Roy Huggins Says Stuff

Many of my fine readers know that I’m in the throes of building an advice column-blog. It isn’t quite ready yet, so no link for you¹. As such, I’ve been paying closer attention to all the advice columns I read…

And you wouldn’t believe² how many people write in all offended by secrets they found while snooping though their SOs’ email. The letters usually go something like:

So, I just happened to walk up to my husband’s computer while he was away and I accidentally glanced at his email and just happened to notice an old email from 5 months ago to his ex-girlfriend where he implied that he misses her! My trust in him is shattered! What do I do?!

It also goes the other way gender-wise. I’m not being sexist. Or hetero-sexist. It happens with same-sex couples, too.

Whenever I see these letters I feel the need to stop reading at the point where the spouse is snooping on his/her partner’s email. Ya, obviously there is a trust problem in your relationship. But maybe the cause is a little more systemic than you previously thought.

This post was inspired by today’s Savage Love column, in which the ever-wonderful Dan Savage dishes it out with a fantastic way of thinking about these situations. His rule:

Here’s a good rule of thumb—one I just made up—for e-mail snoopers, PISSED: If the transgression your snooping uncovers is a more serious transgression than e-mail snooping itself, you apologize for snooping and confront. But if the uncovered transgression is less serious, you keep your fool mouth shut.

I love you Dan Savage. Will you be my friend?

1. but there is one in my blogroll. I’m fickle. [↩]
2. unless you read advice columns as much as I do [↩]

Here’s something nice for y’all:

The custodians of five New York pension funds, being Google shareholders, ask for the company to make policies to counteract censorship in nations such as China and Iran among many others.

I think I was talking to someone this past weekend about Google’s move away from their pre-IPO corporate tenet of “Don’t Be Evil.” After going public, they struck that phrase from their mission statement. It seemed rather telling of the ways in which being beholden to stock holders can turn a good company bad. Google ostensibly could no longer have a phrase like “Don’t Be Evil” as a guiding principle because… I don’t really know why. The SEC would get upset? A stockholder would be offended? I’m not really sure.

But this is one of those stories that gives me a glimmer of hope. As the first poster¹ on this article points out, the fund performing this request holds somewhere around 0.15% of Google’s stock. That is nowhere near being a significant voting block. But it’s great to see that at least one relatively large holder is interested in using it as something more than just an income generator. If Google can no longer promise to not be evil because their shareholders may or may not desire evil, I’m glad that at least one of the few that feels differently is using their voice to express an interest in the public good.

1. http://youtube.com/watch?v=ciG-Xs7mBwU [↩]