Should people who do illegal or immoral things be shunned from high profile jobs?

[Zhukov]

Every so often there's a scandal where a politician or athlete or other public figure is caught cheating on his wife or beating his girlfriend or swimming in hookers and cocaine or whatnot.

This is generally followed by a public apology and their resignation. If they do not resign, there are always many people saying they should.

I'm not entirely sure I get this.

For example, if a politician cheats on his wife, how is this everyone's business? Sure, he's clearly owes his family one hell of an apology, but that's between him and his family. So long as he can do his job properly, I don't really see how it warrants a resignation.

Just to be clear, in cases where the law is broken (eg. drug possession) then the people involved should still go to trial and cop whatever punishment the law dictates. Also, if their employer believes the damage to reputation merits a sacking then that's fine too.

I just don't quite understand the attitude that says they must never be allowed to continue their job or seek another similar one afterwards, even if their ability to do that job is not in question.

Thoughts?

 

[CymbaIine]

Every so often there's a scandal where a politician or athlete or other public figure is caught cheating on his wife or beating his girlfriend or swimming in hookers and cocaine or whatnot.

This is generally followed by a public apology and their resignation. If they do not resign, there are always many people saying they should.

It depends, if that politician has built his platform on 'family values' then yes I think they should resign. In the UK in the 90s the Conservative party has a big push on traditional family values (anti single parent etc) it died a death because it turned out they were all screwing around. Funny stuff. Now I suppose the fact that they were unfaithful to their wives/shagging prostitutes/taking drugs doesn't prohibit them from doing their job per se (although with the press hounding them as a result it can become tricky) but it does mean they mislead the voters. Maybe a bi-election would be more suitable than outright resignation.

Slightly related to this is the case celebrities and press injunctions. There is a very famous personality in the UK who has built his image on a "nice guy" reputation. He has a very messy personal life (it's one of those internet open secrets) and has injunctions keeping this out of the press. Again I think this is unfair. No I don't give a toss that he can't keep it in his kecks but when you build your career on an image the public should know if that image is bullshit.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

Well it depends on the situation. Public figures cheating? Well they shouldn't have done it if they wanted to avoid being raked over the coals. Public figures caught with drug possession? I think that should be a slap on the wrist everywhere, just like for everyone prohibition doesn't work, we already proved that here in the US.

If they have committed a crime like having sex in a bathroom with multiple partners... Well that's illegal regardless of weather or not it's cheating.

But one thing is that most people don't want someone who has committed crimes in public office, and for a very good reason. If they committed crimes in or out of office then there is reasonable suspicion of them doing it again. Criminal behaviour is more often than not a continuing habit. Same goes for high profile spokes people, you don't want a criminal promoting your brand after all, that's bad for business. Same goes for celebrates, you're gonna get unpopular if you drive drunk, and beat hookers.

As far as these sort of things go they kinda show through a person's actions what kind of person you're dealing with.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Cheating on your wife...not very nice but not illegal. Beating your GF, though, is a very serious crime.

Lots of low profile jobs require a criminal record check. If you beat your GF, you shouldn't be able to get a volunteer job answering questions at a museum. Don't see why you should be allowed to run an entire country.

 

[CymbaIine]

Lots of low profile jobs require a criminal record check. If you beat your GF, you shouldn't be able to get a volunteer job answering questions at a museum. Don't see why you should be allowed to run an entire country.

Do you think this should be the case if a man beats another man (or indeed a woman beats anybody) or just if it occurs in a romantic relationship?

 

[Thaluikhain]

@Cymbaline

[small]How come you can quote me, but not the other way around?[/small]

Generally, yes, though domestic abuse tends to be ongoing and particularly nasty.

But, an assault conviction is pretty serious business in any case.

Now that I think of it, often there's a "within X years" tacked on to this sort of thing, though.

 

[Casual Shinji]

In regards to politicians, I don't think it's so much 'having to resign from' as 'having their reputation compromised to a level that the public can't take them serious anymore, so they might else well resign'. They could remain in office if they wanted to, but with their reputation shot they'll have a (way more) difficult time enforcing or even maintaining their position. And yes, even an extramarital fling is enough, because after all, why should I listen to anything this guy's saying if he doesn't even respect his own wife? (This being the view point of the average citizen and the counter argument of the opposition.)

Messy affairs like that -- no matter how personal and of no business to anyone but those involved -- stick to everything regardless.

 

[rgrekejin]

Whenever I see something like this, my reaction is usually one of utter scorn towards those calling for a resignation.

It's one thing if the thing the person did causes me to have serious doubt about their ability to properly do their job - a few good examples of this being Mark Sanford and Bill Clinton, who famously repeatedly lied to investigators over their in-office affairs. A politician I can't even trust to not directly lie under oath is a politician I can't trust to do anything. Oddly, neither actually ended up losing their jobs.

