Monday, January 8, 2024
On the Birth of Corporate Social Responsibilty in 1869
Wednesday, December 6, 2023
Time Magazine’s Person of the Year: Taylor Swift
Time magazine named the
singer Taylor Swift as its person of the year for 2023. Such a force of nature
were her stadium-filled concerts during that summer that they triggered economic
booms in the respective host cities. In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for example,
hotel rooms went for as much as $2,500 downtown on the night of the concert. In terms
of American culture, the analogy of gravity waves may fit. During an interview
for television at her home (or one of her homes), Swift’s savvy business acumen
was very evident; her marketing prowess was extraordinary. She even re-released
her own songs, resulting in a huge financial windfall for what are really the
same songs merely re-sung. It is not as if she had grown a new voice. Swift
personifies American culture, whose “movers and shakers” seem “happy go lucky”
on stage yet, behind the scenes, they tend to be lazar-focused on the business
end. In short, considerable distance may exist between the societal image and
the private business practitioner, and the ethical element can get lost in the
shuffle and excitement.
To be sure, economics was evident
in the “Swiftie” phenomenon during the summer of 2023. According to Time,
Swift “achieved a kind of nuclear fusion: shooting art and commerce together to
release an energy of historic force.”[1] Her Eras concert tour "brought in a whopping $1.04 billion with 4.35 million tickets sold across 60 tour dates."[2] Not just any singer can make such a haul and even trigger municipal economic booms and saturate the media’s
attention worldwide simply by going on tour. Also, the magazine is clear that such
a gargantuan amount of money brought in is not “something we often chalk up to
the alignments of planets and fates,” for “giving too much credit to the stars
ignores [Swift’s] skill and her power.”[3]
In particular, her intense and sustained focus on every conceivable way, such
as by re-recording existing songs and bundling them (admittedly with some songs
from her vault) into albums in their own right, attending to merchandise and actively
using the media for free publicity, to increase revenue leveraged, or made use
of, her tremendous market power that was unrivaled; she dominated the airwaves
during the summer of 2023. The “Taylor’s Version” albums provide us with an
interesting case study wherein hype, money, and ethics are all in the mix.
According to Time, “Swift
began releasing re-recordings of her back catalog in 2021 in an effort to
reclaim her original music, after her initial label Big Machine Records sold
her masters to Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings in 2019. ‘Now Scooter has
stripped me of my life’s work, that I wasn’t given an opportunity to buy,’
Swift wrote. . . . ‘Essentially, my musical legacy is about to lie in the hands
of someone who tried to dismantle it.’”[4]
I don’t doubt the authenticity of her emotive motivation here. In the
vernacular, she was pissed. Even so, if
she had signed a contract with Big Machine Records giving it the unilateral
right to sell the masters of her songs, and the purchaser has the legal right of
use, then she had no legal or ethical claim to preempt the sale or be sold the
masters outright. Of course, if labels write heavily unfair contracts
essentially reflecting the commercial interests of the labels, taking advantage
of the lack of bargaining power of new signers, ethical critique is fair game.
By its very nature, a contract is
a coming together of (at least) two interests, with consideration
(money) given by one party to the other. A residential lease, for instance,
should reflect both interests. It should not restrict use of premises to be narrowed
down to reflect only how the property owner would use the space or would like
the space to be used. A property owner might prefer a “no guest” policy, but
such as “policy”—the very word being presumptuous—violates reasonable use of
premises. Furthermore, the property owner’s personal religious or moral
lifestyle, for instance, should not bind the counterparty as long as the
property itself is not damaged. “I don’t believe in eating meat, so you are
not allowed to use the kitchen of your apartment to cook meat,” for instance,
is presumptuous and dogmatic. More to the point, such a clause would violate or
nullify the fact that in receiving rent, the property owner is selling the use
of the space (as long as the property is not damaged). The mantra, “It’s my
house,” taken as an absolute, is circumscribed when use is being
sold for consideration (i.e., rent). Having it both ways is selfish and
childish.
Whether or not Taylor Swift
originally signed a one-sided contract is beyond my ability to investigate, given
the information that I have. Her fans did not know either, and so, because of her
emotional claim and her “star power,” her ethical cause resonated. Even so, it
can be asked whether it is ethical to have hyped “Taylor’s Version” albums to
the extent that buyers were willing to pay the full price of an album even if
they had most of the songs already. To be sure, the “Taylor’s Versions”
included “vault tracks”—songs not on the original albums. She also updated some
lyrics. Even so, it can be asked whether the additional work justifies a full
price of a new album. It can also be asked whether customers having receipts
for the original albums, such as Fearless, should have been able to buy Taylor’s
version at a discount. I submit that such a discount would be reasonable, given
both the amount of additional work on Taylor’s part and the substance of the
product (i.e., the extent to which it differs from the originals). A few songs
from the vault and some new lyrics do not render the albums commensurate with
albums filled with previously unreleased songs.
