Archive for the ‘Ethics-general’ Category
May 20, 2011
Has the President “thrown Israel under the bus,” as Mitt Romney said yesterday? Has he “once again betrayed our friend and ally, Israel,” as Michele Bachmann raged? Made a “mistaken and very dangerous demand,” as Tim Pawlenty accused? Or has he “given the Palestinians a huge break,” per Newt Gingrich?
Here’s what the President said:
“I believe that any peace agreement between them will require mutually agreed adjustments to the armistice lines of 1949 to reflect current realities and to ensure that the Palestinian state is viable and contiguous.”
Oops. That wasn’t this President, it was President George W. Bush, speaking in Jerusalem on January 11, 2008.
Here’s what President Obama said yesterday:
“We believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states. The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves, and reach their full potential, in a sovereign and contiguous state.”
Get the difference? No? That’s because there isn’t any. The 1949 and 1967 lines are the same. The only difference is that Republican politicians will scream in opposition to anything that President Obama says, even if George W. Bush said the same thing without any complaint.
Politics doesn’t stop at the water’s edge any more.
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Thanks to Michael Smerconish and Hardball for the quotes used here.
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Tags:1949 lines, 1967 lines, ethics, George W Bush, Israel borders, Michele Bachmann, Mitt Romney, mutually agreed swaps, Obama, Palestinian state, Palestinians . Newt Gingrich, peace agreement, Republican hypocrisy, secure borders, Tim Pawlenty, water's edge
Posted in Ethics-general, Government, International, Politics | Leave a Comment »
May 16, 2011
Basketball superstar LeBron James broke new ground last week with an original kind of non-apology. Let’s call it a phantom apology, apologizing for a non-offense instead of for the real offense.
James left the Cleveland Cavaliers after last season to join two other superstars on the Miami Heat. No problem with that: he was a free agent. But he did it in a particularly ugly way that was gratuitously hurtful to his fans in Cleveland. The hurt damaged his image with fans everywhere.
Last Wednesday James led his new team to a victory in the quarter-final series of the playoffs over the Boston Celtics, the team that had knocked out his old team (the Cavaliers) last year. In the flush of victory he tried to repair his image. But a real apology would have admitted he did wrong. So James came up with the phantom apology.
Instead of apologizing for the ugly hurt he had caused, he semi-apologized for jumping to Miami—an act that was entirely honorable and ethical. Semi-, because he went on to explain that his move was a “once in a lifetime” opportunity to get past the Celtics and compete for the championship, His entire statement is here.
So James gets credit for apologizing without accepting blame for what he did.
But no credit from EthicsBob: that’s not a real apology.
A real apology is (more…)
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Tags:apology, basketball, Boston Celtics, Cleveland Cavaliers, Dr. Laura Schlessinger, ethics, LeBron James, Miami Heat, n-word, non-apology, phantom apology, real apology
Posted in Apologies, Ethics-general, Sports | 2 Comments »
May 14, 2011
Most African-Americans are familiar with the charge of DWB. By now many even joke about being stopped by police for “driving while black.” The practice survives, even while police across the country have become sensitized to its wrongs.
It even reached the Presidency when a Cambridge, Massachusetts police officer arrested Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates for attempting to enter his own house without a key. President Obama commented off-handedly that the Cambridge police had “acted stupidly,” then apologized and invited the arresting officer and the professor to the White House to talk things over at a “beer summit.”
Masudur Rahman and Mohamed Zaghloul can add another to the list of offenses that can attract the unwelcome attention of the authorities: FWM, or “flying while Muslim. They were removed from an Atlantic Southeast Airlines (“The Delta Connection”) flight because their garb made the pilots nervous. Fortunately for them, the pilots of a later flight from Memphis to Charlotte weren’t as skitish, and the two Muslim travelers reached their destination safely, albeit, tardily.
George Jonas of Canada’s National Post describes the incident and its meaning here.
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Tags:acted stupidly, Atlantic Southeast Airlines, beer summit, Cambridge police, Delta Connection, driving while black, DWB, ethics, flying while Muslim, FWM, George Jonas, Henry Louis Gates, intolerance, Islamophobia, Masudur Rahman, Mohamed Zaghloul, National Post, Obama, tolerance
Posted in Ethics-general, Religion, Tolerance | Leave a Comment »
May 5, 2011
In an era of selfish, insensitive, whiny, overpaid and unethical athletes, it’s refreshing to recognize Drew Brees as one who lives up to the highest ethical standards. Brees, quarterback of the New Orleans Saints, has taken on a leading role in the NFL’s labor dispute. When asked why he has been out front on such a divisive issue, his answer is right out of the ethics book: “If not me, who?”
Brees led the Saints to a Super Bowl win in 2010, and wants another. But the league has locked out the players: no use of team facilities, no coaching, no pay. Brees stepped up. “If not me, who? If not now, when?” According to this article in LarryBrownSports.com*, Brees has organized team practices and is footing most of the cost personally—he hired coaches from Tulane to help out, paid for insurance for the players, and carried in the Gatorade.
Lots of millionaire athletes could have done this. Brees did.
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*This site is an excellent source of information and gossip about all sport.
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Tags:Drew Brees, ethics, If not me, LarryBrownSports.com, New Orleans Saints, NFL labor dispute, NFL lockout, pro football, Tulane, who?
Posted in Ethics-general, Sports | 3 Comments »
May 3, 2011
The most Muslim city in the US, Dearborn, Michigan, celebrated the killing of Bin Laden as exuberantly as anyplace, according to this article from the Detroit News.
