political correctness

Now THIS Is An Offensive Team Name

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

The London, Ontario independent baseball team has decided to rename itself “The London Rippers.”

Jack's last victim: a logo, perhaps?

The city’s mayor has expressed concerns about the name, and good for him. This isn’t a manufactured political correctness complaint, based on the dubious logic that it demeans a group to honor it with an athletic team name. This is the opposite: a team name that honors a serial killer who disemboweled poor women in the slums of London in 1888. Misogyny isn’t cute or funny, and anyone who thinks that making Jack the Ripper a team symbol is anything but one more outrage perpetrated against his pathetic victims but gets indignant over the Atlanta Braves has his head on upside-down and backwards.

Now, I suppose it’s possible that an association of serial killers will protest that the name “London Rippers” dehumanizes them and puts them in the same category with lions, tigers and bears. In such an eventuality, I would side with the associations of lions, tigers and bears protesting that the name denigrates them. Sportswriting lawyer Craig Calcaterra, a sharp baseball mind whose NBC column alerted me to this story, somehow misses the point by a mile, writing:

“…Jack the Ripper did his work, like, 130 years ago. Murder is murder and it’s always awful, but at what point has enough time passed to where this kind of thing isn’t a problem?  And yes, I note the mayor’s nod to ending violence against women, but does a reference to a 19th century British serial killer who is more often fictionalized today than dealt with in his brutal reality really undermine those laudable aims?
I’m not saying it’s 100% fabulous. But really, kids were singing about Lizzie Borden taking an axe and giving her mother 40 whacks within a few years of that going down. Is it really too soon to be able to use a  long-dead historical figure as a mascot? There are a bunch teams called “crusaders” and the crusades were brutal. We still have Chief Wahoo around, and you can make an argument that the thinking behind that mascot (i.e. Indians are somehow less-than-human) represented way more death and destruction than anything Jack the Ripper did.”

Ugh. How many rationalizations are in this passage? Playground chants about Lizzie Borden (or the Black Plague, which is what “Ring around the rosey” is about) are not remotely comparable to naming a community’s baseball team after a serial killer. Playground refrains don’t become part of a community’s identity, and they don’t in any way bestow prestige on the dark subjects of their rhymes. Teams named after crusaders, warriors, braves and pirates don’t aspire to honor the deaths caused by these groups, any more than teams are named the Lions or Tigers because they have mauled people, or the Cardinals and Orioles are so named because the birds poop on our heads. There one reason, and only one, Jack the Ripper is famous. He slit the throats of desperate prostitutes and dissected them,: in the case of Mary Kelly, he minced his victim, leaving her internal organs on her night table. The London Ripper sent body parts of one victim to police, and taunted them. He didn’t possess a single admirable quality to justify a connection to a sports team, unless there are professional misogyny, mayhem or maniac leagues somewhere.

And Craig’s argument that is an expiration date on the offensiveness of trivializing tragedy is the worst of all. Seriously, Craig? So Penn State can call its wrestling team “the Molesters” in 100 years or so? What he’s really endorsing is ignorance. Kids who chant about the bubonic plague don’t realize it, and neither do their parents. That a lot of people don’t know the truth behind all the fictional Jack the Ripper tales is an argument for enlightening them, not pretending that killing prostitutes is just fun and games.

The mayor of London is right, Craig  is wrong, and if there ever was an inappropriate and harmful  team name, the London Rippers is it.

Hitler’s Paintings, Dirty Money, and an Ethics Quiz

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

A Hitler masterpiece during the artist's controversial "Care Bears" period

As readers here probably know, I don’t do much commentary on Swedish ethics, but this intriguing story touches on a couple of Ethics Alarms topics of continuing interest: so-called dirty money and political correctness.

Sweden’s debt collection agency had planned to sell seven paintings by that noted 20th Century artist Adolf Hitler to bring the government some extra cash to pay off debts. A genuine Hitler can fetch $40,000 or more on the global art market. The intended sale never happened, because the agency concluded that the paintings were fakes, but never mind: what is ethically provocative is that Stockholm’s Jewish association protested that it would be morally offensive for the government to make money off of Hitler’s artistic labors. “It is symbolically unfortunate that people earn money on these items,” said the group’s spokesperson. Continue reading →

Five Questions and Answers About The Steven J. Braun Law Firm Halloween Party Outrage

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Imagine: tasteless Halloween costumes!

