respect

Baseball Park Naming Ethics Again: Getting Closer and Closer to “Chico’s Bail Bonds Park”

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Bad News Bears

The Detroit Tigers will be playing in a ballpark named “Fifth Third Park” next year.

They have no shame. It’s bad enough that there is a bank with the ridiculous name of “Fifth Third Bank” (In 1908, Third National Bank and Fifth National Bank merged and nobody had the wit to come up with a better name. I wouldn’t entrust my money to a bank run by such dimwits), but a ballpark? What’s a fifth of a third out? A third strike? Houston briefly had its park named after Enron, and San Diego’s ball park is named after supplier of dog and cat merchandise, but at least “Petco Park” is alliterative.

I was sure that I had already written a rueful post about baseball teams that sell out their fans, history, traditions, cities and dignity for filthy lucre and name their home fields after any company who will pay to turn a stadium into its billboard. In 2010 I wrote a  post  about the adultery website Ashley Madison tried to by the naming rights to the NFL Giant’s stadium, and sure enough, decade ago I covered this revolting topic thoroughly. In honor of Fifth Third Park, I’m posting it again below, with a couple of additions and edits.

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The Washington Nationals announced this week that it has partnered with Major League Baseball Advanced Media and the consulting firm Korn Ferry to sell naming rights to Nationals Park, as the team’s home field has been known since it opened in 2008.

After all, the team explains, plastering a corporation’s name on the ballpark could add between ten and twenty million dollars a year to the team’s revenue, and imagine how much better the team will be with another starting pitcher or slugging outfielder. Why wouldn’t a team sell its home’s name, and a large chunk of its identity, to a bank, a website, or a pet supplies company?

[Update: I am happy to announce that the Nationals did not ultimately give in to greed and name its stadium MSNow Park. It is still Nationals Park.]

I admit it: being a life-time fan of the Boston Red Sox, who play in one of the the ten major league parks ( the others: Angel Stadium of Anaheim, Dodger Stadium, Fenway Park, Kauffman Stadium, Marlins Park, Nationals Park, Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Turner Field, Wrigley Field, and Yankee Stadium ) belonging to teams that have not accepted filthy lucre to mar their stadium entrances with the names of companies Bernie Sanders would hate, I find the idea revolting.  A baseball team represents its community; its lore becomes part of the culture and shared memories passed down through generations.. That has value, and symbolic significance. How much is it worth? It’s priceless, or should be. Continue reading →

Memorial Day Ethics Reflections…

/ Jack Marshall / 67 Comments

Nice.

The Democratic National Committee decided to use Memorial Day to attack the President of the United States. Of course it did. Despite all of the party’s rhetoric about saving democracy (while it was undermining it to a degree never before seen in U.S. history—go ahead, challenge that!), this is a party that literally doesn’t like the United States (maybe hate is too strong).

That tweet was so offensive, even Democrats objected. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, (D-Ill.) tweeted, “It is incredibly distasteful to use our heroic dead for a political attack on Memorial Day. I’m a Democrat and I condemn this post by the DNC.”

And the DNC pulled it, replacing it with this…

…without comment, apology, anything. Tweet? What tweet? But it was the fact it could be tweeted at all that is signature significance. The party is blaming the “kids” that it had in charge of social media during the holiday, but this just means the Gen Z radicals the party has indoctrinated in our schools and with its media don’t yet understand that the mask has to stay on a bit longer or else…

Can’t have that.

The DNC was just one example. I wrote yesterday about Democrats declaring the holiday “Celebrate a Dead Arrest-Resisting Street Thug Day,” including Minneapolis’s woke mayor, who had to be reminded it was also a holiday to honor patriots and heroes. I note that Fark, the often funny, left-biased satirical news aggregator, posted this yesterday…

If challenged, I’m sure Fark would say that it was satirizing the Trump Deranged progs who still think the Epstein files hold damning evidence against the President. You know the old saying though…”Fool me once..”? I’ve checked Fark for years. It’s about as non-partisan as Stephen Colbert. As for Fark’s favorite party—well, do you remember the Memorial Day message posted by Kamala Harris—you know, that whizbang, smart-as-a-whip candidate for President who only lost because American are racists and sexist? Here , let me refresh your memory…

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Happy Birthday, George Washington From Ethics Alarms, And Thank Your Dad For Us Too…

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

It’s George Washington’s birthday. Nine years ago I wrote, in one of my annual posts on perhaps our most important President (George Will calls him “the Indispensable Man) that something has gone seriously wrong when one’s blog has 287 posts on Donald Trump and only six about Washington. I don’t even want to think about what the count is now, but here is another one in George’s column.