If Swift’s motivation was indeed
to gain control of her songs, she should have agreed to a discount. Fearless
(Taylor’s Version) had the biggest debut for any album in 2021,
with 722.7 million on-demand streams in the U.S. that year.[5]
Surely at least some of those customers already possessed the original album.
Of course, the irrational exuberance that would cause such a customer to buy
the same songs again can also be criticized, but many of her customers were
teenagers and thus easily taken in even by orchestrated hype of good feeling
seemingly aloft from the earthly taint of business strategizing. My point is
that it is no accident that Taylor Swift made a lot of money essentially
recycling songs ready for re-singing. She was not merely trying to regain
control over her work. I submit that she was acting as a business woman, and a
darn good one at that. Her true identity—her
driving financial ambition—was practically hidden under the blinding
glitter of the “nuclear fusion” that Time magazine describes. My point
is that the resulting sonic boom was orchestrated to coordinate and max out
both the hype and the revenue. Behind the moral cause, behind the curtains, Swift’s
financial acumen could be said to be a subterranean force of nature.
Such a force tends to be obscured, obfuscated, or, more often, intentionally hidden in the American entertainment industry. Similarly, elected representatives in Congress or the White House keep both their fowl tongues and their raw desire for power far away from the reach of microphones and cameras. In short, the sheer difference between private personas, including agendas, motivations, and even personalities, and the public images on the societal stage is astounding. Especially in politics in a representative democracy, this differential is a real problem that goes beyond the financial harm to young “Swifties” who have been subtly manipulated into buying (mostly recycled) songs at full price.
2. Maria Sherman, "Taylor Swift's Eras Tour Is the First Tour to Gross Over $1 Billion, Pollster Says," APNews.com, December 8, 2023.
4. Mariah Espada, “Taylor Swift Is Halfway Through Her Rerecording Project. It’s Paid Off Big Time,” Time, July 6, 2023.
5. Ibid.
Saturday, September 30, 2023
Exposing Yale’s Sordid Side: “The Inner Ring” by C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis aptly describes in one published lecture the nature of a very human game, which is really about how soft power, which is often buttressed by institutional position, works in any human organization. To use Nietzsche’s expression (which Lewis would have hardly appreciated), the dynamics of an inner ring is human, all too human, and thus hardly an extractible part of the human condition. Yet it is much more salient, and arguably even dysfunctional, in just some organizations, especially those that have an elite reputation such as Yale, whose essence, we shall investigate here, might be exclusion even within the university community, such that some vulnerable members are told they are not really members (but that their donations are welcome).
In my essay, “Yale’s Original Sin,” I describe Yale’s culture of inner-exclusion operating within the university, wherein some insiders are relegated by inner-insiders as outsiders. During my stay as an alumnus doing research for a book I was writing, I was astonished to read emails from non-academic employees in which they bluntly stated that I was not a “member of the Yale community” because I was an alum. Unfortunately, and quite tellingly, those explicit statements were just the tip of the iceberg. Much more common, in more sense than one ironically, were the intentional subtle hints given by some faculty, faculty-administrators, and even non-academic employees that I was not worth their time whether in replying to an email message or in conversation. This extended to the faculty culture being averse to allowing alumni (and other scholars, as a courtasy) to audit courses and to that of clerical employees not recognizing alumni in residence for a term as members of the Yale community. This self-serving, arrogant, and deeply mistaken attitude and belief applied in a counter-productive way to charging alumni in residence $4 more than students, faculty, and the non-academic employees themselves, for lunch at the university lunch hall known as Commons. A common mentality to be sure.
In his lecture entitled, “The
Inner Ring,” C. S. Lewis describes the ubiquitous phenomenon that he calls the inner
ring of an organization. “I can assure you,” he tells his audience, “that in
whatever hospital, inn of court, diocese, school, business, or college you
arrive . . . , you will find the Rings—what Tolstoy calls the second or
unwritten systems.” In War and Peace, Tolstoy alludes to such an
informal yet firmly hierarchical or concentric system: “(S)ide by side with the
system of discipline and subordination which were laid down in the Army
Regulations, there existed a different and more real system—the system which
compelled a tightly laced general with a purple face to wait respectfully for
his turn while a mere captain like Prince Andrey chatted with a mere second
lieutenant like Boris.” The general is not royalty, and so he deferred to the prince
even though the latter was of a lower rank. The general was thus an outsider in
the immediate context of the prince’s conversation even though he is very much
an insider among military brass.
