responsibility

Comment of the Day: “Randy Cohen’s Scofflaw Cycling: How Did THIS Guy Ever Get To Be Called ‘The Ethicist’?”

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Reader Lance Jacobs, a New York bicycle instructor, was moved by last month’s Ethics Alarms Post “Randy Cohen’s Scofflaw Cycling: How Did THIS Guy Ever Get To Be Called ‘The Ethicist’?” to write the New York Times about their scofflaw, erstwhile “Ethicist,” who had proudly confessed in a an essay that he routinely broke the law while cycling, and believed that he was right to do so. The Times didn’t print Lance’s letter, an open letter to Randy, and sadly, this blog does not (Yet! Yet!) have the circulation of the Times, but it is an excellent rebuff to Cohen, and a most deserving “Comment of the Day.”

Here it is:

“Dear Mr Cohen, Continue reading →

Chris Darden: Failing The Accountability Test and Making the Unethical Quote of the Week, Too

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I feel sorry for Chris Darden.

It’s all Johnny Cochran’s fault.

Like Monica Lewinsky and others, he was living a normal personal and professional life  until events beyond his control  thrust him to the center ring of a media circus, and the bright lights of celebrity and hyper-scrutiny derailed his life forever. As a young prosecutor, he could have made many worse errors than his infamous gamble of allowing O.J. Simpson to try on the murder gloves found at the scene of Nicole Simpson’s and Ron Goldman’s death, and been able to learn and move on. But his  blunder was on live TV, during the most watched trial in history. Master defense attorney Johnny Cochran turned it into a ditty (“If the gloves don’t fit, you must acquit”) that found immortality in law school classes, history books and “Seinfeld,” and Chris Darden, working lawyer, became celebrity road-kill. (So did his colleague Marcia Clarke. Seeing today, bleached, botoxed and barely recognizable, desperately trying to eke out a living as a D-list celebrity pundit, it becomes vividly clear that Simpson ruined more lives than the two he snuffed out that bloody night.)

So I understand why Darden, taking part in a panel discussion about the trial at Pace Law School in New York City, shocked his fellow panel members  and the audience by saying, “I think Johnnie tore the lining. There were some additional tears in the lining so that O.J.’s fingers couldn’t go all the way up into the glove.” Darden then asserted that the defense team had unsupervised custody of the glove before the infamous test, which is when he surmised that the tampering took place. I understand it, just as I understand a lot of terrible conduct that is still inexcusable. Continue reading →

“Is We Getting Dummer?” Oh,Yes. Does We Care?

/ Jack Marshall / 68 Comments

Why yes, it DOES remind me of “Idiocracy,” which is only funny if it isn’t true.

Today, just prior to convicting Drew Peterson of killing his wife, his jury sent a message to the judge asking what the word “unanimous” meant.

Think about the implications of this. First of all, it means that one man’s life and the U.S. justice system’s integrity is resting on the judgment of twelve people, not one of whom possesses a fifth grade vocabulary, or, if one of them does, he or she did not possess the skills of persuasion or credibility to convince a majority of his colleagues that yes, “unanimous” means that everybody is in agreement. It means that the voir dire system managed to carefully select the most ignorant and inarticulate jury of adults imaginable for a first degree murder trial.

That’s not all. It means that in Joliet, Illinois, a select group of twelve adults, in addition to possessing only a rudimentary English vocabulary, were completely uninformed about the jury system. To reach adulthood this stunningly ignorant about one of the basic features of our justice system and  democracy, these individuals could not have regularly read newspapers or watched the news, and if they did, could not possibly have understood what they were reading or seeing. Continue reading →

Is It Unethical To Ban Stupid People From Congress?

/ Jack Marshall / 52 Comments

In 1978, this last image from “Animal House” was hilarious. In 2012, it’s tragic…because it came true.

The Todd Akin debacle has me wondering why we don’t take measures to block the ignorant and dim-witted from gaining high elected office. I know what you are going to say: that’s what elections are for. But we can’t bar ignorant and stupid people from voting: that’s been settled in court. It shouldn’t surprise us that they frequently tip elections toward candidates that the pollsters describe as “people like them”, and voilà! Todd Akin.

Akin is far (well, maybe not very far) from the  most intellectually suspect member of Congress. For example, Georgia Congressman Hank Johnson once expressed concern that the island of Guam might tip over, like a raft. There are too many other telling anecdotes relating to other members of Congress, in both parties. For those who shrug cynically and argue that it’s always been that way, there is solid evidence that indeed, Congress is getting dumber over time. A study of every word spoken in Congress concluded that the grade level at which members of the legislative branch speak has fallen a full grade since 2005, to just half-way through the junior year of high school. Democrats are slightly more articulate (.4 of a grade) than Republicans as a group, but that just could be because Joe Biden left to be Vice-President. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Month: Rev. Pat Robertson

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

“I’ve got a dear friend [who has]an adopted son, a little kid from an orphanage down in Columbia. Child had brain damage, grew up weird. And you just never know what’s been done to a child before you get that child. What kind of sexual abuse [there] has been, what kind of cruelty, what kind of food deprivation, etc. etc. You don’t have to take on somebody else’s problems. You really don’t.”

—-Televangelist Pat Robertson weighing in against international adoption on his syndicated TV show, “The 700 Club.” He was responding to a letter from a woman who had adopted three children from other countries, and whose social life had suffered as a result.