George Washington’s father Augustine had at one time or another run across a list of 110 virtues that young men should adopt and practice in order to be become civil, respectful and honorable members of polite society. He made George, and presumably all his sons (he had six of them) copy them by hand to aid in memorizing the list. George, at least, dutifully committed to memory “110 Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation,”  which was  based on a document composed by French Jesuits in 1595; neither the author nor the English translator and adapter are known today. The elder Washington was following the theory of Aristotle, who held that principles and values began as being externally imposed by authority (morals) and eventually became internalized as character.

Those ethics alarms installed by his father stayed in working order throughout George’s remarkable life. It was said that Washington was known to quote the rules when appropriate, and never forgot them. They did not teach him to be the gifted leader he became, but they helped to make him a trustworthy one.

The list has been available on Ethics Alarms under Rule Book since its beginnings in 2009. By all means read the whole list; I have used it often in ethics seminars but haven’t referred to it here for too long. The 90 rules omitted in the list below contain some gems too, and many that raise curiosity about what exactly the author was thinking of. For example, I find #2. “When in company, put not your hands to any part of the body not usually discovered” and #3. “Show nothing to your friend that may affright him” intriguing.

Below are my 20 favorite entries from the list that helped make George George, therefore helped George make America America:

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Note To CNN’s Race-Baiters: There Are So, So Many Reasons Not To Respect Kamala Harris…Stop Attributing It To Her Race

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

A conclave of fools, knaves and ethics dunces on a CNN panel illustrated how Democrats and the news media are going to try to elect Kamala Harris: keep the conversation entirely on vilifying her opposition and concentrating on irrelevant trivia…like how to pronounce her name.

It serves CNN’s purposes to feature the worst and the dimmest of Republicans whenever possible: this time its choice was Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina. She’s on my list of 25 most embarrassing members of Congress. Mace either set out to troll professional race-baiter Vanderbilt University professor Michael Eric Dyson by intentionally mispronouncing Kamala Harris’s first name or got confused; first she said the name correctly (with the accent on the first syllable), then reversed herself and said it the way that apparently drives the woke crazy, with the accent on the second syllable. (I sometimes forget which is the right way myself—luckily I’m usually typing her name rather than saying it). Democratic strategist Keith Boykin corrected her, and Mace defiantly said, “I will say Kamala’s name any way that I want to.”

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The Super Bowl Produces an Early Nominee For Ethics Alarms “Asshole of the Year”: KC Chiefs Tight End Travis Kelce

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

Cowabunga! This goes beyond the mere jerkish behavior one (or at least I) expects of NFL players.

Kelce has been getting nationwide publicity because of his romance with superstar pop artist Taylor Swift. He knew all eyes would be on the couple during the annual concussion-fest that is always the most viewed single event network TV offering, the Super Bowl (won in thrilling fashion, or so I was told, by the Chiefs in only the second overtime game in SB history). So how did Kelce, fully aware that his fans young and old would be watching, handle his moment in the spotlight?

You see it above: After the Chiefs lost a fumble in the second quarter of the game, Kelce was seen on live TV yelling in Coach Reid’s face and even bumping him. In any other sport, and usually this one, the disrespectful player would be benched, fined and suspended. One NFL player, seeing Kelce’s outburst, tweeted that if he did something like that, he’d be kicked out of the NFL.

Oh no, it was all in good fun, we were informed afterwards. Even though he embarrassed his coach and taught young NFL and Taylor Swift fans that it’s just fine to treat your superiors, bosses and authority figures like dirt, “sources” on the team assured the media that the player “respects Coach Reid. It’s really just about the passion of the game. It wasn’t anything serious.”

