parents

Mother’s Day Reflections On A Wonderful Mother With Flawed Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

My mom and Ma Barker had some things in common.

I am spending this Mothers Day in mourning, as today is the first time I have had to experience the holiday without a mother. My mom died earlier this year, as I mentioned here at the time, and she has been buried for less than a month. My mother used to be a regular feature of my ethics seminars, as I would reference her whenever I talked about the so-called “Mom Test,” one of the three famous ethics tests that are useful to set off sluggish ethics alarms, the other two being the Gut Test (“Does this feel wrong?”) and the New York Times Test (“Would I be willing to see my conduct on the front page of the New York Times?”). The “Mom Test” is whether you could tell your mother about your ethically-dubious conduct without hesitation or shame, and I often told my classes that with some mothers, like my own, this test didn’t work very well. “My mother,” I would explain, “has the ethics of Ma Barker.” I was only partially kidding. Continue reading →

Parental Responsibility, Child Exploitation, and Billboard Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Here’s a rule of thumb: Don’t give the rights to reproduce your child’s photograph to a photographer or ad agency unless you are prepared to accept however it is used, and certain that your child will not be harmed or embarrassed as a result.

Is that so hard?

Tricia Fraser has sued Life Always and Majella Cares Heroic Media, an anti-abortion group, claiming it used her daughter’s picture in “a racist, controversial advertising campaign” that is “defamatory, unauthorized, and offensive,” posting the 4-year-old girl’s photo on a giant billboard by the Holland Tunnel and another in Florida.

Nice try. But there is nothing racist about the campaign, and nothing defamatory about using her daughter’s photo in it.  Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Daily Kos Blogger “bal”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Did Past Paul Ryan make Future Paul Ryan a hypocrite, or vice-versa? Is that even possible?

I sometimes comfort myself with the fantasy that the extreme left websites like The Daily Kos are written and read solely by 15-year-olds. While this adds to my anxieties about the public schools’ incompetence at teaching basic skills like logic, analysis and argument, it soothes my fears that our nation’s policies and political discourse are being dangerously warped by millions of addled adults whose passion is untempered by even a modicum of fairness and common sense. In this spirit, I am hoping that bal is a teenager, which would explain, though not justify, his absurd post on Kos. I fear he is not.

He writes, “I guess it’s only when social programs help other people that they’re bad, because I haven’t seen Paul Ryan acknowledging how Social Security benefits helped him and his family in trying times. Continue reading →

Incompetent Elected Official of the Week: Florida Legislator Kathleen Passidomo

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Yup, the Temple girl was asking for it...

While pushing for a bill mandating a dress code for schools, Florida’s GOP legislator Kathleen Passidomo decided to bolster her argument by linking it the horrendous Texas case in which an eleven-year-old girl was raped by 18 men. She said:

“There was an article about an 11-year-old girl who was gang-raped in Texas by 18 young men because she was dressed up like a 21-year-old prostitute. And her parents let her attend school like that. And I think it’s incumbent upon us to create some areas where students can be safe in school and show up in proper attire so what happened in Texas doesn’t happen to our students.”

This woman is too dim-witted to make sandwiches. much less laws.

I don’t care if the 11-year old girl’s parents dressed her  like Christina Aguilara on a particularly slutty day. I don’t care if she looked like Jon Benet Ramsey on estrogen supplements. I don’t care if she looked 15, 17, 22, 31, or 64; I don’t care if she was buck naked and singing “I’m Just a Girl Who Can’t Say No.” None of that would create any reason, excuse, motivation or justification for even one man to rape her, much less 18.

Blaming rape on how women dress is an insult to men and a denigration of the rights of women. Blaming a rape on how a little girl dresses, however, is a clear sign of dangerous warped and flawed logic, values, compassion and comprehension.

