This should be expected, since the Times no longer practices ethics, shows much interests in it, or demonstrates that it understands what ethics is.
In a bizarre feature called “The Virtues of Being Bad,” 16 writers (I never heard of any of them, and I follow such things) wrote confessionals about their “guilty pleasures” of doing bad things, supposedly the only “bad” things they do. (In most cases, I doubt it.) Here is the annoying introduction…
“Mocktails and sunscreen, masking and mindfulness — for those of us who strive to be upright, responsible citizens, the constant reminders of various ways we ought to be good are all around us. They’re almost enough to make you forget the pleasures of being a little bit bad. We asked 16 writers — most of them respectable adults — about the irresponsible, immoral, indulgent things they do. Transgression has the power to teach us something about how we ought to live. But it’s also just … fun?”
I’ll briefly comment on the ethical logic—if any— being displayed in each of the 16 sections, rating the combination of unethical conduct described and rationalizing it in a public form from 0 (not unethical at all) to 5 (very unethical). I won’t mention the authors, because, frankly, I don’t care who they are. Any feature that confounds non-ethical considerations like “fun” with ethical conduct is too subversive and badly reasoned to generate anything but contempt. Along with the ethics score, I’ll also assign a jerk score to each of the authors, again from zero (not a jerk) to 5. Here we go with the first eight; 9-16 will be discussed in Part 2.
Ethics Alarms 