Posts Tagged ‘ethics’
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 »
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 »
April 7, 2011
The story of the so-called “Ground Zero mosque” has spread halfway around the world to Turkey and to Hurriyet, the Turkish daily I scan (the English edition) on my iPhone every day. Today’s edition has an article by David Dyssegaard Kallick about lessons from the mosque. It’s not so much about the mosque as it is about the endless rhythmic flow of immigrants to New York.
Germans, Irish, Italians, Chinese and Jews, they were all considered “other” at first, despised and feared, but eventually each group became integrated into the New York scene, “not by shedding their culture, but by making a place for it in America.”
Kallick says he’s seen this movie before and it always has a happy ending. He explains why he’s certain that Muslims will find their rightful place in New York—shaping the city and being shaped by it. It’ll be another building block in America’s exceptionalism.
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Tags:American exceptionalism., Chinese and Jews, David Dyssegaard Kallick, ethics, Germans, Ground Zero mosque, Hurriyet, immigrants, Irish, Italians, Muslims, New York, other, Turkey
Posted in Ethics-general, International, Politics, Religion, Tolerance | Leave a Comment »
April 4, 2011
Anti-Muslim prejudice is hurting America at home and abroad: at home because it divides Americans from each other and hurts our Muslim citizens, and abroad because it signals to many of the world’s billion Muslims that America is their enemy. Sometimes it leads directly to anti-American savagery, like last week’s murders in Afghanistan over the burning of the Quran by a deranged Christian pastor.
The prejudice can take root and spread because too many non-Muslim Americans know too little about their Muslim countrymen, or, indeed, about Islam. Katie Couric recently proposed, apparently in all seriousness, that to combat bigotry against Muslims, “Maybe we need a Muslim version of The Cosby Show.”
Faisal Abdul Rauf, imam of the make-shift mosque now holding prayers 2-1/2 blocks from Ground Zero in New York, is doing his part to contribute to inter-faith understanding. Last year he authored What’s Right with Islam is What’s Right With America, called by the Christian Science Monitor “An invigorating glimpse into the heart and mind of a wise Muslim seeking the higher ground.” Now he’s published a column in the Washington Post called Five myths about Muslims in America. The five myths are:
- American Muslims are foreigners.
- American Muslims are ethnically, culturally and politically monolithic.
- American Muslims oppress women.
- American Muslims often become “homegrown” terrorists
- American Muslims want to bring sharia law to the United States
The column is easy reading. If you care one way or the other about Muslims in America, I urge you to read this short article.
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Tags:Afghanistan murders, anti-Muslim prejudice, burning of the Quran, Christian Science Monitor, ethics, Faisal Abdul Rauf, Five myths about Muslims in America, Ground Zero mosque, Katie Couric, Muslim Americans, Muslims, prejudice, The Cosby Show, Washington Post, What's Right with Islam
Posted in Ethics-general, International, Politics, Religion, Tolerance | Leave a Comment »
April 1, 2011
CNN last week ran an excellent documentary about the controversy over a planned new mosque/community center in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. It’s called Unwelcome: Muslims Next Door– Soledad O’Brien. The video runs 42 minutes. An excellent summary of it is here.
It’s upsetting to contrast how ordinary American are the Muslims of Murfreesboro with how fearful and suspicious are the mosque’s opponents. The idea that the American Muslims are “other” is reminiscent of similar arguments made about African-Americans, Japanese-Americans, Jewish Americans, and, much earlier, Irish-Americans.
We Americans take pride in our diversity, and in America as a melting pot, but we still have the capacity to summon up a layer of hate and suspicion from just under the surface.
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Tags:American Muslims, anti-Semitism, CNN, diversity, ethics, hate, intolerance, Irish-Americans, Islamophobia, Japanese-Americans, melting pot, mosque, Murfreesboro, other, Soledad O'Brien, suspicion, Unwelcome: Muslims Next Door
Posted in Ethics-general, Religion, Tolerance | Leave a Comment »
March 31, 2011
Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. The city of Anaheim, California isn’t easy to fool twice. In 1996 the city and the then-California Angels agreed to a long-term lease for Anaheim Stadium. The city agreed to spend $100 million to renovate the stadium, and the team agreed to change its name to include the word ‘Anaheim.’ Years later a new owner, Arte Moreno, weaseled out of the deal by changing the team’s name from Anaheim Angels to Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim—or, universally known as the LA Angels. The city sued to reverse the change, but lost in court.
Now the Sacramento Kings NBA team is considering a move to Anaheim, and the Anaheim city council unanimously approved a $75 million bond deal Tuesday night to entice the Kings to move. The team would be known as the Anaheim Royals (there already is a Los Angeles Kings hockey team.) No Los Angeles Royals of Anaheim: the city won’t be fooled twice. Anaheim Mayor Tom Tait said that the team name would have “Anaheim as its first word and sole geographic identifier.”
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Tags:Anaheim, Anaheim Angels, Anaheim Royals, Anaheim Stadium, Arte Moreno, California Angels, ethics, LA Angels, Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Sacramento Kings, Tom Tait
Posted in Ethics-general, Sports | Leave a Comment »
March 20, 2011
I’ve written here about the remarkable honesty of—seemingly everybody—in Turkey. I got another example two days ago when our taksi stopped at our chosen restaurant in Gaziantep. The meter showed TL 7—about $4.00. Our friend Arzu Tutuk handed the driver a TL20 note. “Sorry, no change,” he said (in Turkish). “Here’s my card, just call me when you’ve finished dinner and I’ll take you back to your hotel. We can settle then.”
And so we did. After a sumptuous dinner at Imam Cağdas Arzu called the driver, he picked us up within two minutes, and she settled the bill for the round trip.
What’s remarkable about this story? The cab driver trusted a total stranger to go out of her way to pay him, when she could have stiffed him with impunity. It never occurred to the driver or to Arzu that the trust could be broken.
Hooray—again—for Turkish honesty.
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Tags:Arzu Tutuk, ethics, Gaziantep, honesty, trust, Turkey, Turkish cab drivers
Posted in Ethics-general, International | 5 Comments »
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?”
Ethics Bob 