A Costly Affair

Bill Clinton survived, Harry Stonecipher didn't. And therein lies an interesting tale.

My first reaction when I heard that the 68-year-old Boeing CEO had lost his job over an affair with an employee was: not the brightest move by a chief executive.

Now that I know more about it, my reaction is: still not the brightest move. But why exactly was this a firing offense?

Well, there's the embarrassment factor for the aerospace giant, especially since the last CEO made the same dumb mistake.

But now Boeing is saying it wasn't the affair itself. The woman (more on her below) didn't report to Stonecipher and there's no evidence he did anything to help her career. He is now said to have been separated from his wife. No, the absolutely unforgivable sin to the Boeing board was that Stonecipher used company e-mail to send the woman some explicit love notes.

Sheesh, hasn't he ever heard of Yahoo Mail, or Hotmail?

Besides, is sending a couple of hot e-mails really grounds for dismissal? That's sort of like saying the affair's okay but that Stonecipher used a company car to drive to the motel.

Something here doesn't quite add up.

A related media question is whether the name of the woman should have been published. Business Week, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times (which ran a photo) all did so yesterday. On the one hand, unlike lowly intern Monica Lewinsky, she's a 48-year-old executive, not some young cupcake who was being exploited. It's not a rape or harassment case, where shielding her name would make sure other complainants aren't deterred.

But did publishing her name really add anything to the story? And are we going to name every paramour of every corporate exec who has an affair -- or only those unfortunate enough to get themselves fired?

Columbia Journalism Review's Thomas Lang wonders why Stonecipher got the boot:

"Compared to sex scandals of the recent past -- think Bill Clinton; heck, think Bill O'Reilly -- this one is relatively tame. Although initial reports described Stonecipher as 'married,' later accounts contain unsourced supposition that he and his wife separated months before the relationship with the employee began. And, according to a Boeing internal investigation, there was no quid pro quo here of preferential treatment in return for sexual favors. Furthermore, the mystery woman has not charged that she was the victim of any sort of sexual harassment. . . .

"Given the dearth of detail, the press did what it always does when it doesn't know what the hell is going on -- speculate. In this case, the speculation has focused on whether Stonecipher's dismissal signals the start of a new era of corporate Puritanism.

"In Wednesday's Wall Street Journal, the paper's editorial board shared that its 'first reaction to the weekend dismissal of Boeing CEO Harry Stonecipher is that the 1990s are finally over. Whether in business or politics, chief executives were often given the benefit of the doubt in that decade, but no more.' . . . Similarly, a Christian Science Monitor news article reported, 'Corporate observers believe Boeing's move may foretell a higher standard for personal behavior in the post-Enron world.' . . .

"Perhaps the Stonecipher saga will indeed usher in a new era of conduct, at least for CEO's of tarnished companies that have promised to stiffen up their ethics codes. Or perhaps -- just perhaps -- that's the angle that the Boeing crisis management team hoped the press would grab onto, instead of rolling up its sleeves and looking into the still-unanswered question of the day: "Is there maybe more to this story than a consensual sexual relationship that is no one's business in the first place?"

Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein has this reaction:

"First, given the political and legal environment in which the company finds itself, and the prevailing business culture in the United States, the board probably made the 'right' decision in demanding Harry Stonecipher's resignation.

"And, second, it's a ridiculous outcome that leaves nobody better off and raises serious questions about that environment and that business culture."

The New York Times leads with the gal pal:

"The female executive whose romantic relationship with Harry C. Stonecipher led to his ouster this week as Boeing's chief executive has been identified as Debra Peabody, an employee in Washington who has been at Boeing for more than 20 years.

"Ms. Peabody, whose identity was disclosed last night by BusinessWeek Online and confirmed by a company official, is a 48-year-old divorced executive who manages office operations for Boeing's chief Washington lobbyist, Rudy deLeon."

Tech blogger Dan Gillmor addresses the business impact:

"Europe must no doubt be thrilled to see America's latest idiotic puritan spanking: the firing of Boeing's CEO, Harry Stonecipher. He had an affair, and the board tossed him out, saying Stonecipher himself had created a no-second-chance ethics policy that left no choice.

