“the ends justify the means”

Talia Jane, Public Jerk, Grabs Credit For Yelp’s Pay Raise

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments
She's baaaaaack!

She’s baaaaaack!

Remember the fifteen-minutes of infamy of Talia Jane, an entry-level Yelp employee who posted an article to the social media site Medium titled, An Open Letter To My CEO?    Cheekily addressed to “Jeremy” (Yelp Chief Executive Officer Jeremy Stoppleman), the letter/rant/ classic of arrogant entitlement was a long, snotty whine about her low compensation—you know, like all entry-level jobs—alleged abject poverty (which was quickly shown to be a lie), high Bay Area living expenses (because they were a secret until she moved there), company policies and the fact that Yelp creator Stoppleman was rich.

Jane was thoroughly shredded by every online commentator (including Ethics Alarms) over the age of 21 and not a Bernie Sanders supporter. The obnoxious screed showed a complete lack of personal responsibility for her own choices, and made her a strong candidate for Most Unattractive Job Candidate of 2016. My conclusion:

I wouldn’t trust Talia Jane to run my lemonade stand.

Hey, but she’s young, she made a mistake, and she’ll learn and grow through this misstep, understanding the error of her ways and going forward to become a fair, reasonable, ethical member of society, right?

Fat chance. I hesitated to pronounce her essay as signature significance, a misbegotten ethics botch of a magnitude that indicated the author was probably an incurable toxic jerk, because 25 is too early to write off even the most egregious offenders. She may learn yet, I suppose, but the most recent evidence is not encouraging. Continue reading →

Animal Ethics: Oh No! Prairie Dogs Are Serial Killers!

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments
Aww, look at the cute little prai---MY GOD, WHAT IS IT DOING TO THAT SQUIRREL???

Aww, look at the cute little prai—MY GOD, WHAT IS IT DOING TO THAT SQUIRREL???

Here’s the most troubling quote from the article in Gizmodo about a biologist’s startling discovery that prairie dogs routinely kill baby ground squirrels because they don’t like baby ground squirrels…after all, they are herbivores:

“Pop culture loves to portray herbivores as peace-loving pacifists—just look at Zootopia as the latest example of this—but who can say what other barbarous acts are going undocumented in our backyards? Are rabbits stealing into burrows to throttle chipmunks in their sleep? Do elk and buffalo lose their cool and impale each other over prairie grass? These are the sorts of unsettling questions biologists will have to start asking.”

The reason those questions will be asked is the work of biologist John Hoogland of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. His observations of prairie dogs, resulting in a paper published today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, indicate that the cute, fuzzy mammals “will chase ground squirrels—usually babies—and if they catch them, they shake them violently. While they’re shaking, they’re biting the back of the neck to sever the vertebral column. Sometimes they grab by the head and literally debrain the baby. It’s violent, savage, and awful.”

There is a reason for this violence: ground squirrels and prairie dogs compete for the same grasses as food. It is the first known instance of a mammalian herbivore killing another mammalian herbivore on a routine basis, and Hoogland’s research indicates that it’s “just business”: the fewer ground squirrels there are; the more food there is for the prairie dogs and their young.

Clearly, prairie dog society is organized according to extreme utilitarian principles: the ends justify the means….at least when it comes to ground squirrels.

I think the ground squirrels should build a wall.

Ethics Dunces: Salon And Old Donald Trump Date Lucy Klebanow

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments
Stop picking on this guy. He vanished long ago.

Stop picking on this guy. He vanished long ago.

I’m not even going to quote from the lower-than-low-blow kiss-and-tell article by Lucy Klebanow in in Salon titled “My awful date with Donald Trump: The real story of a nightmare evening with a callow but cash-less heir.” I couldn’t finish reading it, so quickly was it apparently that I, like you, didn’t need to start, so self-evidently unethical and inexcusable was its motive and topic.  There is nothing newsworthy within it, and while its unjustifiable incursion into the area of privacy that every human being, even celebrities, have a right to enjoy isn’t quite at the Hulk Hogan sex tape level, it is no less wrong.

