signature significance

Ethics Note To Senator Cruz: You Can’t Begin A Principled Stand With A Lie

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

Little is more damaging to the public’s trust and faith in government than when elected officials engage in gratuitous lies—statements that can only convince those who don’t bother to check the facts underlying them, made for their momentary impact on the theory that the effect is worth the eventual exposure of the lie for what it is. Such lies are detestable, because they not only reinforce the impression that politicians lie when their lips are moving, they also convey the message that lies are merely tools of the politicians trade, and not even particularly shameful or worthy of criticism. When a politician engages in such transparent dishonesty, he or she is saying, quite literally, that lying is no big deal.

It is a big deal. It is especially a big deal when the point of the lie is to fool the public into believing something the politician is doing is a big deal itself, when it is really a sham.

Welcome to Sen. Ted Cruz and his fake filibuster, also known as Ted Cruz’s Bad Jimmy Stewart Impression.

"Ted, I knew Mr. Smith, and you're no Mr. Smith. You're not even Rand Paul..."

“Ted, I knew Mr. Smith, and you’re no Mr. Smith. You’re not even Rand Paul…”

Evoking memories of the Frank Capra classic, “Mr. Smith Goes To Washington,” Sen. Cruz told the world that he was going to talk on the floor of the Senate against Obamacare until he couldn’t stand any more…you know, just like the Jimmy’s idealistic junior Senator in the film, who finally collapses of exhaustion to end his filibuster but whose courage makes the corrupt, manipulating senior Senator from his state confess that he was trying to fund a lousy health care b…no, wait, it had something to do with a kids camp and influence peddling. I haven’t seen the film in a while.

Cruz, however, unlike Stewart, is not engaging in a filibuster, because he is not trying to block a vote or anything else: Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid has scheduled a vote on funding the Affordable Care Act for today, whereupon Cruz has to sit down and shut up whether he can still stand or not. Continue reading →

Incompetent Elected Official Of The Month: Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La)

/ Jack Marshall / 39 Comments
The Senator thinks its running backwards!

The Senator thinks it’s running backwards!

On the Shreveport Time website, Andre Dean Benton reports…

“I attended the Bossier City VFW Post 5951 discussion of Veterans’ issues with Senator Mary Landrieu last week at 1315 North Gate Road, where she responded to a wide range of issues facing our American veterans from her talking points as well as from questions fielded from the audience. An older veteran stood up toward the middle of the meeting and expressed to her his deep sadness and concern with the massive and constantly growing American debt ($16.9 trillion today and $5.6 trillion in 2000) and the crippling cost to taxpayers to pay for the staggering interest on that debt….

I was stunned to then hear my Louisiana senator defend the massive U.S. debt saying: “That is not true, sir! We do not have an increasing national debt! For the past six to seven years we have been continuously driving that debt down and reducing it and it is NOT increasing.” She then went on to explain the federal costs of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security as “non-negotiable mandates by law that cannot be changed” and explained that only a small portion of the federal budget was in discretionary spending, where she was working with others in the Senate to further reduce our nation’s debt….

“No one on her staff corrected her or offered a polite “update” for the audience, and the elderly gentleman speaking the question was a little rattled by her vigorous contradiction of his stated facts that he just mumbled something across the table from me about “Congress constantly raising the debt ceiling …” and then was respectfully silent. As he was asking and our senator was responding, I was Googling the US Treasury’s official home page on my iPhone and staring at the government published facts on the history and facts about the U.S. debt: Continue reading →

“It’s A Cook Book!”

/ Jack Marshall / 40 Comments
Nobody listens to me...

Nobody listens to me…

The issues at the core of the Anthony Weiner debacle—which is not the conduct of the ex-Congressman/absurd NYC mayoral candidate/sick puppy, but the fact that so many, like Dan Savage, Huma Abedin (Weiner’s wife, Hillary’s apprentice, carrier of the Clintonian ethisc virus),  Andrew Sullivan, and apparently 16% of New York Democrats still argue that his conduct doesn’t disqualify him from elected office—-are ones which I am especially passionate about, because they are the very issues that launched this blog’s predecessor, the Ethics Scoreboard:

1. There is no division between private unethical conduct and public unethical conduct. It is a false construct designed to assist scoundrels in getting elected. Private conduct is as reliable an indicator of trustworthiness as other prior conduct.

2. Leaders in a democracy should be held to an exemplary level of conduct, not the average or common conduct of those they seek to lead.

3. Some instances of unethical conduct have “signature significance“for the individual involved, meaning that contrary to the common rationalization that “anyone can make a mistake,” there are some things that ethical people never would do even once, and thus the fact that an individual does do it is persuasive evidence that they are generally untrustworthy.

