A Stitch in Haste

Vicious homophobe Maggie Gallagher is actually quite dear to me, since she gave me fodder for one of my very first substantive blogposts. So of course I'm following with interest the brouhaha over her doing undisclosed contract work for the federal government.

I think that those who are distinguishing her situation from disgraced commentator Armstrong Williams are probably closer to correct than incorrect. Accepting payola is not the same as failing to disclose conflicts of interest.

Still, her own statement on the incident is quite illuminating:

I'm a marriage expert. I get paid to write, edit, research and educate on marriage. If a scholar or expert gets paid to do some work for the government, should he or she disclose that if he writes a paper, essay or op-ed on the same or similar subject? If this is the ethical standard, it is an entirely new standard.

I was not paid to promote marriage. I was paid to produce particular research and writing products (articles, brochures, presentations), which I produced. My lifelong experience in marriage research, public education and advocacy is the reason HHS hired me.

But the real truth is that it never occurred to me.

Of course it never occurred to her, because she's not a "professional."

As I have blogged previously, I am subject to not one but two legally enforceable ethics codes -- as lawyer and as investment analyst. Those are true "professions." Lawyers understand about conflict of interest; so do investment bankers (at least we do now). We know about the "appearance of impropriety" and "Chinese Walls" and the sin of commingling. We get it, precisely because we are "professionals." And those of us who fail to get it quickly become "former professionals."

"Marriage expert," by contrast, is not a profession, but gobbledygook. Practitioners of gobbledygook are not "professionals" and of course have no need therefore for ethics codes or for "standards" generally. Hence Gallagher's obliviousness is both understandable and condonable.

I'm glad Gallagher appears likely to wiggle off this ethical hook -- it reduces to crystal clarity the hypocrisy of the mainstream media. When journalists, commentators, professional pundits, paid bloggers and others who "get a check" find themselves on the wrong side of the law, they claim "journalist shield" and "First Amendment." When they're on the wrong side of "mere" ethics, it's "what's the big deal?"

As I've said before, the view from the Moral High Ground is quite lovely.

POST SCRIPT: Heh.