"Why would Europe be happy? Because that's Airbus, the only serious competitor to Boeing in the civilian aircraft market, is located. Seeing its adversary thrown into such turmoil over something so minor has to be a big win for Airbus.

"Anyway, it's close to inconceivable that a European company would toss overboard a CEO for having an affair with another adult. In fact, it's totally inconceivable. An affair makes the guy look bad, but what on earth does it have to do with his job?"

WSJ columnist Alan Murray says the Boeing boss was reckless to use e-mail:

"Has Mr. Stonecipher ever heard of Eliot Spitzer? In the past three years, the New York attorney general has built an awe-inspiring career on indiscreet e-mail, and now believes they are his e-ticket to the governor's mansion. Among his most prized discoveries were Henry Blodget's e-mail using the acronym POS (hint: the first two words are 'piece' and 'of') to refer to a tech stock that he was touting to the public on behalf of Merrill Lynch. Then there was Jack Grubman's e-mail boasting that Citigroup Chairman Sandy Weill had helped his children get into an exclusive Manhattan nursery school after he boosted his rating of AT&T stock."

The blog site Skew from the Left sheds no tears for Stonecipher:

"While I don't think it's anyone's business whether or not Harry was having an affair, if he (ab)used company resources in relation to that affair, he deserves what he got. The investigators say he didn't, so I'm no longer sure Harry deserved what he got, in spite of any personal feelings I may have for the guy. It's possible that Harry's ouster was a knee-jerk over reaction in an overly puritanical environment. However . . . Turns out Harry was about to be awarded a potential payout of something near $27 million in stocks for his performance in 2004 but needed to be employed by the company for a full year after the bonus was awarded. (Guess that explains why he was waiting until 2006 to retire . . . again). So, it turns out that he did lose something as a result of his 'poor judgement.' Still, I have a hard time feeling sorry for a multi-millionaire not getting another $27 million to heap on top of the tens (hundreds?) of millions he already has."

Speaking of exits, Dan Rather, as you just possibly may have heard, made his last night. He wisely made his closing remarks not about him but a tribute to his CBS colleagues and people touched by tragedy, closing with his old, weird sign-off: "Courage."

Chicago Tribune critic Chris Jones scoffs at last night's Rather prime-time special:

"The bottom line of 'Dan Rather: A Reporter Remembers'? Rather wants his newsman's tombstone -- and not his anchorman's tombstone -- to read 'too intense,' not 'too liberal.' He can live with the first. Demonstrably, he cannot easily live with the second. "The aim of Wednesday's peculiar prime time CBS News special is an 11th hour reconstruction of Rather's lost professional dignity. The format of the show is both striking and revelatory -- not least for the way it relies almost entirely on Rather's own voice.

"It is a voice so underpinned with a palpable sadness, you often wonder if its owner will make it through the hour without succumbing to tears."

Salon's Joan Walsh looks for larger lessons:

"Dan Rather is retiring because he's 73. It comes as a shock because CBS did a terrible job of succession planning. He's retiring a year earlier than he wanted to, but probably five years later than he should have. In Ken Auletta's dishy New Yorker piece last week, Walter Cronkite takes a few shots at him, and even supposed admirers like Mike Wallace and Andy Rooney admit they don't even watch him.

"I don't either. I don't watch any of the nightly news shows anymore. Like a lot of people, I'm still at work when they come on, and they don't really merit TiVo. When I have my choice it's Peter Jennings. He's soothing. Rather has always kind of alarmed me. I'm not alone. The CBS anchor's ratings have been shrinking -- he's long been No. 3 -- and the networks' news shows along with them. In Auletta's profile, we learn what we mostly already knew, but the numbers are still shocking: The average age of the big three's viewership is 60. Only 8 or 9 percent of the crucial 18-34 demographic watches network news. This is media death.

