I first encountered the device of the unfounded accusatory rhetorical questions when, as a teenager, I became fascinated by the Lincoln assassination conspiracy. A best-seller at the time was Web of Conspiracy, an over-heated brief for the theory that Lincoln’s War Secretary, Edwin Stanton, and others were in league with John Wilkes Booth. The author, a mystery writer named Theodore Roscoe, was constantly suggesting sinister motives by asking questions like “The sealed records of the official assassination investigation were destroyed in a mysterious fire. Was the War Department afraid of what the documents would prove? Would they have implicated Stanton? We will never know.” This tactic is on view regularly today, used generously by the purveyors of modern conspiracies, but it is also a regrettably common tool of journalists and historians. Now the eclectic sports journalist Howard Megdal (who also edits a terrific website, The Perpetual Post) has found a new use for it. His question: “When Hank Greenberg of the Detroit Tigers made a run at Babe Ruth’s season home run record, falling two short with 58 in 1938, was he pitched around because he was Jewish?” Continue reading
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Essay: Ending the Bi-Partisan Effort to Destroy Trust in America
Both the Pentagon shooter and the Texas I.R.S. attacker were motivated by a virulent distrust of the U.S. government, the distrust mutating into desperation and violence with the assistance of personal problems and emotional instability. We would be foolish, however, to dismiss the two as mere “wingnuts,” the current term of choice to describe political extremists who have gone around the bend. They are a vivid warning of America’s future, for the media, partisan commentators, the two political parties and our elected officials are doing their worst to convert all of us into wingnuts, and the results could be even more disastrous than the fanciful horrors the Left and the Right tell us that the other has planned for us. Continue reading
Ethics Dunce Revisted: Jay McGwire
About a year ago, over on the Ethics Scoreboard, I made former baseball slugger Mark McGwire’s brother, Jay McGwire, an Ethics Dunce. At that time Mark McGwire was still mum about his widely-suspected steroid use, and his brother was peddling a book proposal that supposedly exposed his home run-hitting bro’s cheating ways. I then wrote…
“… Brother Jay says he has written the book “out of love” for his brother, who no longer sees, speaks to him, nor, presumably, gives him hand-outs. Right. Jay McGwire is selling out his brother for cash. This is not a courageous whistleblower alerting a company to crime in its ranks. This is not a family member doing the right thing by refusing to help a parent, sibling, or offspring get away with child abuse, treason, fraud or murder. There is nothing admirable, selfless or courageous here. Jay McGwire wants money, and he is willing to embarrass and exploit his brother to get it.” Continue reading
Mark McGwire’s Steroid Confession, Part 2: Neyer and the Rationalizations
The worst thing about Mark McGwire’s belated confession is that I once again have to listen to and read the absurd, hackneyed, illogical and ethically obtuse arguments for ignoring his conduct. Like… Continue reading
Mark McGwire’s Steroid Confession, Part 1
Former slugging first baseman Mark McGwire finally admitted yesterday that he indeed was a steroid-user while playing. Telling the truth, even, as in McGwire’s case, when it is done too late and in a self-serving manner, is a good thing. Nevertheless, his admission should have no bearing at all on the judgment of him as unworthy of post-career honors. McGwire cheated, and his use of steroids damaged his fellow players and the game. Nothing he said changes any of that. Continue reading
Tiger Woods Ethics, Part I: Betrayal’s Not for Heroes
I wasn’t planning on commenting on the Tiger Woods soap opera. Its ethical lessons seemed obvious, and merely xeroxed themes that I have, in the eyes of some, thumped to death. I do feel that the apparent glee with which some in the sports media have attacked Woods for revealing his true character is damning…of them. Golf’s Golden Child finally outed himself as a phony “good guy” and a classic case of the prodigy who won’t or can’t grow up, a man who has been carrying on multiple adulterous affairs while using his bottomless checkbook to cover his tracks. It seems that many reporters have long known that Tiger’s public image was a fraud, and had chafed over the adulation heaped on him as they witnessed the golfer being mean, petty and boorish, often to them. Now these journalists feel it is “safe” to skewer Woods, and are doing so with gusto. Cowards. They were parties to a mass public deception, and their duty was to let us know Tiger was playing us for suckers when they knew it, not when his lies became National Enquirer headlines.