Will the hate mongers of the right apologize? Not very likely.
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Tags:Bin Laden, Dearborn, Gingrich, Islamophobia, Muslims
Posted in Ethics-general, Politics, Religion, Tolerance | 4 Comments »
April 23, 2011
Today’s New York Daily News has an op-ed by Sharif El-Gamal, developer of the so-called “Ground Zero,” so-called “mosque.” It’s his explanation of what he’s tried to accomplish and why. If you’re a supporter, or especially if you’re an opponent of the development you should hear his side of the story.
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Tags:ethics, Ground Zero mosque, Islamophobia, Muslims, New York Daily News, Sharif El-Gamal
Posted in Ethics-general, Religion, Tolerance | Leave a Comment »
April 11, 2011
We usually look to success and experience for inspiration, but once in a rare while we can be inspired by failure and inexperience. If character is sometimes defined by how we react to failure, then 21-year old Rory McIlroy is an inspiration, a man of real character.
McIlroy was on the verge of claiming one of sport’s greatest awards, the green jacket and the $1,440,000 that goes to the winner of golf’s Masters tournament. He had a four-stroke lead going into the last round, and a one-stroke lead with nine holes to play. Then disaster: a triple-bogey 7 on 10, a bogey 5 on 11, and a double-bogey 5 on 12 and McIlroy was out of contention, finishing with a score of 80 and a tie for 15th place.
Walking off the 18th green he was met by a sportscaster with a microphone. McIlroy didn’t run from the mike.
CBS reporter Peter Kostis asked what happened. McIlroy didn’t whine, didn’t complain, didn’t offer an excuse.
“I thought I hung in pretty well in the front nine, I was leading the tournament going into the back nine. Just hit a poor tee shot on 10 and I just sort of unraveled from there. Just sort of lost it 10, 11, 12, and couldn’t really get it back. It’s one of those things, I’m very disappointed at the minute and I’m sure I will be for the next few days, but I’ll get over it. I’ve got to take the positives, and the positives are I led this golf tournament for 63 holes. I’ll have plenty more chances, I know that. It’s very disappointing what happened today and hopefully it will build a little bit of character in me as well.”
McIlroy already has more than a little bit of character.
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Tags:accountability, character, ethics, failure, golf, grace, inexperience, inspiration, Masters, Peter Kostis, Rory McIlroy, sportsmanship, triple-bogey
Posted in Ethics-general, Sports | 3 Comments »
April 8, 2011
In the run-up to tonight’s budget agreement that will keep the federal government from shutting down, the last remaining point of contention was about federal funding for Planned Parenthood.
Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), Republican Whip, opposed the funding because, he said, Planned Parenthood’s main business is abortions:
“Everybody goes to clinics, to hospitals, to doctors, and so on. Some people go to Planned Parenthood. But you don’t have to go to Planned Parenthood to get your cholesterol or your blood pressure checked. If you want an abortion, you go to Planned Parenthood, and that’s well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does.”
When a PP spokesperson responded that only three per cent of its services are abortions, Sen. Kyl’s office backtracked…sort of. Here’s the entire statement:
“His remark was not intended to be a factual statement, but rather to illustrate that Planned Parenthood, a organization that receives millions of dollars in taxpayer funding, does subsidize abortions.”
We can’t say that Sen. Kyl lied, because a lie is a deliberately false statement made with intent to deceive. Sen. Kyl only meant to “illustrate.” So whether or not he’s a liar, best not to assume anything he says is true.
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Tags:abortions, budget agreement, ethics, government shut down, Jon Kyl, Planned Parenthood
Posted in Ethics-general, Government, Politics | 3 Comments »
April 8, 2011
Last year the Senate held hearings into Goldman Sachs’s role in the financial crisis. I wrote at the time that it appeared that Goldman Sachs, the most respected house on Wall Street, had no ethical standards.
Now the other icon of financial rectitude, Berkshire-Hathaway, is under the ethics microscope because of questionable dealings by David Sokol, an executive widely considered to be a possible successor to the revered “Sage of Omaha,” Warren Buffett.
Sokol had purchased shares in Lubrizol Corporation, then recommended to Buffett that Berkshire Hathaway buy the company. He knew (or was pretty confident) that the shares would go up if a deal went through. It did, and they did, netting Sokol a quick $3,000,000 windfall.
Was Sokol unethical? Buffett defended his sidekick, even as he accepted Sokol’s resignation, saying, “Neither Dave nor I feel his Lubrizol purchases were in any way unlawful.” Notice that Buffett was not defending Sokol’s ethics, only his non-criminality.
So was Sokol being unethical? Sure—I think so, but more importantly, so do 21 of 23 top U.S. investment bankers, according to a poll by Reuters. Only one of the bankers in the poll said Sokol’s behavior breached no ethics or rules.
So investment bankers do have ethics. Now if Reuters would only ask them what they think about the top one per cent of the population earning 20 per cent of the national income and owning 35 per cent of the national wealth…
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Tags:Berkshire-Hathaway, David Sokol, ethics, financial crisis, Goldman Sachs, inequality, investment bankers, Lubrizol Corporation, Reuters, Senate hearings, Warren Buffett
Posted in Business ethics, Ethics-general | Leave a Comment »
Has the President “thrown Israel under the bus,” as Mitt Romney said yesterday? Has he “once again betrayed our friend and ally, Israel,” as Michele Bachmann raged? Made a “mistaken and very dangerous demand,” as Tim Pawlenty accused? Or has he “given the Palestinians a huge break,” per Newt Gingrich?
Ethics Bob 