Welcome to the Fourth  Annual Ethics Alarms Awards

Recognizing the Best and Worst of Ethics in 2012!

This is the first installment of the Worst. (Part 2 is here, the Best is here.)

2012 inspired over 1000 posts, and Ethics Alarms still missed a lot. And the last week of 2012 was sufficiently ethics packed that the Awards are late this year. My apologies.

In a depressingly unethical year, these were the low points:

Ethics Train Wreck of the Year

Was there ever any doubt? The Trayvon Martin- George Zimmerman fiasco, naturally, which is far from over. This year’s winner may be the worst ethics train wreck since Monica and Bill were dominating the news.  So far it has involved dubious, unprofessional or clearly unethical conduct by, among others, Martin’s parents, their lawyer, Zimmerman, his wife, the police, Zimmerman’s first set of lawyers, the prosecutor, the Congressional Black Caucus, NBC (which repeatedly broadcast an “accidentally” truncated tape of Zimmerman’s 911 call that made him sound racist), the rest of the broadcast media, conservative talk radio and bloggers (who decided their contribution would be to try to show that Martin deserved to be shot), Spike Lee, Rosie O’Donnell, the New Black Panthers, and President Obama, who ratcheted up the hate being focused on Zimmerman by implying that the killing as racially motivated, and by connecting himself to the victim. Runner-up: The 2012 Presidential campaign.

“Incompetent Elected Officials of the Year” Division Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Lisa Long’s Unethical, Despicable Bargain: Betrayal For A Blog Post”

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

turn-the-tablesOffering a pointed response to Lisa Long’s blog post about her emotionally-ill son and the suffering Long has endured, is new commenter Fixitsurprise. When I first read the post, I actually thought that she might be Lisa Long’s daughter, so to those like me whose faculties are still addled from too much eggnog and viewings of “A Christmas Story,” remember that Long’s post was titled, “I am Adam Lanza’s Mother.” Fixitsurprise is table-turning.

Here is Fixitsurprise’s Comment of the Day on “Lisa Long’s Unethical, Despicable Bargain: Betrayal For A Blog Post”:

“I am Lisa Long’s Daughter.”

“My mother labeled me as mentally ill when I was 12 to avoid taking on any responsibility for my issues. I was sent to mental hospitals. I was sent to a behavior modification facility. Countless doctors and lots of meds with horrible side effects. I was forced to sign a contract admitting I was mentally ill and promising to be on medication the rest of my life to get out of reform school. She wouldn’t rest until I had a diagnosis that absolved her. I yelled and screamed and acted out. I did so because I had no voice, no respect, and was not allowed to make any boundaries whatsoever. She gave me poetry that spoke of how she was a victim of my illness. She was public about her struggles. How hard it was to have me. I burned it but the words still haunt me to this day. I am an adult now with the perspective of 18 years of parenting my own child. We do need to change the conversation about mental illness in this country, but what Long ironically, and unintentionally points out, is that a big part of the conversation needs to be about the family dynamic. That parents contribute, that society contributes, and that no psychiatric professional and no prescription can heal the child of a mother with a victim complex.”

______________________

Graphic: Cascadesmurf

Tales From The Moral Luck Files: The Truck, The Ice, and the Hero

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments
"I'm a hero!"

“Woo-Hoo! I’m a hero!”

A story from Manitoba, Canada raises the question, “Should someone get full credit for being a hero when he rescues the victim of his own poor judgment?”

A father on an ice fishing trip with his daughter drove his pick-up truck onto the ice of frozen Lake Manitoba, misestimating just how frozen it was. The truck broke through the ice, and he reportedly had to dive deep into the freezing water to rescue his daughter from an icy death. Is it heroism to repair the results of a near tragedy you caused yourself?

Let’s consider at a range of possible frozen ice scenarios:

1. You see someone else’s truck break through the ice, and rescue the occupants from drowning at great personal risk.

2.  You tell a driver that its safe to drive his truck onto the ice, and it breaks through because you were wrong. You rescue his daughter.

3.  You watch several trucks drive on the frozen lake without incident. You follow them, and your truck falls through the ice. You have to rescue your daughter.

4. You drive onto the ice without proper precautions, and after your truck falls through, you rescue your daughter.

5. A local citizen warns you about driving your truck on the ice, which he says is too thin. You do it anyway, and have to save your daughter.

