role-models

Ten More Hollywood Ethics Cures For A Post-Election Hangover (Part I)

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

A year ago, the combination of the erupting Penn State scandal (and Penn State’s students’ scandalous reaction to it) and our dysfunctional government led me to list my “15 Hollywood Cures…,” my favorite movies dealing with ethics themes that I reflexively turn to when the world’s ethics alarms look frozen and broken. I had to leave some of the best ethics films off that list (Part I is here; Part II is here), and this seems like a good time to remedy that injustice. Here are ten more excellent films to prime our ethics alarms with minimal preaching and maximum entertainment value, bringing the Ethics Alarms movie list to 25. It will get larger, I’m sure:

1. The Magnificent  Seven (196o)

Ethics Bob Stone’s favorite ethics movie, and he has a good case. A group of seven hired gunslingers help an impoverished Mexican town fight off looting bandits, each of the seven for a different reason, facing their own ethical dilemmas and contradictions.

Ethical issues highlighted: altruism, bullying, charity, courage, integrity, teamwork and the importance of prioritizing values.

Favorite quote:

Harry (Brad Dexter): “There comes a time to turn mother’s picture to the wall and get out. The village will be no worse off than it was before we came.”

Chris (Yul Brenner): “You forget one thing — we took a contract.”

Vin (Steve McQueen): “It’s not the kind any court would enforce.”

Chris: “That’s just the kind you’ve got to keep.” Continue reading →

A Disappointing and Damaging Ethics Dunce: The Obama Campaign

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

No matter who wins the Presidency on November 6, one thing is for certain. We now can be sure that the day will come when a future Presidential campaign runs an ad that concludes, “Don’t vote for him: he’s an asshole!” For that, we will be able to place the blame on, of all people, Barack Obama, and his 2012 campaign. This is the same Barack Obama who promised, the first time he was running for President, to change the tone in Washington; the same President Obama who told a group in 2010…

“But there is a sense that something is different now, that something is broken, that those of us in Washington are not serving the people as well as we should,” Mr. Obama said. “At times, it seems like we are unable to listen to one another, to have at once a serious and civil debate. This erosion of civility in the public square sows division and cynicism among our citizens. It poisons the well of public opinion….Civility is not a sign of weakness.”

Yet his 2012 campaign’s embrace of gutter-level name calling and divisive rhetoric, with the full participation of both the President and the Vice-President, has guaranteed that the tone Obama promised to change will change for the worse, and that the well of public opinion will be more toxic than ever. Continue reading →

Here It Is, The Ethics Exception You’ve Been Waiting For: When The Naked Teacher Principle Doesn’t Apply

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

The Naked Teacher Principle: The Principle states that a secondary school teacher or administrator (or other role model for children) who allows pictures of himself or herself to be widely publicized, as on the web, showing the teacher naked or engaging in sexually provocative poses, cannot complain when he or she is dismissed by the school as a result.

_______________________________________________________________________

Ms. Webb, NYC school guidance counselor, circa 1995. Va-va-voom.

Tiffany Webb is, or was, a 37 year-old  guidance counselor in the  New York City public schools. She had excelled at her job for 12 years until photos she posed for as a 20-year-old lingerie model turned up on the internet.  When a student showed  photos of Webb that he had found online to her principal, it was recommended that she be fired. After an investigation, an Education Department committee voted 2-1 to do just that, concluding, ‘The inappropriate photos were accessible to impressionable adolescents. That behavior has a potentially adverse influence on her ability to counsel students and be regarded as a role model.”

Her firing came as she was scheduled to gain tenure. Naturally, she’s suing.  I hope she wins, because while the committee’s rhetoric is in line with the sound reasoning behind the Naked Teacher Principle, the facts dictate that this is the point—and all rules have such a point point— where “ethics incompleteness” occurs and the rule, however valid it is the vast majority of the time, accomplishes unethical rather than ethical ends.

The Naked Teacher Principle doesn’t apply to Tiffany Webb because:

1. She is not naked, though the photos doesn’t leave much to the imagination, either. OK, forget #1. Continue reading →

When Your Genius Is A Dunce: The Depressing Self-Outing of Rays’ Manager Joe Madden

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I trusted you, Joe. You broke my heart..

Organizations and institutions tell us a lot about themselves by the individuals they hold up as exemplary. To cite an example much on my mind these days, the conservative blogosphere’s canonization of the late Andrew Breitbart, master of the intentional half-truth, makes me dubious about its reliability and integrity. On  the other side of the spectrum, the fact that so many Democrats, and especially Democratic women, worship Bill Clinton reflects horribly on their values and tolerance for hypocrisy. Now, in the wake of Roger Clemens’ well-deserved acquittal for denying under oath acts that he almost certainly did, we have strong confirmation that a prominent individual Major League Baseball holds up as exemplifying, in the immortal and irritatingly pretentious words of “Terence Mann” about that corn field in Iowa, “all that once was good and it could be again”* is in truth an Ethics Dunce, and a big one at that. His name is Joe Madden, the American League’s 2011 Manager of the Year, and I am disappointed and depressed. (Yes, I have named Joe an Ethics Hero in the past.) Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: France

/ Jack Marshall / 37 Comments

France

France doesn’t seem to comprehend it yet, but it is embarking on an uncharted and dangerous journey by installing a leader whose lifestyle argues for the irrelevance of marriage.