We mere humans revile being relegated as outsiders; we very much want to be insiders. This is C. S. Lewis’ main point. “My main purpose in this address is simply to convince you that this desire is one of the great permanent mainsprings of human action.” Specifically, he means here “the desire to be inside the local Ring and the terror of being left outside.” This desire and fear can be distinguished from the desire for personal gain and the fear of going homeless out of financial ruin. “And you will be drawn in, if you are drawn in, not by desire for gain or ease, but simply because at that moment, when the cup was so near your lips, you cannot bear to be thrust back again into the cold outer world. It would be so terrible to see the other man’s face—that genial, confidential, delightfully sophisticated face—turn suddenly cold and contemptuous, to know that you had been tried for the Inner Ring and rejected.” In other words, wanting to feel oneself as an insider and to avoid feeling like an outsider are desires that do not necessarily line up with, or reduce to, the desire for political or economic gain.
As with any desire, the desire to
be an insider cannot be permanently satiated once achieved. C.S. Lewis wrote, “As long as you are
governed by that desire you will never get what you want. You are trying to
peel an onion: if you succeed there will be nothing left. . . . Once the first
novelty is worn off, the members of this circle will be no more interesting
than your old friends.” Or perhaps a ring within that ring will emerge, and you
will have a new impediment to feeling like an insider. Even if that is
achieved, you would still suffer from the fear that you could become an
outsider, for the grounds from relegating you are informal in this secondary
system and thus secretive and hardly subject to the moral principle of
fairness. C. S. Lewis goes so far as to declare, “Until you conquer the fear of
being an outsider, an outsider you will remain.”
The combination of secrecy and
informality in an inner ring, or circle, renders unfairness from personal like
and dislike especially likely. An official hierarchy, in contrast, operates
ideally on the basic of merit, with avenues for appeals. Money in the form of
bribes and political power can less ideally come into play in formal
hierarchies. So too can friendships. But these more informal means of promotion
and demotion are more the currency of inclusion and exclusion in informal
hierarchies, such as C. S. Lewis describes. To be rejected for lack of merit
is, I submit, easier to take than by unfair means or reasons. The latter is
evinced when the decision-makers are hidden from view and thus appeals to them
cannot be made. This passage from C. S. Lewis describes the subtle mechanics of
an inner ring very well:
“You are never formally and
explicitly admitted by anyone. You discover gradually, in almost indefinable
ways, that it exists and that you are outside it; and then later, perhaps, that
you are inside it. . . . It is not easy, even at a given moment, to say who is
inside and who is outside. Some people are obviously in and some are obviously
out, but there are always several on the borderline. . . . There are no formal
admissions or expulsions. People think they are in it after they have in fact
been pushed out of it, or before they have been allowed in: this provides great
amusement for those who are really inside. It has no fixed name.”
The subtle messages in the rude behavior from Yale
faculty, academic administrators, non-academic employees, and even some students
that I describe above and in “Yale’s Original Sin” are the means by which ill-favored Yalies gradually discover that they have already been rendered outsiders. That the realization of having been excluded
can occur gradually opens up the outsider to embarrassment, for the insiders
relish watching as if the person with a blindfold on is stumbling over
furniture. The behavior could be regarded superficially as mere rudeness, so it
can be difficult if one is on the receiving end to detect that one is being
handed one’s hat on the way out. A person may just stand there, holding one’s
hat, wondering why a person just felt the need to deliver the hat even if the other
person intended to send the message, you are no longer welcome here but I
can’t kick you out of the building. This is precisely the message that
people in Yale’s inner rings (and there are more than one) want to send. Bottom
line: such people refuse to tolerate even the very presence of a person they
don’t like. This includes a person who holds a contrary opinion. The motive, in
other words, goes beyond wanting to make sophomoric statements of superiority; the
intention is also meant to convey to others that they are outsiders. Whereas
gorillas establish superiority and push certain individuals out by physical
means, our species is not so forthright and honest (or brave).
