The Star Syndrome

Ethics Dunce: Justin Bieber Enabler, Adidas

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments
today-justin-bieber-mugshot

You have to admit, the kid takes a great mugshot…

Sure, why wouldn’t a multinational athletic shoe company want an irresponsible, sociopathic drunken creep as the face of its product?

With any half-ethical company, the news that the celebrity it is paying a fortune to endorse its wares to consumers has just completed a six month period of embarrassments with an arrest for drag-racing under the influence would be followed immediately with a pink slip and an apology. Not Adidas.

No, despite the news of the continued unraveling of the 19-year-old Justin Bieber,—previously seen egging his next door neighbor’s home—who seems determined to emulate the worst of spoiled child idol cautionary tales, Adidas announced that Bieber is still their boy, which means that it is still promoting him as an icon and role model, and officially communicating the position that a teen’s impaired driving is no big deal—certainly nothing to lower the teen’s status in the eyes of a major corporation. The company also signaled that it doesn’t care if its ethical shrug amounts to enabling and rewarding The Bieb’s self-destructive behavior, increasing the burgeoning odds that he ends up in the gutter, on a slab, or wort of all, in a pathetic reality show before he’s 30.

I know, I know: the company is taking a wait and see stance, which only means it is venal and irresponsible, and if Jeffrey Dahmer was their official Adidas-wearing superstar, and the kids who buy Adidas shoes didn’t care who he ate, Adidas would keep paying him millions too.

In these situations you only get one chance to show that you care about the values and conduct you endorse, and Adidas already missed it. It has no values.

But I guess most of us already knew that.

(I saw this coming, you know…)

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Sources: TMZ, The Province

Hustle

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Diligence. Integrity. Responsibility. Reliability. Trustworthiness

Pete Rose may have been a fool who gambled on baseball, but he never, ever, failed to run hard to first base.

Pete Rose may have been a fool who gambled on baseball, but he never, ever, failed to run hard to first base.

The Washington Nationals’ blossoming star outfielder Bryce Harper provided a graphic lesson in the importance of these ethical values in the breach of them last night, when his lapse of character on the field contributed to a loss D.C.’s struggling major league baseball team could ill-afford.

The Nats have been one of the baseball season’s greatest disappointments. A team that had the best record of all last season and was widely favored to be a World Series contender, it has barely won more games than it has lost, and is hopelessly trailing the Atlanta Braves for the National League East championship. A wild card berth in this season’s play-offs also looked like a futile hope, until a recent winning streak and a flash of 2012 brilliance allowed fans to dream of a thrilling late-season comeback. It is possible, but time is running out, and every game counts. To have any chance, the Nats have to win games like last night’s against the sub-par Mets.

With the Mets leading 3-2, Washington had mounted a two-out rally, and had runners on first and second base. Harper, the team’s youngest, most exciting and most talented player was up at bat,  but he bounced an easy ground ball to the Mets second baseman. Clearly disgusted with his failure to come though in the clutch, Harper merely jogged to first base. If he had run hard, which was his trademark last season when Harper’s energy and enthusiasm made him an instant fan favorite, he would have reached first base safely, loading the bases, for the fielder unexpectedly booted the ball. But because Harper was loafing, the second baseman had time to recover and throw to first for the out. It was the last chance the Nationals had to tie the score, and they lost a game that the team needed to win. Continue reading →

Tiger Woods Cheated! Who’s Surprised?

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments
Marital fidelity was a previous rule Tiger thought was stupid. Nike must be so proud.

Marital fidelity was a previous rule Tiger thought was stupid. Nike must be so proud.

The fact that Tiger Woods finished fourth in the Masters was a stroke of moral luck that will allow, in all probability, the memory of his lack of sportsmanship and the PGA’s lack of integrity to cause a bit less harm to professional golf, at least until the next time Tiger tries to cut ethical corners. He is, after all, a shameless cheater with a deeply flawed character. It was just a matter of time before he managed, as the sport’s biggest name, to corrupt it. Now, he has.

During the tournament, Woods improved his lie after a stray shot by taking an illegal drop, and did so in such a blatant and obvious manner that TV viewers noticed it. Based on his experience and the rules of golf, Tiger should have known that what he was doing was a violation; based on his later statement to ESPN, in which he admitted that he placed his ball “2 yards”  behind where it belonged to give himself a better shot at the green, he did know. USGA rule 26-1 says a golfer must “play a ball as nearly as possible at the spot” from which he or she originally hit it. As Christine Brennan correctly explained in USA Today, previous golfers who have committed far less serious infractions have withdrawn from competition to preserve golf’s status as the last major sport that expects competitors to police their own conduct. Golf has an honor code. There is nothing honorable about Tiger Woods. Continue reading →

Ethics Poison From Nike and Tiger Woods

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Woods AdWoods Ad2

…and not for the first time, in either case.

But Woods’ new ad for Nike in the wake of his resurgence in his sport, is audaciously unethical, braying a dangerous, corrupting message into the cultural atmosphere, endorsing, in five simple-minded words, consequentialism, the Star Syndrome, the King’s Pass, non-ethical considerations over ethical ones, and “the ends justify the means.” That’s a pretty impressive load of ethics offal in so few words: congratulations to the soulless ignoramus who devised it.