It's quite another thing when it's just the morality police looking to make someone pay for expressing thoughts not completely in line with party doctrine which will in no way impact their ability to perform their job. Recent examples that come to mind include yesterday's kerfluffle about new Daily Show host Trevor Noah's crappy twitter jokes (not anti-semitic, just sometimes unfunny), the witchhunt against former Mozilla Boss Brendan Eich for having non-PC opinions on gay marriage, and that time British comedian Jonathan Ross got disinvited from hosting the Hugo awards because someone was scared he might make a fat joke. I know that last one sounds like I made it up as some sort of argumentum ad absurdum, but I really, really didn't. People got upset and demanded that he be canned not because of something he did, but because of something he might potentially do in the future, founded on nothing much in particular. It's not like Ross had longer a history of making fat jokes than literally every other comedian in the world.

 

[Korenith]

With Politicians it's always about how many votes they get. If people don't like them for cheating then it damages party reputation so it's better for the party to jettison whoever it is, regardless of how good or not they are at their job. Being a politician is not about doing the right things for the country (though it'd be nice if that were the priority) but about getting votes.

TV personalities are similar, just replace votes with viewing figures.

For me if somebody does a good job then they do a good job regardless of irrelevant non-PC opinions, cheating, recreational drug use etc. Unless it's a serious crime, in which case they should be in prison anyway, it should be about how good they are at their job.

 

[Dalisclock]

It's about Perception. It's not just you,but the organization you represent/work for. If you're the spokesperson for a major corporation, and then somebody takes a video of you urinating on a sleeping homeless person(because you're an asshole and don't care about poor people) and puts it on youtube, you've basically just shown what a massive asshole you are and brought scron upon your corporation. Your employers now have the option of continuing to let you do your job as their public spokesperson and take the PR hit of "We're fine with letting a poor person hating asshole represent us" or they fire you and thus rid themselves of the stigma.

US military personnel have to live by a lot of these rules because anything done in uniform can reflect badly on the branch they represent, the DoD and the US government. A sailor who gets drunk at a bar and throws up all over the sidewalk in regular clothes is a drunk at a bar, while a sailor who gets drunk in uniform and throws up all over the sidewalk reflects badly upon the US Navy, because it forms and reinforces the perception that Sailors are drunks.

 

[Lightknight]

Illegal, yes. In most cases but especially in scenarios that involve corruption or things they're entrusted with.

Immoral? Depends. Let's say a politician goes to a foreign country where pederasty isn't strictly illegal and partakes. They didn't break any laws but I'm pretty sure most people wouldn't bat an eye at him losing his position on moral grounds.

But there are a wide number of "immoral" things that are so relative or benign that they shouldn't be considered shun-able. While I particularly dislike people who cheat on their wives, I've always found it confusing that we deem them doing that as if they'd taken money out of the city coffers or something.

It is a true statement that all laws and beliefs of crime are moral based, however. Murder is not "inherently" evil but is so because we as a society agree it is.

 

[rgrekejin]

It is a true statement that all laws and beliefs of crime are moral based, however. Murder is not "inherently" evil but is so because we as a society agree it is.

...I'm pretty sure that, like, 75% or more of all the major schools of philosophy that have ever existed would take issue with that statement.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

Several things:

-In regards to cheating on one's spouse, many people say "how is it any of our business?" However, in the case of Politicians and other higher-ups in the Government, the logic is that someone willing to betray the person they married and took an OATH not to cheat on, has less qualms about betraying someone or something else, like secrets they are entrusted with, or abusing power they were given. To give an example, if you apply for one of the alphabet soup organizations in the US (FBI, CIA, NSA, etc.) having cheated on your spouse won't necessarily immediately take you out of the running, but it seriously hurts your application, their logic being "if you're willing to cheat on the person whom you love and swore an oath too, what makes us think you wouldn't betray an oath you swore to your country?"

-Whether we like it or not, we live in the communication age, where information never really dies. So when someone does something (or sometimes it's only allegations) that others look down upon for either moral or legal reasons, they are immediately branded, for all intents and purposes, and organizations willing to hire them are looked down upon for, in essence, tolerating that behavior. To give another example; in the NFL this off-season, Greg Hardy, formerly of the Carolina Panthers, was easily the best Defensive End free agent available, but no one wanted to touch him. Why? Because he had been accused of domestic violence (even though the charges were dropped because his partner never showed up to court). No organization wanted to be known as the organization that tolerates spousal abuse, no matter how good he is a "doing his job". He did eventually get picked up by a team, but a lot of people weren't happy about it.

 

[Lightknight]

It is a true statement that all laws and beliefs of crime are moral based, however. Murder is not "inherently" evil but is so because we as a society agree it is.

