Rich Man, Poor Woman

“Moral principles have lost their distinctiveness. For modern man, absolute right and absolute wrong are a matter of what the majority is doing.”
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929 - 1968), U.S. civil rights leader.

Here is the saga of two people, one with ethics, and one without. Which one is better off? Even if one voted for Bush, or maybe especially if one voted for Bush, they could easily pick the one better off, without knowing their names.

Bunnatine (Bunny) Greenhouse blew the whistle on Haliburton and its cozy relationship with the government, thanks to Vice President Dick Cheney’s influence whether real or perceived. It took guts for an African-American woman to stand up and point out that the government was illegally approving lengthy no-bid contracts for Cheney’s old company that was going to profit from the Iraq war.

Instead of praise and promotion, according to Time magazine, Greenhouse was warned to stop interfering and threatened with a demotion. She has requested protection from retaliation. The Misanthrope believes she should have secret service protection from the most vengeful administration in U.S. history.

And the one seemingly without ethics, Michael Ovitz., was awarded $140 million for just showing up for 14 months. Disney shareholders are suing Ovitz claiming he was not entitled to the severance because he should have been fired over this poor performance and ethical lapses. The Misanthrope wonders how many animators would still be employed with a $140 million budget? Or possibly, Disney could have created their own Pixar studios. There is something wrong with a society that can allow either of these scenarios to exist.