In the movie Contact (1997), Haddon, a millionaire, says to Ellie, a young astrophysicist who wants to be chosen to go on a space mission, “The powers that be have been very busy lately, falling over themselves to position themselves for the game of the millennium. Maybe I can help deal you back in.” By this he is referring to being dealt cards in a card game. Ellie takes the hint and replies, “I didn’t realize that I was out,” to which Haddon says, “Maybe not out, but certainly being handed your hat.” Ellie has no idea that even her boss, in jockeying for position to be chosen as the astronaut, has been working to see to it that Ellie is eliminated from consideration by the inner ring of which the boss is an insider but Ellie is not. She has no access to that circle of power-elites, so she doesn’t even know that she needs to promote or defend herself, or even appeal. From outside the inner ring, its workings are shrouded with mystery, for outsiders are not privy to the phone calls and other conversations that take place within. As C.S. Lewis wrote, “There are no formal admissions or expulsions. People think they are in it after they have in fact been pushed out of it, or before they have been allowed in: this provides great amusement for those who are really inside. It has no fixed name.” Ellie’s boss gets pleasure from dealing her out, especially because this is being done without her knowledge. C. S. Lewis wrote, “It is not easy, even at a given moment, to say who is inside and who is outside. Some people are obviously in and some are obviously out, but there are always several on the borderline.”
Interesting, C. S. Lewis must have known that the question of whether the phenomenon of the inner ring, even manifesting in a seminary, is evil was being asked. If, as I strongly suspect, exclusionary comments and actions are deliberately done at least in part to emotionally hurt other people, even just out of dislike, the question of whether such insiders are de facto evil is relevant. C. S Lewis focuses his answer at the level of the ring, but with implications for its inhabitants. “I am not going to say that the existence of Inner Rings is an Evil. It is certainly unavoidable. There must be confidential discussions: and it is not only a bad thing, it is (in itself) a good thing, that personal friendship should grow up between those who work together.” But this is just one side of the coin, or ring. Lewis admits that the “genuine Inner Ring exists for exclusion. There’d be no fun if there were no outsiders. The invisible line would have no meaning unless most people were on the wrong side of it. Exclusion is no accident; it is the essence.” These last two sentences may aptly describe the dark side of Yale. This is not to say that the essence of Yale is exclusively exclusion, for that would imply that no other source of worth, in this case, academic, exists in the organization. Even so, exclusion is an excessive, or hypertrophic instinctual urge in many people there, especially in those who work there.
Lewis claims that the anguish in being reckoned as an outsider is a strong human motivating force in wanting to be counted as insiders. But if a group, or its inner ring, is filled with rude, petty elitists, wouldn't a normal person feel some solace and even self-esteem in being an outsider? I suppose whether this is one's own choice or that of the "members" of a ring makes a difference here. Nevertheless, Nietzsche wrote that the healthy should not visit the sick in hospital lest the healthy catch something. In Christianity, Paul warns about hanging out with fools. Depending on the group, a person might very well relish being an outsider, even if not by choice. Some rings have bad odors.
A question posed by C. S. Lewis seems relevant: “I must not ask
whether you have derived actual pleasure from the loneliness and humiliation of
the outsiders after you, yourself were in: whether you have talked to fellow
members of the Ring in the presence of outsiders simply in order that the
outsiders might envy; whether the means whereby, in your days of probation, you
propitiated the Inner Ring, were always wholly admirable. I will ask only one
question—and it is, of course, a rhetorical question which expects no answer. In
the whole of your life as you now remember it, has the desire to be on the
right side of that invisible line ever prompted you to any act or word on
which, in the cold small hours of a wakeful night, you can look back with
satisfaction? If so, your case is more fortunate than most.” From this, I
surmise that Lewis reckoned that such people are bad, and even malicious, but
not evil, because what he was describing was human nature itself.
In Augustine’s theology, we are all subject to original sin. Proverbially, we are all sons and daughters of Adam and Eve. Evil, it seems to me, cannot simply be human nature itself, but, rather, an extreme in enjoying human suffering. But even this definition is problematic, for sociopathy is a psychological illness rather than a religious phenomenon. Evil is a distinctly religious term. I think the problem is psychological where exclusion is allowed to fill in a void to become the essence of an organization. Taken to the extreme, exclusion as substance or the raison d’etre of an organization and thus being its very essence snuffs out other possible substances and thus must ultimately collapse. Relatedly, M. Scott Peck writes in People of the Lie that it is a sense of inner emptiness that lies at the core of malignant narcissism. Perhaps that is responsible for the dysfunctional organizational culture of inner-exclusion from within that has plagued Yale.
Thursday, August 17, 2023
Walmart: Encroaching on Employees' Private Lives
In 2023, Walmart relaxed its
policy requiring anyone applying for a job at the company to get a drug test,
including for marijuana, which at the time was legal in several U.S. member
states. Once hired, however, employees were still subject to random testing. An
employee in a member state in which the drug is legal could be fired even if
the person is never affected by the drug while working. I contend that the practice is unfair, unethical, and an over-reach in terms of the nature of a labor contract.
