adultery

(Pssst! GOP? Awful Human Beings Are Not Qualified To Be President!)

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

Coincidentally, this newt is also a miserable human being...

I suppose that it was inevitable that the “Anyone but Mitt” bloc of Republican voters would eventually give Newt Gingrich a second look. After all, he can put a complete sentence together and stays current on world events. He doesn’t take pride in being inarticulate (like Rick Perry) or think it’s cute not to know a thing about foreign countries (like Herman Cain).  Unlike Michele Bachmann, he could pass a junior high exam in American History; unlike Ron Paul, he doesn’t live in a parallel universe. Newt isn’t bland and weightless, like Rick Santorum, and he doesn’t appear to be a holograph, like Jon Huntsman. He’s obviously smart.

This is all true, and yet Newt is a wretched choice. Not because he has virtually no executive experience (and we should be learning what that means.) Not because in his only extended attempt at filling an important and challenging leadership position when he was Speaker of the House, he squandered a position of strength with ethical misconduct and unrestrained hubris worthy of the House of Atreus.  Newt is unqualified to be president because he is demonstrably an awful human being. Continue reading →

Ethics Bulletin: Payback Is Not Always Unethical

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

"Sure, honey, take all the photos you want. And if your girlfriend wants to see the birth of our daughter, she's welcome too!"

Washington Post advice columnist Carolyn Hax, as I have noted before, has an almost pitch-perfect ethical sense, and negotiates difficult relationship dilemmas with consistent skill and wisdom. She is too nice sometimes, however, and her recent advice to an expectant mother is a striking example.

The woman wrote Hax about how to handle the request of her AWOL husband, who left her mid-pregnancy to move in with his mistress, to witness the birth of his daughter. He also wants his family to be present. The mother-to-be said that she fully intends to allow her child to have a good relationship with her father, but she does not want either her weasel husband or his family, which hid his affair from her, around when the baby comes. “I don’t want any of them there,” Expectant Mom writes. “Many of them knew about the girlfriend but kept it from me, and I don’t want my husband to have the satisfaction of comforting me when I’m in pain. Do I have the right to tell them this, in some collected, nonconfrontational way?” Continue reading →

The Tricky Ethics of Trading Sex For Tuition

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

 

It's not generally known, but Anna Nicole Smith initially hooked up with billionaire husband J. Herbert Marshall so he could pay her tuition at MIT.*

Seekingarrangement.com is undoubtedly an unethical website. The question is how unethical, and that is why I’ve taken longer than usual to write about it, and the social phenomenon it and other websites are fostering.

The site is per se unethical because it facilitates adultery, infidelity and improper workplace conduct, by definition and unequivocally, convicted by its own words:

“Rich and successful. Single or married, you have no time for games. You are looking to mentor or spoil someone special — perhaps a “personal secretary”? secret lover? student? or a mistress for an extra-marital affair?”

Based on this alone, Seekingarrangement.com is Ashley Madison (the adultery website) all over again. Case closed, no appeal. A website is unethical when it endorses, encourages, and assists in dishonest conduct that is guaranteed to cause harm to third parties. The “consenting adults” argument doesn’t work, and doesn’t apply, when the adults are consenting to something that violates commitments, agreements and promises made to other parties who don’t have the option of consenting.

Seekingarrangement.com, however, became the topic of much debate this month for another reason: its use by desperate students, aspiring students or indebted graduates to pay their college tuition. In this it is like the more specialized Seektuition.com, which is solely devoted to matching horny, rich, developmentally retarded and presumably repulsive older men who can’t find real relationships to hot, poor, young women willing to exchange their bodies and dignity to  “help sponsor” their “ dorm rent, books, or provide assistance for tuition.” (“Perhaps even take you shopping for those new clothes you want to impress your sorority sisters!”). The Huntington Post broke the story, telling the tales of both students who “hook up” with wealthy, older men over the internet using Seekingarrangement.com and similar sites, have sex with them, and get tuition money or tuition loan repayment funds in return, while the wealthy men gladly pay big bucks to have an evening of passion with a co-ed and some Viagra. Continue reading →