Thus I believe Weiner’s story is more important than the mere sordid political drama involved: if people pay attention, if people learn, if people can get by their partisan biases and convenient ethics misconceptions, maybe we can begin establishing a better, more sensible, beneficial standard for our elected leaders, who, perhaps you have noticed, are, as a group, an embarrassment to the legacy of July 4, 1776. I don’t have illusions that I have any influence, and it is unseemly to say “I told you so,” but sometimes I feel like one of the doomed heroes in science fiction/horror scenarios who end up screaming “They’re already here! You’re next!” or “It’s a cook book!” to unheeding crowds blithely proceeding to their own destruction.

Yesterday the news surfaced that should be the smoking gun on Anthony Weiner’s corrupt character that readers of this blog, at least, did not require to render a verdict—that Weiner’s conduct was not just an irrelevant personal quirk, that his initial lying about it was proof of a corrupt character, and that he is no more trustworthy than John Edwards, Lance Armstrong, Ryan Braun or anyone else who lies to the public to keep its trust. Maybe it will convince Dan, Huma, Andrew and the rest that Anthony Weiner is too corrupt—never mind sick—to lead. If it doesn’t, I think that is signature significance about them. Continue reading →

Ethically Depressing Quote Of The Week: NBC News

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

“It’s unclear if his latest admission will hurt his standing with voters.”

—-NBC News, after revealing on its website that New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner, who resigned from Congress in 2011 amid a sexting scandal, admitted today that there were more episodes like the one that forced his resignation.  He issued the statement after a gossip website published an interview with an anonymous woman who claimed she had a six-month online relationship with him that continued after his earlier online activities were, uh, exposed.

The once and future studmuffin...

The once and future studmuffin…”Mayor Studmuffin?” Really, New York?

Weiner’s  statement was Clintonian with heavy dash of weasel, saying,

“I said that other texts and photos were likely to come out, and today they have. As I have said in the past, these things that I did were wrong and hurtful to my wife and caused us to go through challenges in our marriage that extended past my resignation from Congress. While some things that have been posted today are true and some are not, there is no question that what I did was wrong. This behavior is behind me.”

Note: Weiner also said the behavior was behind him when he resigned. (Actually, based on the photos, the behavior is clearly in front of him.) Given his talent for Clintonesque  deceit, perhaps he means that all past behavior is behind him, since he’s talking in the present, and only future internet flashing is ahead of him.

Whatever. Continue reading →

Self-Webshaming At Dunkin’ Donuts

/ Jack Marshall / 53 Comments

(Watch this after you’ve read the post. Kind of like dessert..)

The ethical considerations one should review when pondering whether to engage in webshaming nicely evaporate when the subject has chosen, though unwittingly, to webshame herself. Thus Ethics Alarms has no qualms about presenting for your consideration, revulsion, and rejection if she ever applies for a job from you, one Taylor Chapman, a 27-year-old woman who lives in the vicinity of Fort Lauderdale. She eagerly and proudly posted to her Facebook page the phone-video above, of her abusing an impeccable Dunkin’ Donuts employee, annoying a customer, and making serial statements with signature significance—no decent human being would utter even one of these appalling comments in public unless suffering from a brain trauma or extreme intoxication.

Chapman was angry because she and her friends had not received a receipt along with their large drive-thru order, and angrily (and abusively, based on Chapman’s manner, but we can only guess) demanded to receive their order free of charge, as Dunkin’ Donuts now promises as part of a service pledge. The employee handling the order apparently did not know how to proceed, and told the group that they would have to come by the store and see her manager the next day.

[An aside: That’s not good customer service, DD. If you make a guarantee that is supposed to mean anything, you have an obligation to train employees how to deliver on it. Telling customers who have not received the promised service that they have to come back to the establishment another day to receive what they are owed is unreasonable and a bait-and switch. I would have said to forget it. I would have written a letter. I would not have done what Chapman did, and I don’t know anyone who would.]

What Chapman did was to return the next day and demand her free order, tossing obscenities at the extraordinarily polite and unflappable employee (his name is Abid Adar, and you should send him flowers) on duty while she recorded the encounter as if it were a health department sting. Continue reading →

Reese Witherspoon Uses The Pazuzu Defense

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments
What's that, Reese? You say your head spun around? Ok, then I take it back--that really wasn't you talking...

What’s that, Reese? You say your head spun around? Ok, then I take it back–that really wasn’t you talking…

Actress Reese Witherspoon interfered with police in the process of their arresting her husband  for DUI, and got arrested herself as a result…but not before displaying the tell-tale mark of an arrogant celebrity, the old “Do you know who I am?” threat. As the officers tried to handle her allegedly drunken hubby, Witherspoon interjected, “Do you know my name?” When the officer said, in effect, that he couldn’t care less,  the star of “Legally Blonde”  retorted with “You’re about to find out who I am … You are going to be on national news!”