The ethical principle of fairness
is violated because both marijuana and alcohol can impair the brain and yet the
company only tests for one even where both drugs are legal. An argument can be
made that the alcoholic personality is less than suitable, and yet taking
marijuana outside of work (with no impact during work hours) is reason enough
for an employee to be fired. Whereas alcohol can inducive hostility and even
aggression, marijuana has a calming drug—something that could actually help
busy cashiers.
Besides being unfair, the policy
of even random tests for marijuana is invasive, beyond the legitimate scope of
an employer’s reach—assuming that the employee using marijuana is never “high”
at work. In selling one’s labor, an employee does not agree to a company’s
management being able to control the employee’s legal activities outside of
work if those activities do not affect the employee’s work. Sam Walton, the
founder of Walmart, was against marijuana; for him to impose his ideological
opposition on others where the drug is legal was over-reaching and impious; he
was not a god. An argument can also be made that it is none of the company’s
business, literally and figuratively, whether an employee uses the drug where
it is illegal, again as long as the employee is not “high” at work. Law
enforcement is the job of police, not a company’s managers. Of course, if an employee
is convicted of a crime, an employer may not permit convicted employees to
continue. In the case of Walmart, it hires people who have criminal records,
which shows just how nonsensical the policy of random testing for marijuana is
(especially as more and more U.S. member states legalize recreational use of
the drug). In terms of a contract between an employer and an employee, an
employer who presumes to dictate an employee’s recreational activities imposes
a cost on employees that is not offset by the monetary compensation.
Imagine what would happen if a
labor union informed a company’s management that an abrasive supervisor must
be subject to drug and alcohol tests and fired for any positive results, or
else the employees would strike. Suppose too that the supervisor does indeed
have a problem with alcohol, but is not under its influence while at work.
Still the union insists that the company fire that person. Suddenly, the
company’s management would object with a mighty roar, How dare employees
tell us what we cannot do on our days off! The nerve! Well, it goes both
ways, folks. The attitude is the same: the unethical vice of invasiveness (in
peoples’ personal, not work-related lives) is noxious and may even point to a
toxic organizational culture.
See: Walmart:
Bad Management as Unethical
Wednesday, August 16, 2023
Getting the Seasons Wrong: Purblind Meteorologists
You may think you know the answer
to the question, “When is the autumn season?” But do you? Watching the weather section of local news on
television or the internet, you could be excused for getting the beginning date
wrong because it is the meteorologist who has misled you. In itself, getting
the exact day right is not a big deal; it is not as if the temperature can be
expected to take a nose-dive on the first day of fall. The astonishing thing is
that so many meteorologists either knowingly or out of ignorance present the
astronomical beginning of the “autumn” quarter of the Earth’s orbit as the meteorological
start of fall, for the two are different yet admittedly related.
“According to The Old Farmer’s Almanac,
meteorological seasons are based on the temperature cycle in a calendar year.”[1]
The first month of a given season tends resemble the preceding season and the
last month anticipates the upcoming season. A season comes is fully its own in
its second month. Each season lasts three months. “Meteorological fall begins on
September 1” in the Northern Hemisphere and ends “exactly 90 days later, on
November 30. Winter then gets its three months. Growing up in a northern
Midwestern (U.S.) state, I just assumed that snowy March was part of winter. It
sure felt like that. Only later, while living in the Southwest, did I realize
that temperatures do start to go up in March.
Distinct but having an impact on
meteorological seasons, the astronomical seasons are “based on the position of Earth
in relation to the sun’s position.”[2]
There are such seasons because of the tilt of the Earth in relation to the sun.
On the summer solstice—the astronomical beginning of “summer”—the sun’s perpendicular
rays get the farthest north; the Northern Hemisphere tilts toward the sun. The Southern
Hemisphere is closest on the winter solstice—the astronomical beginning
of “winter.” Again, while growing up in the northern Midwest, I knew that
meteorological winter could not possibly start well into December just before Christmas,
for winter cold was well ensconced by that time. The meteorological start of
winter, on December 1st, is much more accurate in terms of temperature.
It is odd, therefore, that the start
dates of the astronomical seasons are “more commonly celebrated” even to mark
changes in weather.[3] A
weather site or television broadcast using the astronomical start-date is inherently
misleading, as the implication is incorrect. Even though Accuweather.com states,
“Astronomical autumn officially arrives on Saturday, Sept. 23 at 2:50 a.m. EDT,
a few weeks after the arrival of meteorological fall,” the presentation of the
two starts by a weather organization may be confusing, especially as the
paragraph continues with: “Regardless of which date you celebrate the start of
autumn, . . .”[4] In
an article on the fall weather forecast, two start-dates for that
seasons are given.