The John Edwards Indictment

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Cornell law professor Michael Dorf makes my heart leap in admiration by bucking the popular trend—especially among Democrats and soft-hearted media types who 1) only like seeing Republicans and conservatives get in trouble for sex scandals and 2) think Edwards “has suffered enough” —of arguing that the prosecution of John Edwards for campaign fundraising violations is based on a weak legal case. On his blog, Prof. Dorf  argues persuasively to the contrary:

“At its core, the indictment alleges that Edwards knowingly: 1) in violation of federal campaign finance law, accepted money well in excess of the individual campaign contribution limits; 2) spent that money to hide his extramarital affair with Rielle Hunter; and 3) in violation of federal campaign finance law, failed to disclose either the donations or the expenditures….

“…The real question with respect to the government’s point number 1) is whether the hundreds of thousands of dollars were given to Edwards ” for the purpose of influencing any election for Federal office.”  Subject to a whole lot of irrelevant exceptions, that’s the statutory definition of a “campaign contribution.”  It is nearly inconceivable that the money for hiding the Hunter affair was not “for the purpose of influencing” the 2008 Presidential primary.  What other possible purpose could it have served? Continue reading →

Ethics Dunces: Joe Klein and Chris Matthews

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

John Edwards agrees with Chris Matthews

Journalist Joe Klein has been a candidate for an Ethics Dunce award for a long time, because he has been ethically suspect or worse for a long time. His defining integrity moment came when he lied about his authorship of the Bill Clinton roman-a-clef, “Primary Colors.” Since that time, Klein has gradually evolved into a shamelessly biased and ethically muddled political commentator from the left. Too bad. He’s a perceptive guy and a wonderful writer, but he makes his living now shooting from the hip, so we seldom get the benefit of his best qualities.

It was inevitable that the Chris Matthews Show would allow Klein’s ethical blindness to reach full flower.  Matthews has been on his own journey of self-diminishment since MSNBC decided to become the anti-Fox; where once he could be counted on to treat the issues of the day fairly and avoid partisan cheerleading, the Obama years have seen him abandon any effort at objectivity or even-handedness. Matthews’ Sunday morning panel show now eschews ideological balance and has Matthews posing questions to a rotating group of reliable conservative-bashers, with an occasional straight journalist mixed in who at least pretends to be neutral.  On Sunday, Matthews asked his panel about the appropriateness of the Justice Department’s prosecution of uber-cad John Edwards for violations of the federal election laws. It’s not a bad question, and reasonable people can disagree about the answer. The charges against Edwards stem from solicitation of large cash gifts from two long-time friends and supporters while he was simultaneously running for president and trying to cover up the existence of his love-child with Rielle Hunter and the adulterous affair that spawned her.  The money was given directly to Hunter, raising a legal question as to whether it was really a campaign contribution at all. Continue reading →

Newt Gingrich: Ethics Victim…Ethics Miscreant…Walking, Talking Ethics Lesson

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

The Ethics Lesson

I’m glad Newt Gingrich is in the presidential race, however foolishly and futilely. He is perhaps the perfect illustration of how a potential political leader’s private personal conduct is not only relevant to assessing his fitness to lead, but predictive of it. What makes Newt especially useful in this regard is that he is a Republican, and all the Democrats who are going to be sneering at his candidacy will have to square their attacks on his character with their indignant claims in 1998 that Bill Clinton’s adultery, sexual harassment and lies were irrelevant to his leadership—and they weren’t truly private or personal.  Similarly, Newt will be helpful to some of my ethically-addled trial lawyer friends who have argued that John Edwards is still a trustworthy lawyer, despite his betrayals of his dying wife, his family, his supporters and his party.

Of course private conduct is relevant to judging a leader, especially when private conduct shows an individual to be dishonest, disloyal, cowardly, ruthless, selfish and cruel—like Newt. Cheating on two wives and leaving both of them when they were battling health crises isn’t a mistake, or a coincidence, or a misunderstanding; it is a pattern, and a symptom. You can’t trust Newt. You can’t rely on Newt. You can’t believe Newt. Ask his ex-wives, and eventually, I am quite certain, his current one.

