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Reserved for those individuals and organizations
who display a complete ignorance of ethics through their persistence in,
defense of, or comfort with blatantly unethical conduct.
April 2008 Ethics Dunces
Lynddie England
Out of prison and shooting her mouth off, Abu Ghraib cover girl Lynndie England is demonstrating that she has a flat learning curve on the ethics scale. In an interview with the German magazine Stern, England blamed the consequences of her conduct (and the conduct of the other guards photographed humiliating, threatening, terrorizing and abusing Iraqi prisoners) on the international media's publication of the evidence.
March 2008 Ethics Dunces
Donald
Fehr
For the three or four people not suffering from closed-head injuries who have yet to conclude that the Major League Baseball Player's Association is 100% out-to-lunch on the issue of steroids, we have this jaw-dropping news item from the Associated Press: Union head Donald Fehr has announced that the Association is investigating why no team has signed free agent Barry Bonds to a 2008 contract.
Tony
Kornheiser
Tony Kornheiser has risen from being a humor columnist in the Washington Post to being a national cable television and radio sports personality. He was even the inspiration for a character played by "Seinfeld's" Jason Alexander in a short-lived sit-com. Kornheiser's obviously a smart guy, so it was especially upsetting to hear him grab an Ethics Dunce cap by declaring on a Washington DC sports show that Roger Clemens shouldn't be prosecuted for perjury because "This country doesn't benefit by putting him in jail." He later applied the same argument to Barry Bonds and disgraced Olympian sprinter Marion Jones.
Marina High School Administrators
It is a sound ethics principle that subsequent events will not retroactively justify or validate an act that was wrongful at its inception. But the principle does not mean that those subsequent events, if significant enough, cannot or should not eliminate the need to punish the wrongdoer. What if an individual is in the right place at the right time to avert a disaster and does so, but the reason she was there constitutes an infraction? Shouldn't the fair and appropriate reward be, at very least, the forgiveness of the original misdeed?
Client Number 9
With avague but provocative statement, New York Governor Eliot Spitzer responded to the public revelation that he was "Client Number 9" in the dealings of an international prostitution ring, known as "The Emperor's Club." It also established him as solid gold Ethics Dunce. A federal wiretap had confirmed that Spitzer almost certainly violated laws by transporting a high-priced sex partner into Washington, D.C., by negotiating directly with a criminal enterprise, and by going to great lengths to disguise cash transfers to that enterprise. In so doing so, Spitzer probably spent state funds, and definitely exposed himself to possible extortion that could have compromised his independence in the service of the people of New York. (Is it conceivable that he never has seen "The Godfather, Part 2," and what happened to the prostitute-prone U.S. Senator from Nevada in that film?) Meanwhile, the money the governor transferred to "The Emperor's Club"---nearly $5,000 for four hours of kinky recreation this time, more on other occasions--- went right into the pockets of organized crime.
By no stretch of the imagination did this chain of misconduct constitute "a private matter."
February 2008 Ethics Dunces
San
Jose State President Don Kassing
In the pantheon of ethically misguided protests, the decision of San Jose State University's president to ban blood drives on its 30,000-student campus has to rank right up there with the first person kicked his dog because he was mad at his boss. The essence of a valid protest is that it does minimum harm to bystanders while persuading those who have the power to alter the conditions being protested. San Jose's action fails on both counts.
Paul
Lo Duca and Eric Gagne
The Washington Nationals Paul Lo Duca and the Milwaukee Brewers' Eric Gagne, both named as users of prohibited performance-enhancing substances in the Mitchell Report, issued "apologies" to their fans and team mates while declining to say what they were apologizing for. This slimy and cynical tactic, almost certainly invented by player agents who double as lawyers and PR flacks, was tried a couple years earlier by Yankee slugger Jason Giambi, another steroid-user. It served him well until he slipped up in an interview last year and referenced regrets about using "that stuff." Oh, THAT's what you were apologizing for!