The assorted miscreants, past and present, who would have gladly stood in for Tiger in his damning ad include dictators, despots, mass murderers, gangsters and corrupt politicians like Richard Daley, Marion Barry, Charley Rangel and Tom DeLay, corporate bandits, assassins, robber barons, Wall Street criminals, athletic cheaters like Lance Armstrong and Barry Bonds, serial fathers like the NBA’s priapic stars, arrogant social misfits like Charley Sheen, con artists and liars in all walks of life, and of course, our most popular politician, the man whose entire career is based on Nike’s new motto, William Jefferson Clinton.

I almost forgot the terrorists. Continue reading →

Justin Bieber’s Tardiness: Calling Card Of The Unprofessional Jerk

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments
Professional on the right, arrogant jerk on the left. Also, anyone next to Cary Grant looks like a troll...

Professional on the left, arrogant jerk on the right. Bonus: Anyone next to Cary Grant looks like a troll…

There is still some confusion how late pop sensation Justin Bieber was for a recent London concert. It may have been as much as two hours, and it may have been only 40 minutes. The ethical verdict on the conduct is the same, however: rude, disrespectful, irresponsible, unfair and arrogant…and inexcusable.

The tardiness is especially inexcusable because the singer didn’t even offer a plausible excuse or one that might prompt some sympathy. He was not kidnapped by terrorists, abducted by aliens, or cornered by a rampaging T-Rex from Isla Sorna. He wasn’t late because he single-handedly rescued a runaway school bus full of kids, or defused a ticking bomb in the London Tube. Justin Bieber was late because he’s an unprofessional jerk who knew that his fans would wait for him until he got there, and so he chose to to get drunk, or get laid, or sleep in, or play Words With Friends with Alec Baldwin, or whatever other selfish conduct suited him rather than meet his obligations as a performer. This is the Star Syndrome in its most obvious and obnoxious form. Continue reading →

Manny Post Script: The Signature of a Jerk

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Manny Ramirez, the now-retired ex-baseball slugger, provoked the predictable responses from the media and fellow players in the wake of his sudden retirement after being notified that he would be the first major league player to face a 100 game suspension for failing a mandated PED test (that’s “performance enhancing drugs” for all of you who don’t know who Barry Bonds is), because no player had ever been caught TWICE before.

Everyone was in agreement that this meant: Continue reading →

Manny Ramirez’s Perfect Exit

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

The most unethical baseball player since the Black Sox

From  Major League Baseball:

“Major League Baseball recently notified Manny Ramirez of an issue under Major League Baseball’s Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program. Rather than continue with the process under the Program, Ramirez has informed MLB that he is retiring as an active player. If Ramirez seeks reinstatement in the future, the process under the Drug Program will be completed. MLB will not have any further comment on this matter.”

Perfect. Perfect.

Manny Ramirez was an impressively talented baseball player with discipline of an untrained Irish Setter, and the selfishness of a six-year-old. Throughout his career, he was a textbook example of the management fallacy known as the star principle, in which an extremely talented individual is allowed to break the rules and defy an organization’s culture in direct proportion to his perceived value. Continue reading →

CBS: Ethics Corrupter

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

Rehire Charlie Sheen?! What could CBS be thinking?

Barry Bonds goes on trial for perjury today. He is one of our society’s prime corrupters. Bonds cheated, lied, broke the law and helped drag major league baseball’s integrity  into the depths, all with the objectives of breaking records by players better and more honest than he, and becoming rich and famous. He accomplished all of these things, with no appreciable negative consequences; as of now, his career and life carry the lesson that cheating works, and anyone who lets things like rules, laws, or ethics stand in the way of success is a fool. Perhaps the trial will change that. I can dream.

Now CBS has stepped up to be a prime corporate ethics corrupter. Reportedly, it is negotiating with Charlie Sheen to get him back on the air, either in his now defunct show “Two and a Half Men,” or in something else. Continue reading →

It’s About Time! Dept.: Charlie Sheen, Ethics Uber-Dunce, Gets What He Deserves

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Charlie Sheen, The Amazing Human Ethics Train Wreck

Up until yesterday, the message CBS and Warner Bros. had been sending to the culture by its handling of the ongoing Charlie Sheen embarrassment was this: you can break laws, try to strangle your wife, publicly betray multiple spouses, neglect your children, dive drunk, use illegal drugs, generally behave like a spoiled, anti-social ass without showing  any remorse or contrition, and corporations will still pay you a million dollars a week and tell America you are a terrific guy as long as you keep making  them big profits. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Justice Clarence Thomas

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Will Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas be impeached because he failed to disclose his wife’s income, as required by Federal law, for at least five years? No.

Should he be? Probably not, though if it was proven that he intentionally used incorrect information, he could be found guilty of perjury. More likely is a civil penalty. In any event, his wife’s income isn’t a crucial piece of information in Thomas’s case, though his ideological enemies will argue otherwise. Such an omission is virtually never a cause for judicial discipline.

Is it a serious breach of his duties nonetheless? Yes. Continue reading →