Honor and integrity are traits that show who you really are when no one else is around. - John Di Lemme
Anthony Weiner ... Jonathan Edwards ... Jim Tressel ... Lance Armstrong (maybe) ... the list could stretch far and wide, and it does: Men behaving badly, then trying to cover it up, and finally being discovered. A media frenzy ensues, and then these folks are brought down. Hooray!
I was going to write an entry intoning that it's not the crime ... it's the coverup, recommending that people - especially politicians and other celebrities - who transgress should confess when caught and then trust the forgiveness of the general public. But I have since changed my mind, in part because my thesis-to-be was a cliché, and in part because it is not typically the case. Often it is the crime that matters.
The coverup compounds the crime, to be sure, but to think - as I did, before I thought - that the coverup matters most misses the
moral point. To single out the coverup as especially egregious is to imply that anything goes as long as one does not get caught or as long as one confesses when caught. The topic of another essay might be baseball as a possible exception, because cheating - at least certain forms like throwing spitballs or stealing signs or corking one's bat - is okay if not detected. But that's another essay, and baseball is at best an unusual case.
My primary research concern as a psychologist is strengths of character, which I approach as habits: You are what you usually do. Accordingly, I do not believe that one transgression necessarily tarnishes an otherwise well-lived life. That said, some transgressions really are bad ones, especially given particular social or occupational roles and especially given specific transgressions vis-à-vis those roles, whether or not they are covered up. In these cases, people should be held accountable for their bad acts, and consequences should follow.
Should those who do bad things lose their jobs? It depends on the job and the relevance of the transgression to the job. Accountants who embezzle funds should be given pink slips. Scientists who fabricate data should be sent packing. Athletic coaches who cheat should be fired. All of them can find work elsewhere.
I have no problem with convicted dog-fighter Michael Vick playing professional football. And I have no problem with Charlie Sheen playing the part of a dog on a television show. But I do not believe that straying spouses should hold public office, where they are in a position to make decisions that affect all of us, including in particular married folks and their families. And I am the only one who finds it bizarre that Eliot Spitzer is now a political pundit on CNN?
If we mess up, we should fess up and acknowledge our transgression. We should own it and apologize for it, not in a wimpy and circular "I apologize to anyone who was offended" kind of way but in a forthright and simple sentence kind of way: "I apologize." And then we should take the punishment and live our subsequent life to show that we have indeed learned a lesson.
Maybe we will lose our job, maybe not. Maybe we will be ridiculed or vilified, maybe not. Maybe we will be forgiven, maybe not. But at least we will have followed a wrong thing by a right thing.
