Do Better Rules Make for Better Men?

The New York Times (NYT) opines today, in light of the Petraeus-Allen-Sinclair-Johnson III affairs – to name a few of the military with tarnished brass over just the last year alone  - that now maybe the Pentagon will get about “enforc(ing) the military’s standards of sexual conduct more consistently.”

But then declares the NYT Editorial Board: “The Pentagon needs clear rules on misconduct.”

So which is it?  Consistency, or clarity?  Or both?

Did those with all the rank not read the file?

Or maybe these headlines are simply a reflection of what we should have seen coming all along before diving into the (cultural-cess)pool?

• “Columbia University sponsors the (in)famous ‘Sexhibition,’ (an) event complete with a sex-toy show-and-tell.”
•  “It appears that, after more than a century of debate, Harvard students are still unsure of what ‘cheating’ means."  
• In the Spam Box – “Life is short, have an affair” – “Every 60 seconds a new woman joins www.AshleyMadison.com looking to have a discreet encounter.” 
• Office Depot hooks up with Lady Gaga to sell back-to-school supplies, a project called “Born That Way”.  Never mind that the release of Gaga’s album by that title featured a picture of her nude from the waist down. 

Of course there’s more. 

Penn State football gets kicked wide of the uprights (and Sandusky, Paterno and Spanier are ejected from the field over the child sexual abuse scandal). 

And following the folks gunned down in a theater in Aurora, Colorado the multimillion-dollar violent summer blockbusters were recommended by the theater industry to be released in the fall, or shown on Wednesdays instead of Fridays to avoid fan frenzy.  

Speaking of the delay of the films - as opposed to declining at all to show them -- Russell Schwartz, former head of marketing for New Line Cinema and the president of Pandemic Marketing, said that while “the craft of film making is gloomy as hell, it doesn’t seem to be keeping anybody away.”

In other words, while we may vilify - rightly - the likes of Petraeus and ask how he could have betrayed us, when he should have been dealing with the dastardly deeds of America’s enemies in Afghanistan, truth be told he is simply the most current example of an enemy we have met much closer to home:

Us.