...I'm pretty sure that, like, 75% or more of all the major schools of philosophy that have ever existed would take issue with that statement.

And they'd be wrong. Things are only classified as evil because enough people or powerful enough people call them such.

Ask yourself, why is something like "murder" inherently wrong? Wrong because of what it is rather than due to what religion, laws or social constructs say about it?

Morality is purely relative unless you adhere to a construct for whatever reason.

That's not to say that truth is relative, far from it, but morality is what it is purely because we say it is or a construct we believe in by faith and not empiricism has willed it to be so.

 

[Secondhand Revenant]

If it impacts your job, of course.

Also not associating with people who commit heinous crimes is cool too.

I also don't mind seeing people fired for being bigots or supporting bigotry. I don't see an inherent problem with sending a moral message about your company. I do not think amoral profit seeking is something to want in a company. I might take issue with the morals one supports with it still of course.

 

[Callate]

It depends on the situation, particularly if the incident causes or risks damage to the group that's contemplating whether or not to terminate the person's employment. But in most cases, I think it's best to allow the law to punish illegal activity, rather than the private group.

In an era where a single Tweet or line in a podcast is enough to get people howling for resignations and terminations, I genuinely think our standards on such matters have gotten appallingly hair-trigger.

 

[rgrekejin]

It is a true statement that all laws and beliefs of crime are moral based, however. Murder is not "inherently" evil but is so because we as a society agree it is.

...I'm pretty sure that, like, 75% or more of all the major schools of philosophy that have ever existed would take issue with that statement.

And they'd be wrong. Things are only classified as evil because enough people or powerful enough people call them such.

Ask yourself, why is something like "murder" inherently wrong? Wrong because of what it is rather than due to what religion, laws or social constructs say about it?

Morality is purely relative unless you adhere to a construct for whatever reason.

That's not to say that truth is relative, far from it, but morality is what it is purely because we say it is or a construct we believe in by faith and not empiricism has willed it to be so.

So you're just asserting that thousands of years of philosophical discourse over a particularly thorny question dating back at least to Plato can simply be solved with a "because I said so" and a wave of the hands. Forgive me if I don't take that position particularly seriously. Especially as it seems rooted in a form of Empiricism that is itself a philosophical position rather than an observable truth, and merely one position among many.

 

[Callate]

It is a true statement that all laws and beliefs of crime are moral based, however. Murder is not "inherently" evil but is so because we as a society agree it is.

...I'm pretty sure that, like, 75% or more of all the major schools of philosophy that have ever existed would take issue with that statement.

And they'd be wrong. Things are only classified as evil because enough people or powerful enough people call them such.

Ask yourself, why is something like "murder" inherently wrong? Wrong because of what it is rather than due to what religion, laws or social constructs say about it?

Morality is purely relative unless you adhere to a construct for whatever reason.

That's not to say that truth is relative, far from it, but morality is what it is purely because we say it is or a construct we believe in by faith and not empiricism has willed it to be so.

So you're just asserting that thousands of years of philosophical discourse over a particularly thorny question dating back at least to Plato can simply be solved with a "because I said so" and a wave of the hands. Forgive me if I don't take that position particularly seriously. Especially as it seems rooted in a form of Empiricism that is itself a philosophical position rather than an observable truth, and merely one position among many.

Arguably, a society that refuses to find murder wrong- at least in some cases, within that society- ceases to be a society. The very reason for a society to exist on its most basic level is to allow people to continue to exist. If being part of that society doesn't protect its members from other members- if it literally makes it more dangerous to be part of that society than to be alone- it will not, and cannot, continue.

One could argue that that isn't the same as making murder "wrong", but such a claim threatens to render the very terms used to describe the issue meaningless in the name of chasing its own tail.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Arguably, a society that refuses to find murder wrong- at least in some cases, within that society- ceases to be a society. The very reason for a society to exist on its most basic level is to allow people to continue to exist. If being part of that society doesn't protect its members from other members- if it literally makes it more dangerous to be part of that society than to be alone- it will not, and cannot, continue.

One could argue that that isn't the same as making murder "wrong", but such a claim threatens to render the very terms used to describe the issue meaningless in the name of chasing its own tail.

Define "murder", though. Murder is killing the society doesn't approve of, if it's ok with it, it isn't murder.

All societies view murder as wrong, but what they count as murder varies a lot.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

Well ... if they continue to do illegal and immoral things I would imagine a company wouldn't want to hire them in the first place? Are we talking Rupert Murdoch levels of immorality and criminality where he bludgeons people with wads of money/lawyers to make problems go away or the un-famous type of crooked person who is wealthy, but not that wealthy? Like a bent politician or a manipulative banking finance advisor?