Easy Calls
Quick Takes on Current Events

• Kwami Kilpatrick has just been given jail time for leaving the country in violation of his bond, stemming from the multiple counts of perjury against him for lying about his illicit affair that cost the city of Detroit millions of dollars. He is also charged, in another matter, with assault. This habitual liar, felon and law-breaker is the mayor of Detroit, in case his name didn't ring a bell. Why? How can an elected official and leader of a city (one with a terrible crime rate, coincidentally) continue to serve in that role, when he has violated his pledge to serve the laws and the city's interests above all else? Can his failure to resign be justified by any ethical principle? He cannot be trusted: his perjury charges stem from lying under oath in a lawsuit claiming (accurately, the jury found) that he dismissed his city security detail when they uncovered his illicit relationship. He does not respect the law: he willfully left the country in defiance of a court bail order, citing his official duties. But that's the point: a man battling felony charges can't do his official duties, and shouldn't be allowed to try. Kilpatrick's sole argument for staying in office is that he is the city's savior (well, he also has argued that his troubles are the result of racist enemies, but that is right out of the Corrupt African-American Elected Official Playbook, co-authored by Marion Barry, William Jefferson and Mel Reynolds), which explains a lot: the man is so convinced of his superiority and infallibility that he makes John Edwards look like a realist. If Kilpatrick had an ethical impulse still twitching in his ego-swollen body, and cared about the welfare of the city's residents one-tenth as much as he admires himself, he would have resigned months ago. Detroit doesn't need a self-proclaimed savior as much as it needs a mayor who respects the law, who knows the difference between right and wrong , and who regards the values of accountability and integrity as more important than power. {8/16/2008]

• So why did the Associated Press feel that a man being arrested for openly stealing money from a charity was newsworthy? Not because of how much was stolen, but because of how little: just forty-two cents. The subtext of the AP story was clearly that the arrest was an oddball example of law enforcement gone wild. 43-year-old Laslo Mujzer was arrested for taking change out a public fountain in Naples, Florida. A sign at the fountain said that all coins would be donated to Habitat for Humanity. Well, the AP is wrong. Theft is theft. Property is property. Forty-two cents is still something of worth, and the mindset that little ethical and legal violations don’t count is a lifetime pass to the dreaded Slippery Slope. The ethical violation isn’t dependent on how much one steals, but that one steals at all. Punishment is another matter: a night in jail for stealing $ 0.42 is tough punishment, but you can’t usually fine someone who is stealing spare change, and the Paris Hilton/Nicole Ritchie/Lindsay Lohan twenty minute jail sentences are a joke. If society doesn’t treat stealing small amounts as a crime, then it is saying that it will be tolerated---and that’s perilously close to saying that it’s acceptable. It isn’t, and good for the Naples police for making sure everyone knows it. [7/27/2008]

• A cartoon cover of The New Yorker, titled "The Politics of Fear" (drawn by Barry Blitt) depicts Barack Obama wearing traditional Muslim garb, including robe and turban, and his wife, Michelle dressed in camouflage and combat boots with an assault rifle strapped over her shoulder. They are standing in the Oval Office, doing a tapping fists as an American flag burns merrily in the fireplace. A portrait of Osama bin Laden hangs over the mantle. Unfair? It is obviously a tongue in cheek image: anyone who takes it seriously is the kind of person the cartoon is really lampooning. Tasteless?  It depends on your taste in satire. Presumable the Northeast sophisticates who appreciate The New Yorker will get it; at least the magazine’s editors think so. Offensive? Well, sure: satire has to offend somebody. But was it wrong to print it? Absolutely, 100% not! The now-indignant protectors of Barack Obama doubtlessly chuckled at portrayals of George W. Bush as a drooling moron on “Saturday Night Live,” reveled in absurd caricatures of Hillary Clinton as a power-mad, compulsive liar, enjoyed exaggerations of Dick Cheney as a gun-crazed loony, and even received guilty pleasure from cartoons and satiric representations of Bill Clinton as a hyper-sexed, hillbilly glutton. For them now to declare that a cartoon ridiculing the smears of right-wing talk radio against Obama crosses some ethical line scales the heights of hypocrisy. It also makes one dread that these same people will try to use Obama’s race to shield him from the routine and traditional ravages of cartoonists, satirists, impressionists and political opponents, using the bizarre argument that it is somehow acceptable to present the President of the United States as a blithering idiot but improper to bring down similar indignities on a mere candidate for the job. Let’s be clear: seriously asserting that Obama is a Muslim, terrorist-lover and traitor-in-disguise is simple slander, ignorant and dishonest. But for satire that lampoons him as anything from a Muslim to a moron to a marmoset, he is fair game…just like anyone else.[7/26/2008]

