NWA editorial

The revelation

The perils of lying, cheating and the Internet

Human beings can be such dogs.

Except that's not really fair to the canines, most of whom know what loyalty is and don't hesitate to show it.

What’s the point?

The hacking of an infidility-based website is a prime example that a life based on dishonesty and secrecy is destined to crumble.

Not so much can be said about homo sapiens, a species with so much brilliance it can create a global network of computers and change the world, but so numb-headed it uses large swaths of its capacity for pornography, websites filled with lies, acrimonious exchanges and mindless games.

Among the worst of the worst making news lately is Ashley Madison. No, that's not an up-and-coming Hollywood starlet or the namesake of a new fashion line. It's a website based in Canada. It's goal? Well, it's goal is to make money, and it apparently has developed a solid business model for doing so.

Ashley Madison is devoted to empowering married people who want to engage in extramarital affairs. In a word, they want to cheat. It's a website where liars seek out new conquests and invest their time, money and effort in destroying whatever kind of marriage they've got. It's slogan? "Life is short. Have an affair."

Holy cow! Can anyone explain what heterosexual people have done in marriage that makes it look so attractive to the gay community?

This nasty website recently became the target of hackers, those online criminals who use their computer skills for nefarious purposes. In the case of Ashley Madison, it's hard to feel much sympathy for the "victim" website, but cybersecurity is nonetheless a critical factor in everyone's use of the Internet. The hacking of supposedly secure information is a matter that deserves a serious investigation and prosecution.

That said, Ashley Madison is getting what it can expect in the kind of moral-free world it advocates in the conduct of its business. If anything goes in marriage, then so be it in the business and cyber worlds, right?

The hackers exposed Northwest Arkansas' own Josh Duggar, again, as "the biggest hypocrite ever," to use his own words. Revelation that Duggar, married with four children, had an account on the cheating-based website is only the latest damage he's done to his large family, subject of the now-canceled TV show 19 Kids and Counting. Latest reports are he has checked into rehab to deal with his issues. Good luck to him.

He's famous, although why still perplexes us, so he'll get a lot of the attention, but there are apparently millions of others who thought signing up and providing credit card information to a website based on marital infidelity was a good idea. According to multiple reports, even members who had paid a required $19 fee to have their accounts erased have discovered the website did nothing of the sort. But can members of the site really complain? If you're in bed, so to speak, with liars and cheaters, who can be shocked when they lie and cheat?

How many lessons can arise from this mess? How about honesty being the best approach? How about keeping one's word in marriage and in life? And there's this, too: Nothing one would want kept private should involve a computer and the Internet. No matter how much supposed security exists, the best approach to anything on the Internet is to expect it to be revealed.

Secrets say a lot about who a person really is. Perhaps the key isn't to keep the secret from being revealed, but to live lives true to the best qualities people believe us to have, rather than giving in to the worst.

Commentary on 08/27/2015

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