The Best in Ethics 2010. Not nearly long enough…but still a lot of men, women and deeds worth celebrating.
Most Important Ethical Act of the Year: Continue reading
sportsmanship
Hall of Fame Ethics: The Jeff Bagwell Dilemma
Members of the Baseball Writers Association of America have been turning in their ballots for the Hall of Fame, their collective totals eventually determining which retired major league baseball stars will have plaques in Cooperstown. If you follow baseball closely, you are aware of the big debates this year: Is Tim Raines worthy? Will Bert Blyleven finally make it? Has Alan Trammel been unfairly neglected? What about Jack Morris and Roberto Alomar? If you don’t follow baseball, you couldn’t care less, and I pity you. One controversy this year, however, should be of interest to non-fans as well as fans, because it involves the proper application of the ethical principles of fairness and equity in an environment of doubt. It is the Jeff Bagwell dilemma. Continue reading
Ethics Hero: Ex-Washington Redskins Holder Hunter Smith
The Washington Redskins and their fans thought they had made a last second comeback to tie last Sunday’s NFL game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. All they needed to do to send the game into overtime was to make the extra point, the virtually automatic seventh point of a touchdown that is successfully kicked in the pros about 99% of the time. It wasn’t to be, however: the ‘Skins long snapper snapped the ball high, the holder couldn’t hold it, and the game was lost.
After the game, the holder, Redskins punter Hunter Smith, told reporters that it was his job to catch errant snaps, and that he took responsibility for the loss. “If anybody needs to lose their job it’s me,” he said in the locker room. “I certainly accept blame.”
Sure enough, the Redskins, who are having yet another in a long line of disappointing seasons, fired him. Continue reading
Ethics Quote of the Week: Dolphins linebacker Karlos Dansby
“He’s just taking after the head coach, man. It all trickles downhill. That’s how I look at it, it trickles downhill. The head coach, he opened a can of worms over there and now he’s got to fix it.”
Dolphins linebacker Karlos Dansby, commenting on the outrageous conduct of New York Jets trainer Sal Alosi ,who intentionally tripped a Miami Dolphins player on the sideline during a game Sunday. Alosi was suspended without pay for the rest of the season, including the playoffs, and fined an additional $25,000.
Dansby is exactly right. Continue reading
Bret Favre, Meet Derek, LeBron, and Tiger
Recent revelations about Joe DiMaggio’s conduct while doing PR work for the military during World War II shocked some people who had been humming “Mrs. Robinson” over the years. Joe, as insiders had long maintained, really was a selfish and anti-social guy, far from the knight in shining armor that the public took him to be. But he played his hero role well when he was in the public eye, and that is to his credit: DiMaggio met his obligation as a hero-for-hire. Athletic heroes are challenged to live up to their on-field character, and not surprisingly, few are equal to the task. One who was has been back in the news lately: Stan (the Man) Musial, the St. Louis baseball great who will soon be awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Obama.
In these anxious times when every institution and every champion seems to betray us eventually, sports heroes who can remain untarnished are especially valuable, which is one reason why they earn so much money. On the field, court, course, ring or track, they can exhibit courage, trustworthiness, selflessness, leadership, sacrifice, diligence, loyalty, fair play and sportsmanship to inspire us and serve as role models for our children. All they have to do is avoid showing that it is all an illusion after the games are over. It shouldn’t be difficult, yet it is.
Tiger Woods only needed to be a responsible and trustworthy husband and father. LeBron James only had to avoid revealing himself as a fame-obsessed child. Derek Jeter only had to resist the impulse to extort the team he symbolized for money he neither deserved or needed. Yet they couldn’t, or wouldn’t do it. They hurt their own images, reputation and legacy beyond repair, but more important, they robbed us of heroes that we sorely need.
The latest addition to the pantheon of fallen idols is Bret Favre, the star NFL quarterback now suffering through the humiliating final season that was more or less guaranteed by his inability to retire while he could still pick up a football. Continue reading
Manny, Kanye, and the Farce of Self-Serving Apologies
Two habitual bad actors in the world of entertainment apologized this week, for similar reasons and with equivalent credibility.
First, baseball slugger Manny Ramirez issued an apology to his former team once removed, The Boston Red Sox, for forcing the team to trade him in the middle of the 2008 pennant race because Manny was faking injuries, refusing to hustle during game, assaulting employees, and poisoning team morale and discipline. “I think everything was my fault,” Ramirez said. “You’ve got to be a real man to realize when you do wrong. Hey, it was my fault, right? I’m already past that stage. I’m happy. I’m in a new team,” Manny told reporters. He was with a new team, all right: the Dodgers, his previous team, let him go to the Chicago White Sox for nothing because, well, he was faking injuries, dogging it in the field…same act, different stage. So what was the apology about?