• No doubt about it: T. Boone Pickens can choose integrity or an extra million dollars. And he appears---surprise!---to have chosen the latter. Last November Pickens issued the imprudent promise that he would give a cool mil to anyone who came forth with proof that any of the claims of the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth in their vendetta against John Kerry were false. Later, when Sen. Kerry confronted him on the pledge, Boone narrowed it to include only those claims made by the group in the series of TV attack ads funded by Pickens during the 2004 presidential campaign. Now ten Viet Nam veterans have come forward with eye-witness testimony undermining the Swiftboaters' charges that Kerry's war medals were based on fraud and misrepresentation. These allegations were always the weakest, nastiest and most unfair of the group's attacks; others, such as their assertion that Kerry's G.I bashing while testifying before Congress and his unsubstantiated accusations of routine brutality by U.S. forces in Viet Nam harmed the troops, especially those in enemy hands, were both well-founded and thoroughly deserved. But Pickens said "any" of the claims, and the records and documentation support Kerry. Nevertheless, he refuses to pay up. The Scoreboard pronounces him ethically reprehensible, and is sure T. Boone will cry all the way to the bank… [7/6/2008]

• At the trial of art student Kristina Caban, her attorney, James Friedman, said, "She's a good kid, despite the picture painted of her, who exercised poor judgment and got herself into a bad situation. She is not the monster the prosecution made her out to be." Caban was convicted of enlisting the help of two friends to taser and immobilize a former one-night-stand sex partner, and then branding his torso with the letter "R" in retribution for his not calling her afterwards. Once again, the Scoreboard must reiterate its position that certain acts, especially when they have been carefully planned and pre-meditated like this one was, demonstrate a sufficiently flawed ethical system that the adjective "good" can not reasonably be applied to the person responsible. Can we agree that using hot metal to brand and scar a human being is in this category? Yes, we can. [6/22/2008]

• Pronouncing a mob moll like Victoria Gotti (daughter of deceased Gambino family head John Gotti and former wife of mobster Carmine Agnello) an "ethics dunce" is pointless; still, her ethics void goes deeper than most. She had accepted a $70,000 advance from Harper Row Publishing to produce a book and never bothered to write it. Then she cancelled the agreement with her publishers, without giving the money back. Her literary agent reportedly says that Gotti will pay back the money when she finds another publishing deal. Analogy: you are paid $500 up front to paint a house, and then decide you don't want to do the work. You tell the former customer that you'll return the money when you get another job. Uhhhh, no. Ms. Gotti's father would have taught her that people who tried that game with him would end up on a meat hook…an over-reaction, no doubt, but one that represents a correct verdict on the conduct as unethical. Keep your promises, Victoria. And don't accept money for work you're not going to do. That leaves only one question: why would any rational company trust someone like Victoria Gotti with a cash advance? [6/9/2008]