House
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
Recognizing that members of Congress have about the same sensitivity to ethical principles as Luka Brazzi hardly requires an ethicist. But the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform really disgraced itself by permitting Roger Clemens, who was preparing to appear before the committee and testify that he had not used performance-enhancing substances as alleged by his former trainer and the Mitchell Report, to have private visits in the offices of 19 Committee members prior to his appearance.
New
York Chapter of NOW
After Sen. Ted Kennedy's revulsion at "Billary's" attempt to exploit racial divisions in their quest for the Democratic presidential nomination led him to endorse the Clintons' rival, Barack Obama, New York's NOW chapter released this amazing statement:
"Women have just experienced the ultimate betrayal. Senator Kennedy's endorsement of Hillary Clinton's opponent in the Democratic presidential primary campaign has really hit women hard. Women have forgiven Kennedy, stuck up for him, stood by him, hushed the fact that he was late in his support of Title IX, the ERA, the Family Leave and Medical Act to name a few. Women have buried their anger that his support for the compromises in No Child Left Behind and the Medicare bogus drug benefit brought us the passage of these flawed bills. We have thanked him for his ardent support of many civil rights bills, BUT women are always waiting in the wings.
"And now the greatest betrayal! We are repaid with his abandonment! He's picked the new guy over us. He's joined the list of progressive white men who can't or won't handle the prospect of a woman president who is Hillary Clinton (they will of course say they support a woman president, just not "this" one).
January 2008 Ethics Dunces
Howard
Kurtz, Washington Post Media Reporter
The Scoreboard periodically receives protests from misty-eyes idealists who are offended by its oft-repeated assertions that the evidence of consistent journalistic ethics in the media is about on par with the evidence for the existence of Bigfoot. For those who need further convincing, I present Ethics Dunce Howard Kurtz, whose regular Washington Post column and blog often critiques media ethics. Kurtz also hosts a weekly cable show on the same topic. A blogger named Amanda Carpenter eavesdropped on a private conversation Mike Huckabee advisor Ed Rollins was having with a dining companion at an Iowa restaurant, and jotted down Rollins' comments over a significant time span. She then published the comments on her blog. Kurtz happily included many of her notes in his "Media Notes" column. He did so to spice up his coverage of the Iowa Caucus infighting. He did not, apparently, even detect the ethical problem with Carpenter's actions.
Astros
Catcher Brad Ausmus
The Scoreboard wants to thank Ausmus, whose comments to Boston Globe reporter Nick Cafarto about the Mitchell Report (detailing findings of steroid use among specific major league players) are a virtual primer on the common use of invalid rationalizations to excuse unethical conduct.
December 2007 Ethics Dunces
The
University of Arkansas
Seldom, perhaps never, has the departure of a football coach inspired as much venom from his players as when Bobby Petrino resigned from the Atlanta Falcons. With his team suffering through a horrible season that began with its star quarterback facing prison for dog-fighting, animal abuse and illegal gambling, the first-year coach fled his 24 million dollar multi-year contract with the Falcons to take a coaching position with the University of Arkansas, without finishing the season (three games were left) or even addressing his players. He left them a written note.
George
Mitchell and Bud Selig
Former Senator George Mitchell is a straightforward and honest man, a life-time public servant, and about as perfect a candidate to head a high-profile investigation into steroid use as Major League Baseball could have found. So why in the world did he allow his integrity to be vulnerable to attack by remaining on the Board pf Directors of the Boston Red Sox as he took over this sensitive assignment?
November 2007 Ethics Dunces
Esther
Monclova-Johnson
Esther Monclova-Johnson is Executive Director of the Office of Community and Education Programs. If you have not been following the shenanigans in the local government of the nation's Capital, let it suffice to say that the managers, administrators and bureaucrats there would be right at home in Mexico, Nigeria, or any Third World nation where government workers feel that it is their natural right to rip off the public. Monclova-Johnson's reaction to financial scandal Number 6,598, 221 (approximately) since the feds turned the reins of governance over to the locals helps explain why this shameful state of affairs persists. (Why did it begin in the first place, and why has it lasted so long? Opinions vary, but most of the explanations seem to include the name of two-time mayor and current D.C. Councilman Marion Barry, D.C.'s patron saint of shameless corruption.)
