March 24, 2006

Modern ethics have changed so much that we need a new word for them. I decided this after hearing that the ethics commissioner concluded no rules were broken when Stephen Harper talked MP David Emerson into turning Conservative – and graciously accepting a cabinet post – two weeks after Emerson was elected as a Liberal.

There’s an appropriate new word in English but I doubt the CBC would print it. So we shall turn to Indonesia and call modern ethics "TST." This is short for Tahu Sama Tahu, and it means "you know it, I know it." Indonesians use it to refer to a deal between two people, one usually a government official, to cheat the state. (For this, I thank Adam Jacot de Boinod’s wonderful new dictionary, The Meaning of Tingo.)

I love the commissioner’s Cheshire cat sarcasm about Emerson’s claim that it "seemed, at least to him, a way to better serve his city, province and country." Such clarity is the essence of TST.

At what point did ethics become TST? It’s hard to pick a moment.

Crossing the floor is a time-honoured parliamentary practice. You do it when you can’t stomach your old party’s ethics. But Emerson treated ethics the way Victorian tanners treated ox hides. They de-haired them and scraped off the flesh, soaked them in lime and then a warm vat of liquidized dog droppings. Tanner-like, Emerson didn’t just flip overnight, he took a cabinet post.

Look, I know it ages me to say this but we seem to have become tanners of ethics. This is new. Ergo TST.

I shall make my case, not with crotchety remarks about "when I were a lad" but with examples.

Remember Alastair Cooke, the amiable white-haired British gentleman who provided Americans with a gentle tutorial before Masterpiece Theatre? He died at age 95. And how did his host country thank him? In a revolting chain of TST, they removed Cooke’s bones and sold them for seven grand to New Jersey body tissue thieves who sold them to patients in need of fresh young bones. Cooke’s bones were full of cancer. (Check your joint replacements now.) Worse, corpses were left with plastic pipes so no one would find the legs floppy.

Remember art thieves? They used to steal paintings. I can understand that, in a way. But now they come in the middle of the night with a bright red flatbed truck and winches and steal 2.5 ton Henry Moore sculptures. Worse, they melt it down for scrap metal.

In modern times, it always gets worse. Insult is invariably added to injury.

In London, an entire children’s playground, swings included, was stolen by thieves with pneumatic drills.

Now it appears that Tony Blair has been selling peerages. The cash "loans" came from men itching to be named to the House of Lords and were put in a secret slush fund. The house, like Canada’s Senate, is notorious for being filled with party hacks, but the amazing thing is it has become Britain’s defender of human rights and has again refused to sign off on Blair’s plan for a national ID card.

Even the bribed can’t be bought now, an ethical twist that calls out for a big "Tahu Sama Tahu" smile from Tony Blair. I imagine the Brits will stay with the traditional expression, "a wink and a nod."

And then Sherry Cooper, chief economist with BMO Nesbitt Burns, came along with her homilies on the modern criminal.

Cooper was recently robbed of jewellery, computers, cash, cars and BlackBerries by two armed men who broke into her house in the night. Rather than saying a private hallelujah that they hadn’t shot her and her husband in the dark as they sat bound with duct tape a la Red Green, Cooper accused the robbers of attacking capitalism.

Is Canada getting like Brazil, where the rich and famous need security guards, she wondered out loud. "Why are people who work hard to gain success and beautiful homes a target?"

My heart sank. BMO is my bank. She’s an economist, remember.

Sherry, could it be that up-your-nostrils rich people are a target because they have stuff? Robbers don’t hit shotgun shacks with a two-tone Mustang on concrete blocks out front, especially not if they’re looking for knuckleduster diamonds. They go for million dollar homes and people like Cooper so publicly loaded with bling that it’s a surprise they can still lift their head and hands. The robbers were defending capitalism’s good name. TST, man.

Cooper, interviewed in her local paper, seemed to be suggesting her robbers were ethically twisted. A decent robber would target the lazy and the lousy-homed. But I was thinking what superfine robbers they were, brisk, non-violent, and not out for shocked revenge when they saw Cooper’s palace.

Hey, TST is subject to fashion too. Keep it fresh. When bribed, stay snarky. Expand the theft landscape. Bones. Playgrounds. Steal art by weight, not value. Steal a sidewalk. A mid-sized office building.

Tahu Sama Tahu!