• The efforts of Minnesota Republicans to discredit Democratic U.S. Senate hopeful (and former satirist in print, on TV, and on the airwaves) Al Franken echoes the despicable attempt of former Virginia Senator George Allen to discredit his ultimately-victorious opponent Jim Webb, using steamy sex scenes from Webb's justly acclaimed novels. Republicans would have screamed to high heaven in 1980 if President Jimmy Carter's campaign had used film clips of Ronald Reagan playing a vicious villain and slapping Angie Dickenson around in "The Killers," and justifiably so. Well, the GOP's trumpeting the fact that Franken wrote a sexually-provocative humor piece for Playboy eight years ago is equally unfair, and also 100% irrelevant to what kind of senator Franken would make. His obviously satirical story tells us nothing of his character or policy inclinations. All it tells us is that, like 97% of all males who went to college in the late 1960s, Franken does not regard Playboy as the personification of evil or sex as a moral stain on mankind, and that like 99.9% of all humorists having to make a living, he would write what a particular magazine's readers were likely to read in order to sell an article. It is understandable that Franken would see no stigma in writing for Playboy, since while he was reading the magazine as a Harvard student, it published essays and stories by the likes of Truman Capote, Lawrence Durrell, James T. Farrell, Allen Ginsberg, Le Roi Jones, Norman Thomas, Arthur Miller, Norman Podhoretz, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, Georges Simenon, Isaac Bashevis Singer, William Styron, Marshall McLuhan, Eric Hoffer, and John Updike, as well as humorous pieces by Jean Shepherd (of "A Christmas Story" fame), Robert Morley, and P.G. Wodehouse. When Republicans do things like this, they insult voters by assuming that they are narrow-minded and illiterate, celebrate humorlessness, and willfully blur the difference between entertainment and public policy. It was an ethical outrage when Allen tried this tactic on Webb, and he deserved to lose for doing it. If Franken's opponent, Republican Norm Coleman, permits the same ridiculous attacks to be used on him, it will tell voters far more about his character than any silly article in Playboy tells us about Al Franken. [Full disclosure: I went to the same college as Franken during the same years, though I never met him. Politically, stylistically and personally, I don't especially agree with or like the guy and what he stands for. I respect and have enjoyed much of his work as an actor and writer.] [6/1/08]
  
  
• Actress Sharon Stone's crack that the deadly earthquake in China was "karma" places her squarely in the deplorable group also occupied by Jeremiah Wright and Pat Robertson: people whose response to catastrophes that befall those with whom they disagree is to say, "Well, they had it coming." This betrays a lack of empathy, charity, respect and kindness, not to mention common sense. This is a free country, and prominent figures are allowed to say such mean-spirited and hurtful things, just as the rest of us are entitled to make some judgements about their ethical instincts and IQ's when they shoot off their mouths in such an offensive manner. [6/1/08]
  
  
• Is there anything that can be said in support of Port St. Lucie, Fla. kindergarten teacher Wendy Portillo, who humiliated a disruptive special-needs five-year old by conducting a vote among his classmates as to whether he should be allowed to remain in class? That she was "frustrated," perhaps, by the difficulty of dealing with a child who had symptoms of autism? Well, would you say that being frustrated would mitigate her offense if she kicked the boy in the gut? That probably would have been less devastating, in the long run. The abused child, whose one friend in the class was reportedly pressured to declare him unfit to remain there, now is traumatized at the prospect of returning to school. And all parents may be traumatized at the prospect of entrusting their children to a profession that seems to be increasingly populated by badly-trained, unprofessional teachers who have serious, and dangerous, deficits in judgment. Perhaps it has always been thus in the public schools, with more abuse, cruelty and incompetence that we suspected. Or perhaps Portillo is an extreme and rare aberration. In either event, she has injured the reputation of her profession as well as the innocent child, and made home-schooling seem more attractive than ever. [6/1/08]
  
  
• The Scoreboard is loathe to agree with Star Jones on anything, but… there is no conceivable excuse for anyone, no matter how desperately the public wants to know about their exciting life, exposing private secrets involving lovers and friends in an autobiography. Unless former Senator and, as we now know thanks to Barbara's new book, former Barbara Walters adulterous paramour Ed Brooke actually gave her permission to spill the beans, it was a despicable, venal, and unethical thing to do. Just like Star Jones said. If there's one thing Star Jones knows about, it's unethical conduct. [5/19/2008]
  
