respect

Ethics Quiz: My “Disrespectful” Comment

/ Jack Marshall / 38 Comments

alas_header3

There has been an epic thread, over a week long now, I think, on Ampersand’s blog about the Zimmerman trial. It has been very illuminating and valuable for me, because the vast majority of the discussion consists of articulate knee-jerk liberals desperately searching for some way to hold on to the myth that Trayvon Martin was the victim of racial profiling, and that George Zimmerman, a closet racist cold-blooded killer, got away with murder. It is fascinating, if depressing. So many seemingly smart people who just “know” that Zimmerman was really guilty, and that Martin was gunned down because he was wearing a hoodie and carrying Skittles.

One of the outnumbered rational commenters there, a chap calling himself Conrad, responded to a persistent Zimmerman-hater who kept saying that it was “50-50” who started the fatal fight, and that it should disturb anyone that there is, therefore, a 50-50 chance that Zimmerman got away with murder. Conrad pointed out that the evidence, in fact, strongly suggested that Zimmerman did not provoke the physical encounter, and, sure enough, none of the  factual arguments to the contrary were deemed persuasive. I had intervened several times in the discussion (since it was launched in the blog post by Ampersand saying that my assertion that there were no legitimate grounds on which to challenge the jury’s verdict as anything but compelled by the evidence was biased), and this was the final straw.

I wrote, to Conrad:

“Fascinating, isn’t it? So many compassionate, fair, intelligent people tying their brains into knots because they have staked everything on a badly cast George Zimmerman being the epitome of a murderous, conservative, vigilante racist. Oops! He’s not white! Oops! His prom date was black! Oops! He voted for Obama! Oops! He never used a racial slur! Oops! He was jumped by the victim! Oops! He really was injured! Oops! The evidence and all the witnesses support his account! Never mind…you just KNOW he did it.

“This is the real lesson of this endless mess–how confirmation bias makes good people into bigots and persecutors.

“There is another piece of evidence: when police, while interrogating Zimmerman, told him that the entire altercation was caught on a security camera—a lie, to check his reaction–his instant response, according to witnesses, was “Thank God!” Clever guy, that George. Quick thinking!

“But this has never been about evidence. It was about making Obama’s base fear for their lives just in time for the 2012 elections, and increasing racial divisiveness for cynical political gain. At least I hope that was what it was about, because if there wasn’t some tangible reason for it, it is the stupidest self-inflicted wound on society that I can remember.”

I was shortly thereafter shocked to receive Ampersand’s stern reprimand for this comment.

“Jack, please reread the moderation goals for this blog. In particular, this bit: “Debates are conducted in a manner that shows respect even for folks we disagree with.” If you don’t find it possible to disagree with people while treating them with respect, then I’ll ask you to stop leaving comments here. Where would make me unhappy, so I hope it doesn’t come to that. –Amp”

He generously left my entire post up with a strike-through, making it unreadable as well as  hanging a scarlet letter on the content. Nice. Apparently it was all too disrespectful. (In fact, I would judge many of the approved comments in the thread far more directly insulting to specific commenters than mine, which impugned the whole anti-Zimmerman chorus.)

Your Ethics Quiz as we head into the first August weekend:

Was it too disrespectful? Continue reading →

Mind Control? My Alarm Is Ringing. Should It Be?

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Kirk Mind

Harvard researchers are on the way to perfecting brain-to-brain interfaces, permitting a human to control the behavior and eventually instincts and emotions of other creatures with thought alone. Continue reading →

More Juror Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

funny judgeFrom the Erie Times News:

An Erie woman, dismayed that she had been picked to serve as a juror in a weapons case, audibly harrumphed the worst curse word of them all, then huffed and puffed her way to her seat in the jury box. Erie County President Judge Ernest J. DiSantis was having none of it. When apprised of the outburst by the lawyers on the case, DiSantis came to the courtroom and called the woman, Kathleen Port, in front of the bench.

Port was off the jury, for start, DiSantis said. “But we are not done,” he said. DiSantis held Port in contempt of court and fined her $500 for the improper behavior. “You are totally out of line,” he said….Jury service is a duty of citizenship, he said.

“It is inconvenient at times,” he said.

Good.

That’s one less juror who will go on ABC to prove that her vote was meaningless and that she had no idea what she was doing.

____________________________

Pointer: ABA Journal

The Weiner Joke Orgy

/ Jack Marshall / 39 Comments

Conservatives will grandstand about declining standards of dignity and decorum in the U.S., happily blaming the decline of gentility and civil public expression on rappers, Hollywood liberals and Joe “This is a big fuckin’ deal” Biden, until a Democrat with a name ready-made for bad sex puns and double-entendres shows up, and then its a mad stampede to bad taste.

Wow. Clever.

Wow. Clever.

