Varieties of moral dilemmas

Sometimes people think they're faced with a tricky ethical problem when in fact the problem is simply that they're dumber than a post.

From this week's "On Ethics" column by Randy Cohen (behind the Times Select pay-per firewall, unfortunately now available here):

Q: After I was scheduled for a job interview at a university, a member of the search committee Googled me and found my blog, where I refer to him (but not by name) as a belligerent jerk. He cancelled the interview. It was impolitic to write what I did, but my thinking him to be a jerk does not mean I would not be great at that job, and the rest of the committee might agree. Was it ethical of him to cancel the interview?

(Cohen's reply begins: "'Impolitic'? You let yourself off the hook rather easy." He then dignifies the interviewee's silly question with four paragraphs weighing the ins and outs of why academic search committees are the way they are, as if the vagaries of department politics were the root of the problem here, not this person's professional cluelessness. Cohen gets back on track when he sums up: You might contact the committee and make your case for getting a second chance, he writes, but "don't quit your day job.")