Worse than weird

No, of course you don’t “have” to take on anyone’s problems, especially those of helpless orphans in poor countries. You can ignore them completely. You can concentrate on helping people here, and that’s admirable, or you can just help yourself and fulfill your minimal societal obligations without hurting anyone. It is certainly strange, however, to hear a Christian minister discourage the sacrifice and courage of parents who choose to rescue international orphans, and express such callousness in the process.

A fellow minister, Russell Moore, properly put Robertson in his place: Continue reading →

Toddler Fight Club: The Monsters Among Us

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

“And in this corner, standing 20 inches and weighing 18 pounds…”

There was a joke in an old “I Love Lucy” episode in which Lucy misunderstood a reference to “three-year-olds” in a story about horse racing, and announced in horror, “They’re racing little girls at Churchill Downs!”

Well, this is worse, and it’s no joke.

From CBS in Philadelphia:

“According to Dover Police, three employees from the Hands of Our Future Daycare in Delaware were arrested after a cell phone video showed employees watching and encouraging two 3-year-olds fight each other. Tiana Harris, 19, Lisa Parker, 47, and Estefania Myers, 21, were charged with Assault, Endangering the Welfare of a Child, Reckless Endangering and Conspiracy for the incident, which occurred in March of 2012 and was captured on cell phone video. In the video, police say one child can be heard crying and yelling, ‘He’s pinching me,’ while a daycare worker responds, ‘No pinching, only punching.’” Continue reading →

The Akin Affair: A Brief Note on Being Fair To Idiots

/ Jack Marshall / 33 Comments

A Baby Fairy (from the Todd Akin collection)

Todd Akin, as I discussed in the recent post, is too dumb to serve in high elected office, and his refusal (at least so far) to give up his nomination for the U.S. Senate after proving it marks him as unethical as well.

Nonetheless, an astounding number of pundits, Democrats and social media users are making fools of themselves and missing the fish in the barrel by concentrating their fire on Akin’s use of the phrase “legitimate rape.” Many of them apparently never read his quote, and really think the poor, silly man said that rape could be “legitimate”, as in “legal, just, valid or proper,” which is what the word really means. He didn’t say that, and he didn’t mean that. He obviously didn’t mean that, and it is unfair and misleading to condemn him on the basis of what he didn’t say.

Here is his quote again, speaking of women getting pregnant after being raped: Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO)…Plus Some Clarifications

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Apparently Prissy told Todd Akin’s family all about the Baby Faries…

To clarify, Rep. Todd Akin, the GOP’s candidate for the U.S. Senate in opposition to Sen. Claire McCaskill, is not an Ethics Dunce because he said, in a recent TV interview, this, in response to whether it should be illegal for a woman impregnated by a rapist to get an abortion:

“It seems to me, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something: I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be of the rapist, and not attacking the child.”

No, that statement just proves that he’s an idiot. Continue reading →

Incompetent Elected Officials of the Month: The California State Legislature

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

California knows what’s best for your maybe-gay child, not your child’s therapist. Resistance is futile…

California’s legislature is poised to pass legislation that would ban state doctors, counselors and therapists from offering sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE) treatment for minors, and parents from seeking them. The rationale is a tangle of research, opinion, politics, ideology and political correctness that makes distinguishing legitimate reasons from illegitimate ones impossible. The end result, however, is a law that tells counselors and therapists what is appropriate treatment regardless of their expertise and the wishes of parents, because, of course, the typically moderately IQ-endowed legislators know best, or rather the gay rights advocates who dictate to them do. Either way, this is a serious intrusion of government into the counseling profession, free speech, parental authority and individual freedom, and any competent elected official would see that the second such an over-reaching and presumptuous bill reached his or her desk. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: Vice-President Biden (No, Not THAT Unethical Quote!)

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

 “I guarantee you, flat guarantee you, there will be no changes in Social Security. I flat guarantee you.”

—-Vice President Joe Biden, in reply to a supporter at a campaign stop in southern Virgina who told him,  “I’m glad you all are not talking about doing anything with Social Security.”

I know this feels like “Pick on Poor Joe Biden Week” at Ethics Alarms, but everyone has a lot of catching up to do in that regard.

The Washington Post picked up on the above quote by Biden, which it made the subject of an editorial and pronounced “depressing.” It is more than depressing, but then, the Post has to protect Democrats even when they prove themselves irresponsible or dishonest, as Biden does with this “guarantee.” As the Post quite accurately points out, Social Security is going broke, its trustees have called for immediate reforms, and the longer the government waits to do what is needed, the harder it is going to be to do it. Biden, however, and presumably his superior, President Obama, apparently believes that either refusing to take the steps that are essential to prevent a Social Security meltdown or lying to the public about the fact that they will have to take them is preferable to the alternative: responsible fiscal policy and governance and leveling with the public. Critics can scream about the broken system, economists can repeat the math, op-ed writers can warn against constantly “kicking the can down the road” until, like Greece and other profligate and incompetent societies, there is no more road, but if our leaders refuse to show political courage and do their duty, the U.S. has a guarantee, all right—a guarantee of future fiscal catastrophe. That’s okey-dokey with politicians like Biden however. He doesn’t need Social Security, and besides, he’ll be happily drooling in Madam Kluck’s Home for the Bewildered by then. Based on his recent conduct, maybe sooner than he thinks. Continue reading →