Valérie Trierweiler, the partner of France’s newly-elected president François Hollande, is being referred to world-wide as France’s new, and unmarried, “First Lady.” She seems like a serious, admirable professional, and there are certainly benefits to any nation by having a woman of substance, intelligence and talent at or near the top of that country’s public figures. I know very little about Hollande, but I am assuming that he is qualified for the difficult job he is undertaking, and that he, like Trierweiler, are mature adults who have every right to structure their personal relationships however they please. That assumption, however, requires the omission of the duties of leadership from the calculation. Leaders cannot make personal decisions based only on their own needs, but must make those decisions while acknowledging an immutable and long-proven fact: leaders have a disproportional, almost frightening power to influence, shape and change a culture, and the more successful and popular  leaders are, the greater that power is. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Hillary Clinton

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Those are four words I once would have bet I would never type.

Real. Honest. Brave. Beautiful. Thanks.

The Secretary of State deserves them though, for appearing in public, before the cameras, with no make-up and just a touch of lipstick. Let Fox News and the Matt Drudge mock: Hillary didn’t “forget her make-up.” She just decided “to hell with it.” And, as the Washington Post correctly noted, she looks just fine.

I just spent an event sitting next to the wife of a friend. She must be pushing 70, and her face and hair would not provide a single clue that she was more than 45, except for this: but for the movement of her eyeballs and occasionally her lips, her expression was completely unchanging.It was creepy. Her husband, whom I hadn’t seen in about ten years, was aging normally, but now his marriage of 40-plus years looked like he had robbed the cradle, albeit the cradle of a family afflicted with genetic facial paralysis. What’s the point? Why do American women feel the need to feign youth, even to those who they can’t possibly fool? Hillary looks like a real person to me; my friend’s wife looks like she may crumble into dust when the sunlight hits her. Continue reading →

Role Model Ethics: A Spring Training Drama in One Act

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Kevin Youkilis, role model

From Fort Myers, Florida, where the Boston Red Sox are in the early stages of  Spring Training, Boston Globe sportswriter Pete Abraham reports the following scene involving Kevin Youkilis, the Boston third baseman:

The Red Sox infielders were taking grounders on Field 2 this morning when a kid who looked to be 10 or 11 yelled out, “Hey, Youk, give me a ball!”

Kevin Youkilis looked up and said, “What’s the right way to ask?” Chagrined, the kid said, “Can I please have a ball?”

Youk tossed the kid a ball. “Don’t ever forget that for the rest of your life,” he said.

“Thanks,” said the kid.

It may not take a village to raise a child, but the village can certainly help out, especially those who children admire, look up to and respect. Kevin Youkilis took the time to teach a boy he had never seen before a crucial lesson about politeness, civility and respect, and because the lesson  came from a baseball player, the boy really might remember it for the rest of his life. This was a gift. It only took a few seconds, but it might make a huge difference over time as the boy grows to manhood, and all because a professional athlete accepted the responsibility of being a role model.

Nice job, Youk.

Now try to stay healthy this year.

Ethics Incoherence From Sir Paul

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

"Obladi oblada."

I thought about a lot of possible headlines for this post. “Most Muddled Ethics Statement of the Century” was a real contender. I thought about making it an Ethics Alarms quiz, with the plaintive query,“Can anyone please tell me what the heck Paul McCartney thinks he is saying?” And, yes, I thought about skipping the story completely, as I am not eager to rattle the cages of the zealous pot enthusiasts, several of whom bombarded me, my business and my wife with vicious and threatening e-mails last week.

But this cannot pass without comment. Paul McCartney has given an interview to Rolling Stone in which, among other things, he announces that he is giving up smoking pot as a responsible father of an eight-year-old girl.

“I did a lot, and it was enough,” the co-writer of “With a Little Help From My Friends” (“I get high with a little help from my friends…”) and “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” tells the interviewer. “I smoked my share. When you’re bringing up a youngster, your sense of responsibility does kick in, if you’re lucky, at some point. Enough’s enough – you just don’t seem to think it’s necessary.”

This is completely bewildering. Is Paul saying he’s had his fill, and now that he has, come to think of it, it’s irresponsible to smoke pot? Is he expressing regret? Continue reading →

A “Naked Teacher Principle” Spin-Off: “The Case of the Naked Football Coach”

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

If it's any consolation, Coach Withee, George Costanza sends his sympathies.

With the notable exception of the high school art teacher who moonlighted on the web as an artist that painted pictures using his butt and genitals while wearing a paper bag over his head, most victims of the “Naked Teacher Principle”(TNTP for short) have been females.  [You can read the initial exposition of the principle here. “To put it in the simplest possible terms, a responsible high school teacher has a duty to take reasonable care that her students do not see her in the nude. It’s not too much to ask.”] This time, however, the naked teacher was not only male but the football coach. And, as the merciless Principle demands, he’s out of a job. Continue reading →

Introducing the Munroe Rule: “If You Teach, Don’t Denegrate Students Online; If you Denigrate People OnLine, Don’t Teach”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Viki Knox fans

I want to thank Viki Knox, the  Union Township (N.J.) high school teacher who decided to proclaim her condemnation of gays on Facebook, for making it possible for me to re-use much of an earlier post. This saves me a lot of thought and time.

That one involved Jerry Buell, a veteran high school teacher who was suspended indefinitely earlier this year by Lake County, Florida’s Mount Dora High School for posting an anti-same-sex marriage rant on his Facebook page.  In his post, prompted by New York’s decision to legalize gay marriage, Buell said that the news made him want to throw up, that gay marriage was “a cesspool,” and that homosexuality was a sin. Knox went Buell one better, going to the heart of the matter by declaring that homosexuality is a sin that “breeds like cancer” and describing it as “perverted.” She also wrote:

“Why parade your unnatural immoral behaviors before the rest of us? I/we do not have to accept anything, anyone, any behavior or any choices! I do not have to tolerate anything others wish to do.” Continue reading →