Background: New York Times Joe Nocera is stirring up public outrage because some employees of a law firm involved in questionable foreclosure practices attended the firms 2010 Halloween party dressed as homeless people. Photos taken at the Steven J. Baum law firm’s Halloween party last year were passed along to Nocera by a former firm employee.  In one that was posed on the Times site, two party-goers are dressed as  homeless people, with one holding a sign that reads, “I lost my home and I was never served.” Nocera wrote that the costumes show an “appalling lack of compassion.”

Here are ten questions and answers regarding ethics issues raised by the incident. Continue reading →

Herman Cain, the News Media’s New Sarah Palin

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Calling Herman Cain an Oreo and an Uncle Tom is bad, but comparing him to Sanjaya? Is there no limit to media cruelty?

At least when the media and pundits decided to suspend basic principles of fairness and decency to attack Sarah Palin for the unforgivable crime of being an outspoken conservative woman (even before she had a chance to show she deserved to be attacked for other reasons), she had been nominated for Vice President. Business executive Herman Cain, a similarly reviled aberration from the expected norm as a black Republican, is now getting equally unconscionable journalistic treatment just for getting decent poll numbers.

I will move past the race-based attacks from columnists and the MSNBC hit squad that have explicitly referred to him as an Oreo, an Uncle Tom, a black man who “knows his place,”  “the GOP’s token,” and “the Sanjaya of the Republican field,” as well as the many demeaning references to him as a “joke candidate,” and go right to this weekend, when the Palin standard was on bright display.

Here is part of the interview of Cain on “Face the Nation,” after host Bob Scheiffer showed Cain’s bizarre web ad, which ends with his campaign manager taking a puff on a cigarette:

Continue reading →

Celebrate Columbus Day, Honor Columbus

/ Jack Marshall / 39 Comments

Today is Columbus Day, not that one would know it to read the typical paper or to watch most newscasts. The Italian explorer’s reputation and legacy have been relentlessly eroded over the years by temporal chauvinists who apply spurious social and historical hindsight to justify unfair criticism of civilization’s heroes. Christopher Columbus deserves the honor this holiday bestowed on him.  He was a visionary and an explorer who, like all transformative figures, possessed the courage and imagination to challenge conventional wisdom and seek new horizons of achievement.

Holding Columbus responsible for the predation of the Spanish and the devastation of native populations that were among the unanticipated consequences of his achievement is the equivalent of blaming Steve Jobs for technology’s elimination of occupations and the fact that our children are fat and have the attention span of mayflies. And of course, anyone who believes that the Stone Age populations of the Americas would have continued to prosper in Avatar bliss without Columbus’s intrusion is ignorant of both human nature and world history. Continue reading →

Hank Williams, Jr.: Victim of a Political Correctness Mugging

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

Wait---Hank Williams Jr. thinks Obama is like Jennifer Aniston?

On the Fox News morning couch-fest, country singer Hank Williams, Jr. had this exchange with the hosts:

HANK WILLIAMS: Remember the golf game?

    STEVE DOOCY: Boehner?

    HANK WILLIAMS: That was one of the biggest political mistakes ever.

    CO-HOSTS: Why?

    HANK WILLIAMS: That turned a lot of people off. You know, watching, you know, it just didn’t go over.

    GRETCHEN CARLSON: You mean when John Boehner played golf with President Obama?

    HANK WILLIAMS: Oh, yeah! Yeah. And Biden and Kasich, yeah. Uh-huh.

    GRETCHEN CARLSON: What did you not like about it? It seems to be a really pivotal moment for you.

    HANK WILLIAMS: Come on. Come on. It would be like Hitler playing golf with Netanyahu, OK?

It wasn’t OK, apparently. Headlines sprouted up like weeds claiming that Williams had “compared Obama to Hitler,” or “said Obama was like Hitler.” So because ESPN figured much of its audience would think that Hank Williams compared the President to Adolf Hitler, since the media was reporting his words that way, ESPN, that paragon of courage, fired Williams as the voice of Monday Night Football. No longer will his song introduce the festivities. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: University of Wisconsin-Stout Chancellor Charles W. Sorensen

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

"Oh, HELP me, University administrators! A poster says that a fictional space cowboy from a TV series that isn't on anymore might kill me, or someone, under certain conditions!"