"So let's be clear: Rathergate may have hastened Rather's departure, but it didn't cause it. Which is not to say it wasn't a scandal. The story of how CBS ran with the Sept. 8 Bush report is an awful chapter in journalism and reveals terrible flaws in the news organization. I want to hand CBS's investigative-panel report on the mess to every new hire at Salon; it should be taught at every journalism school.

"But it's possible to lament the handling of the National Guard story loudly without concluding that it either proves the mainstream media (MSM) is hopelessly corrupt and necessarily dead, and/or that the blogosphere is what tells us both things are true."

New York Observer's Joe Hagan got hold of some taped conversations from Mike Smith, a CBS freelancer who worked on the National Guard story. They include a conversation with CBS Senior Vice President Linda Mason, who was coordinating the news division's response to that outside investigation:

"In a tape from late December, days before the report was released, Ms. Mason was asked by Mr. Smith if CBS News would ever regain its former glory after the incident.

" 'I certainly hope so,' she said, 'but this has shaken . . . Mike, we're part of this huge corporation now. And [Viacom C.E.O.] Sumner Redstone commented on it at one point. Who needs him commenting about things? Let him stay with his entertainment.

" 'In the news, when it was first happening,' she continued, 'he was away in Hong Kong or something. He made some kind of stupid statement about how he didn't like this, but he was out of town and he had to learn more about it or something. I mean, wow, right?' "

Ouch.

National Review's Jim Geraghty piles on:

"Daniel I. Rather, will you please go now?

"Rather's tenure parallels network news' journey into irrelevance.

"Dan, let me be the one guy rude enough to tell you that you won't be missed. Well, perhaps it's not just me -- Walter Cronkite has chosen this moment to slide the shiv between the ribs of his successor.

"But can you blame Cronkite? Conservatives may never forgive him for doing his part to ensure that the U.S. left the South Vietnamese people to the tender mercies of the Viet Cong, but when Uncle Walt left the anchor desk in 1981, the CBS Evening News was still in healthy shape, and a major news force."

Hold on -- now we're blaming Cronkite for reporting what became obvious to everyone -- that there was no light at the end of the tunnel for the U.S. military? His report was in 1968, seven years before the war's end.

"Rather may be bragging on Letterman about his 24 years, but the only institutions that have had a rougher past two-and-a-half decades than CBS News have been the Soviet Union, Egyptian opposition movements, and disco.

If you're reading NRO, or the blogs, chances are you don't watch the CBS Evening News or many network evening-news programs. . . . The network evening news has become a half-hour analgesic, chopped into snippets divided by commercials for over-the-counter cold medication, prescription drugs, or cure-alls for gastrointestinal distress, for those who want a cranky 73-year-old to tell them what to think."

A big day in the MJ trial yesterday, as the Los Angeles Times reports:

"Michael Jackson was confronted by his accuser Wednesday as the boy who says he was molested by the pop star took the stand and told of viewing pictures of naked women on the Internet.

"It was an older, healthier boy who appeared before the jury that just hours earlier had seen him on videotape. . . .

"It was during that first visit [in 2000], the accuser testified, that he, his brother, Jackson and an aide, viewed adult material on the Internet. At one point, he said he viewed a website with a woman exposing her breasts.

" 'Like one time, we like, looked at this site. There was this girl with her shirt up and Michael said, "Got milk?" We laughed,' he told jurors."

Pretty edifying stuff.

The Detroit Free Press covers the latest Coulter controversy:

"For most of Helen Thomas' 60-plus years in White House journalism, her Arab ethnicity never was an issue.

"But according to political commentator Ann Coulter, the ancestry of the Detroit native makes her an 'old Arab' and thus a security threat to President George W. Bush. . . . 'Press passes can't be that hard to come by if the White House allows that old Arab Helen Thomas to sit within yards of the president,' wrote Coulter, who once argued the United States should invade Muslim countries and 'convert them to Christianity.'

Reached at her office in Washington, Thomas, 84, said she didn't want to comment specifically on Coulter's words. Asked about her background, Thomas said: 'I'm an American; I'm not hyphenated. But I was very lucky to grow up in two cultures.' "

Twenty-six members of Congress have sent a protest letter to Coulter's syndicate.