This same, mean-spirited, essay could be written about me, or you, and definitely about Lucy Klebanow, by anyone who happened to have a one-time social encounter with us that didn’t show us at our best. What has Donald Trump done to exempt him from the basic human courtesy of keeping the details of such inevitable social disasters on the way to maturity and wisdom between the two participants? Nothing. Nothing, because nothing, not even Trump’s own indiscretions about others, can do this. The Golden Rule applies here like epoxy: we don’t do this disgusting thing, because nobody wants their own repulsed bad dates to do it to them. It’s a terrible thing to do. To anyone. Period. No exceptions. Continue reading →

Bernie Sanders Fails An Integrity Test…and Worse

/ Jack Marshall / 65 Comments

Sanders protest

At the conclusion of yesterday’s post in reaction to the violent protests in Chicago that shut down a planned Donald Trump rally, I wrote, as my final observation…

8. Ethics test: Let’s see if Bernie Sanders, without prompting,  has the integrity to condemn the conduct of his fervent fans.

My guess?

No.

Well.

Bernie Sanders has escaped much scrutiny of his character thus far, in a crowd of frighteningly flawed competitors. He’s not as corrupt or dishonest as Clinton, nor as ruthless as Cruz, nor as weak as Rubio, nor lacking any redeeming qualities of character at all,  like Donald Trump. Here, however, Berrnie betrays the moral rot of the leftist revolutionary, willing to excuse violence to overturn the established order for “the greater good.” We saw this during the last Democratic debate, in which he refused to condemn the Castro regime in Cuba nor repudiate his past praise of Fidel’s accomplishments.  Hillary Clinton, given an under-hand soft-ball pitch to hit out of the park, swung from then heels and launched it into the stands:

“You know, if the values are that you oppress people, you disappear, you imprison people, even kill people, for expressing their opinions … that is not the kind of revolution of values that I ever want to see anywhere.”

Bingo. But Bernie Sanders, like the Communist totalitarians he admires for their health care and distribution of wealth, is willing to put up with some violence to achieve his revolution, and he proved it here. Abetted in some respects by the biased news media that were thrilled to blame an example of violence squelching political speech on the victim rather than the true offenders—because they don’t like the victim, you see, and if journalists and pundits don’t like someone, they discard the basic standards of decency and fairness that they will rush to demand for their political favorites—Sanders released a telling defense of the actions of his supporters, even though his supporters had admitted their deliberate mounting of a near riot to silence Trump: Continue reading →

Anti-Abortion Deception And The Saint’s Excuse

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Family Planning

Both of the extreme positions in the abortion war use the Saint’s Excuse, the historically destructive rationalization that roughly translates as “We know what’s right, so we will shamelessly lie, cheat, steal, and commit mayhem to make certain our virtuous position prevails.” Prominent employers of the Saint’s Excuse past and present include Mao, the Spanish Inquisition, ISIS, and Ted Cruz’s marketing consultant, among others.

From the pro-abortion side, we saw NARAL embrace The Saint’s Excuse when, in the middle of its orgy of self-humiliating political correctness during the Super Bowl—NARAL said this ad was “transphobic” (the word they were looking for is “silly”)—

—it condemned a Doritos ad for “humanizing fetuses.”

Imagine that! Humanizing a growing organism with human DNA, created by two human beings that will, unimpeded, grow up to be a human being itself! The Horror.

That was just intellectually dishonest, however. What anti-abortion Pat Lohman is doing in her battle against abortion is far, far worse.

Until a few months ago, Amethyst Health Center for Women, one of Northern Virginia’s few abortion clinics, helped women considering abortions in Manassas. Lohman moved her crisis pregnancy center, AAA Women for Choice, right next door. Does “Women for Choice” sound like an anti-abortion organization to you? No? Well, that’s the idea, you see. Pat Lohman wants women seeking abortion to wander into her operation by mistake, where they will be told horror stories about abortions gone wrong and be pressured into changing their minds with “pamphlets, pleas, prayers, promises of help, used baby gear, bloody imagery, [and] God” until they either capitulate or leave.

Now, however, this unethical deception by the pro-life activist has moved to a new and even more dishonest stage. The operator of  Amethyst Health Center retired and the service closed.  Lohman and her allies bought the property using a surrogate (According to property records,  it now belongs to the Indiana-based Blessed Virgin Mary Foundation) so the abortion provider didn’t suspect their purpose before the title passed. Today everything about the abortion clinic seems the same as ever, except there is no way to get inside. The clinic’s Google ads are still live, and the phone number is still connected. When women dial that number, however, the call is forwarded to AAA Women for Choice.  If a woman seeking an abortion comes to the abortion clinic directly, she will try the door, find it locked, then go right next door, into the clutches of lying Pat Lohman and her devoted, virtuous, saintly minions.