This is
definitely misleading—or is it the case that local weather personalities do not
realize their mistakes? At the very least, the television meteorologists astonishingly
do not realize that they are giving false information—that they are misleading
the public. It is absurd, at least in the northern tier of U.S. member states
to say that summer does not begin until June 21st and that winter
does not begin until a few days before Christmas. To stick with something that is
so obviously absurd and incorrect when meteorologists should know better
is precisely the cognitive phenomenon that I want to highlight here.
Perhaps the culprit is cognitive dissidence:
the brain holding two contradictory thoughts at the same time. I know this
date is astronomical AND I am using it on a weather forecast AND I know that
the meteorological date is different. This weakness or vulnerability of the
human brain may mean that there are others.
Regarding religious and political
ideological beliefs, the brain may be susceptible to “short-circuiting”
an internal check that would otherwise keep the brain from conflating belief
with knowledge. A person once told me that Michele Obama is really a
man. I disagreed. The person replied, “That’s just your opinion; I have the
facts.” I said that I did not want to discuss politics. “It’s not political,”
she replied. My claim to the contrary was, again, “just an opinion.” I was
stunned at such ignorance that couldn’t be wrong. Next, she wrote a nonsensical “deep state”
political coded message on an index card. That her brain would not entertain
the possibility that it could be in error is precisely the vulnerability that I
contend plagues the brain as it ventures into political and religious domains
of cognitions. In short, I suggest that a healthy human brain has more
cognitive weaknesses than merely being subjective, and that society is overwhelmingly
oblivious to them.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Brian Lada, “AccuWeather’s 2023 US Fall Forecast,” Accuweather.com, July 26, 2023.
Tuesday, July 4, 2023
On the Decadence of American Journalism: Journalists as Celebrities
I submit that when a conveyer of
the news becomes the story, something is wrong; in typing this sentence
initially, I did not include I submit that. To state my thesis statement
as if it were a fact of reason (Kant’s phrase) seemed to me rather heavy-handed
(i.e., arrogant). Similarly, when some Americans insisted after the U.S.
presidential that Don Trump had won as if the asseveration were a fact of
reason, I could sense aggressiveness along with the presumptuousness in
treating one’s own opinion as a declaration of fact, especially if the actual
fact—Joe Biden being sworn into the office—was otherwise. Opinion is one thing;
fact is another. When a person misconstrues one’s opinion with fact, something
is wrong. I believe this happens so often that it may be due to a problem
innate in the human brain. Religious folks would not have to reach far to point
out that in the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the sin of pride manifests
in wanting to be omniscient; eating of that proverbial apple of the knowledge
of good and evil ushers in original sin. A person perceiving one’s own opinion
as fact, or even as important as fact, implicitly regards oneself as God. A
journalist who interlards one’s role in conveying the news with one’s own
commentary, and an editor who then makes that commentary the point of a story both
treat a means (i.e., the conveyer of news) as an end (i.e., the news itself). I
contend that at least by 2023, American journalism had fallen into this hole
with impunity, which involved a lack of industry self-regulation and individual
self-discipline.
On July 4, 2023, The Huffington Post ran a story, “CNN Journalist Responds to Brazen Trump Campaign Claim with Disbelief.” The story begins with the following statement: “CNN’s Phil Mattingly on Monday couldn’t quite believe a Trump campaign response to a Washington Post question about the former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election result.”[1] Why should it matter whether a journalist can’t quite believe a statement made by a person being interviewed? CNN also ran the story, "Anderson Cooper Is Dumbfounded by Ron DeSantis' Bad Polling Excuse." The news network reported that the "CNN anchor was confused by the 2024 Republican presidential candidate's reason for falling behind Donald Trump." Why should it matter that the journalist was confused? Maybe he was not the brightest lightbulb. The network's message was obviously that DeSantis was to blame for the journalist's confusion, so the intent was to bias the viewers and readers against the presidential candidate. The inclusion of the word, excuse, in the story's title indicates the tenor of the bias in the "news" story.
Is it ethical for a journalist to sway or bias the reactions of viewers or readers? Euronews, a E.U. rather than a U.S. news network, explicitly espouses impartiality so viewers can form their own opinions unimpeded by that of a journalist. That network even has a feature in which video is shown of events going on around the world, such as a political protest, with “No Comment” showing at the end. What a contrast to the American news media!
CNN’s obsession with the visible reactions of one of its news anchors, Anderson Cooper, to political statements even of people being interviewed illustrates my thesis. From his “news” show, Anderson Cooper 360, the network posted a video on CNN.com entitled “Watch Cooper’s Reaction to What Sondland Told Trump.” His reaction was visibly nothing spectacular.
