Does Time Magazine Approve of Cheating and Lying?
posted by Elizabeth Nowicki
I was troubled to read Joel Stein’s column, captioned “Cheating Rocks,” in the August 17 issue of Time. (The online version of the article has the heading “Cheating: It’s All-American — And It’s Great!”)
The upshot of Stein’s column seems to be that cheating in various circumstances should be acknowledged as acceptable. Stein starts his “Cheating Rocks” column by discussing the (misplaced, in his view) public outrage against steroid use by athletes, and Stein seems to suggest that steroids and other “cheating” tactics in sports should not be scorned, since they enhance performance which makes sports more interesting. While I do not agree with that position, I imagine Stein might have been offering it partially tongue-in-cheek.
What was not tongue-in-cheek, however, was Stein’s later admission in the column that he assisted his father years ago with what is likely unlawful tax fraud of some ilk, and Stein indicates that he continues to think deceit and cheating is acceptable.. Specifically, Stein says in his column:
I have long been an advocate of cheating. It started when my dad fooled an IRS auditor by comparing different vintages of phone book, finding and out-of-business furrier and getting me to use my Apple IIe to create a fake receipt to prove a false fur-coat donation.
Stein admits to helping to deceive the IRS, and Stein offers no regrets about it. Stein then writes – seemingly with approval – about high school cheating. This all gives me pause.
To be clear, my concern is not about Stein himself or Stein’s ethics. I am sure Stein is a lovely person, and I personally have no stake in how he views cheating or dishonesty. Rather, I have concerns about the fact that no senior person at Time Magazine put the kibosh on Stein’s “Cheating Rocks” column. Does Time Magazine really want its writers to publicly admit to being comfortable with being dishonest? Surely that undermines reader confidence in the material being published.
I am not suggesting that Stein himself fabricates things in his writing. My impression is quite the opposite – Stein seems to be a well-respected and well-published writer who does stellar work. What I am suggesting instead is that I am perplexed by the fact that the higher-ups at Time did not raise an eyebrow at a column in which a Time writer appears to admit comfort with dishonesty and lying.
Maybe I am a bit sensitive about issues of dishonesty and cheating, given that I research and write on corporate and attorney ethics. Maybe I am jaded, having consulted on too many cases where comfort with fudging and a bit of cheating turned into full-blown options backdating.
Whatever the reason, the column did not sit well with me. Even if we all agree that the column was partially in jest, it still would have given me pause, were I a Time executive.
As a final note, I found it ironic that, two pages before the “Cheating Rocks” column, there was an article about Bernie Madoff (the article is actually about books written about Madoff). The article notes that “Madoff screwed his investors.” The word “screwed” is so overly judgmental, given that cheating seems not to be a big deal to folks at Time….
August 19, 2009 at 11:03 pm
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Responses (3)
Patrick S. O'Donnell - August 20, 2009 at 4:21 am
I think your concern is spot-on but I see no reason as to why one might not infer from this something about Stein’s ethics (at least it shifts the burden of proof or alters any presumptive benefit of the doubt we may accord him in this regard). It’s not uncommon in our time and place for individuals to boast of their belief in this or that vice or even a cluster of vices or publicly parade conduct contrary to virtuous behavior and ethical principles (it’s not that it should be private, but its confinement to the latter realm suggests at least a sense of guilt or shame). It’s symptomatic of an immature reveling in naughty behavior and in perfect accord with our ongoing yet dangerous fascination with a cultural norm of transgression for the sake of transgression.
So, it’s good of you to call the magazine out on this. The slippery slope may often function as an informal logical fallacy in arguments, but I think there’s nothing fallacious about slippery slopes when it comes to our ethical lives.
Jonathan H. Adler - August 20, 2009 at 6:42 am
I’m with Mr. O’Donnell. I think this is a very valuable post, save for the refusal to call Stein what he is. He may well be “lovely,” and I accept the notion that some things we label as “cheating” are not necessarily wrong, but I also think one could conclude from the article that he is immature, unethical cad.
JHA
A.J. Sutter - August 20, 2009 at 6:28 pm
On reading the piece, it seems more than partially tongue-in-cheek — it’s plainly very much so. E.g., “But I do want — and fully expect — to one day see a baseball hit out of a major league stadium and into another major league stadium,” and “Should we require [athletes] to read the books they supposedly write? Where will the madness end?”
Even the part about high-school cheating, while definitely gray, is less extreme than it sounds from this post: a teacher never changed his multiple-choice exams from year to year. My Ivy League college kept volumes of past exams for many courses available in its libraries; sometimes profs repeated questions. My “accounting for lawyers” prof also gave us advance notice he was taking all his questions from old C.P.A. exams, for which answer keys were publicly available. Less gray than Stein’s case, perhaps — but hard to believe the h.s. teacher wasn’t aware he was passively enabling this behavior with his own perennial laziness.
The I.R.S. matter is certainly more troubling, I agree. Nonetheless, I definitely didn’t interpret the column to mean that “Stein seems to suggest that steroids and other ‘cheating’ tactics in sports should not be scorned” — rather, his more serious point seems to be to attack the hypocrisy of people who scorn cheating in sports but tolerate it in other areas of life. Maybe his I.R.S. story was his attempt to come clean on that point, i.e. to avoid being hypocritical himself, even though by telling the story with the same pumped-up irony as the rest of the piece he did make it sound as if he’s advocating tax fraud. I concede that Stein’s attempt to channel Jonathan Swift is not fully successful. But when viewed in context, the main problem with the piece seems somewhat less a matter of caddish ethics and a good deal more one of questionable taste.
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