“Confederate History Month.” That title should be sufficient to have any semi-conscious American’s ethics alarms ringing, like “Dina Lohan, Mother of the Year.” That it didn’t for Virginia governor Bob McDonnell, at least until furious critics rang it for him, tells us something disturbing about the Republican’s ethical blind spots, and perhaps other things as well. Perhaps we can truly get through to Bob with a song…sung to the tune of that traditional Virginia favorite, Dixie. All together, now: Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh… Continue reading
respect
The Evolving Ethics of Joke Theft
Kal Raustiala, a Professor at UCLA Law School and the UCLA International Institute, and Chris Sprigman, a Professor at the University of Virginia Law School, are counterfeiting and intellectual property experts who hang out at the Freakonomics blog, and their latest post discusses how the world of stand-up comedy deals with joke theft. Some of the commentary will remind you of the Monty Python sketch in which a professor dryly lectures (with demonstrations) on the art of slapstick, but their observation is important: professional comics have developed a series of standards, enforced informally by such methods as shunning, shaming, and confrontation (and the occasional punch in the face) to discourage theft of a form of intellectual property that cannot be efficiently protested by copyright or trademark law. Continue reading
The Westboro Baptist Church and Free Speech: When Cruel and Unfair Can Still Be Right
The United States, as currently constituted, is a utilitarian nation. We embrace the inherent virtue of certain “natural” rights, and tolerate the frequent harm that some citizens commit while exercising the rights that all of us cherish. I think that is the correct philosophy, but it requires us to grit our teeth and re-read the Bill of Rights when the formula produces a nauseating result that is nonetheless right in our democratic culture. It was right to let the Nazis march in Skokie. It was right to let the Klan hold their non-violent, white supremacy demonstrations. And it was right for the court to make Albert Snyder pay the court costs when he lost his lawsuit against a hate group that disrupted his son’s funeral. No, it wasn’t fair, or kind, or empathetic. It was only right. Continue reading
Art Ethics: We Are Not Bowls of Fruit
During his legendary questioning by Clarence Darrow in the Scopes trial, Williams Jennings Bryan famously answered one of Darrow’s queries by saying, “I don’t think about things I don’t think about.” (Darrow’s rejoinder: “Do you think about the things you do think about?”) One of the ethical issues I hadn’t thought about was whether an artist drawing a subject in public without his or her consent is being unethical. Thanks to a post by an inquiring artist on an art blog who heard the faint ringing of an ethics alarm in his head, I’m thinking about it now, and it is trickier than you might think.
Once the artist starts rolling, he has a lot of ethics questions: Continue reading
Unethical Website of the Month: Bloomberg News
Seldom does any news media organization make its absence of fairness and objectivity on a topic so obvious that there isn’t some room for argument, but Bloomberg managed to scale the heights with its headline to a story by reporter Heidi Przybyla. Her report covered the results of a Bloomberg poll designed to create a profile of the members of the Tea Party movement, which has been holding multiple demonstrations across the country to protest passage of President Obama’s health care reform bill.