Gotcha! Continue reading →

“Code Black” Glosses Over A Medical Ethics Imperative

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Code Black

In TV’s medical drama “Code Black‘s” episode “Diagnosis of Exclusion,” we were plunged, as is too often the case in such shows, into a freak situation that might not occur in any U.S. hospital for a century, but that somehow happens on TV routinely.

A lunatic stalker named Gordon (Jesse Bradford) tried to rape doctor Malaya Pineda (Melanie Chandra) in the hospital garage, after stabbing a hospital administrator, perhaps fatally. Dr. Pineda fought back, the stalker stabbed her in the stomach, and then mild-mannered Dr. Angus Leighton (Harry Ford) arrived in time to pull the stalker off of his wounded friend and save her life. In the struggle that ensued, crazy Gordon was stabbed in the neck with his own knife.

This was presented in flashback, in the form of an official inquiry where Dr. Leighton explained that he told the stalker not to pull out his knife, but he did anyway, causing uncontrollable bleeding. “Maybe I could have done more but, I was out of my mind,” Angus explains. Leighton says he tried to stop the bleeding as he screamed for help. By the time the paramedics got the murderous patient into the ER, he was beyond saving.

Ahhh, but that’s not exactly what happened, we learn! First we saw Angus’s older brother, also a doctor, tell him that he did the right thing, that Gordon tried to kill two women that day and would have gone on to kill more if Angus hadn’t acted as he did.

Wait, what? Continue reading →

Prof. Jonathan Turley On The Latest Clinton E-Mail Revelations

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

the_end_justifies_the_means_by_carlos0003

“Highly classified Hillary Clinton emails that the intelligence community and State Department recently deemed too damaging to national security to release contain “operational intelligence” – and their presence on the unsecure, personal email system jeopardized “sources, methods and lives,” a U.S. government official who has reviewed the documents told Fox News.”

The mainstream media is dutifully ignoring this while they can, so you may well say, “Oh, well that’s just Fox News.” However, this bit of leaked information should not be surprising, and assuming that it is accurate, it follows the pattern of each bit of new data further discrediting Clinton’s various defenses for her indefensible handling of communications.

I point you to the analysis of George Washington law professor and blogger Jonathan Turley, who is that rarity in academia, a non-partisan, fair and unbiased commentator. Here, in part, are his recent comments on this matter. Please send it to the unshakable Clinton enablers in your life: a mind is a terrible thing to waste. (The emphasis is mine.)

While I agree with the Clinton campaign that these leaks are themselves problematic (both in terms of their timing and their disclosures from an ongoing investigation), I have long maintained that this was a serious scandal and that Clinton’s evolving defense does not track with national security rules or procedures. I consider the decision to use exclusively an unsecure server for “convenience” to be a breathtakingly reckless act for one of the top officials in our government. I am also deeply concerned about the level of “spin” coming from the campaign that is misrepresenting the governing standards and practices in the field. Much of what has been said in defense of Clinton’s use of the email system is knowingly misleading in my view.

In addition, Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., who sits on the House intelligence committee, “suggested the military and intelligence communities have had to change operations” due to the presumption that Clinton’s emails were compromised.

… I have previously noted that the decision of Clinton to use a personal server showed incredibly bad judgment that put classified information at risk. The defense that the information was not marked, which the campaign has been using recently, does not address the fundamental issues in the scandal. Clinton has insisted that “I never sent classified material on my email, and I never received any that was marked classified.” The key of this spin is again the word “marked.” I have previously discussed why that explanation is less than compelling, particularly for anyone who has handled sensitive or classified material. Continue reading →

Animal Ethics: The East African Topi

/ Jack Marshall / 43 Comments

topi

The Topi is an African antelope. It’s hard to even google this animal, because Google keeps changing the word to “topic.”

Topi (that’s the singular and plural)  are strange. Their females are fecund only one day a year, which obviously makes that day a little frantic for the males. The males have to corner the females to mate, which is not always easy. Some of the males cheat by lying—there’s no other word for it.

