politics

A Northwestern University Education, 2010

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

“Ethics in Politics: An evening with Former Governor Rod Blagojevich,” will be presented by Northwestern University at Cahn Auditorium next week for the education and edification of its students and others in the university community.

Future programs under consideration by Northwestern include:

  • Career Development and Image Enhancement: an evening with Lindsay Lohan
  • Civility in the Public Square: an evening with Rep. Alan Grayson
  • Retirement with Dignity: an evening with O.J. Simpson
  • Building Trust: an evening with Bernard Madoff

I am depressed, and am going to bed.

But if you have  similarly edifying programs to suggest, I will pass them along to the Northwestern administration.

Rep. Cao: Profile in Something or Other

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Wow. One lone House Republican voting for the reviled Democrat healthcare bill.  Talk about conscience! Talk about courage!

Well, maybe. The vote by Louisiana Republican  Anh “Joseph” Cao could have been a truly ethical act, or a completely  cynical one. The fact that it is almost impossible to tell which explains a lot about the funhouse mirror version of “ethics” in use of Capitol Hill.  Continue reading →

Cocoa Krispies and the Curse of the Transparent Lie

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I have always been bothered by public lies that nobody could possibly believe. It is widely believed that such lies are harmless, since nobody could possibly be deceived by them. They are harmful, however, because their use suggests that lying doesn’t matter— it’s trivial, something everybody does, and nobody should expect truthfulness when a lie will serve.  The culture is already far too accepting of transparent lies. Politics is the most prominent example. Because the public expects candidates for high office to lie about their intent, they are amazingly forgiving when campaign lies become apparent. And because we  knowingly vote for well-meaning liars (or so we think), some  really dangerous, corrupt liars not only get elected, but can survive public exposure as liars. After all, say their supporters, enablers and henchmen, it is only a matter of degree.

Transparent lies, therefore, numb us to the hard stuff. They make us cynical, and the make us tolerant of liars. Then there is the possibility that the spokesperson who utters an obvious whopper really does think we’ll believe it. That’s an insult, profoundly disrespectful, and we should resent it.

The Ethics Scoreboard had a  feature called “The David Manning Trivial Liar of the Month” to highlight the public lies nobody could possibly believe. It was named for Sony’s “defense” when it was revealed that the movie critic, “David Manning,”  who they advertised as raving about lousy Sony films like “The Animal” (Starring Rob Schneider as a guy who accidentally has animal DNA grafted…oh, never mind.) was a fake invented by their marketing division. Sony said, in essence, that it was no big deal because everyone knows those critical raves in movie ads are mostly lies anyway. I didn’t carry the feature over to Ethics Alarms, because the kind of transparent, shameless, “I’m going to say this anyway even though it will have America rolling its eyes” lie the feature was designed to condemn didn’t come around every month. Naturally, the minute  Ethics Alarms debuts, here comes the Kellogg people with a classic.

Suddenly, boxes of Kellogg’s breakfast cereals like Cocoa Krispies have a huge yellow label across the front proclaiming “Now Helps Your Child’s IMMUNITY.”   Next to the banner is an announcement that the cereal is soaked with antioxidants, upping the daily vitamin requirement provided by a serving from 10% to 25%.  This has attracted the attention of the FDA , consumer advocates, and nutritionists, who say that the claim that a bowl of Cocoa Krispies that have been sprayed with extra vitamins can improve any child’s immunity to disease is either “dubious” or “ridiculous,” depending on whether you want to be nice about it.  USA Today quoted Marion Nestle, nutrition professor at New York University, as fuming, “The idea that eating Cocoa Krispies will keep a kid from getting swine flu, or from catching a cold, doesn’t make sense. Yes, these nutrients are involved in immunity, but I can’t think of a nutrient that isn’t involved in the immune system.”

The immunity claim isn’t  Kellogg’s obvious lie, however, as hard as that may be to believe. This is, also quoted in the USA Today story:

“It was not created to capitalize on the current H1N1 flu situation,” spokeswoman Susanne Norwitz says. “Kellogg developed this product in response to consumers expressing a need for more positive nutrition.”

Right. It is just a coincidence that in the middle of a swine flu epidemic, with dire predictions of world plague and the Dustin Hoffman movie “Outbreak” playing on every cable system, with parents sending their kids to the doctor as soon as they sneeze, scared silly by news reports of perfectly healthy children catching the H1N1 flu and dropping dead in days, Cocoa Crispies suddenly takes up a third of its box with claims that the cereal boosts immunity.

To be fair, it is obvious that Norwitz was trying to be deceitful, which is usually the antithesis of an obvious lie, since deceit depends on using the truth to deceive. She said the product wasn’t “developed” to exploit the H1N1 scare—no, no, it was “developed” because consumers wanted more nutrition. But nobody asked her why the product was developed. They asked her why Kellogg’s was making the dubious  immunity claim, and her answer that Kellogg’s wasn’t intentionally capitalizing on H1N1 fears, and that assertion, despite her attempt to qualify it, insults our intelligence.

