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August 2004 Ethics Dunces
L&M Import and ExportAs Don Rickles would say, if you look up "ethics dunce" in Webster's Dictionary, the logo of L&M Import and Export will be next to the definition.
"Believe
it or Not", this charming and creative company designed and distributed
a toy to be sealed in bags of candy for children, and the toy depicts
an airliner about to crash into one of the Twin Towers. (If you have any
doubts, check the number stamped on the plastic: 9011. Coincidence?) An
11 year-old boy pulled the incredible toy out of his candy bag, and immediately
recognized what it depicted. A few phone calls later, and Lisy Corp, which
packaged the candy, had pulled the toy from distribution. Lisy claims,
credibly, that the toy was one of many in a lot designated for the candy,
and that they are as offended by the thing as anyone else. But according
to Orlando's Channel 9, which received the first notice of the toy from
the 11 year-old's mom, the company responsible is unrepentant. The company
reportedly told Channel 9 they didn't think it was a big deal, saying
they consider it just a toy for children and don't think it's inappropriate.
Who are these people? Dan Ackroyd used to play a character on the old "Saturday Night Live" named E. Buzz Miller, who distributed toys for kids like "Bag 'O Glass." Did E. Buzz take over L&M Import and Export? If making a plastic toy depicting the violent murders of thousands of Americans, isn't "inappropriate," what does L&M have in store for America's youth next? Jeffrey Dahmer action figures? Auschwitz Lego sets? Ethics Scoreboard would retire the "Ethics Dunce" title for good and leave it in L&M's oh so deserving hands, if not for the near certainty that an even more ethically clueless company is lurking just around the corner.
Get this: Lewis Lapham, occasionally brilliant but lately just cranky herald for the left and editor of Harper's, includes the following paragraph in his regular column in the magazine:
The speeches in Madison Square Garden affirmed the great truths now routinely preached from the pulpits of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal--government the problem, not the solution; the social contract a dead letter; the free market the answer to every maiden's prayer--and while listening to the hollow rattle of the rhetorical brass and tin, I remembered the question that [Richard] Hofstadter didn't stay to answer. How did a set of ideas both archaic and bizarre make its way into the center ring of the American political circus?
This is his critique of the speeches at the Republican National Convention, written for the September Harper's. Of course, the convention hasn't occurred yet, and the speeches haven't been delivered. Even though Lapham can probably confidently assume that he will dislike the GOP speeches when they are made, reviewing concerts you haven't attended, books you haven't read and movies you've never seen are right out of Unethical Journalism 101, and publishing the review of a speech before the speech is made is a sure way to flunk the course.
UPDATED 8/31:
Not surprisingly, Lapham’s gaff attracted quite a bit of attention, and he duly apologized:
… the rhetorical invention was silly. The mistake, however, is a serious one, and if I'd had my wits about me as an editor, I wouldn't have let the author mix up his tenses in manuscript or allowed him in page proof to lapse into poetic license. Both of us regret the injury done to the magazine and apologize, wholeheartedly, to its readers.>
Fair enough, and half a salute to the Harper’s editor for doing the right thing and apologizing. He’d get the full salute if he had omitted the face-saving nonsense about “a rhetorical device.” His piece was in a magazine dated September, and would reach most readers after the convention. Is he saying that the phony commentary on the speeches he hadn’t heard (because they hadn’t occurred when he wrote about them) was never intended to imply that he had heard them? It seems so, and it is not convincing.The correct response was, “I’m sorry, and I won’t do it again.”