Shame (On You)

Hello. Welcome to the renowned Weekend Gene Pool, in which I will confess a career-jeopardizing unethical action from my past in exchange for soliciting your silly personal anecdotes that are similar but nowhere near as dramatic or entertaining, which I can nonetheless use as fodder for subsequent discussions. I’m trading entertainment for confessions. It’s just how I roll.

But first, before the fireworks, a Gene Pool Gene Poll. As of today, we are at the beginning of Tax Season, when we assemble the physical detritus of our year’s worth of economic achievement and / or anxiety and misery for the benefit of the Internal Revenue Service, which seems to have been whittled down to a skeleton crew of nine auditors, but which can still get us through bad luck.

Here’s the Gene Poll:

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Okay, here we go. What is the worst thing you’ve done that you got away with? (Or possibly failed to get away with?).

Mine occurred a very long time ago. I was 25 years old, a reporter at a tiny, disrespected newspaper in Albany, New York. I was ambitious, and desperate for attention. I had been promoted to a top job, covering New York state government, operating out of an office in the state Capitol. I was a big fish in a very, very dinky pond. And I was looking to make a name for myself.

One day, I got a tip that a respected government official — head of a major state agency — had run afoul of the governor, Hugh Carey, over the official’s stubborn opposition to one of the governor’s pet construction projects; the two men, I’d been told, no longer spoke to each other. I began interviewing state officials on background, and confirmed this was all true. I wanted to write that the guy was about to be fired, but didn’t have anyone saying that in so many words. They were saying it by implication, but not that definitively. Everyone was cautious around Hugh Carey, a good man who nonetheless operated his fiefdom like a Mafia Don.

So I made up a quote. Whole cloth, saying exactly what all my sources had sort of been saying to me. I quoted an unnamed “senior government official” saying the guy was still on the job “only by the skin of his teeth.” It ran on the front page.

It was accurate, but also a total lie. A fireable offense, just to be clear. Even back in the journalistically laissez faire 1970s, one did not “pipe” a quote.

My newspaper published in the afternoons. By the following morning, the government spokes-peoples had spokes-peopled. To my horror, one of them told the New York Times that she believed the quote was manufactured.

I was in a blind panic. I felt my career was about to end, replaced by a career in a refrigerator carton in the streets of Schenectady. (Albany was too good for me.). I did not sleep all night. I was beset by worry, and shame.

And then something amazing happened. Can you guess what it was?

I’ll wait here a second.

Okay, here it is: The next day, Hugh Carey fired the guy.

I looked great, like a well-connected cub reporter. My career took off. And I discovered something about myself: I was not cut out for lying. It was not worth the agony. Didn’t do it again. (I’m not sure, in retrospect, this was entirely noble. It was not based on the shame of unethical behavior, but on the effect it had on me. Different, and less admirable.)

So that is your challenge for the day. What is a bad thing you did for which you were not punished? (Or for which you were punished, in some unusual / interesting way?)

Send your stories here, as always.

Important: If you want me to use your name, you must not only state your name, but say you want me to use your name, in the body of the text. Otherwise, you will remain anonymous. Tell the truth, please, if you still know how.

Good.

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You can’t get stuff like this on any other newsletter. I’m grateful you are here. It is enough that you follow me, even for free! You don’t have to be a stoic hero, like a man I know well — this is a true story — who has been a Founding Member for a year and a quarter but who has never received a single email from me, but never complained because he is such a gracious gent. Finally, we figured out that a technical glitch had denied him The Gene Pool. This situation has apparently been rectified. And he is not bitter.