6. The Homer Simpson scenario: You see a truck fall through the ice, and yet drive yours onto the ice anyway. You rescue Lisa. Continue reading →

The Ethics of Christmas Shaming

/ Jack Marshall / 40 Comments

Ethics Alarms participant Jeff Hibbert asks my reactions to this photo:

Blurry face boy

[The sign reads: “I have to take back my PS3 that I was getting for Christmas because I wasn’t grateful to receive a Captain America action figure (That I received from Church) so I’m going Christmas shopping for other kids with the refund money!”  The actual photo on the web shows the unblurred face of an unhappy boy, and that is how I originally posted it. However, after some prompting by Jeff, I concluded that I was adding to the boy’s plight by helping to publicize his identity. Ethics Alarms commenter texagg04 kindly provided this version, as well as three others that gave me some Christmas mirth by replacing the boy’s face with Bart Simpson’s, a smiley face, and most inspired of all, the face of recent Ethics Alarms’ subject John Dillinger.]

I can’t find any context for it, back-story, or the name of the family involved. (I’m glad about that last part, by the way.)  If it is what it appears to be, a young boy’s parents are subjecting him to rather harsh punishment for displaying inadequate gratitude for a gift he didn’t care for, by forcing him to return his favorite gift, a Play Station 3, and use the money to buy gifts for presumably needy children. 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 →

Lisa Long’s Unethical, Despicable Bargain: Betrayal For A Blog Post

/ Jack Marshall / 90 Comments
No silver for this mother's betrayal...just blogging fame..

No silver for this mother’s betrayal…just blogging fame..

I hope free-lance writer Lisa Long enjoys her brief notoriety as a result of her blog post on The Blue Review that was  re-published on the Huffington Post and  Gawker, guaranteeing millions of readers. That should be worth at least a few more published articles for her, and maybe even a cable interview or two. After all, it would be a pity  to deliberately and callously burden the life of her emotionally disturbed son and get nothing out of it at all.

One thing she is already getting as the result of her sensationally-titled essay “I am Adam Lanza’s Mother” is harsh criticism for making such a cynical and self-serving bargain. In her post, Long relates the harrowing tale of her life with her 13-year-old son, whose erratic behavior and emotional outbursts terrify and dismay her. In the most quoted portion of the post, she proclaims his equivalence to well-known serial killers:

“I am sharing this story because I am Adam Lanza’s mother. I am Dylan Klebold’s and Eric Harris’s mother. I am James Holmes’s mother. I am Jared Loughner’s mother. I am Seung-Hui Cho’s mother. And these boys—and their mothers—need help. In the wake of another horrific national tragedy, it’s easy to talk about guns. But it’s time to talk about mental illness.”

Gee, thanks Mom! Continue reading →

UPDATE: A Cynical Ethics Tale That Wasn’t So Cynical After All

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

In the recent Ethics Alarms post The Asperger’s Child, the Company With A Heart, and the Cheapskate Parents: A Cynical Ethics Tale, I expressed both ethical and credibility doubts about the heart-warming story of a little boy who was sent the out-of stock LEGO set he had saved to buy for two years, only to discover that it was no longer manufactured and could only be purchased at premium rates via collectors or online auction. The child’s joyful reaction when he opened the box containing the set sent to him as a gift by the toymaker was captured in a family video that subsequently went viral on YouTube.

I won’t rehash my analysis here; read the post. I questioned why the family wouldn’t just contribute the necessary funds to ensure that the child’s long effort to obtain the toy didn’t come to naught, and I expressed skepticism that LEGO’s generosity wasn’t part of a pre-arranged quid pro quo in exchange for the video, especially since the father is professional videographer, and the YouTube product functioned as a promotion for LEGO.

By purest coincidence, a personal friend here in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, Jeff Westlake, is also a close personal friend of the Groccia family. He was privy to the events of the story as they unfolded, and relayed information to me about both the family and the events surrounding the YouTube video that were not evident in the media reports. Thanks to Jeff’s insight, I am now satisfied that the family’s decision to explore every avenue of obtaining the LEGO set was reasonable rather than penurious, and that there was no quid pro quo with LEGO.