Another video had the title, “See Anderson Cooper’s Reaction to Ted Cruz ‘Groveling’ on Fox.” Again, the reaction was hardly noteworthy.
Nevertheless, his show on the new network
all about the anchor, as the very name of the show makes explicit. CNN’s CEO
must have thought that the anchor’s reactions would make good promotional
material for the network. Strangely, a magazine’s editor even thought that
Anderson Cooper’s reactions were of value apart from promotional purposes. People
posted a story online about the CNN anchor’s reactions in a New Year’s Eve
broadcast from Times Square in New York City. The story, “Anderson
Cooper Was All of Us with His Hilarious Reactions as He Took Shots to Bid 2020
Farewell,” featured the celebrity’s reaction to drinking a shot of
alcohol on live television. After he and the other host drank a shot, “Cooper
pursed his lips and coughed in seemingly slight discomfort, though he otherwise
held it together.”[2]
Hilarious.
It may be that Anderson Cooper’s minute reactions were such important fodder for publications because the anchor’s mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, was an heiress of an illustrious (and very rich) American family. She was a businesswoman, fashion designer, socialite, and writer in her own right. Interestingly, she had offered at the age of 85 to carry a baby for her gay son. That in itself was more newsworthy than any of her son’s muted political reactions on air. Of course, when Anderson Cooper had come out as gay on air, that too was deemed to be newsworthy in spite the journalistic standard that the sexual orientation (or race, gender, or political ideology) of a conveyer of news shouldn’t have an impact on the presentation of the news.
When a journalist becomes the story, especially in expressing a personal opinion, news itself (and journalism) becomes obfuscated, diluted, and even toxic from the standpoint of the role of an electorate in a democracy. The societal justification in giving journalists an outsized mouthpiece in public discourse is predicated on their function in conveying the news. This does not extend to molding public opinion and being the news themselves. In a culture in which reality-shows spawn celebrities, perhaps it is only natural that anyone on television could be made into one even for displaying muted visible reactions.
1. Lee Moran, “CNN
Journalist Responds to Brazen Trump Campaign Claim with Disbelief,” The
Huffington Post, July 4, 2023.
2. Jen Juneau, “Anderson Cooper Was All of Us with His Hilarious Reactions as He Took Shots to Bid 2020 Farewell,” People, January 1, 2021.
Wednesday, June 14, 2023
Starbucks: A Racist Company Against Racism
In June, 2023, Starbucks had to face a unanimous jury decision in favor of a regional manager whom Starbucks' upper management had fired because she had resisted the company's racist policy of punishing innocent Caucasian managers for good public relations, which the CEO felt was needed and appropriate after a store manager had legitimately called the police on two Black people in a Starbucks restaurant who presumed the right not only to sit in a restaurant without ordering anything (before Starbucks allowed this), but also to ignore the authority of the store's manager. Starbucks cowered to the unjust negative publicity, and thus showed a lack of leadership, and went on to act unethically in wanting to show the world that the company can go after Caucasian employees. This racism is ironic, for several years earlier, Starbucks' CEO had ordered employees at the store level to discuss racism with customers. Interestingly, the anti-racist ideology being preached was partial, and thus contained a blind spot wherein racism such as the company's upper management would exhibit is acceptable.
As the CEO of Starbucks, Howard Schultz had employees promote his political ideology on two social issues: gay marriage and race. Regarding the latter, he ordered employees, whom he artfully called partners, to write race messages on cups so customers would unknowingly enable employees to impart Schultz’s position on the issue by raising the topic. I assume that the employees could not begin such conversations. I have argued elsewhere that Schultz’s use of the employees for such a purpose was not only extrinsic to making coffee as per the employees’ job descriptions, but also unethical.[1] In terms of corporate governance alone, the shareholders, as the owners of the company, should have decided whether to have their company used to promote partisan positions on social issues. In 2023, Target and Budweiser would learn of the perils in wandering off the knitting to get political on social issues. In terms of jurisprudence, the “right” of a company, a legal entity, to have free speech is dubious, as abstract entities, even if legally recognized as such, are not human beings. Rather, the “free speech” claimed by companies is really that of the human beings who work for the companies. Using an abstract entity that itself cannot speak to gain additional publicity for one’s ideological views is unfair because the vaulted or amplified speakers are not so from a democratic standpoint. In short, why should Howard Schultz have access to a megaphone and employees to propagate his political ideology on social issues, when you and I have no such means of self-amplification? Whether we agree or disagree with the former CEO’s political ideology on race is not relevant to my point. To be sure, that his employees were told to speak against racism is in my opinion much better than had they been told to advocate racism against Black people. That Starbucks would then engage in racism is that much harder to understand, but perhaps the hypocrisy reflects a hidden negative aspect of Schultz’s ideology on race. American society could benefit by having that aspect uncovered; such a benefit vastly outweighs any benefit to business. Even in a pro-business culture, a lower good should not be put over a higher one. Aristotle refers to this error as misordered concupiscence.
