By now, most of the pundits have weighed on Henry Louis Gates Jr., who was arrested on the porch of his own home on July 16. Just in case you’ve been on vacation on a remote Atoll and have missed this debacle, while many facts are still in dispute, these are the facts that both sides agree upon:

Gates arrived home from a trip to China, had trouble getting the door of his house open and forced it. Someone called 911 to report breaking and entering. A police officer approached Gates’ home and asked him to step outside. Gates declined. The officer went into the home where Gates showed him an ID that proved he lived there. Gates asked the officer for his name and badge number and did not get them.

The blogosphere and pundits alike have had a field day over the last month with the specter of yet another supposedly straight-laced, upright, morality preaching politician brought down by infidelity. While he hasn’t resigned as of this post, he had a tough time at Monday’s press conference dodging questions about his affair with an Argentine beauty while he was trying to talk about state business.
While I could go on about how he–like other sanctimonious, bible thumping politicians- should have just “kept it in his pants” what I want to remind you about, dear reader, is the stupidity and dangers of email.
The State, a South Carolina newspaper, printed excerpts from the florid emails between the Gov. and the woman with whom he was having an affair, “Maria.” For example:
“Two, mutual feelings…You have a particular grace and calm that I adore. You have a level of sophistication that so fitting with your beauty. I could digress and say that you have the ability to give magnificent gentle kisses, or that I love your tan lines or that I love the curve of your hips, the erotic beauty of you holding yourself (or two magnificent parts of yourself) in the faded glow of the night’s light- but hey, that would be going into sexual details…
Sleep soundly knowing that despite the best efforts of my head my heart cries out for you, your voice, your body, the touch of your lips, the touch of your finger tips and an even deeper connection to your soul.”
What is it about email that makes supposedly smart people abandon all sense? Almost every investigation I conduct these days has the alleged harasser or discriminator leaving an incriminating email trail. These are all people who should know better: lawyers, investment bankers, IT professionals. Yet email they must, despite the fact that an email is a just a postcard on the server floor.
As I often tell my workshop participants, and as I wrote in my book Stop Pissing Me Off! What to do When the People You Work With Drive You Crazy, the e in email stands for evidence! And in the Sanford debacle, I would say that the e in email stands for embarrassing! Some examples of the stupidity I have seen:

Love her or hate her, Palin continues to fire up commentators, enrage her critics and engage her supporters. When she jumped ship and resigned as the governor of Alaska, she shocked even her former Presidential running mate John McCain, who admitted on Meet the Press this week that she hadn’t called him beforehand.

While the pundits will continue to debate whether the constant media scrutiny forced Palin out of office or whether she’s plotting her own media empire, the question I have for you is what can you learn from her departure? If your job is driving you crazy, should you stay or should you go?

After a two-week flap, David Letterman finally and directly apologized to Alaskan Gov. Sarah Palin and her daughters on his program last Monday night, saying he wanted to say he was sorry “to the two daughters involved, Bristol and Willow, and also to the governor and her family and everyone else who was outraged by the joke.”

In case you’re like me and can’t stay up for the late show, two weeks ago, Letterman joked about Gov. Palin attending a Yankees game with her daughter. The joke, in which Letterman seemingly confused Willow, who is 14 and attended a Yankees game that week, with Bristol, who is 18 and an unwed mother, had to do with Palin’s biggest problem being keeping her daughter from being “knocked up” by Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez.

In the rush to beat up on Elizabeth Edwards over her book tour this week, for publicly exposing her pain over John’s infidelity, the allegedly, resulting baby (who she insists, strangely, on calling ‘it”) and her reaction to the betrayal, we seem to have forgotten an important point in this saga: The other woman, Rielle Hunter, worked for John.

Unless you’ve been trapped under a Hobbit hut without a computer, you’re probably one of the 120 million worldwide viewers who’ve downloaded Susan Boyle on YouTube bringing the house down with “I Dreamed a Dream” from “Les Miserables.” One of the great things about the 48-year-old unstyled, uncoached, rather frumpy-looking British spinster is that, when asked by Simon Cowell, “What’s the dream?” her response was “I’m trying to be a professional singer.”

Not, “I want to be famous” but “I want to make a living doing something I love.” Somehow, that touched me more than all the ambitious 20-somethings who want to rule the charts.

Miss California

My goodness, but Miss California has had a tough couple of weeks hasn’t she? First, she brings down the wrath of a significant portion of the American public by coming out against gay marriage in response to a question by Parez Hilton in The Miss USA Pageant, which allegedly cost her the crown. Then, this week, nude pictures of her taken as a teenager show up on the Internet.

While such problems may seem far removed from your work-a-day woes, they actually both reveal relevant lessons.

In selecting quarterback Matthew Stafford No. 1 overall, the Detroit Lions committed to a six-year contract wroth at least $72 million.  The guarantee:  a record $41.7 million, up 39% from a year ago when the Miami Dolphins guarteed offensive tackle Jake Long $30 million in the top spot.

Agent Tom Condon, who did Long and Stafford’s contracts said that “Money follows the football, “That reflects the importance of the quarterback to the success of the team.”

Well, duh… With Detroit’s losing record, I think we can all agree that they really, really need a great quarterback but 72 million?  Don’t you wish that you had Condon to negotiate your next raise?

Was this a drug test or an intelligence test? One has to wonder, since these two potential draftees were given weeks of notice, not only as to the exact time of the test but also as to the type of drug to be tested for and the amount of time the drug residues would remain in the body. Hello!

You may not have your cubicle assaulted by Somali pirates, but violence is still an issue that arises in plenty of workplaces. And even one incidence of violence in the workplace is one too many.

This is not the kind of thing that we can ignore. Most people who have been violent have made threats beforehand. Ignoring it and hoping it will go away — not a good strategy. Are you pooh-poohing it? Cutting someone slack? Being understanding? Maybe that’s not what the situation demands.