Posted: August 1, 2025
A couple weeks ago at a Coldplay concert outside of Boston, a couple were seen on the Jumbotron (kiss cam) in a warm embrace. It was heartwarming to see two people enjoying themselves at the concert and in their enjoyment of each other. Then the fellow ran off when he realized they were onscreen. Chris Martin “called it” of course… either very shy or in an affair, and before long this was all that was on the internet. Apparently, it was more important than the slaughter and starvation by Israel of the people in Gaza, or the relentless bombing of the Ukraine by that regions war criminal, or the dismantling of the last shreds of equality in the United States with One Big Shitty Bill.
The world was seemingly mesmerized by what turned out to be a tech executive with his company’s head of HR. It was quickly revealed that he was a married person so beyond the obvious inappropriate unethical corporate behavior this was also a personal moral failure.
But what intrigued me was the coverage that followed over the next several days with many commentators suggesting that what someone does in one aspect of their life is not relevant to their corporate life. There is a term for people with such ideas – stupid.
If a person is prepared to cheat on their most significant partner, and ignore the honesty needed in the most important of relationships, we can only expect that they will also be prepared to cheat on items with similar gravitas – business partners, their taxes, their finances etc. Now I am not trying to put ignoring a parking meter as the same as murder, but the decision making that goes into an immoral or unethical decision, particularly an ongoing set of immoral or unethical decisions and the deceit that is required to maintain the coverup, is a decision maker you don’t want on your team, or managing anything, let alone investors money, or the security of your personal identity.
I certainly have made mistakes in how I have dealt with others at times as well. And I don’t know this fellow’s situation and the nature of the relationship he has with his wife. What I do know is that when I see the level of discourse on whether it should affect how we think about him as a decision maker, it is another piece of evidence our society is falling apart, and that there is a growing percentage of the people we share the planet with who are very confused about how to conduct themselves and interact with others. Perhaps this is how we ended up with Trump.
Django