  
• Setting the standard for trivial scandals is undoubtedly Casserolegate, in which a list of his wife's "family recipes" on Senator John McCain's campaign website turned out to contain nothing but copyrighted recipes lifted from the web. The media laughed it off and McCain's spokespeople laughed it off, saying that Cindy McCain had no idea that these recipes were listed under her seal of approval. So, in other words, the entire page was a lie: Cindy didn't really have "family recipes" to pass on; this was just a way to pander to homemakers, entrusted to a low level staffer, and a dim-wit at that. Silly as this is, it doesn't speak well for the campaign's ethics or Cindy McCain's sense of accountability. Message to McCain's team: Don't lie about trivial things, because it can become a habit that leads to lying about important things. Message to Cindy McCain and everyone else: If you put your name on something, you're accountable for it. Even if it's just a collection of phony recipes. [4/24/2008]

• It's a silly issue, but not as silly as you might think: Senator Obama's flag pin. Obama made a point of not wearing the popular lapel decoration earlier in his campaign, stating that it had become "a substitute for real patriotism," which was, in his case, speaking out against the Iraq conflict. Fine: legitimate symbolism, a courageous stand, and certainly preferable to playing the "I support the troops but I don't support what the troops are doing" double-talk favored by too many of his colleagues. But Obama's lack of a flag pin became a lightning rod for right-wing columnists and talk-show hosts, who used it to raise questions about Obama's patriotism and "real feelings about America," especially after his wife's ill-considered comment about being proud of America "for the first time," and Obama's strange twenty-year passiveness in the faces of his pastor's racist America-bashing. So now he's wearing a flag pin. The problem is that once you have said an action is an empty substitute for the real thing, you can't suddenly embrace the conduct when you come under criticism without making the implicit statement that you are doing something you don't really believe in just to quiet the storm. Taking a bold contrarian stand like "I don't need no stinkin' flag pin" to prove my patriotism is an assertion of integrity, courage honesty and ethical character. So what is it when one puts the pin back on as soon as the going gets a little tougher? A small compromise and a minor concession to political realities, or a telling symptom of another politician whose integrity is only as reliable as the next poll results? We shall see. [4/24/2008]

• The Case of the Hirsute Steak: We usually associate the professional duty of trust with such professionals as accountants, lawyers and doctors, but the fact is that we put a great deal of trust in less celebrated professionals whom we deal with on a regular basis. Cooks, for example. Ryan Kropp, a cook at a Texas Roadhouse, got annoyed at a patron who complained that his steak was over-done, and stuffed his own hair into the new steak he prepared to take its place. Yuk! He is currently facing felony charges, though that won't make it much easier for his victim to regain trust in the culinary profession. It also demonstrates that some minimal character requirements need to be applied even when the job isn't as high-paying and consequential as lawyer or doctor. Kropp had been arrested before, though not for stuffing steak with hair, A Code of Ethics for short-order cooks? It might be time. [4/13/2008]
  
  
• Sometimes the law becomes necessary to enforce ethical habits. Actor Nicholas Cage (most recently starring in the "National Treasure" movies and the "Ghost Rider" lark: Cage has settled into his "What the hell, it's a paycheck!" stage…) just successfully sued Kathleen Turner (a once-terrific actress just trying to stay solvent and famous) for claiming in her memoir, "Send Yourself Roses," that Cage had twice been arrested for drunken driving and had stolen a dog. It should be obvious, but apparently not: spicing up your published recollections with made up stuff is bad enough, but making up stories that impugn a colleague's character and conduct is a major ethics violation that involves not merely breaking the Golden Rule but complete ignorance of it. Even if Turner erroneously believed what she wrote, she had an obligation to check her facts before labeling Cage a dog-stealer and a drunk driver. Turner, like just about every other movie star, has complained about vicious lies and rumors printed in the tabloids; how can she justify doing the same to Cage? Well, she couldn't. Turner admitted there was no truth in the stories, Cage is getting unspecified damages (which he will forward to charity) and the book will be corrected. And just maybe an ethical lesson will be learned. [4/13/2008]
  