What should she have said? She should have said this: “We know parents are concerned,with the current flu outbreak and all the publicity it is receiving, about their children’s heath and their vulnerability to the virus. Since we had recently increased the antioxidants added to our cereals, it seemed to be responsible to make sure parents knew about it, so we provided the banner. Antioxidents do contribute to immunity against disease. Did we think this would sell more cereal? Sure. We’re in the cereal business.”

But no. She and her employers didn’t have the integrity, honesty, brains, or respect for us to say that. They chose instead to play word games, and ended up with a foolish misrepresentation that even the most gullible couldn’t believe.

The Acceptable Slur

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Reason Magazine’s website has an article today by Steve Chapman describing New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine’s tactic of ridiculing his opponent Chris Christie’s weight (among other barbs, Corzine has used an ad showing Christie looking unusually large with a voice-over about him “throwing his weight around.” Har Har.) as politically maladroit. He’s right, but Chapman neglects to discuss the ethical issue involved. Attacking someone for his or her physical attributes is unethical: rude, mean-spirited, unkind and uncivil, a pure violation of the Golden Rule. Suggesting that a person’s worth can be discerned from his or her physical attributes is, quite simply, bigotry. Corzine, a proud liberal, would never dream of attacking an opponent for his race, or a physical disability like a missing leg. But calling an opponent fat in a manner designed to appeal to the bigotry of others is acceptable to him, indeed, acceptable to many. Why is that?

This is an oddly popular form of bigotry for liberals, journalists (I know I’m approaching redundancy here) and media commentators. The most popular target of fat attacks is conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh. Despite the fact that  Limbaugh has been in one of his svelte periods for some time, many newspapers and websites continue to accompany stories about his latest rants with an especially unflattering photo showing him roughly 100 pounds heavier.  John Kerry and other Limbaugh critics routinely include physical insults as they respond to his critiques. (They also frequently reference his problems with prescription pill addiction, an AMA-decreed medical malady. Their excuse for this is that Limbaugh has been unsympathetic to drug abusers in the past, an example of the unethical rationalization known here as the Tit for Tat excuse)  The junior U.S. senator from Minnesota got his job in part by making liberals giggle with his book entitled  “Rush Limbaugh is a Big, Fat, Idiot.”   But Limbaugh is just one target of many. The late, liberal Washington Post cartoonist Herb Block always drew the characters he didn’t like—Republicans, conservatives, bankers, “corporate interests,” “industrialists”—as human beach balls, to contrast with his poor, downtrodden, attractively thin liberal archetypes. Conservatives are guilty of fat-baiting too, of course; when they weren’t  using Mary Jo Kopechne to ridicule the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, they called him a tub of lard. Conservatives often have a more difficult time getting away with it, because liberals will rise in indignation to condemn such a tactic on the Right, especially if the target is a woman, as when conservative radio talk show Laura Ingraham was pilloried for referring to John McCain’s daughter Meaghan as “plus-sized.” Liberals appear to understand that using physical characteristics to deride and diminish someone is unethical, but believe there is an exception when the fat person in question is “bad,” as in “disagrees with them.”

Here is the sad truth. Many people, liberals and conservatives, are bigoted against fat people, and even those who are repulsed by bigotry based on race, religion or physical malady manage to rationalize regarding excessive weight as a sign of bad character, greed, gluttony, laziness, or, in the most recent trend, having too large a carbon footprint. Good, responsible people jog and exercise, like Jon Corzine. True, Corzine is a millionaire, and studies show that the higher correlation is not between wealth and fat, but rather poverty and fat, but never mind.  Though the culture now strongly reinforces the message that it is wrong for a white man to feel superior to a black man, it has yet assimilate the concept that a thin, fit, attractive American isn’t inherently preferable to a fat one, no matter what else the corpulent individual has to offer.

It’s time; indeed, it is past time. I think there is even  a case to be made that a fat individual may be overweight for ethical reasons. You can spend a couple hours a day jogging and pumping iron—14 hours a week, 56 hours a month, 672 hours a year—or you can spend the same time on pursuits that benefit people other than yourself, like your family, the poor, or society. Extra weight may be a form of sacrifice, a badge of honor.  What justification does Al Franken or Laura Ingraham, or a Hollywood actor who gets paid to be fit, have to question that choice or feel superior? If Oprah Winfrey wants to call herself fat, fine, but who can criticize how she uses her time? She cares about other things more than the scale and the mirror. Good for her.

