When cheating defines us
We’ve got to stop cheating like this.
What first pops into your head after reading the above line will probably depend upon your political and moral sensibilities.
We are awash today in alleged and real political and personal cheating, lying and stealing. Name your villain (s).
Is it Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the House of Commons giving rote replies to whether he and his minions directly interfered in the judicial process by pressuring a former attorney general to find a legally acceptable alternative to prosecuting a huge Quebec corporation for bribery without losing that company’s jobs?
Or is it that former overtly virtuous attorney-general herself, who secretly taped a conversation she had with a high ranking civil servant to prove her point?
Is it Jason Kenney, head of the United Conservative Party (UCP) who expects to be resoundingly voted in this week as Alberta’s new premier, but around whose leadership campaign serious allegations have swirled (I love it that allegations always swirl) of voter fraud and other irregularities? Not to mention unchecked bigotry.
Is it the many politicians — Conservative Andrew Scheer, leader of the Opposition being one — who seem to have no compunction about making false statements on social media about their opponents but expect that pfft, nothing will come of it, not even the threat of a possible libel suit. Or none of the above. In the U.S., a clear majority of its citizens can’t agree yet — maybe tomorrow — that president Donald Trump is, as Michael Cohen, his legally embattled former personal attorney and self-admittedly scummy himself, recently testified, “a racist, a conman, a cheat.” He forgot “liar,” but I guess everyone can agree with that. This, when every day Trump blatantly, even joyfully, acts out racism, conning, lying and cheating in front of the cameras.
Perhaps politics, especially in today’s feverishly partisan, digitally amplified gotcha climate, is not the hill to die on when it comes to calling out cheating and saying we’ve got to be better than this.
There does seem to be general agreement that two popular middle-aged actresses who along with others in the U.S. college admissions scam, have been charged with bribing and conspiracy to commit fraud to get their kids into good colleges, are the very embodiment of cheating.
They certainly are, but that’s not quite the point. They are also the queens of mindless cheating to boot, what happens when even privilege isn’t enough. It’s called having more money than brains.
To make it worse, Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, both charged along with other affluent parents and operators in a wide-ranging police action with spending big bucks to help their kids cheat their way into college by boosted test scores, phoney athlete status or other means — without, according to them, their kids knowing a thing about it — were previously publicly identified with being good, normal, real-life moms.
Huffman had a now-deleted mommy insight and merch blog What the Flicka? And Loughlin — of whom I had never heard before her legal troubles — played moms in some of her onscreen roles.
They did seem decent enough. But never normal. Now they are called Scammer Moms. Which reminded me of Serial Mom.
Remember that 1994 gleamingly satirical movie starring Kathleen Turner as a smarmy but deranged suburban mom who killed people for such egregious crimes as wearing white after Labor Day?
That movie was a huge hit with my grade school kids at the time — and yes, I wondered as they laughed, whether they saw their own passionately supportive mother as a serial mom in type, if not in deed.
Felicity Huffman, a former Oscar nominee, last week indicated she would plead guilty to a charge that she paid $15,000 to fraudulently boost one daughter’s SAT scores. She also issued an abject apology. (I love that all apologies are abject.)
“I am ashamed of the pain I have caused my daughter, my family, my friends, my colleagues and the educational community. I want to apologize to them and, especially, I want to apologize to the students who work hard every day to get into college, and to their parents who make tremendous sacrifices to support their children and do so honestly,” read Huffman’s apology in part. Huffman will likely not do time. Look for some serious community work and a hefty fine.
Lori Loughlin is so far apparently going to tough it out and take her chances in court. Authorities have said that she and her husband, a fashion designer, spent $500,000 to fraudulently get their kids admitted to college.
She may not have such a soft landing. Although I did like one satirical tweet that Loughlin would be sentenced to “100 hours of community theatre.”
The college admissions scandal is decadent, disgraceful and damaging. It will wind its way through the courts as critics continue to assail affirmative action, gender equality initiatives and any legitimate method of helping everyone achieve their potential.
One of the most depressing comments was aptly enough in glossy Vanity Fair magazine, which wondered if, like formerly disgraced lifestyle doyenne Martha Stewart, who did minimal time for lying about a stock fraud, Loughlin’s “brand” could survive a prison term.
Oh screw their “brands.” All of them. Politicians, actors, any public person who cheats when their real obvious privilege isn’t even enough for them to walk away with the spoils they so desperately want. They cheat or lie because they can.
I’m old enough to remember when personal integrity wasn’t a “brand,” but a way of life.
I once got a call from a wealthy businessman who heard I wrote speeches. “What do you need?” I asked him.
His answer shocked me. His daughter was running to be class president and he asked if I could write her speech for her.
Fumbling, I said no thanks, that in the long run his teenage daughter would be better off writing her own speech. I got off the phone deciding to keep my moral outrage to myself.
I wonder now whether I should have raked him over the coals.
Sometimes all we have to do keep others morally in check is give them the opposite of the status or power or victory they obviously crave.
Can we do that? I doubt it. We can’t even agree who’s cheating and who’s just playing the game.
Lori Loughlin is apparently going to tough it out and take her chances in court