  
• The problem with single-minded zealots is that they can lose the ability to empathize with others who do not share their passions, and do needless harm to those who are completely irrelevant to their objectives. And so it was that a hoard of pro-life protestors disrupted the Hollywood premiere of "Horton Hears a Who!" Some genius figured out that the movie's core message of "A person's a person, no matter how small" (courtesy of Theodore Geisel, a.k.a. Dr. Seuss) could be applied to the anti-abortion cause. That's swell, but the children who were looking forward to seeing an uninterrupted performance of a kids movie don't have a dog in this hunt, and shouldn't have been made the victims of a protest that was ill-timed, unfair, irresponsible and pointlessly obnoxious. A protest has to be able to justify the harm it does to bystanders with sufficiently significant and positive results, and this one didn't, except perhaps to spawn a new slogan, "An inconsiderate jerk's a jerk, no matter how well-intentioned."[4/13/2008]
  

• Big story, huge implications, but ethically, a very Easy Call. The Los Angeles Times, which has been running through editors like Kleenex tissues as it tries to cut expenses at the apparent cost of competence and credibility, ran a sensational story about the death of rapper Tupak Shakur that was based on fake documents. Once again it was the website "The Smoking Gun" that set the record straight: the documents appear to have been the work of an imprisoned con-man with a lifetime habit of fraud and audacious lying. Newspapers are supposed to check and double check such things, but like weekly news magazines and TV network news shows, they are media dinosaurs trying to do anything to avoid extinction. So they cut corners, eliminate jobs and checkpoints, and what is the result? "60 Minutes" attacks a President based on a forged document that was never authenticated. The New York Times runs a barely-sourced front-page sex-scandal story about what some of John McCain's aides "were worried about." The New Republic publishes stories of callous conduct by American soldiers in Iraq by an anonymous "diarist," who turns out to be 1) the husband of a staffer and 2) making things up. These and other embarrassments by the mainstream media shows what happens when a powerful non-ethical considerations like staying competitive in a changing business cause an organization to put professional ethics on the back-burner. Once it is there, other non-ethical and even unethical influences like political biases, ambition and cultural prejudice can run amuck. The lesson of this dismaying series of mainstream media betrayals of the public trust is this: there are no newspapers, network news shows, or periodicals that are any more trustworthy than the internet sources that drove them all to desperation. There are undoubtedly some of them that have maintained high ethical standards, but we cannot know what they are, and worse, we cannot assume that they won't abandon those standards tomorrow. [3/27/2008]

• Here is what Bill Clinton, speaking to a group of veterans in Charlotte, N.C. on behalf of his wife’s candidacy, said: "I think it would be a great thing if we had an election year where you had two people who loved this country and were devoted to the interest of this country. And people could actually ask themselves who is right on these issues, instead of all this other stuff that always seems to intrude itself on our politics." Now, some supporters of Sen. Barack Obama are accusing the former president and charter member of the Ethics Scoreboard “Liar of the Month” Hall of Fame of insinuating, ever so cleverly and deceitfully, that his wife’s opponent isn’t a person who loves and is devoted to the interest of this country. “Horrors!! Bill Clinton suggest something like that? How can anyone think such a thing?” has been the response of Team Clinton. This Easy Call is too easy: of course that’s what Clinton was insinuating, and yes, it is unfair, dishonest and unethical. It is classic deceit: there is nothing wrong with the sentiment or the words, for everyone thinks that would “be a great thing.” But since the comment was made in the context of arguing that his wife is the better candidate to face unquestioned patriot John McCain, there is only one possible interpretation of Clinton’s intent, which was to make those in doubt think, “Hmmmm…what do I really know about that guy who was born a Muslim and whose middle name is Hussein? And didn’t I read somewhere that his mentor and advisor said, ‘God damn America’?” Nobody knows how to make words tap-dance better than Mr. “It depends on what the definition of ‘is’ is.” Fortunately, people are finally beginning to recognize his handiwork for what it is. [3/26/2008]