But that’s just an argument that fat bigotry is unjustified. The primary point is that it is wrong, as wrong as any other form of bigotry. I don’t think Jon Corzine should necessarily lose the governorship because of it, because American culture, so far, has told him that fat bigotry is still tolerated. Still, if Corzine did lose, and lost in part because of his bigoted campaign, it would send an important  message—the message is that the “acceptable slur”  isn’t acceptable any more, no matter who the target is.

October Unethical Website: www.chamber-of-commerce.us.

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Today the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is one of the designated enemies of the Obama administration. This is not a complete surprise. The Chamber, organized at the request of President Taft specifically to communicate the positions and interests of the private sector in contrast to those of organized labor (the AFL-CIO’s offices are virtually next door to the Chamber, which itself looks across Lafayette Park onto the White House) always has a better relationship with Republican administrations than Democrat, because of the two parties’ very different philosophies on labor, regulation, free enterprise, taxation, and other epic issues. Other Democratic administrations have managed to respond to the Chamber’s predictable opposition without vilifying it; but not this one. Taking its cue from the White House’s regrettable enemies-list approach, a coalition of extreme progressive-left organizations have launched  www.StopTheChamber.com to make the vilification intense, focusing on de-legitimizing the Chamber as a national policy advocate.

Typical of such groups and such efforts (by both the Left and the Right), StoptheChamber’s screed  begins with the assumption that its position is the only defensible one, that they have all the answers, that they are good, and therefore the opposition is evil. The Chamber, in this formula, is not trying to avoid untenable deficits and large tax increases, as it claims, but rather working to deny health care for all. It is not questioning the wisdom of spending billions of dollars and handicapping U.S. industry with scientifically dubious solutions to climate change, but rather trying to poison the environment for profit. It is not lobbying, but “buying Congress.” [Clarification: I agree that a lot of lobbying, including that of the Chamber and its members, does amount to “buying Congress,” or trying to. Lobbying, as it is currently practiced in America, too often promotes corruption. It is disingenuous, however, to take the position that one side’s lobbying is corrupt while the other side’s identical activities are virtuous.]

The group’s remedy for the inconvenience of the Chamber’s opposition is typically undemocratic: shut it down with investigations and government harassment. Alleging “criminal activity and fraud” (and, amusingly, quoting disgraced felon Eliott Spitzer, the deposed Governor of New York, to bolster its claims), the group wants to stop the Chamber from lobbying and expressing contrary opinions…essentially because it is a formidable adversary.

OK. The group’s rhetoric (the coalition is called “the Velvet Revolution,” and finding the actual groups it includes is extremely time-consuming—at least the Chamber’s members don’t hide behind their umbrella) is undemocratic, uncivil, hyperbolic, and juvenile, but typical (sadly) of a lot of over-heated ranting on the Right and the Left, and individually harmless. (The cumulative effect of this sort of political offal-throwing on all sides is disastrous to our government, but that is a larger topic for another post.) It announces itself for what it is, an unapologetic, extreme, progressive, take-no-prisoners organization advocating revolutionary change in America. if you didn’t already agree with their assertions, you will not find them especially persuasive. When the group dashed far past the ethical line was when it held a fake press conference under the Chamber’s banner, and supported it with the fake website, http://www.chamber-of-commerce.us The address is misleading, and the site itself is more so. Using graphics indistinguishable from the actual Chamber homepage, the site makes a serious effort to deceive any reader into believing he or she has reached the US Chamber website, and that the Chamber, through a statement by its President, Tom Donohue, is reversing course and embracing climate change legislation.

A hoax, a joke, a parody—this is what the Velvet Revolution is calling the site, which is now, appropriately, the object of legal action by the Chamber. The Chamber has a right to express views contrary to climate change advocates, just as the Velvet Revolution has a right to make its opinions known; the press conference and the website interfere with the Chamber’s message. These cyber stunts may be legal (though I doubt it), but they are not in any sense fair or ethical. They are not designed to educate or inform, or even debate. Their purpose is to confuse, deceive, and annoy, while achieving media publicity as a bonus.

Of course, the Chamber’s choice was to protect itself from misrepresentation and help unsuspecting members of the public from landing on the wrong website, looking like bullies in the process, or to ignore the deception and allow it to continue. It is in a no-win situation, which is exactly as the Velvet Revolution intended. In other words, their tactic was an unqualified success.

That does not make it right.

—————-

[Full disclosure: I used to work for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. I was hired to run the Chamber’s policy issue research foundation, which had the assignment of performing open-ended, independent research on issues of concern to the nation and the business community. I was permitted to choose the topics of the research, to choose the researchers, and to pick each project’s advisory committees, which always included representatives from academia, labor, government and other points of view as well as private sector experts. Sometimes the results of our studies supported the Chamber’s position, and sometimes they did not. But I was never pressured to slant the findings; indeed, my boss at the Chamber, an Executive Vice-President, insisted that it was critical not to bias the studies in any way. He insisted on honesty, integrity, and letting the facts show the way, even when others in the Chamber leadership strongly objected.

