For a text-book example of how political correctness, ideology, ignorance and a humor deficit can undermine speech, culture and entertainment, we need look no further than Montana, and its public critics of the Missoula Community Theater’s production of “The Mikado,” perhaps the best of all Gilbert and Sullivan operettas and one of the very best musical comedies ever written. Continue reading
And so it begins.
CNN’s John King: “Before we go to break, I want to make a quick point. We were having a discussion about the Chicago mayoral race. My friend Andy Shaw used the term ‘in the crosshairs’ in talking about the candidates. We’re trying, we’re trying to get away from that language. Andy is a good friend, he’s covered politics for a long time, but we’re trying to get away from that kind of language.”
What “kind of langauge”? Oh, you know: vivid language. Metaphors. Similes. Can’t have that on CNN, because, as everyone knows, a completely unrelated use of a cross-hairs graphic on a Sarah Palin campaign map had nothing to do with the shooting of Rep. Gaby Giffords and 19 others, but the media decided to make everyone think it was the fault of the map anyway. So now a news network, which is supposed to convey information, is apologizing for a guest’s use of the word “cross-hairs” in a context that had nothing to do with violence. Continue reading
One of the characteristics of a true Ethics Train Wreck (or ETW for short) is that it eventually reaches the point where unethical and ethical responses to it are indistinguishable. The Tucson shooting ETW officially reached that point today, when Speaker of the House John Boehner apparently yielded to the complaint that referring to the health care reform law as “job killing” was inappropriate in light of Jared Loughner’s near-murder of Rep. Giffords along with killing or wounding 19 other victims.
In a post on his official blog, Boehner referred to the law as “job destroying” and “job crushing,” an apparent concession to critics like Democratic Rep. Chellie Pingree, who argued that the House bill called the “Repeal the Job Killing Health Care Law Act” should be renamed something without “killing” in it, “for Gabby’s sake.” By doing so, the Speaker of the House gave credibility to an argument that… Continue reading
As one who has argued that certain TV commercials, notably the infamous “green shirt” Tide commercial, the Twix commercial and Direct TV’s disturbing (but often funny) series showing football fans hurting rival team supporters, I know I’m asking for trouble by declaring, as I officially do here, that for compliance firm Global Ethics to criticize TV shows like “The Office” and “30 Rock” for supposed workplace ethics violations is absurd. But it is absurd. And criticizing the commercials in question is not.
Hear me out. Continue reading
The last Christmas gift Jill Patella got from her late husband, who died in 2007, was a six foot tall plastic statue of Santa Claus that loudlysings Christmas songs in a jolly baritone. In his memory, Jill decided to put the singing Santa on her front lawn this year, where he has been singing around the clock, driving her neighbors Lorillard Avenue in Union Beach, New Jersey to consider Santacide.
Jill explained her intentional infliction of the holiday noise pollution by telling reporters, “This year was the time. He [her late husband, not Santa] would have wanted me to live life again.”
She did not explain why she believes that her departed husband’s definition of “live life” was “show utter disregard for the neighbors.” Even if Mr. Patella was the kind of selfish, irresponsible person who believes that his tastes and desires trump the right of the people around him to enjoy their holidays without having to listen to a giant mechanical singing Santa, that would not excuse her for carrying on his unethical ways.
There is such a vast area of reasonable Christmas conduct between the insane poles represented by NPR’s Nina Totenberg apologizing for using the term “Christmas” on TV, and the in-your-face Christmas celebration represented by Jill Patella’s lawn concerts. Why do so many people have such a hard time locating it?
Last week, the McBurney YMCA in the West Village of New York City fired Santa Claus, who traditionally takes gift requests from children at its annual holiday luncheon, in favor of Frosty the Snowman. Why, you ask?
John Rappaport, executive director of the McBurney YMCA, explained, “We realized that change is sometimes good, and that Frosty is a great winter character who would appeal to a broader number of kids.”
Translation: Continue reading
UPDATE, 12/19/2011: There is more on the topic of international adoptions here.
There are few things more harmful than a trusted organization associated with good will and good deeds that uses its influence irresponsibly, and there are few organizations with more accumulated trust than UNICEF, the United Nations organization dedicated to children’s rights, safety and welfare. That UNICEF could be promoting policies that actually harms children seems too awful to contemplate, but that appears to be what is occurring. The problem is that most people have grown up thinking of the organization as the epitome of international virtue. UNICEF doing something that hurts kids? Impossible. Since the group’s impressive moral authority seems to be focused in an unethical direction, the damage it can do before public opinion turns is substantial.
The area is international adoptions. Continue reading
Yes, it has come to this. The period between Thanksgiving and Christmas season is a pre-unethical condition, getting worse every year. (Pre-unethical conditions are situations that experience teaches us deserve early ethics alarms, since the stage is set for habitual bad conduct.) The financial stresses on the public and the business community in 2010 will only fuel the creeping tendency to ignore the moral and ethical values that are supposed to underlie the winter holidays—charity, gratitude, generosity, kindness, love, forgiveness, peace and hope—for the non-ethical considerations that traditionally battle them for supremacy: avarice, selfishness, greed, self-pity, and cynicism. Combine this with the ideological and political polarization in today’s America and the deterioration of mutual respect and civility, and the days approaching Christmas are likely to become an ethical nightmare…unless we work collectively to stop that from happening. Continue reading
We may be seeing a sterling example of the innate American resistance to intrusive and excessive authority, just when it looked as if many citizens were prepared to accept reductions in their dignity, privacy and freedom that past generations would never have countenanced.
As usual, the fuse has been lit by a combination of incompetence, bad management, and arrogance. Since the tragedy of 9-11, airplane passengers have been remarkably passive and tolerant in accepting increasingly inconvenient and de-humanizing security procedures at airports. They have allowed political correctness to hold sway over fairness and logic, subjecting decrepit seniors, ten-year-old girls and U.S. Senators to aggressive wanding rather than employing reasonable profiling techniques. They have allowed near-miss terrorist attacks caused by sloppy Homeland Security procedures and execution to be addressed by punishing the public with increasingly more intrusive search techniques. But when new procedures involving full-hand body searches were recently instituted without due warning, while the new full-body scanning devices were standing unused because of a shortage of trained personnel, anger, resistance and traditional American refusal to be pushed around finally made their appearance. Why, passengers are asking, must they be molested to compensate for intelligence failures? Where are reasonable alternatives? Why are we being treated this way? Continue reading
We have learned a lot from the Juan Williams firing. For example,
Ethics Alarms 