What is it with the Right: is everybody 12? From Rush Limbaugh (“Weiner is hard to swallow…”) to The Daily Caller (“Weiner blows his lead”) to the New York Daily News (“Cuomo Spanks Weiner!”) to dozens of websites that can’t resist versions of “Will Weiner pull out?” and “Weiner Exposed,”  to Drudge (“Weiner Goes Soft”) to CNS (“Boehner Won’t Bite On Weiner”) to, naturally, the reliably crude New York Post ( “Too Hard To Stop!’…”Tip of the Weiner”…”Obama Beats Weiner”…”Weiner: I’ll Stick It Out”…and on, and on–okay, it’s  abrand, I get it ), apparently conservative pundits and headline writers can’t resist seeking naughty snickers from obvious gags.  Continue reading →

Anthony Weiner, Gov. McDonnell, Mayor Filner and the Rest: Degrading Democracy, Tainting Leadership

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments
Hey, Mayor Filner, if San Diegans decide they have a proble being led by a serial sexual harasser, you can run for Mayor of New York!

Hey, Mayor Filner, if San Diegans decide they have a problem being led by a serial sexual harasser, you can run for Mayor of New York!

The mandate for leaders and potential leaders who have engaged in blatantly dishonest, corrupt, undignified or otherwise unethical conduct to remove themselves from office or consideration for office is not that, as hundreds of foolish pundits (like this guy) will try to convince you, hypocrites with a keyboard or a vote falsely pretend that such conduct is unique. There are two justifications for the unethical to resign from office, both undeniable and ancient. I have written enough, for now, about the first—that such conduct demonstrates untrustworthiness, the quality a leader must not have— and want to focus on the second, which is this: if they do not step down and away, such leaders and potential leaders mock the aspirations of democracy, insult its underlying hopes, and degrade, by their persistence, the standards of future leadership.

Once, this was thoroughly understood. Leaders who were exposed as lacking honesty, integrity, responsibility and respect for their own office resigned or withdrew from public life, as self-executed punishment and their last chance at redemption. Democracy, as John Adams wrote, is supposed to be a system that elevates the most accomplished, the most able, the most trusted and the most ethically sound to leadership, for obvious reasons. They are qualified to be leaders because, bluntly, they are better than the rest of us. They are also, because they are better, supposed to be capable of sacrifice and humility, and to recognize that power is a privilege, not a possession to be retained at all costs. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: Unethical Website of the Month: Chimpmania, And The Unethical Petition Opposing It

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

ku klux klan

The post defending the right of the racist website Chimpmania to stay on the web despite its offenses to decency, civility and fairness predictably attracted racists to this blog—very articulate racists, I must say, but racists nonetheless. One of them, Paddy Roller, who operates his own, slightly less crude racist website, attracted this response from one of Ethics Alarms’ most thoughtful and passionate readers, known here as fattymoon. It is a deserving Comment of the Day, an open letter sparked by a racist screed posted here by Paddy, itself sparked by the post, Unethical Website of the Month: Chimpmania…And The Unethical Petition Opposing It.

[ Paddy and about six of his compatriots in hate have been banned here after violating my warning to eschew racist epithets rhetoric after I had granted them one reprieve. No more reprieves…if one of the Klan wannabes has a comment to this post he wants to have read, there had better be no uses of “nigger” in it.]

Here’s Fattymoon: Continue reading →

Unethical Website of the Month: Chimpmania…And The Unethical Petition Opposing It

/ Jack Marshall / 150 Comments

CensorshipA good friend sent me a link to a Change.org petition put up by Heidie Stanton-Sharpe of Mukilteo, Washington, suggesting that I sign it. Heidi had announced that she wanted to take down a website called Chimpmania, writing,

“This website spews hatred and promotes violence against people of color. It targeted my family and posted pictures of my children. It is vile and extreme and if the internet is an international forum we should have regulations about promoting violence against people. It’s not humane, it’s barbaric and there is no place for that type of behavior anywhere in society and most definitely not on a public forum.”

Heidi did not articulate a legal or Constitutional justification for closing down a website (because there is none) , and I was surprised that my friend would support such an effort. Spewing hatred is acceptable free speech for the most part. I think the Daily Kos  and right wing talk show host Mark Levin spew hatred, but I’ll defend to the death their right to do spew it.  “Promoting violence” has to become threatening and genuinely illegal before it qualifies as conduct that can justify censorship; what is inhumane and barbaric is a matter of opinion. Being in the mood to flag civic ignorance as I watched live feeds of a responsible, brave, unquestionably correct jury verdict in the Zimmerman case being protested around the country, I started to write my friend a little primer on the First Amendment. I decided to check out the website in question first, though, and “Cowabunga!” as Bart Simpson used to say* in such situations. Chimpmania is one ugly, hateful racist website. Continue reading →

“Ghosting” Is Unethical

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments
I don't care if you are dead, Marley; when you leave my party, say good-bye.