All year long, male Topi warn the herd  of approaching predators by making a special, loud grunting sound that is immediately heard by all as “Watch out! A lion (or facsimile) is nearby!” When Topi hear the sound, they freeze and look  for the potential attacker.

Researchers have found that some male Topi win the mating sweepstakes by unfairly using the sound that 364 days a year means, no kidding, “We’re in trouble!” It has to be believed, for the safety and survival of the herd, and is. One day a year, however, on mating day, there are male Topi who falsely use the warning grunt to freeze shy females in their tracks, and while the girls are searching the area for something with sharp teeth, they get a big surprise from behind. These deceptive males sneak up on them, and it’s wham, bam, thank you, Miss Topi!

Topi males that use this subterfuge, researchers find, mate three times as often as those who play by the rules. Males who don’t cheat, and who don’t risk the effectiveness of a vital species defense device by playing “The Horny Topi Who Cried ‘Lion,” are less likely to pass along their genetic material.

The Topi are encouraging an unethical culture. It works for a few Topi now, but if each generation has more cheaters, will the Topi warning grunt become ineffective the rest of the year? I doubt that Topi have calendars.

If Topi were human beings, would the fake grunt tactic be unethical? Immoral?

Discuss.

__________________

Spark: Nature (PBS)

Thank You, Matt Yglesias, For Showing Exactly Why Journalists Like You Cannot Be Trusted

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

yglesias_sophistry_8-10

Matt Yglesias is now called a blogger, but he has been an editor and a writer at places like The Atlantic and Vox. He’s a journalist; an opinion journalist, for the most part, but a journalist. He also seldom meets a progressive idea he doesn’t like, which is fine, I suppose; after all, that just makes him like about 90 percent of all journalists.

He also endorses lying. The tweet above from Matt is a couple years old, but was recently raised again in an interview with the conservative Daily Caller and some of Matt’s Twitter exchanges with other writers.

“Fighting dishonesty with dishonesty is sometimes the right thing for advocates to do, yes,” wrote Yglesias last week. He seemed shocked that anyone would be troubled by this, asking a conservative writer,  “Do you really think deception is immoral in all circumstances?”  He told the Daily Caller that he approves of lying by policy advocates, but of course he would never lie, because his job as a blogger is to inform.

Does that mean that he would flag, expose and criticize a lie from a politician or advocate he favors, used in the service of  a progressive policy Yglesias wants to see succeed? Say, a health insurance program where the primary public policy-making advocate swears will allow everyone to keep their current health care plans, “Period!”? Will Matt vigorously expose hype by climate change advocates like Al Gore, or false budget claims by politicians like Bernie Sanders? If Yglesias thinks that the public wrongly believing that Mike Brown was surrendering when he was shot will lead to important social reforms, will he expose the lie, or bolster it? What are the implications of a journalist’s belief that lying to the public may be ethical for officials and advocates?

Continue reading →

The Washington Post Drops Its Resident Op-Ed Socialist. Good.

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Workers Unite

The Washington Post has jettisoned Harold Meyerson, who has been the leftest of the leftists on the Washington Post op-ed pages for about 13 years…not surprising, as he also serves as editor at large for The American Prospect. Mayerson, according to his last column, was told that he was a goner because he was losing readers and because his columns were repetitious, which they certainly were. How many times, after all, can one read “Workers Unite!”?  From Occupy Wall Street to BlackLivesMatter, there was no revolt of the oppressed and downtrodden that Meyerson didn’t support, nor any standard issue socialist/progressive position that he did not wholeheartedly embrace.

The Post has other kneejerk leftists among their pundits, a disproportionate number in fact (this was also part of the Post’s motivation to let Meyerson go), but I found Meyerson more infuriating than the others because he seemed so much more intelligent than his positions and statements would suggest. He was the epitome of an opinion journalist whose opinions seemed to be calibrated to achieve a grander agenda, rather than honest expressions of truth or even what he really believed. He is a columnist in the Saul Alinsky tradition of liberalism, willing to bend truth for the greater good, to win converts for the Great Worker Rebellion, or whatever it would be.

No newspaper should employ a journalist who is willing to deceive its readers, even on the pretense of saving the world.

Continue reading →