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The passing of former President Jimmy Carter has given Americans not only the opportunity to reflect upon his faith-driven life, but also on how the country has changed in the nearly five decades since his election.
And there is no greater example of how the decency meter has devolved than the reaction to Carter’s infamous Playboy interview in 1976.
In that interview, Carter confessed to two reporters that, despite his strong marriage, “I’ve looked on many women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times.”
The remark wasn’t a calculated attempt to win the favor of Playboy readers, but rather part of a long-winding soliloquy about his religious faith, but the reporters immediately understood that it was a “money” quote, one that would attract the most attention out of everything Carter had said in a conversation that lasted more than an hour.
One of the reporters later wrote, “I still feel some chagrin at causing a good man some trouble on his road to the White House.”
And although the quote today seems downright quaint, it did, in fact, cause Carter trouble, and for a while, many people thought it might cost him the election. In the aftermath of the interview, the Rev. Jerry Falwell told The Washington Post, “Four months ago, most of the people I knew were pro-Carter. Today, that has been totally reversed.”
Falwell was also among people who castigated Carter for even speaking to Playboy, “a salacious, vulgar magazine that did not even deserve the time of his day.”
But the moral outrage of that time eventually gave way to one in which a majority of Americans were willing to overlook not just emotional adultery, but physical infidelity in their leaders. Not, of course, that this hadn’t happened before — the most famous of the accusations of infidelity involving John F. Kennedy. And yet it’s clear that the barometer of what’s acceptable in terms of moral behavior has tilted precariously and is pointing downward, not heavenward.
Largely overlooked in the fury over the Playboy interview is what Carter said right after the “adultery in my heart” line, standing in the doorway of his home, bidding goodbye to his interviewers, who still had the tape recorder running. Carter said that he didn’t think he had it in him to lie, cheat or distort the truth as some of his predecessors did. “I think that my religious beliefs alone would prevent that from happening to me. I have that confidence. I hope it’s justified,” he said.
Carter’s religious beliefs, no doubt, were also part of why he apparently never gave in to other temptations, and why his 77-year-long marriage is being celebrated along with his other achievements this week. Some in our society have lost sight of it, but there is, on both a cultural and individual level, virtue and value in having a finely tuned decency meter.
The cost of incivility
While those of us who bemoan the decline of common decency in culture are often derided as pearl-clutchers, there’s new evidence that incivility has societal costs that can be measured in dollars, at least in the workplace.
The Society for Human Resource Management, better known as SHRM, has been tracking workplace incivility and recently reported that a quarter of U.S. workers plan to leave their jobs because of incivility. While SHRM is largely looking at incivility among coworkers, anyone who works in retail, or knows someone who does, can tell stories of the bad behavior retail workers face every day. The real-life Karens of the world got a bad rap when the name became a synonym for horrible behavior, but the term stuck because it was an easy way to describe customers who make life miserable for workers.
In writing about the incivility research, the Religious Freedom & Business Foundation noted, “A largely untapped antidote to this rising tide of incivility is to openly tap virtues that faith reinforces.” Like love, which Thomas Aquinas defined as willing the good of another, civility asks us to treat each other with kindness and respect — to ramp up the decency meter, as it were. Our failure to do so is costing businesses billions in unproductivity and absenteeism, according to the SHRM report. Maybe the customer — or the coworker — isn’t always right, but we can still treat them as if they were.
The most popular Perspectives of 2024
During the holiday season, we’ve been looking back at some of the Deseret News’ best stories, photographs and illustrations. Here are the top 5 Ideas pieces of the year.
My church is closing and I don’t know what comes next, for me or America, by Ryan Burge
Why the Kamala Harris ‘60 Minutes’ brouhaha matters, by Jennifer Graham
College volleyball, Blaire Fleming and the flex of the forfeit, by Valerie Hudson
The real reason for Ballerina Farm’s popularity, by L.R. Encinas
The young adults who are going ‘no contact’ with their parents, by Naomi Schaefer Riley
The case for the New Year resolution
While many people make New Year’s resolutions, I prefer to call mine “New Year ideas,” which takes the pressure off, since most people abandon their resolutions by February. Last year, one of my ideas was to go to a service at an unfamiliar church once a month; Kelsey Dallas wrote about this in her State of Faith newsletter.
I’m still pondering this year’s ideas, but in the meantime, I recommend this excellent essay by Allyson Flake Matsoso, entitled “A Christian Defense of New Year’s resolutions.” Maybe I’ll call them resolutions after all.
And here’s a round-up of some of the Deseret News’ best reads of 2024. Happy new year, and thank you for reading Right to the Point.