I apologize for mistakenly impugning the Groccia’s motives and account in the episode. I don’t apologize for raising the ethical issues that I saw implicit in the media accounts. That’s my job, and provoking discussion and debate over the ethical or unethical conduct of public figures is why this blog exists. If a family is going to participate in making an occurrence in their lives the subject of news stories, features and blog posts, they cannot insist that all commentary be unequivocally positive. I thought the doubts I expressed were legitimate and fair; it happens that they were not borne out by the facts.

Mr. Groccia was offended, understandably, and not so understandably, decided to respond here with, first, an anonymous comment noting that my “foil hat must be too tight as it appears to be impeding your cognitive abilities.” I didn’t know who the author was, and informed him via the email; address accompanying the comment that I would post his remarks if 1) I had a real name, as the Comment Policies require,  and 2) if the screen name he used was not a commercial website, since this would lead to the comment being spammed. He responded that he “knew” I wouldn’t have the “spine” to print his comment, which is manifestly not the case. I told him that I would be happy to publish a more thorough account by him, and would retract my suspicions if I was persuaded by it. Instead. Mr. Groccia chose to send a series of alternately insulting and threatening e-mails, none of which were substantive, and all of which served to reinforce my doubts. There the matter would have laid, except for the intervention of Jeff Westlake. I’m grateful to him for setting the record straight.

 

In the Wake Of The BP Disaster, Another Andersonville Trial

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments
Someone has to be held responsible, even if nobody is to blame.

Someone has to be held responsible, even if nobody is to blame.

I don’t know about you, but I was certainly surprised to discover that in the view of the Justice Department, two men I had never heard of, Robert Kaluza and Donald Vidrine, were the ones responsible for the April 20, 2010 explosion of a BP oil rig that caused millions of barrels of oil to leak into the Gulf of Mexico for months, polluting the waters and the shores and causing billions of dollars of damages. That is the clear implication of the decision to prosecute the two rig  supervisors for manslaughter in the deaths of the eleven BP workers who perished in the blast.

Obviously, this makes no sense at all. Other government authorities have treated the BP spill as resulting from a complex series of errors, misjudgments, and regulatory violations on the part of several companies and their management teams. The allocation of responsibilities and damages will take years to unravel. How then can Kaluza and Vidrine, who are accused of disregarding abnormally high pressure readings that according to the government should have alerted them to the danger of a  blowout at BP’s Macondo well, be the ones facing criminal charges and prison time? How can this be fair, just, or even possible?

It isn’t fair or just. It is possible because it is easier to finger the two middle-managers who inherited the flawed well equipment that was a ticking time bomb than to put a whole company, or many companies, behind bars. As the F.B.I. agent investigating the theft of the Declaration of Independence keeps telling Nicholas Cage’s treasure hunter in the Dan Brown rip-off  movie “American Treasure,” “Somebody has to go to jail.” Kaluza and Vidrine may be the designated villains for the BP spill. Their only crime was one of moral luck: they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, the final links in a tangled chain of incompetence, corruption and miscalculations. Continue reading →

The Asperger’s Child, the Company With A Heart, and the Cheapskate Parents: A Cynical Ethics Tale

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

This is a sweet and gooey ethics tale with, I fear, a fishy center.

James, luckily captured in spontaneous celebration over the completely unexpected gift from the LEGO company

James, luckily captured in spontaneous celebration over the completely unexpected gift from the LEGO company

James Groccia of West Boylston, Massachusetts was nine years old when he told his parents that his dream gift was an Emerald Night Train LEGO Set. His parents, seeking to build his character before he could build his dream train. told the boy that he had to save up for the expensive set, which cost $100. James has Asperger’s Syndrome, which means that he obsesses about things that interest him to an extreme degree, and he made the Lego set the object of his tunnel vision. After two years of meticulous saving, he finally had enough money saved to purchase his prize—-and discovered that it had been discontinued. Now the  Emerald Night Train could only be obtained from collectors or in expensive online auctions, costing far more money than James had saved. The boy was devastated.

At the suggestion of James’ Asperger’s counsellor, his mother helped him write a letter to LEGO, explaining his devotion to the toy and asking if the company could track one down for him. It responded, with regret,  that indeed the Emerald Night Train LEGO Set was out of stock and was no longer made. Then, a few days before James’s birthday this October, a box addressed to James arrived at the family home. Yes, Virginia, it was a brand-new model of the Emerald Night Train! The accompanying letter from Lego said, Continue reading →