Pope
Benedict XVI
The Scoreboard is prepared for an increase in its usual complement of "Who do you think you are?" messages, but this isn't even an especially difficult call. Pope Benedict XVI told the International Congress of Catholic Pharmacists that practitioners should exercise a "conscientious objection" to dispensing drugs that would induce an abortion or the contraceptive that prevents an egg from being fertilized. Total ethics nonsense, and an indefensible position. If the Pope said that pharmacists who regarded some of the prescriptions they were obligated to fill as immoral needed to get their real estate license, there would be no quarrel here. But belonging to a profession that serves the public means that one cannot selectively ignore legal duties to the public, It is unethical for doctors to let a wounded serial killer bleed to death. It is unethical for a criminal defense attorney to intentionally allow a defendant to be convicted because the attorney believes he is guilty. And it is unethical for a pharmacist to veto a doctor's assessment of what a patient needs.
Previous Listings
October 2007:
- Hofstra University Law School
- The Sports Media and Rick Ankiel's "Privilege"
- Air American's Jon Elliott
September 2007:
August 2007:
- Lawrence Lebowitz and the Pittsburgh Law Firm of Cohen and Grigsby
- Whole Foods Market Inc. Founder John Mackey
July 2007:
June 2007:
May 2007:
April 2007:
March 2007:
- Los Angeles Times Editorial Page Editor Andres Martinez
- Carol Burnett
- Judge Larry Seidlin
- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
February 2007:
January 2007:
- VA Representative Virgil Goode
- Franklin Haney
- Dr. Laura
- Pagosa Springs Home Owners Association
- Rosie O'Donnell
- Maryland Republican Leadership
- Senator John Kerry
- Novelist John Grisham
- Colin Cowherd
- Milton Moore Elementary School
- Radio Shack Management
- President George W. Bush
- Tony Kornheiser
- Lindsay Lohan's Mother
- Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele
- Cape Coral High School Teacher Sue Propert and the Southwest Florida News-Press [Updated 7/1/07 Retracted in part; Affirmed in part]
- Freakonomics authors Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubnerg
- Allen Ray Heckard
- Senator Harry Reid
- Hungary Creek Middle School
- Lehman H.S
- Consumers Energy
- Stephen Colbert and Fans
- Officer Kelley
- 27%
- Curtis and Rhonda Grokey
- George
Washington University
- Alfonso Soriano
- The New York Yankees
- Howard University
- Florida Governor Jeb Bush
- Karass Effective Negotiating
- Ethics Professor Daniel C. Maguire
- George Clooney
- Columnist Peter Ferrara
- Oprah Winfrey
- Judge Andrew Napolitano
- Sir Paul McCartney
- Senator Arlen Specter
- Senator Arlen Specter and Senator Tom Harkin
- Howard Kurtz
- Washington State University
- Lorrie Heasley
- Maureen Dowd
- Ray Hultman and Eleanor Cook
- USA Today
- United Dominion Residential Community in Jacksonville, North Carolina
- Florida Governor Jeb Bush
- Al Franken
- The Peabody Awards
- Kellen Winslow and Dave Chappelle
- Major League Baseball
- Dean Paul Danos
- Walter Cronkite
- Newsweek
- Larry King
- Doug Wead
- Richard Hatch
2004:
- 80% of San Francisco Giant Fans
- Antoinette Millard's Lawyer
- Star Jones
- Larry Herbst
-
Robert Novak **
- L&M Import and Export
- Lewis Lapham
- Dr. Hawk
- Mike Torchia
- Matt Starr
- The Casual Reagan Mourners
- Lynndie England
- University of Wisconsin Sophomore Audrey Seiler
- Department of Health and Human Services
- The NHL and Its Fans
- The Budweiser Brewing Company
- Halliburton
- Jayson Blair
- Steve Irwin ("The Crocodile Hunter")
- Pete Rose
- The Fox Network
**
2004 Ethics Dunce of the Year
(View all winners in The 2004 Ethics Score)