Being in a Crisis

While we are most certainly in a financial crisis, we are also most certainly in a crisis of ethics. The Governor of Illinois and the one before him, who is now serving a prison sentence, lets us know this. We are in a national ethics crisis.

Many of us seem to have long forsaken the principles of ethics that have brought us to this moment. Yes, this is a watershed moment and we must rise to the occasion. We are in an ethical crisis. But this crisis need not be sensationalized. This will not help.

When I heard the news initially about the governor on the news, I was incensed and sickened. After viewing a few stories about the event, I was disturbed. I turned the TV off all day. Not only was the news itself disturbing, but some new channels seemed to be reveling in the story itself.

"This is better than Watergate," one reporter said. Yes, the story is truly amazing; the lengths taken are extraordinary. But really...we have way too many things to confront to be bogged down, to be dragged down by such sleaze.

Get rid of the bum and his wife, work to root out corruption, but by all means let's not be deterred from the pressing issues we as a country are facing right now. Professionally, some of us live for this stuff, i.e., the media. Another reporter seemed to elevate his job to that of a D.A. His tone was more jeering than Attorney General Fitzgerald himself.

The Justice Department has done and will do its work. The actions of one seemingly deranged governor must not take us off our goal of change. Get him out of there and expose any wrongdoing, but a national witch hunt is not what's needed now. We have too much to do.