“UW-Stout administrators believe strongly in the right of all students, faculty and staff to express themselves freely about issues on campus and off.  This freedom is fundamental on a public university campus. However, we also have the responsibility to promote a campus environment that is free from threats of any kind—both direct and implied. It was our belief, after consultation with UW System legal counsel, that the posters in question constituted an implied threat of violence.  That is why they were removed. This was not an act of censorship.  This was an act of sensitivity to and care for our shared community, and was intended to maintain a campus climate in which everyone can feel welcome, safe and secure.”

—-

, one featuring a humorous quote from a cult TV science fiction series, the other a satiric poster opposing fascism, as in cases where speech-censoring university administrators remove harmless pop culture references they don’t understand. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “The University of Wisconsin’s Lesson: Ignorance + Political Correctness = Repression”

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Michael posted the Comment of the Day (though I am posting it here a day late), discussing the plight of the U. of Wisconsin professor whose “Firefly” poster was deemed to create an unacceptable risk of violence. Here is his perceptive addendum to  The University of Wisconsin’s Lesson: Ignorance + Political Correctness = Repression:

“I think you are missing another force at work here: the bureaucracy . They have gladly embraced the political correctness of the liberal majority on campus, not because they necessarily believe in it, but because it lets them have power. There is a wonderful quote from P.J. O’Rourke on this, “bureaucracy is attractive because it gives every piss-ant an anthill to piss from”. Chief Walker got to exercise arbitrary and petty authority in tearing down the posters. People who enjoy the exercise of unrestrained power over people are attracted to such positions. By challenging her, Miller was challenging the entire bureaucratic ruling class of the university, and that couldn’t be allowed. From that moment on, he was going to be picked on and subject to unreasonable scrutiny, subjected to endless requests to comply with the most outrageous interpretations of every University regulation. He will be subjected to endless meetings to explain and justify every time he goes to the bathroom before a “Hearing consisting of both faculty and administrators”:

“Section IV, paragraph 5 of the faculty clearly state that “when not teaching, faculty should be available to students”. By using the men’s room, you were unavailable to female students. This was a blatantly sexist act of your part and under my authority as gender relations officer are ordering you to attend sensitivity training.”

The University of Wisconsin’s Lesson: Ignorance + Political Correctness = Repression

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Why does a defunct cult TV space Western threaten the University of Wisconsin? Good Question!

As in the disturbing incident at Widener Law School, in which a professor has been persecuted and punished for the imagined sexist and racist implications in his  fanciful classroom hypothetical, a theater professor at the University of Wisconsin in Stout, is now being subjected to full-fledged censorship by the university’s administration because of a pop culture reference that it finds “threatening.”

And also as in the Widener situation, one wonders if the school’s faculty cares enough about academic freedom and free speech to support their colleague. So far, they have not.

Prof. James Miller is, like me, a fan of “Firefly,”  Joss Whedon’s late, lamented science fiction TV series. He mounted a poster on his door that shows actor Nathan Fillion as Malcolm “Mal” Reynolds, captain of the spaceship that cruised through the series.  The poster includes a famous line (well, famous with fans of the show, at least) by Reynolds in the first episode,  delivered in response to a passenger who asked if he was in danger of being murdered while he slept. “You don’t know me, son, so let me explain this to you once,” Fillion’s character said. “If I ever kill you, you’ll be awake. You’ll be facing me. And you’ll be armed.”

Lisa Walter, the university’s chief of police, took down the poster, stating that “it is unacceptable to have postings such as this that refer to killing.” Walter said that the poster was not covered by the First Amendment:

“ We were notified of the existence of the posting, reviewed it and believe that the wording on the poster can be interpreted as a threat by others and/or could cause those that view it to believe that you are willing/able to carry out actions similar to what is listed. This posting can cause others to fear for their safety, thus it was removed.”

Absurd. Ignorant. Offensive.  And an abuse of power. Continue reading →

Coercive Indoctrination in the Schools: Unethical, Regardless of the Content

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

A German language teacher at Western Hills High School in Fort Worth, Texas sent 14-year-old honors student Dakota Ary to the principal’s office for telling a classmate that he believes “homosexuality is wrong.”

Ary was then suspended as punishment. Homosexuality isn’t wrong,, but the school was.

Ary, who was raised in a church that believes homosexuality violates God’s laws, has a right to believe whatever he chooses to, and also has a right to express those beliefs as long as he doesn’t denigrate fellow students or incite violence or a disruption. There are words for schools punishing students for their beliefs, and among those words are “indoctrination,” “coercion,” brain-washing,” and “unethical.” Continue reading →