Today conservative talk radio is abuzz with Gingrich’s frenzied efforts to sooth the conservative faithful after he attacked Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget reforms over the weekend. What??? You mean Newt Gingrich stabbed a political ally and  fellow party stalwart in the back without warning? Who could have seen that coming? Oh, only everybody: You can’t trust Newt. You can’t rely on Newt. You can’t believe Newt. Ask his ex-wives. Continue reading →

Ensign Scandal Revelations: Sen. Coburn’s Betrayal

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Oh dear, Sen. Coburn...didn't anyone tell you that corruption is contagious?

The bipartisan Senate committee, investigating the sexual harassment/ extortion/ lobbying scandals that led Sen John Ensign (R-Nev.) to resign his seat issued its report this week. It found “substantial credible evidence that provides substantial cause to conclude that Senator Ensign violated Senate Rules and federal civil and criminal laws, and engaged in improper conduct reflecting upon the Senate, thus betraying the public trust and bringing discredit to the Senate.” The committee referred the matter to the Justice Department and the Federal Election Commission.

The report also found, however, that another Republican Senator, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, was hip-deep in the  mess, serving as an intermediary between Ensign and his top aide, Doug Hampton, who was in the process of extorting  Ensign  for having an affair with Hampton’s wife. Sen. Coburn also played a central role in arranging for Ensign’s parents to cough up the hush money to satisfy Hampton’s demands.  Whether Coburn knew about the more serious offenses that Ensign seems to have committed, such as lying to investigators and using his influence to create business for Hampton’s lobbying firm as part of the pay-off for Ensign sleeping with Hampton’s wife, is unknown, but never mind: helping with the cover-up is bad enough. Continue reading →

Colorado’s Adultery Dilemma

/ Jack Marshall / 66 Comments

Relax! It's OK...you're in Colorado!

In most states, adultery is one of the great examples of how something can be wrong and destructive without being illegal, a useful concept to have in mind when a corrupt politician or a crooked corporate executive  says “I didn’t break any laws!” It is also a good example of unethical conduct that is better controlled by ethics than law. A law against adultery is theoretically defensible as a deterrent of harmful social conduct, and the state definitely has an interest in preserving family stability. The problem is that regulating offenses triggered by love, lust and romance feels excessively intrusive to most of us. It has overtones of the Plymouth colony. For better of worse, minimizing adultery belongs in the realm of ethics, not the criminal law. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: Sen. John Ensign

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

“While I stand behind my firm belief that I have not violated any law, rule, or standard of conduct of the Senate, and I have fought to prove this publicly, I will not continue to subject my family, my constituents, or the Senate to any further rounds of investigation, depositions, drawn out proceedings, or especially public hearings.”

Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), announcing his resignation from the U.S. Senate about two years late. Ensign’s continuing service in the upper chamber has been a continuing embarrassment thanks to a 2009 sex scandal and sordid cover-up attempt. Interestingly, Ensign maintains that such conduct doesn’t violate any “standard of conduct” for him and his colleagues.

Sadly, perhaps he’s right.

“I didn’t violate any laws or rules” has been Ensign’s mantra since it came to light that he: Continue reading →

CBS: Ethics Corrupter

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

Rehire Charlie Sheen?! What could CBS be thinking?

Barry Bonds goes on trial for perjury today. He is one of our society’s prime corrupters. Bonds cheated, lied, broke the law and helped drag major league baseball’s integrity  into the depths, all with the objectives of breaking records by players better and more honest than he, and becoming rich and famous. He accomplished all of these things, with no appreciable negative consequences; as of now, his career and life carry the lesson that cheating works, and anyone who lets things like rules, laws, or ethics stand in the way of success is a fool. Perhaps the trial will change that. I can dream.

Now CBS has stepped up to be a prime corporate ethics corrupter. Reportedly, it is negotiating with Charlie Sheen to get him back on the air, either in his now defunct show “Two and a Half Men,” or in something else. Continue reading →