Manny, or more likely his agent, realizes this most recent break with a team as the result of his habitually juvenile and unprofessional attitude might cost him a lot of money at contract time—Ramirez is a free agent after all. So contrition was called for—two full years after he laughed off any suggestions that he was at fault for the Boston debacle, and proved that he had been loafing on the field by playing in L.A. like he was on fire. This isn’t an apology; it’s damage control, and thus is a deceitful and dishonest apology that has nothing whatsoever to do with genuine regret. The big tip-off is that Ramirez felt he had to explain why his apology was so admirable. Yes, Manny, you have to be a real man to admit you’re wrong; a real jerk to fake an apology to fool a future employer into believing that you’ve turned over a new leaf, and real fool to believe anyone will fall for it.
Then there is rapper Kanye West. Continue reading
Charlie Rangel’s Defense and Buster Olney’s Fallacy
Charlie Rangel’s defense against the ethics charges against him is, in part this: I’m not the only one, so it’s unfair to punish me.” From the Washington Post:
“He was not the only lawmaker to solicit donations in this manner, his lawyers argue, saying that peers who did the same thing were not punished. With a trial of Rangel by the House ethics committee possible by mid-September, his legal team reached across the Capitol to point a finger at Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who helped raise money for a center named for him at the University of Louisville. Rangel’s team cited similarities with the recently deceased Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) and with former Republican senators Trent Lott (Miss.) and Jesse Helms (N.C.).”
OK, a question: what’s the matter with that argument? Continue reading
Lincoln Chafee’s Unethical Attack on Curt Schilling
Former G.O.P. Senator Lincoln Chafee, now running for Governor of Rhode Island as an Independent, did a despicable thing yesterday, and almost certainly has no idea why it was so wrong.
During a radio interview, Chafee criticized a deal state economic development officials approved with 38 Studios, a game development company owned by former Red Sox pitcher and World Series hero Curt Schilling. Chafee, who is not alone in his criticism of the loan, argued that too much taxpayer money is being entrusted to a company that has no proven track record. That’s a legitimate point. But to hammer home his point, Chafee decided to attack the character, career accomplishments, reputation and integrity of Schilling, a man he has never met…based on nothing at all. Continue reading
LaBron, Steinbrenner, and Warped Sports Ethics
Sports ennoble us through the symbolic exploits of latter-day mythic heroes, who use their amazing skills and talents to exemplify courage, grace under adversity, loyalty, accountability, sacrifice, and, of course, sportsmanship.
Or so they say.
Sometimes it works out that way, but just as often an extraordinary athlete like LeBron James will choose to use his prominence to promote less attractive character traits, like greed, vanity, disloyalty, cruelty and boorishness. For some reason, the mega-millions LeBron was going to receive for fleeing Cleveland as an NBA free agent was not sufficient booty: the basketball star felt that “branding” required that he tease as many cities and franchises as possible, rub Cleveland’s loss in the faces of his previously worshipful fans in that city, and then announce his final choice of new employers in an ESPN TV special that embarrassed his sport and his species. James is not alone, of course; he has lots of company among college and professional athletes whose preening and selfishness make it impossible to use their names and “role model” in the same sentence.
But for the use of sport to warp ethical priorities, nothing quite matches the nauseating accolades being heaped on the late George Steinbrenner, whose ownership of the New York Yankees was a decades-long advertisement for the principle that the end justifies the means, and as long as you win, nothing else really matters. Continue reading
Ethics Challenge: the Fisherman and the Pole Vaulter
Many readers disagreed with Ethics Alarms on its verdict in the women’s track and field tournament story, where the championship-winning pole vault was disqualified after the opposing coach complained that the vaulter was wearing a bracelet, which was specifically banned by the rules. I argued that the rule was clear and unambiguous, that the coaches had the duty of making sure each competitor followed it, and that simply pretending that the rule didn’t exist because the result of enforcing it was harsh was not an ethical option for the referees. The coach who flagged the rules was well within ethical limits by making sure that his team, which obeyed the rules, wasn’t defeated by a team that didn’t, even if the rule violated didn’t help it succeed.
Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to explain why this recent scenario, in a very different sport, should be looked at differently from the track meet, or not. Continue reading
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