Workplace-Romance Double Standard
Army Capt. Derrick Robertson
got sentenced the other day to four months in prison for having consensual sex
with a 20-year-old (female) private. Meanwhile, the media buzz is about another
workplace romance: between ABC News President David Westin, in the midst of a
divorce, and ABC Vice President Sherrie Rollins, wife of perennially
embarrassed political consultant Ed Rollins. Westin was Rollins' boss until, in
the midst of all the rumors about their liaison, they both got promoted.
Clearly,
on the subject of workplace romance, the media and the Army operate by
different rules. And the rules in the (civilian) government are different
still. Former National Security Adviser Anthony Lake, estranged from his wife
and nearly inseparable from his former deputy, had that relationship hanging
over his head when he told the president to withdraw his nomination to be CIA
chief. Other appointments are never proposed and political campaigns are never
launched (in addition to those that are famously derailed, like Gary Hart's)
because of the threat that some sexual misadventure will become front-page
news.
Would a bit of consistency be small-minded in this case? We
can scarcely avoid love at work: To paraphrase Willie Sutton, that's where the
opposite sex is. There are good reasons for strict rules in the military, where
a superior can send a subordinate into life-threatening battle. Still, if you
throw nearly 200,000 females into close quarters with a million or so males,
under immense stress combined with stretches of boredom and laced with
loneliness, some of the Jacks are going to fall in love--or lust--with some of
the Jills. And a difference in rank is a permeable barrier.
Abuse of
women must be punished. But for consensual sex, has the Army ever considered a
policy of "ask and tell," with direct reports being reassigned and the others
being left alone?
At the other extreme, ABC (which won't say
whether it has any rules at all) is off-base too. Corporate executives don't
risk their lives in battle, but there is career death--or enhancement--at
stake, as well as fairness. Since the classic 1980 case of William Agee and
Mary Cunningham--he was chairman of Bendix; he promoted her rapidly to vice
president; they denied an affair; she was forced out; they married--many
companies have instituted the policy that when a subordinate and a boss get
involved, at least one gets reassigned.
ABC's Ted Koppel simply blew
off the Westin-Rollins affair to the Washington Post , citing human
frailties. A network representative says the matter "doesn't deserve the
attention it's getting." Yet ABC, like all the networks, is quick to pounce
when the lifestyles of the rich and famous, including politicians, go astray.
The Army is proceeding against other soldiers under a draconian code that can
transform consensual sex into constructive rape, if it happens across ranks.
But there must be some middle way between that sad spectacle and ABC's
above-it-all double standard. In or out of uniform, we're all under the sway of
the same birds and bees.