The poll results themselves were unremarkable, given what we already have learned about the Tea Partiers’ objectives and objections. Over 90% of those polled by Bloomberg said that they feared that the nation was turning to socialism, with the federal government trying to control too many aspects of Americans’ lives. In answer to another question, 70% felt that Obama’s Administration needed to put more resources into job creation. So Przybyla, her editors and Bloomberg’s management chose to headline the report with this:
“Tea Party Advocates Who Scorn Socialism Want a Government Job” Continue reading
Death Video Ethics
As with the video of the fatal luge run at the Olympics, as with 9-11 videos of the Twin Towers crashing down, pundits, lawyers and family members of a victim are arguing in courts of law and public opinion that the visual record of their loved one’s death should be off-limits for public. The family of Dawn Brancheau, the SeaWorld trainer who was drowned last month by a six-ton Killer Whale that held her underwater by her ponytail, has announced that they will seek an injunction to stop the release of the death videos, captured by SeaWorld’s surveillance cameras on Feb. 24. Once the official investigation is complete, the video could be made widely available on YouTube and elsewhere. The family understandably does not want their daughter’s last moments to become a source of web entertainment. Continue reading
Philly’s “Webcamgate”: No Ethics Controversy, Just Unethical
Ethics Alarms has not discussed the Lower Merion School District’s “Webcamgate” scandal, in part because its facts are still somewhat in doubt, and because I found it difficult to believe that what had been reported was true. High school student Blake Robbins sued the District after officials reprimanded for him for conduct inside his Pennsylvania Valley home. Apparently he was caught on the webcam of the Apple MacBook that the district supplies to its 2,300 high school students. Following an investigation by the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office and the FBI, it was confirmed that the cameras were programmed to be turned on remotely by school officials, but, say those officials, only to track down stolen computers, not to spy on students, their friends and their parents. Continue reading
Ethics Dunces: The Republican National Committee
Politico reports that the GOP, though the Republican National Committee and its Chair, Michael Steele, has refused to co-sign a statement created by the Democratic Party that calls on “elected officials of both parties to set an example of the civility we want to see in our citizenry,” and for “Americans to respect differences of opinion, to refrain from inappropriate forms of intimidation, to reject violence and vandalism, and to scale back rhetoric that might reasonably be misinterpreted by those prone to such behavior.”
The reason, we are told, is that the Republicans view the statement as “a trap,” because the Democrats could use the statement against them later. Huh? It could only be used against Republicans if Republicans did something that was inconsistent with the statement, such as, to take two ridiculous examples that would never happen, yell “You lie!” during a State of the Union message, or shout “Baby killer!” at a Congressmen.
The Republican’s obviously want to use uncivil and inappropriate rhetoric to stir up their base and raise funds. That is the only possible rationale for not signing the statement, and it is a blatantly unethical one.
Biden’s Incivility: No “Big Fucking Deal”?
For the most part, the media and the culture have given Vice-President Joe Biden a pass on his ebullient violation of a civil discourse taboo, on national TV and during an official ceremony, caught on a microphone for all to hear. That only makes the consequences of Biden’s inability to control his potty-mouth worse, though not for Biden. Biden has made so many embarrassing public utterances that he is treated by the media and much of the public as sort of a crazy uncle, someone we expect to do and say outrageous things because he can’t help himself (it stands as the smoking gun proof of the media’s bias against Sarah Palin that her verbal mistakes were—and are—pounced upon and used as evidence of her incompetence, while her Democratic counterpart’s career-long fondness for saying silly and outrageous things was —and is—excused.) But national leaders set cultural standards, and the shrugging off of Biden’s F-bomb permanently lowers our standards of civility as much as “Baby killer!” or “You lie!” So thanks, Joe, for making America just a little bit less gentile, just a little bit cruder. We knew you had it in you. Continue reading
Ethics Hero: Boston Sportswriter Pete Abraham
I try to keep the number of Ethics Heroes and Ethics Dunces in rough balance here, and sometimes I despair of how few of the former and how many of the latter I have to choose from. Perhaps part of the problem is that good conduct is more common than bad conduct, and thus has to be especially flashy before the media notices. Or perhaps I am not giving sufficient credit to small, ethical gestures that in their own way make a difference.
This brings us to Pete Abraham, a writer on the Red Sox beat for the Boston Globe. Pete writes the “Extra Bases” blog, and does something that I have not seen before. At the end of his post every morning, Pete signs off with, “Thanks as always for reading the blog.”
It is a small but genteel exhibition of civility and manners that, for me at least, serves the same purpose every morning as Ben Franklin’s Daily Questions. It sets the ethics alarms for the day and reminds me to not get so focused on work, tasks and problems that I forget to help smooth out the edges for those around me.
I’ve never met Pete Abraham, but I hope I do some day. He is obviously a kind and caring person who understands the importance of civility. He knows how to set his ethics alarms.
And best of all, he’s a Red Sox fan.
Oh—I almost forgot! “Thanks as always for reading the blog.”
Ethics Alarms 