Websites

August 2009

wholeboycott

This website is leading the charge to boycott Whole Foods. Why a boycott? Is Whole Foods supporting child labor in its choice of suppliers, or bolstering nations that practice apartheid? Well, no. Does Whole Foods mistreat or exploit its employees, or mistreat and mislead its customers? No again; in fact, this is a corporation whose business practices are exemplary. People are organizing a boycott of Whole Foods stores because its outspoken CEO, John Mackey, had the audacity to express his opinion (in a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed) that the Obama’s administration’s approach to health care reform is not the best option for the country.

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July 2009

armchairsubversive

This website made the rounds in the wake of Congressman Peter King’s YouTube diatribe against Michael Jackson, when he called him a “pervert.” King’s words were ugly, tasteless, ill-timed, ignorant and unfair, but mild compared to the site, which is all of these and more. Its thesis is that being a Republican is prima facie evidence of perversion, and its audience is anyone whose critical thinking skills are minimal and whose hatred is strong.

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June 2009

voteformanny

While Manny Ramirez was serving his 50-game suspension for testing positive for drugs, a blogger named Jason Rosenberg decided that it would be “funny” if Ramirez was voted on to baseball’s All-Star team.

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May 2009

peoplesdirt.com, thedirty.com, and others

I suppose determining that websites with “dirty” in the URL are unethical doesn’t exactly require Sherlock Holmes. These websites, sadly, are only examples of a whole genre of sites designed to be virtual public bathroom walls, where users can scrawl rumors, insults, and vile libel about others anonymously. They are full of lies and slurs, motivated by the worst of human inclinations: jealousy, vengeance, anger, hatred, or just plain meanness.

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March 2009

myfreeimplants

Unlike most of the Scoreboard’s Unethical Website designees, the exact ethical offense of myfreeimplants.com is difficult to define. The site is not illegal. It actually facilitates charity, though a particularly perverse form of charity. The site, on rare occasions, may even help someone who is emotionally and psychologically damaged to achieve new self-esteem.

How does one describe what is wrong with a website that makes it possible for men to buy breast implants for women they have never met, and then encourages them to drool over the results?

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February 2009

thenadyasulemanfamily

Nadya Suleman, the apparently unhinged birth-machine who found an ethical guidelines-distaining correspondence course fertility doctor to load her up with enough embryos to kill a normal woman (or dachshund)…the single mother who already had six children she couldn’t take care of or afford and wanted more and more…the freakishly fertile publicity hound (again, no pun intended) who is headed for ruin if she doesn’t land a despicable reality show, and probably even if she does… has a professionally designed website with adorable photos of her brood that has no other purpose than to beg for “donations of money or other items.”

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January 2009

PETA

Once again, the Scoreboard confronts the irony of PETA, the organization with “Ethical’ in its name that is nevertheless open to all sorts of tricks, scams, misrepresentations and other unfair tactics to accomplish its sole objective, to eliminate any differences between what we consider the ethical treatment of humans and the treatment of animals.

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