In June, 2023, a jury in New Jersey “found in favor of
former Starbucks regional director Shannon Phillips, who sued the company for
wrongfully firing her, claiming she was terminated for being White.”[2]
The company’s position was that Phillis’ boss fired her because she had displayed
weak leadership. The use of such vague jargon as leadership for what is
actually management is itself problematic. Even if Phillips had “appeared
overwhelmed and lacked awareness of how critical the situation had become,” as
her boss presumably had written, does not constitute weak leadership, for she
was not in a leadership role[3];
instead, the company’s CEO should have got out in front of the issue and
provided a vision for the company.[4]
If Schultz was the CEO at the time, the failure of his leadership would be
especially telling, considering his earlier foray into politics using the
company to promote his ideology.
The triggering incident that had overwhelmed Phillips, according to her boss, whom the CEO at the time must agree in retrospect failed as a supervisor but presumably was not fired, involved two Black men who had refused to leave a Starbucks store in 2018 even though they would not purchase anything. They were thus not customers, and the incident occurred before the company allowed non-purchasers to be in the stores. That the two Black men refused to leave the company’s private property means they were trespassing, so the store manager was on solid legal grounds in having the local police remove the men from the store. Being Black, even if that race has been (and is) subject to racism generally, does not give a person the right to trespass on private property, and efforts to remove such trespassing is not racist, for anyone trespassing would be legally subject to removal from the property.
I
contend that Howard Schultz’s notion of racial reconciliation suffers from the
weakness of being blind to the racial presumption displayed by the two Blacks. In
having employees talk about the need not to be racist to customers, Schultz was
assuming that racism is something that non-Blacks do to Blacks. Employees were
not told to suggest to Black customers that being Black does not give them
special exemptions from the law or in society. Schultz could have had employees
suggest to Black customers that jay-walking between intersections in a major
street even if cars are coming is not “a Black thing” that is justified because
the race in general has been subject to discrimination. Furthermore, the use of
the word, nigga, cannot be allowed only if the speaker is Black, for that would
be a racist position. For a Black person who uses the word to become hostile or
aggressive towards an Indian, Oriental, or Caucasian who also uses the word is
itself racist (and of course the hostility is unjustified unless the related
word nigger is used in a hostile manner). The U.S. Constitution does not
indicate that free speech depends or is limited by race; such a clause would be
prime facie racist.
Phillips’ complaint, which the jury accepted unanimously, states that following the arrest of the two Black men, Starbucks “took steps to punish White employees who had not been involved in the arrests, but who worked in and around the city of Philadelphia, in an effort to convince the community that it had properly responded to the incident.”[5] Phillips was ordered “to place a White employee on administrative leave as part of these efforts, due to alleged discriminatory conduct which Phillips said she knew was inaccurate. After Phillips tried to defend the employee, the company let her go.”[6] It does not sound like Phillips was overwhelmed; in fact, she was being pro-active and ethical in defending an employee from an unjust punishment. The implication is that the person who fired Phillips acted unethically.
Moreover, in being willing to sacrifice Caucasian employees based on their race for good public relations, the company’s upper managers were being racist. An unseen implication is that those managers believed that the public reaction against the company for having the two Black men removed from the store in Philadelphia had some validity—that Black people should not be treated like that or that Black people deserve special treatment due to their race. But such a belief is itself racist. Schutz’s talking points for his employees to discuss with customers on race did not include mention of the racism in such beliefs. Moreover, he did not have the company’s employees talk about racism by Black people stemming from resentment. Any ideology is partial, rather than whole, and even claim of being against racism can fall short. In going after Caucasian employees, including Phillips, Starbucks’ upper managers fell short; the failure of leadership ultimate belongs to the CEO at the time. At least at the time of the trial, Howard Schultz was the CEO.
1. Skip Worden, Bucking
Starbucks’ Star.
2. Danielle Wiener-Bronner, “Starbucks
Ordered to Pay $25.6 million to a Manager Who Says She Was Fired for Being
White,” CNN.com, June 14, 2023.
3. Ibid.
4. Skip Worden, The
Essence of Leadership.
5. Danielle
Wiener-Bronner, “Starbucks
Ordered to Pay $25.6 million to a Manager Who Says She Was Fired for Being
White.
6. Ibid.