Comments of the Day: “Bully Ethics…”

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

I was in New York all day, and returned to find a plethora of excellent comments on the post, “Bully Ethics: Lessons from Casey the Punisher.” Two of the finest follow, and they go well together: Michael on the dilemma facing the bullied child, and Lianne on her family’s solution.

First, Michael:

“Bullies only understand violence. If you are being bullied, how can you stop it? Continue reading →

Lindsay’s Sad Lie

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Lindsay Lohan, when the future was bright

I’m still rooting for Lindsay Lohan to turn things around, so I didn’t want to make too big a deal over her recent tweet in connection with the 24-year-old’s latest drama, a felony charge for walking out of a jewelry store wearing an unpurchased necklace priced at $2,500. Being still on probation as she is, the downward-spiraling former child star is facing the possibility of serious prison time. The tweet said, in part,

“…I was not raised to lie, cheat or steal…!”

This is either self-delusion on an epic scale or one of the most brazen lies since Lindsay told police, when they found cocaine in the pocket of her jeans, that she wasn’t wearing her own pants…or perhaps since she told a judge that she couldn’t make her court appearance on a drunk driving charge, after flying off to the Cannes Film Festival shortly before she was due in court, because “her passport was stolen.” Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Unethical Quote of the Week: Walmart”

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

The Comment of the Day on Walmart’s jaw-dropping justification for its new line of make-up for the under-12 set,  from Steven Mark Pilling:

“… This sort of thing is repugnant by nature. We’ve all seen other clothing lines for kids that reflect this sort of thing, to include sexy lingerie for little girls. This is unrelentingly vile, as it not only sexualizes children further in the eyes of predators, but that it normalizes it in their own developing minds. This is the same argument, of course, that I’ve long employed in my opposition to films employing child actors in R-rated performances. And, I maintain, just as valid. In other words, this is a case of pedophile bait.

“That slickly worded announcement from Walmart that you quoted even resembles that of filmmakers who present such things. The bottom line is profit… regardless of means. The excuse is in shifting the onus onto the parents who, while distracted by other items, will absentmindedly consent to their children (who have been attracted by some colorful, glitzy item- as children innocently are) and indulge them… only to later discover (maybe) the true nature of what they’ve bought. But the damage will have been done.”

Unethical Quote of the Week: Walmart

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

http://www.ketknbc.com/news/how-young-is-too-young-for-makeup

“The geoGIRL line was developed in partnership with our customers to give parents a healthier, age-appropriate option for their tween girls who ask about wearing make-up. The decision of what is age appropriate to wear makeup rests solely with the parent. The line will be marketed to parents and targets a certain life stage as opposed to a certain age of girl so parents can make informed decisions whenever they feel it’s appropriate for their child to wear makeup.”

—-Walmart, in a statement addressing criticism of its new makeup line called geoGIRL that targets “tweens”–or 8-12 year old girls.  The products include a cleanser, blush, eye shadow, mascara, and more. Continue reading →

Pole-Dancing for Kids: Icky or Unethical?

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

The latest issue of “Pole Spin,” the “international pole dance and lifestyle magazine,” features “the world’s youngest pole dancer” and a proud family with four  pole-dancing teenagers.

Is this wrong? Child porn? Bad parenting? What the heck is it when something with sexual connotations is used by children in a non-sexual way? Continue reading →

“Books for Christmas?!” A Christmas YouTube Ethics Lesson…For Parents

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Last year, a three-year old opened a Christmas present and told off his parents when he discovered a book instead of a toy. So amuses were the parents at their offspring’s absence of gratitude and manners that they put the video of his disappointed response on YouTube. This Christmas, the video has gone suddenly viral, and there are dozens of web posts all over cyberspace holding the little ingrate up as an exemplar of all that’s wrong with Christmas, children, America, materialism, and more. Many commenters are suggesting just desserts for this budding illiterate, like no Christmas presents at all, nothing but books as presents from now until puberty, or nothing but books by Dean Koonzt, Sarah Palin, or  Marcel Proust. That’ll teach him. Continue reading →