Right. Making hostile physical contact with your boss in front of team mates on national TV is nothing serious. I remember Reggie Jackson doing something similar to Yankees manager Billy Martin in the dugout during a game in Fenway Park, and Martin had to be restrained from attacking Reggie, who was immediately suspended.

But Martin had some self-respect, and Reggie wasn’t dating Taylor Swift, I guess. And Kelce? Asked about his actions, he told ESPN. “I was just telling him how much I love him.”

Ha. Funny.

What an asshole.

To be fair to Kelce, he probably already is suffering from brain damage, so that’s something of a mitigation. He and Taylor shouldn’t worry: Donald Trump is still the odds on favorite to win “Asshole of the Year,” as he usually does.

Ethics Dunce: LSU Women’s Basketball Star Angel Reese

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Wow. What a disrespectful, narcissistic, rude and entitled athlete. Now let’s see if anyone has the guts and integrity to tell her she’s completely in the wrong. My bet: Nah.

LSU beat Iowa for the women’s national championship over the weekend. First Lady Jill Biden, ESPN reported, was in attendance at the decisive game and praised Iowa’s sportsmanship. “I know we’ll have the champions come to the White House; we always do. So we hope LSU will come,” Dr. Jill said. “But, you know, I’m going to tell  Joe  I think Iowa should come, too, because they played such a good game.”

OK, the tradition is for the President to invite the winning team in such situations, so suggesting that the losing team deserved an invite to was a bit naive. But truly: big deal. Never mind: LSU star Angel Reese decided that it was justification to blow a gasket and throw a tantrum. Later, someone told Jill that this wasn’t the way it was done, and the First Lady had her press secretary  “walk back” and spin the first lady’s comments, saying they “were intended to applaud the historic game and all women athletes. She looks forward to celebrating the LSU Tigers on their championship win at the White House.” In other words, she didn’t mean what she said, when obviously, at the time, she did.

A gracious, mature individual who knows that our elected leaders and their family members deserve to be accorded a bit more generosity and respect in general and be given some consideration and empathy when they make gaffes than the family next door that gets drunk and parties all night would have left the matter at that, but not Angel, who told a podcast, Continue reading →

Arrogant, Deluded And Ignorant Is No Way To Go Through Life, Jennifer Lawrence…

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Jennifer Lawrence is a charismatic, versatile, talented movie star, but someone misled her into believing that everything that pops into her head is worth saying, and it isn’t. In this case, it wasn’t just banal or gratuitous progressive blather points, but a wildly false and disrespectful over-praising of her own significance at the expense of actresses that she ought to be honoring rather than insulting.

In a recent interview with Variety magazine, the star of the “Hunger Games” movies (beginning in 2012), “Silver Lining Playbook” and other films said,

“I remember when I was doing ‘Hunger Games,’ nobody had ever put a woman in the lead of an action movie because it wouldn’t work. We were told … girls and boys can both identify with a male lead, but boys cannot identify with a female lead.”

If you don’t know your film history, don’t make statements about film history. It makes one look like a conceited fool, as the social media mob rushed to inform Lawrence. Continue reading →

Iconic Movie Hero Ethics: The Humiliation Of Indiana Jones

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

One upon a time, Hollywood showed respect to its greatest movie heroes. They deserved it, after all. We never had to see what became of Rick Blaine as he battled the Nazis. We never had to watch Scarlet chase Rhett. Nobody made as watch the plucky Hickory High School basketball team try to hold on to its title the next year after its miracle triumph. Hollywood got greedy (greedier), though, as imaginations ran out and audiences looked elsewhere for their entertainment. And thus the sublime ending of “Rocky” (“There ain’t gonna be no rematch!” “Don’t want one!”) was eroded and superseded by endless inferior sequels. “Star Wars” ended with a jubilant celebration of victory over the Empire and the characters happy, safe, and young, but studio finances dictated that it all had to be diluted with inferior and derivative prequels and sequels, with audiences being tortured by aging husks of Leia, Luke and Han Solo, instead of allowing them to be preserved in our memories as immortal, like legends should.

