“the ends justify the means”

The Damage of Health Care Reform “By Any Means Necessary”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

I have no idea whether the health care reform bill, assuming it finally gets passed in one form or another, will make things better or worse, and if you are honest about it, neither do you…and neither, I am certain, do most of the elected representatives who will have voted for it or against it (or for it and against it) by the time the dust clears. To only cite the most obvious proof, the bill’s current form was just posted yesterday, giving Congress 72 hours to read and understand over 2,000 pages of technical jargon and badly-written prose. I don’t believe I have ever read 700 pages a day for three days at any point in my life, and if I have, I know it had to be something more diverting than a health care bill.

Relying on second-hand analysis—also by individuals who haven’t read the current bill—simply puts us (and the members of Congress) at the mercy of the biases of those rendering the opinions. For example, one of my favorite commentators, Robert Samuelson, has persuasive arguments against the bill here and here, while one of my least favorite, Paul Krugman, weighs in on the bill’s virtues here and here. Now, I think Krugman has squandered his credibility by blatant untruths in the past (One howler, his infamous statement about the national health care systems of Canada and Great Britain that “We’ve all heard scare stories about how that works in practice; these stories are false” is derisively quoted almost daily by Wall Street Journal blogger James Taranto as he relays tales of national health care horrors from the London press), but the man has won a Nobel prize: maybe he’s right and Samuelson is wrong. I really don’t know.

I do know this, however: whether the bill proves to be disaster or panacea, the manner in which President Obama and the Democrats have gone about passing it has done real and lasting harm.  Continue reading →

Gawker Asks: “Why Were the Democrats So Ethical?”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

One could hardly find a more illuminating window into the unethical political and media culture festering in this country than to read today’s “scoop” on (yecch!) Gawker, the celebrity-stalking, rumor-mongering website that makes TMZ look like The Economist.  Its breathless lead:

“Did you know that Scott Brown—the new star Republican Senator—was accused of harassing a female campaign worker in 1998? We have the documents to prove it. Did the Democrats blow an opportunity to keep their 60th Senate seat?” Continue reading →

“For Our Own Good”: the U.S. Government’s Prohibition Poisoning Policy

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Slate has posted a shocking story by historian Deborah Blum, exposing long-forgotten efforts by the U.S. government to poison the alcohol supply during Prohibition for the express purpose of frightening would-be consumers of bootleg liquor into abstaining. She estimates that the government’s poisoning program killed more than 10,000 Americans before the “noble experiment” of Prohibition was abandoned in 1933.

The horrific episode is an abject lesson in the dangers of extreme Utilitarianism, in which unambiguous wrongs are deemed acceptable because of the great benefits they will create, or the greater wrongs they will prevent. It tells us that we should never trust those in power too much, because even good intentions and idealism can mutate into sinister and deadly forms. And it tells us that while we should be wary of conspiracy theories and our seemingly-paranoid fellow citizens who see malice and collusion in every misfortune, we must not dismiss them out of hand. Sometimes the conspiracies are real. Sometimes the paranoids are right.

Blum’s Slate piece is a sobering and frightening account that also raises questions about the holes in our historical record. There are surely other dark episodes in our nation’s history that we need to know about, understand, and learn from. In the meantime, we owe a debt of thanks to Deborah Blum.

By all means, read her article.

Comedy Ethics, Censorship, and Culture

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

(The current uproar over the use of  various versions of the word “retarded” by Rahm Emanuel and Rush Limbaugh seems to warrant a reprint, slightly revised, of the following essay on ethics and comedy, a January 2008 post on The Ethics Scoreboard. The word “retard” also came in for criticism in a comic context last year, with its use in the Ben Stiller comedy “Tropic Thunder.” Of course, comedy is one thing, and gratuitous cruelty is another. In either case, the issue is the use of a word, not the word itself. As discussed in the previous post, it is appropriate for any group to promote sensitivity and to encourage civility. It is unethical to try to bully others into censoring their speech by trying to “ban” words, phrases or ideas. )

Here is the essay:

Comedy Ethics

“Saturday Night Live” has, not for the first time in its three decade run, ignited an ethics controversy with politically incorrect humor. Was SNL ensemble member Fred Armison’s impression of  New York Governor David Paterson, who is blind, including as it did a wandering eye and featuring slapstick disorientation, legitimate satire or, as Paterson and advocates for the blind have claimed, a cruel catalyst for discrimination against the sight-challenged?
It is not an easy call, though the opposing sides of the argument probably think it should be. And it raises long-standing questions about the balance between ethics and humor. Continue reading →

Ed Schultz Shows How to Be Wildly Unethical in Fifty Words Or Less

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

The pattern is distressingly clear now. Fox News finds an arrogant, doctrinaire talking head on the Right, Bill O’Reilly, and soon its Left-tilted rival, MSNBC, has recruited an even more arrogant, doctrinaire talking head on that side of the spectrum, the assaultive Keith Olbermann. O’Reilly uncivilly calls those he disagrees with “pin-heads,” while Olberman calls them “the Worst Person in the World.” This motivates Fox to find a commentator on the Right who makes O’Reilly seem modest and measured, Glenn Beck. This, naturally, pushed MSNBC to look under every rock to find a liberal host who can out-Beck Beck.

The bad news: they succeeded, and found Ed Schultz, who is louder, cruder, more uncivil and less fair than any of the above-mentioned blowhards. The worse news: if you out Beck Beck, no responsible station should put you on the air. Continue reading →

“Sex Rehab with Dr. Drew” and Reality Show Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Duncan Roy is a director, producer and writer whom I had never heard of, and I didn’t watch his exploits as a patient/reality show performer on VH1’s “Celebrity Sex Rehab with Dr. Drew .” The reason for the latter was a mixture of ethics and taste: feeding the fame addiction of celebrities while supposedly treating their other addictions seemed wrong to me, and inducing sex-addicted female porn stars, beauty queens and models to go into therapy with similarly attractive and sexually obsessive men is ridiculous, like setting “The Biggest Loser” at a 24 hour, all-you-can-eat smorgasbord. Continue reading →