Up is down, down is up
By SCOTT ADAMS
CARTOONIST
Editorial / Opinion
Sunday, July 14, 2002
DANVILLE, Calif. -- Apparently, without anyone's noticing, our entire universe collapsed into a black hole and emerged in another dimension where everything is backward: Bill Gates (who used to be evil) is spending billions to vaccinate children in Third World countries, while the Catholic Church (which used to be good) is defending priests accused of molesting children.
The stock market (which used to go up) now only drifts downward. And the surest way to lose respect is to mention you started a dot-com.
But here's the strangest backwardism of all: People seem surprised that captains of industry are stealing vast amounts of money at every opportunity. Back in our old dimension everyone assumed that CEOs and CFOs were weasels. Now it's big news.
It's useful to put these corporate scandals in perspective. Every employee I ever worked with in my cubicle-dwelling days was pillaging the company on a regular basis, too. But the quantity of loot was rarely newsworthy. My weasel co-workers were pocketing office supplies, fudging expense reports, using sick days as vacation and engaging in a wide array of work-avoidance techniques.
Most people rationalize this kind of behavior by saying that corporations are evil and so the weasel employees deserve a little extra. The CEOs and CFOs aren't less ethical than employees and stockholders; they're just more effective. They're getting a higher quality of loot than the rank and file, and for that they must be punished.
I have some friends in law enforcement who say the only crooks that get caught are the stupid ones. Assuming this holds true for CEOs, it's bad news for the economy. I have to think that at least a few of the executives who are running billion-dollar companies are smart, so we might be seeing the tip of the weasel's tail here.
The typical CEO defense -- and it's a good one -- is to place the blame on plain old massive incompetence, not on evil. If I end up on the jury for one of those trials, I'll be torn.
On the one hand, I'm predisposed to believing that executives are indeed clueless. But on the other, I'm enough of a weasel to vote guilty just to watch a CEO cry.
I lost a lot of money on Enron, Tyco and WorldCom. So I might enjoy being a juror on one of those cases. I might even volunteer. And when I sign in to the jury room each day, I'll steal the pen, because frankly, I deserve it.
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Scott Adams' cartoon runs in the P-I. Copyright 2002 The New York Times.
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