I don’t care if you are dead, Marley; when you leave my party, say good-bye.

Slate contributor Seth Stevenson has an interesting justification for being rude: good manners are too much trouble.

This is the way the world ends, as T.S. Elliot would say.

Stevenson argues that instead of saying goodbye and thank-you to one’s host at a party, the best way to exit is “the Irish good-bye,” or in its non-ethnic stereotype form (Irish guests are presumed too drunk to say good-bye, you see), “ghosting.” “Yes, I know,” he writes. “You’re going to tell me it’s rude to leave without saying goodbye. This moral judgment is implicit in the culturally derogatory nicknames ghosting has been burdened with over the centuries.” That sentence is signature significance for me: Stevenson is an unethical jerk. I get comments and e-mails all the time accusing Ethics Alarms of “moralizing” or being “sanctimonious” when I write that obviously unethical conduct is obviously unethical. That’s because unethical people who do unethical things feel much better about themselves if nobody calls them on it, so they can maintain, as one recent commenter did here who was, I’m proud to say, chased away by the rest of you (and me) with torches and pitchforks, that ethics is “100% subjective”—Translation: “If I want to do it, it’s ethical.”

That’s essentially Stevenson’s reasoning, too.  “Is it really so bad to bounce without fanfare?,” he asks. Continue reading →

ARRRGH! Outrageous Ethics Malpractice By “The Ethicist”!!!!

/ Jack Marshall / 38 Comments
Well, you did it again, Chuck..you made my head explode. But now I have a place to keep my keys...

Well, you did it again, Chuck..you made my head explode. But now I have a place to keep my keys…

It’s time for Chuck Klosterman, the New York Times’ designated amateur who now handles “The Ethicist” advice column, to hang it up, and let some randomly chosen unemployed New Yorker take a shot at the job. Since assuming his post, Chuck has had good moments and bad, but this botch is embarrassing, and signature significance—no one who isn’t a bona fide Ethics Dunce could make such a terrible call.

Get this: Klosterman was asked whether surreptitiously taking cuttings from plants owned by a shopping center was unethical:

“…While walking through our local shopping center, we noticed a particular plant that we both liked and decided to get it for our patio….My wife thought she could grow it from cuttings, so we went back and took about three or four cuttings from one of the many plants that were scattered around the shopping center. The plant was not hurt or damaged in any manner or form, but my gut instinct told me that this was wrong. Was it?”

Does this question really need asking? Apparently, because the fraud masquerading as an ethicist at the Times thinks it’s a “thorny” question (Chuck likes puns…maybe the column should be called “The Punster”) about an “unethical act that has a positive impact.” ( Helpful hint to Chuck: the issue is stealing.)  Klosterman then embarked on a rationalization orgy: Continue reading →

GLAAD Joins The Hilaria Baldwin Ethics Lionel Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

model_trainwreck2

Ethics train wrecks can develop at any time, though sometimes the participants and the incidents involved limit the results to small-scale ethics damage. Let’s call these “Ethics Lionel Wrecks,” in honor of the model train sitting in a cardboard box in my basement. This week’s tale of Hilaria Baldwin’s mistimed tweets defines the genre.

The progression:

1. George Stark Starts the Train

This one began when the pregnant wife of actor/ pitchman/liberal blowhard/ bully Alec Baldwin was called out by the Daily Mail for tweeting trivial, giddy messages during the funeral of recently departed actor James Gandolfini. That would have been certifiably disrespectful conduct in the rare sub-category of Funeral Ethics; indeed Ethics Alarms certified it. The problem is that Mail reporter George Stark was wrong.

Salon explained that the error was caused by “a technical glitch on Twitter that reflected GMT instead of ET…an analysis of the source code of Hilaria Baldwin’s tweets reveals that she tweeted between 11 am and 2 pm, as opposed to 8 am to 11 am. The Daily Mail has stated that “the tweets did appear accurately timed on mobile devices such as smartphones and iPads,” but “the only way MailOnline was able to establish the REAL time the tweets were sent was by viewing the twitter web page source code, something almost no normal member of the public would ever do.”

I have no idea what the hell that means, but I was one of the people who relied on Stark’s report, which seemed convincing, with screen shots of the tweets themselves and their timestamps. Was he unethically sloppy, as Baldwin and others have claimed, or was this just an excusable mistake? Twitter is new enough that there may be some justification for not checking the source code before using the time stamp to conclude something from a tweet: I can’t determine whether there is a journalistic protocol for this at the Daily Mail or elsewhere. Before a reporter attacks the conduct of a pregnant woman at a friend’s funeral, he would presumably be obligated to be certain of his facts, since readers, like me, will assume that he was. If this really was, as Salon says, a freak Twitter glitch, then Stark was unlucky rather than unethical.

2. Ethics Alarms rides the rails Continue reading →