Abraham Lincoln was right: "If you look for the bad in people expecting to find it, you surely will."
Still, it must be disappointing for Investigate magazine that the worst it could come up with when it went looking for dirt on Police Commissioner Howard Broad was that
someone with highly objectionable taste in movies played a film depicting bestiality during a party at Broad's Dunedin house in 1981.
Unfortunately for Investigate's attempt to make an issue of this - despite a conspicuous lack of anything resembling evidence of wrongdoing on Broad's part - that someone is alleged to be none other than Wayne Idour, the policeman turned private investigator who's been at the grimy end of a host of other anti-Labour allegations.
The same private investigator, mind, who categorically denied being the procurer of the offensive film, and was very probably the unnamed source of the latest dirt-dishing in Investigate.
So Broad's only sin was allowing his house to be used for a police fundraiser at which rugby movies were supposed to be the drawcard. Broad, 23 at the time, says the porn movie was played without his prior knowledge and permission, and that he made his displeasure known. His colleagues back his story.
I think it's safe to say Commissioner Broad won't be clearing out his office any time soon.
And the moral campaigners, whoever they are, can sleep easy. As Police Minister Annette King was at pains to point out when she, with some pleasure, outed Idour yesterday, it was as unacceptable in 1981 for police officers to watch a pornographic movie at a party as it is today.
Which is interesting when you consider that some people always want to make out that there was a different standard of behaviour at work in the old days, whenever the old days were.
That was the excuse for Clint Rickards and his convicted rapist friends when they combined police work with group sex involving vulnerable young women. They claimed everyone was doing it. Actually, no, most people weren't.
But have we become more precious and judgmental about such things, more - dare I say it - moralistic? Are we, as a Herald editorial put it, "in danger of succumbing to moral panic on any sexual subject these days"?
I wouldn't have thought so. If there's a difference between what we're prepared to tolerate now and what we tolerated, say, 20 or 25 years ago, it isn't in the fundamentals. The difference is that today there's an unprecedented level of public scrutiny. In the cold, harsh light of publicity, you hardly ever hear a defence of bad behaviour, only excuses.
Had the New Zealand public known back in the 1980s and 1990s of the behaviour that a commission of inquiry into police behaviour and recent court cases have highlighted, they'd have been just as unimpressed as they are today.
We expected then what we expect now of our police force - men and women of good character. By anyone's definition, that would not have included people who took pleasure from a film featuring bestiality.
C.S. Lewis argued that people through the ages have been remarkably consistent about what constitutes decent behaviour.
"Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the people who had been kindest to him. You might as well try to imagine a country where two and two made five.
"Men have differed as regards what people you ought to be unselfish to - whether it was only your own family, or your fellow countrymen, or everyone. But they have always agreed that you ought not to put yourself first ...
"Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining it's not fair before you can say Jack Robinson.
"A nation may say treaties don't matter; but then, next minute, they spoil their case by saying that the particular treaty they want to break is an unfair one. But if treaties do not matter, and if there is no such things as Right and Wrong, what is the difference between a fair treaty and an unfair one?"
Recently, someone sent me an extract from American businessman Lee Iacocca's new book Where Have All The Leaders Gone? He lists the nine Cs of leadership: courage, creativity, curiosity, communication, charisma, competency, common sense, conviction and character, the latter defined by Iacocca as "knowing the difference between right and wrong and having the guts to do the right thing".
If he'd consulted my 13-year-old, he might have put character right at the top. When I asked my son why he admired a particular entertainer, he said it was because of his music, his work for the poor and his "high moral standards".
I only hope his hero's moral standards stand up to close scrutiny.
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