As for Tiger’s own conduct, however, I presumed most could see the ethics issues clearly. Then the apologists and rationalizers started writing their columns. Continue reading
Player Dementia and the Fan’s Dilemma: Is Watching N.F.L. Football Unethical?
It is Sunday, and much of America is ready to settle in front of millions of wide-screen, high-definition television sets to watch Sunday’s favorite entertainment: NFL football. The last thing football fans want to think about today is ethics, and today, perhaps, they shouldn’t have to. Although we are not there yet, the time is fast approaching when not only football fans, but the companies that buy commercials, the merchandisers that sell NFL-licensed jerseys and posters, the TV networks, and the nation itself may have to consider a difficult ethics question: is supporting pro-football unethical? Continue reading
Corked Bats and “No Harm, No Foul”
From lawyer/baseball blogger Craig Calcattera we learn that Baseball Hall of Famer Robin Yount may have used a corked bat. Corking, in which cork is surreptitiously inserted into a hole drilled down the length of a baseball bat, is banned by the rules of baseball: it supposedly allows the bat to be swung faster and propel a ball farther and harder because of the properties of the cork. Get caught with a corked bat, and a major league player gets thrown out of the game, suspended and fined. Worse, he acquires the reputation of being a cheater. Those who are certain that former Cubs slugger Sammy Sosa used steroids are bolstered in their belief by the fact that he was once caught using a corked bat.
Yet there are strong indications that the superiority of corked bats is imaginary. When TV’s excellent “Mythbusters” tested the matter, their tests rendered that myth as “busted.” So Robin Yount’s 3,142 major league hits were not aided in any way by the cork in his bat. Should we care that he used one, if he indeed did?
Yes. We should care that he was cheating. Using a corked bat violates the rules, and the fact that this cheating is not as effective as a player thinks it is, or effective at all, is absolutely irrelevant to an assessment of his character, integrity and sportsmanship. When the Delta House students in the comedy “Animal House” steal what they think are the final exam answers and use them on the test, they are still cheating, even though it turns out that their cheat-sheet had the wrong answers. A runner who cheats but loses the race anyway is still a cheater; so is a corked bat-user who never manages to hit the ball.
“No harm, no foul” is just another rationalization to make it easier for some to let unethical conduct go unrecognized and unpunished. The foul is the harm, or part of it. In cheating situations, there are two issues: was there cheating, and what were the consequences of it. The cheater is responsible for the results of his cheating, but often has less than complete control over them. An ineffective cheater is still just as unethical as an effective one.
Many have trouble grasping this. Even some professions have trouble grasping this: for example, the ethics rules governing lawyers generally only prohibit completed violations. An attorney trying to introduce falsified evidence in trial doesn’t count as cheating, in the construction of the Rules, if the attempt fails. A lawyer who tries to deceive his or her client with a slyly misleading statement may not be violating the ethics rules if the client isn’t misled. Admittedly, this weakness in the legal ethics rules has a lot to do with the logistics of enforcement, but it is still an embodiment of “no harm, no foul.” The unsuccessful attempt to break the rules would probably support a complaint that the lawyer exhibited conduct calling his character into question, but I can’t locate a case of a lawyer whose bar disciplined him solely for unsuccessfully attempting to break a rule.
When, if ever, baseball decides to permit corked bats, then using them will be perfectly fine, if probably pointless. For now, however, the anti-corking rule still serves a useful purpose. It helps identify who the cheaters are. In cheating, as in more honorable pursuits, there is no honor in being inept.
Ethics Alarms 