• It is all but certain that neither Michigan nor Florida will give its Democrats a "do-over" so that delegates from those states can be chosen in a fair primary. Now there is only one ethical answer to the burning question of whether Hillary Clinton's victories in the two rogue primaries that were held against the rules of the Democratic National Committee should provide her with the additional delegates from those states she so desperately needs: no. The candidates did not campaign in those states and she alone allowed her name to appear on the ballot in Michigan. The fact that thousands of people voted? Irrelevant. The fact that they are major states with a major stake in a battle for the Democratic nomination that is, as Dan Rather liked to say, "as tight as a too-small bathing suit on a too-long ride home from the beach" ? Beside the point. The Democratic Party declared that those primaries wouldn't count before they took place. All the candidates knew it, and pledged to abide by the ruling. Senator Clinton's advocates, well-trained in "ends justify the means" theology, have been floating all manner of arguments to try to validate the voting results retroactively. That's called changing the rules after the game has been played, a.k.a. "cheating." The Party has endorsed this tactic before, notably when it tried to change the definition of what counted as a valid ballot in Florida back in 2000, so it can't get too high up on its horse. But giving Mrs. Clinton delegates that Senator Obama did not compete for is still unfair and wrong. [3/21/2008]

• In the wake of Eliot Spitzer's resignation as governor of New York, there has been the predictable flurry of published opinions that prostitution, as a "victimless crime," should not be a crime at all. It is an irresponsible and willfully ignorant position. Victimless? Look at video footage of the stricken face of Spitzer's wife as she heard her husband admit his prostitution habit. Check the horrendous public health record of AIDS and other sexually-transmitted diseases acquired or spread through the practice of prostitution. Listen to interviews of the desperate, abused women in "the life," and hear how it traps runaways, the poor and the abandoned in an existence based upon exploitation and degradation by men with money and power. Prostitution has wrecked lives and families for centuries, and making it legal would not stop that one bit. Legalization would, however, make a societal statement that it is okay…a statement that usually leads to more of the conduct involved. Well, nothing about prostitution and its effects are "okay." The fact that laws have not eliminated it does not mean that we should eliminate the laws. And calling a crime "victimless" that harms so many is indistinguishable from a lie. [3/17/2008]

• The Scoreboard is going to be moderate in its praise of Sen. John McCain's habitual ethical decency, lest he show up too regularly in the Ethics Hero category and threaten the Scoreboard's claim to non-partisanship. But it's an Easy Call to praise McCain for repudiating the remarks of Ohio talk-show fire-breather Bill Cunningham, an uncivil, shrill and mean-spirited man even by the abysmal standards of conservative talk radio, who warmed up McCain's crowd in Cincinnati with anti-Obama vitriol, including the slimy tactic, lately a favorite of the Angry Right, of calling the Illinois Senator by his unfortunate middle name, Hussein. Yes slimy, because the clear objective is to associate Obama, an American and a patriot, with radical Muslims in the minds of those members of the American public who are bigoted, ignorant, racist, or terrified---a very large group, unfortunately. Cunningham has disingenuously protested that there can be nothing wrong with calling someone by his legal name, but he knows what he is doing, and McCain wasn't about to buy into his juvenile tricks. So after his campaign rally, Senator McCain immediately gave a press conference in which he said: "It's my understanding that before I came in here a person who was on the program before I spoke made some disparaging remarks about my two colleagues in the Senate, Senator Obama and Senator Clinton. I have repeatedly stated my respect for Senator Obama and Senator Clinton, that I will treat them with respect. I will call them 'Senator.' We will have a respectful debate, as I have said on hundreds of occasions. I regret any comments that may have been made about these two individuals who are honorable Americans…Whatever suggestion that was made that was any way disparaging to the integrity, character, honesty of either Senator Obama or Senator Clinton was wrong. I condemn it, and if I have any responsibility, I will take the responsibility, and I apologize for it." McCain emphasized that it was not appropriate to invoke Mr. Obama's middle name in the course of the campaign, saying, "I absolutely repudiate such comments. It will never happen again." Cunningham was furious, and later said that he would switch his support to Hillary Clinton. I'm sure she will be thrilled. [3/2/2008]
  

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