That boss was Thomas J. Donohue, today the Chamber’s President. He was the most impressive of many impressive and able people I met in the seven years I worked for the Chamber, which was and is far less monolithic in its ideological views than its image suggests. Tom is smart, open-minded, a deft politician and a talented leader. He has a sense of humor. Most of all, I found him to be someone you can trust. He may defeat you, he may outmaneuver you, but he does not cheat, and I never knew him to lie. He has a constituency as president of a business organization, and he will fight for their interests, but not in an unfair way.

I left the Chamber shortly after Tom Donohue did (he became the head of the American Trucking Association), because he was no longer there to make sure my research efforts would have integrity and free reign. Still, I respected the organization, its expertise, breadth and professionalism. Many of its positions were not my positions, and are not today, but the Chamber does its job, agree with it or not, professionally and well.]

President Obama and the Peace Prize

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

There are several ethical issues raised by the stunning announcement that President Barack Obama had won the Nobel Peace Prize. More, perhaps, were raised by the reactions to it.

Imagine, if you will, that you are a cast member in a Hollywood movie of dubious quality. Personally, you think the director is in over his head and that the movie is an empty, pompous failure. To your amazement, however, critics like the film. It is a surprise winner at an international film festival, and the director wins the “Master Film-maker” prize. Are you outraged, or pleasantly surprised? Do you congratulate the director for the honor, or do you tell him he is an undeserving fraud? Do you feel pride for your own connection to the award—you were in the cast, after all—or do you feel resentment? I would think the answers to all these questions are obvious. The civil, fair, respectful and kind response, the Golden Rule response, is to feel pride because your leader and colleague has been recognized for an enterprise in which you played a role. You should offer congratulations, and mean it. Whatever doubts you may harbor about the judgment of the award-giving panel should remain unexplored and unexpressed until another day.

This is exactly the situation that Americans faced with Obama’s honor. He’s our president and leader, and the award honors us by honoring him. Regardless of our current feelings about his health care reform plans, war policies or choice of family dog, there is no reason not to applaud and feel good about his good fortune. Adversaries like GOP Chairman Michael Steele, who used the award to ridicule the gap between Obama’s aspirations and his accomplishments, show that they do not comprehend, or possess, the ethical values of civility, courtesy, decency, self-restraint, prudence, graciousness, empathy, and, yes, citizenship. We should be glad for anyone’s good fortune, even a stranger. This man is the elected leader of our nation, and to treat him worse than a stranger is indefensible.

Steele and the others who immediately protested Obama’s honor are little better than Kanye West, leaping on stage uninvited to scream to the audience that Taylor Swift, supposedly a professional colleague, didn’t deserve her MTV VMI award, as poor Swift stood ready to make her acceptance speech. West’s disgraceful conduct wouldn’t have been any more palatable or ethical if he were clearly correct. It was a miserable, unfair and disrespectful act toward a singer who had nothing to do with determining her honor, deserved or not.

All right: what about the Nobel committee? It may well have been wrong, as in mistaken. I do not believe its action was wrongful. Peggy Noonan, Reagan’s favorite speech-writer-turned columnist, called their honor “ a wicked award,” designed to manipulate U.S. foreign policy. I don’t think it is correct to call a sincere attempt to influence a nation’s foreign policy toward what a group believes will advance world peace “wicked.” Naïve, perhaps; misguided, maybe foolish. Even bizarre: why is Obama’s call for nuclear disarmament more praiseworthy than the similar calls by so many U.S. Presidents before him? Arguably, his is the least realistic and justified, for we are entering a time when rogue states and terrorist groups will have access to nuclear arms, hardly the wisest or safest time for us to give up our own.

As for the committee’s justification that President Obama has given the world hope for peace, this demonstrates a stubborn refusal by the Norwegians to learn from the past. President Woodrow Wilson was given a Nobel Peace Prize too, for the hope he created with his aspirations for a World War I peace treaty, and his bungled idealism greased the world’s slide into World War II. Faith healers create hope; con men create hope; liars and fools can create hope. Hope can blind people to reality, or lead them to dangerous complacency. I think the Nobel committee places far too much value on hope.

The real ethical dilemma posed by the award faces President Obama, if he is even slightly tempted to let the ideological message of the award interfere with his independent judgment as he makes decisions that must be in the best interests of the United States of America. The award is irrelevant, or should be, like every award. It is, like every award, arbitrary, biased, simplistic, and nice to have on one’s resume. Obama has nothing to “live up to” or justify; he doesn’t report to Norwegians. It should not make him feel inadequate or undeserving, nor should it make him feel anointed or validated. He ought to accept the prize, say thank-you, and forget it, just as all Americans should say, “Congratulations!” and leave it at that.

Then, with the encouragement, trust and respect of the American public, President Obama should do his job, the best he can, for as long as he is the president.