Now, in the light of day, sobriety, and the realization that her Q points may be in danger, Witherspoon has responded with a Full Pazuzu (Pazuzu is the demon that caused poor Linda Blair to say all those awful things in “The Exorcist”), saying:

“…I was disrespectful to the officer who was just doing his job. The words I used that night definitely do not reflect who I am. I have nothing but respect for the police and I am very sorry for my behavior.” Continue reading →

The Arlington, Texas School District Flunks Accountability

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments
The latest in teaching aids in Arlington, Texas

The latest in teaching aids in Arlington, Texas

If a Walmart worker poured pencil shavings down the throat of a customer, he would be fired. If the CEO of Boeing poured pencil shaving down the throat of a company accountant, he’d be out the door before he could utter the word, “Seconds?” If a pediatrician poured pencil shavings down the throat of a patient, she’d lose her license, and if a veterinarian poured pencil shavings down the throat of a kitten, he’d be arrested.

Yet in the Arlington, Texas, School District, the teacher who poured pencil shavings into the mouth of unsuspecting Marquis Jay, a 13-year-old eighth-grader at Boles Junior High School, is back on the job after less than a month’s suspension. She apologized, you see. She said that she wasn’t thinking right.

Yes, I’d say that’s a fair description of her actions. But I’d also say that a teacher prone to harming her students in those periodic moments when she is “not thinking right” is a continuing risk to the children. If fact, I’ll confidently state not only that a teacher who attacks a child in this manner—and an attack is what it is—has to be fired, if a parent of a child attending the school involved is to have any justified faith that the school is properly concerned with the welfare of its students, isn’t recruiting instructors from the violent ward at the local Home for the Bewildered, and, in short, doesn’t have an administration staffed by moonlighting Hell’s Angels members. Continue reading →

Is It Fair that Manti Te’o’s Dead Girlfriend Hoax Might Make Him A Less Attractive Draft Choice?

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Don’t be silly. Of course it is.

You'd think the green skin would have tipped him off....

The non-existent girlfriend. You’d think the green skin would have tipped him off….

If you are not aware of the particulars of this weird and confusing tale, read the extensive account here, and good luck to you. From an ethics perspective, all that matters is:

  • Somebody perpetrated a web hoax, creating an imaginary online girlfriend for Notre Dame football star Manti Te’o.
  • The young man told the media a touching story about how his grandmother and girlfriend had died the same day.
  • Without checking any aspect of the story, outlet after outlet repeated and embellished the tale, despite the fact that the girlfriend never existed.
  • In his comments to the press, Manti Te’o never revealed that he had not, in fact, ever met the woman face to face. Indeed, many of his comments suggested otherwise.
  • As of this writing, no one is certain who created the fake girlfriend, or whether Manti Te’o was in on the deception. Continue reading →

The Significance of Paul Ryan’s Marathon

/ Jack Marshall / 61 Comments

Interviewer : Are you still running?
Paul Ryan: Yeah, I hurt a disc in my back, so I don’t run marathons anymore. I just run ten miles or [less].
Interviewer : But you did run marathons at some point?
Paul Ryan: Yeah, but I can’t do it anymore, because my back is just not that great.
Interviewer : I’ve just gotta ask, what’s your personal best?
Paul Ryan: Under three, high twos. I had a two hour and fifty-something.
Interviewer : Holy smokes. All right, now you go down to Miami University…
Paul Ryan: I was fast when I was younger, yeah.

Thus did Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Paul Ryan describe his athletic exploits to ABC News reporter Hugh Hewett. But it was bad information: Runner’s World did some digging, and discovered that Ryan, intentionally or unintentionally, fictionally improved his best marathon time by an more than an hour. That “intentionally or unintentionally” is as important as the media and blog sleuths are making it out to be. Continue reading →

Signature Significance, Jonah Lehrer, and That Sinking Feeling

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Yes, uh, a little TOO MUCH creativity there, Jonah…

At the New Yorker, star writer Jonah Lehrer has resigned after it was shown that he fabricated quotes from Bob Dylan for his well-reviewed book “Imagine: How Creativity Works.”

This was the final shoe dropping that began with one untied shoelace, the discovery in June that Lehrer had plagiarized from himself, lifting a section of a piece published earlier in one publication to include in a piece written for The New Yorker. This is a minor ethical incursion—-Lehrer had represented the second essay as original, so using prior published material was dishonest even if he was the author—but it launched his employers on a mission of scrutiny, investigating to see if the one transgression was part of a trend.

When it comes to professional ethics, you see, it often is. The principle of signature significance holds that in some pursuits just one episode can be enough to make certain conclusions. A writer of true integrity never borrows from his own published work without flagging the fact. Doing so even once indicates shaky integrity, and a willingness to cut corners. It may well indicate a proclivity to cheat in more egregious ways. Continue reading →