Now it’s Indiana Jones’ turn. Spielberg and Lucas already set up the perfect farewell for Indy in the third of the original trilogy, flawed as it was. We saw him ride off with his father and Marcus Brody into the sunset after drinking from the Holy Grail, which should have conferred eternal youth. Perfect!

They couldn’t let it go, though, or the studio couldn’t, or Spielberg’s alimony, or something. So we had to watch, many years later, an over-the-hill Indy in a jumping-the-shark fourth film that George Lucas signaled would stretch out the franchise ad infinitum by symbolically passing The Hat on to Indiana’s newly discovered son, the then young and promising Shia LaBeouf.

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President’s Day On Ethics Alarms: The Nation’s Incompetent, Disrespectful, Unethical Treatment Of George Washington’s Birthday [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

How many Americans of our rich national past have a birthday celebrated as a national holiday? One: Martin Luther King. That surely makes the anti-white racists and the “the most important aspect of the United States is its racial divisions” gang—you know, Democrats—happy, but it is also misleading and ridiculous. The most important single figure, black, brown, white or whatever it is currently acceptable to call Asians and Native Americans (I haven’t checked this morning), is George Washington. He was, as George Will likes to say, “the indispensable man”—no George, no U.S. His birthday absolutely should be a national holiday.

Yet it isn’t, due to a confluence of factors. You can’t call today “George Washington’s Birthday,” because the date is February 21, and George was born on the 22nd. In the just-launched 4th season of Amazon’s clever and brilliantly cast comedy series “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” the heroine, on the road, learns that her parents are having a birthday party for her young son. “The real date wasn’t good for me,” her very weird father (Tony Shaloub) explains. “He’s five! He won’t notice.” “What kind of people change a kid’s birthday?” she protests.

Americans. And worse, we did it to the man to whom we owe the greatest debt of all.

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Dress Code Ethics (Again) From The “Oh, Come ON!” Files: The Immodest Fitness Model

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

bodybuilder-1

Two days ago, American Airlines denied boarding for Deniz Saypinar, a Turkish-born fitness model traveling from Dallas-Fort Worth to Miami because, the carrier explained to her, its conditions of carriage require all customers to dress “appropriately,” and her outfit wasn’t appropriate.

Ya think? That photo above shows how she presented herself at the gate.

“The customer was advised of our policy and was rebooked on a subsequent flight. The customer has since arrived in Miami,” the airline’s rep said.

Deniz is in great shape; I wonder why, if she was going to grandstand like this, she didn’t just wear a g-string and pasties and go all the way with it. I do not believe for a second that she expected to be allowed on the plane dressed like that. She wanted to set off a controversy and win herself Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame, while giving feminists something to shout about.

“You will never believe what happened to me at Texas Airport,” first non-American citizen to win the US National Bikini Fitness Competition in 2021 wailed to her 1 million followers on Instagram as she posted her attire.

Oh yes I will!

“I am an athlete, and now I have to wait here until the morning,” she wrote. “I like to wear feminine clothes that reveal my femininity, but I never dress in a way that will offend anyone. I’m mature and civilized enough to know what I can and cannot wear. I don’t deserve to be treated like the worst person in the world for wearing denim shorts What separates us from animals if humans can’t control even their most primitive impulses? I feel insulted. They wouldn’t let me on the plane because I wore these shorts in the United States.”

Uh, I wouldn’t call that an exactly fair description of what happened. She wasn’t treated “like the worst person in the world,” although she should have been treated as a narcissist and ruthless self-promoter who deliberately wasted the time of airline staff and caused a pointless controversy just to get her name and figure publicized. And she wasn’t rejected as a passenger for “wearing denim shorts.”

” What separates us from animals if humans can’t control even their most primitive impulses? ” has to win an irony award: it is the model who can’t control her primitive impulse to display herself in places where such displays are rude and disruptive. Decorum and manners in public also separate us from animals. Wearing reasonably modest clothing in public is basic civility, showing respect for others.

What do you want to bet that she wears that kind of outfit and then, when some little fat guy stares at her, gets indignant?

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