The admirable website, EthicsAlarms.com, praised the U of Wisconsin today for ending its contract with Nike, the result of a 15-year effort by my friend Jim Keady.
Keady’s 15-year effort to get Nike to take some responsibility for the workers who make products with the swoosh has included living for three months in Indonesia on $1.25 a day, the wage in a local factory that makes shoes for Nike. He’s a Jesuit-educated true believer in Catholic ideas (not necessarily practices) of charity.
Hatred of the “other” in America is on the down slope. We still have some way to go, but we’ve come a long way since “No Irish need apply” for employment, gays and lesbians barred from teaching,lily-white major league baseball, and deed restrictions against selling houses to Jews. Heck, we even elected an African-American President.
It seems like the only minority it’s ok to hate is the Muslims. Ann Coulter’s many fans laughed when she said that Muslims should not be allowed to fly on airplanes and should take “flying carpets” instead. When a Canadian Muslim student protested that she did not, in fact, own a flying carpet and asked how she should travel, Coulter’s rejoinder was “Take a camel.” Haha.
More serious hate-Muslim screeds are viral on the internet. And worse than the crude screeds are the seemingly analytical pieces laying out the danger we face from a growing Muslim population, (more…)
Hillary Clinton promised the voters of New York state in 2000 that if elected she would serve a full term. But by 2003, with George W. Bush’s popularity falling he appeared beatable, if the Democrats nominated the right person. Most of the Democratic political heavyweights thought the right person was Hillary.
Should she or shouldn’t she? She summoned all her inner circle—husband Bill, daughter Chelsea and her boyfriend, and four veterans of the Clinton White House—to one final meeting at the Clinton home in Westchester County. Game Change, the dishy story about the 2008 election by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, tells what happened.
“One by one, Hillary polled the group, listening carefully to what each of them had to say. [All told her she should run, but] there was one dissenter in the room. Chelsea believed that her mother had to finish her term, that she’d made a promise (more…)
“Nigger!” shouted by a demonstrator at Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) as he was leaving the Capitol Saturday. “Faggot!” at Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA). Words not enough, a demonstrator spat on Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D., Mo.).
To their credit, some on the right objected. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), called the actions by some protesters “reprehensible.” Amy Kremer, coordinator of the Tea Party Express, told Fox News, “I absolutely think it’s isolated. It’s disgraceful and the people in this movement won’t tolerate it because that’s not what we’re about.”
While nigger and faggot cross the line for Tea Partiers, they may be the logical next step after socialist, communist, and Nazi. If you agree with the so-far-unnamed Republican congressman who shouted “baby killer” from the House floor (more…)
On the eve of a historic vote in the House on health care reform Republicans aren’t conflicted. They’ll all vote ‘no.’ But on the Democratic side it’s not so easy. Some members who favor reform are in districts that poll strongly against; some members who oppose reform are in districts that poll in favor. Both groups are conflicted: vote their conscience or vote their constituents?Marjorie Margolies argues, in an op-ed in Thursday’s Washington Post, that members should vote their conscience. She’s a voice worth paying attention to, since her vote of conscience in favor of President Clinton’s budget proposal is generally considered to have led directly to her defeat in the 1994 election. But if you think Margolies’ advice just serves her desire to get health care reform passed, consider what the father of modern conservatism, Edmund Burke had to say on the subject in 1774.
Seton Hall University is the oldest and largest Catholic university in New Jersey. It also has been a basketball power, on and off, for the past 60 years. This year the Pirates seemed on the verge of returning to the elite of college basketball, posting a 19-13 record, including 9-9 in the Big East Conference, the nation’s toughest.
The return was led by coach Bobby Gonzalez, who posted a 66-59 record over four years. But Gonzalez brought a mixed blessing to Seton Hall: the university often had more reason to be ashamed of the Pirates than to be proud of them. Gonzalez repeatedly clashed with everybody: his players, opposing players, his coaches, opposing coaches, game officials, and his superiors at Seton Hall. Players he recruited were charged with serious crimes.
Tuesday it ended. In the afternoon a player Gonzalez had just kicked off the team was arrested (more…)
Television is a sucker for sex and sexy pictures. It loves a story with legs—both literal and metaphorical. So the saga of Rielle Hunter, John Edwards’s baby mama, goes on and on.
First the denials of an affair. Then admission of the affair but denial of the payments. Then admission of the payments but denial of the fatherhood. Now the exclusive in GQ Magazine: “Hello, America, My Name Is Rielle Hunter,” complete with a photo spread worthy of Playboy’s Playmate of the Month.
Now the USAToday headline: “Hunter ‘in tears’ over ‘repulsive’ photos in ‘GQ’.” Those are the photos she posed for that she labels repulsive.
The photos are quite nice. It’s Rielle and her Johnny that are repulsive. And the media’s intensive coverage and re-coverage. Her fifteen minutes of fame should be up. Bring back Paris Hilton.
The flap intensifies over Israel’s announcement of
plans to build 1600 new homes in East Jerusalem. After strenuous objection from Joe Biden and the State Department , Prime Minister Netanyahu apologized for the timing of the announcement but not for the substance, telling the Israeli Parliament that construction of Jewish housing in Jerusalem was not a matter for negotiation.
The New York Times quotes a senior administration official as saying, “What happened to the vice president in Israel was unprecedented. Where it goes from here depends on the Israelis.” But the Israelis seem intent on continuing to expand into East Jerusalem and more broadly into the West Bank.
The U.S. is in a difficult position, caught between the uncompromising Israeli ally on one side and (more…)
We’ve written about our favorite football coach, Chip Kelly of the Oregon Ducks. Kelly has been a paragon of coaching in his first-year on the job, leading the Ducks last year to a 10-3 record and their first Pac 10 championship since 1995. He did this while insisting on good citizenship from his players, even suspending his top running back for nine games for sucker punching an opposing player after the Ducks’ opening game loss.
Duck fans were hopeful of an even better 2010, with most of last year’s stars returning, led by Heisman Trophy candidate, quarterback Jeremiah Masoli, and running back LaMichael James, who rushed for 1546 yards as a freshman last year. This could be the Ducks’ chance at a national championship, even.
Not so much, anymore. Kelly suspended James, another of the team’s offensive stars, and top placekicker Rob Beard, both of whom pled guilty to misdemeanor physical harassment. They’ll both sit out at least next season’s opening game, with the proviso that they can play after that if they adhere to the guidelines Kelly puts forward.
But the big deal was the suspension of Masoli for the entire 2010 season (more…)
That’s the headline in this week’s sensible editorial in The Economist about the controversy over what to name the events that led to the deaths of so many Armenians in 1915.
Their conclusion: “There is room for scholarly inquiry into the working of the murky state machinery that led to that outcome—to determine whether the tragedy was principally the result of murderous design or culpable neglect. By inviting all scholars to peruse its archives (something it has done only patchily), Turkey could disarm its critics.”
Highly recommended reading.
Ethics Bob 
