In the old cowboy movies, you could tell the good guys from the bad by the color of their hats. Villains wore black; heroes wore white. It made things easy. Too easy.

I want to put black hats on all the people who discredit their professions and disgrace themselves and their families by acts of dishonesty or uncontrolled desire.

Unfortunately, the closer I look at athletes, school administrators, corporate executives, cops, politicians, and priests who continually fill the newspapers with scandal and fuel the bonfire of cynicism, the more obvious it becomes that most of them are a mixed bag of virtues and flaws – not so different from you and me.

I point this out not to minimize or excuse their bad conduct, but to heighten awareness of how vulnerable we all are to moral blind spots. The best defense against the seductive dark side is a strong sense of integrity and a sleepless conscience.

Poet Edgar Guest put it this way:

I have to live with myself, and so,
I want to be fit for myself to know.
I want to be able as days go by
Always to look myself straight in the eye.
I don’t want to stand with the setting sun
And hate myself for the things I’ve done.

I don’t want to keep on a closet shelf
A lot of secrets about myself
And fool myself as I come and go
Into thinking that nobody else will know
The kind of man I really am.
I don’t want to dress myself up in sham.

I never can hide myself from me;
I see what others may never see.
I know what others may never know;
I never can fool myself, and so,
Whatever happens, I want to be
Self-respecting and conscience-free.

This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.