Monday, May 02, 2005

Laughing All The Way To The Bank

An hour, today, on KIRO's Dori Monson talk show was about Washington State's famous teacher who went to jail for having an affair with a 12 year old boy (maybe 14?). Mary K. Letourneau.

Now she is out of jail. The boy is 22 and they plan to get married. A cable TV network plans to pay $500,000 for the rights to tell this bizarre story. Latourneau is now reported living in a million dollar waterfront home.

Some folks are outraged, but others just say, "hey, she did her time." "The affair with a 22 year old is now legal." "She can laugh all the way to the bank."

While I am not as horrified as some people are by this tern of events, I do see it as a fallacy of the marketplace. Letting the marketplace, alone, determine who rises to the top is problematic.

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