Shamelessness is the new morality of mass media age

The thing is, I rather like James McGibney. I like his energy. His wit. His passion. I think we could be beer-drinking buddies, though, come to think of it, I don't even know if he likes beer.

But James and I met as antagonists. At least we were postured as antagonists during a KNPR-FM 88.9 interview regarding Cheaterville.com, launched by James this past Valentine's Day. At Cheaterville, you can sign on and tell the story of the person who was unfaithful to you. You can name names, times and places. You can even register yourself to be notified about someone in the event he or she is reported on Cheaterville.

James cites as the nexus of his brainchild the betrayal of a fellow Marine who, upon returning home from his deployment in Iraq, discovered that his wife had been cheating during his absence.

James says Cheaterville "is not about morality," that it's a social networking site. Not about morality? For me, Cheaterville represents the quintessential new morality of America in the age of mass media. To wit: Shamelessness is our new morality. Inquiring minds have a right to know ... everything. Modern Americans believe deeply they have the right to see everything naked. We want to see everything naked. We are convinced morality is advanced in this way.

"Don't go down without a fight," says the Cheaterville billboard. The fight at Cheaterville, of course, is retributive humiliation. Infidelity is awful. So Cheaterville invites its users to humiliate those who have humiliated them.

I get it. But my question is ... what will you get out of it?

I think the folks on Cheaterville are angry. Understandably. It's a normal human instinct. But, in my office, when betrayed mates share their plans for public retribution, I listen with compassion ... then I do my best to talk them out of it.

Why? Chiefly because bitterness, enmity and revenge bind us intimately to our enemies. To my way of thinking, if your mate has revealed himself or herself to be a treacherous loser, wouldn't your first order of business be to unbind yourself? To jettison said loser? To render them irrelevant?

But, there are other reasons, too. James asked me what I'd do if my mate cheated on me. I told him I'd be devastated. Hurt, then deluged with angry, vengeful fantasies. But here's what I wouldn't do: I wouldn't then drop my pants in public. Not on Jerry Springer. Not on Cheaterville. I think that's a function of self-respect. My motto isn't "Don't take this lying down; fight back." My motto is "Don't take this lying down; live well!"

To which James called me a "tree hugger" and suggested I was touting "Kum Bay Ya" as a salve for the pain of betrayal. He thought I was attacking free speech and during the break removed his shirt to show me the elaborate, full-body Marine tattoo on his back. See, there's James' passion, which I adore. He fought for my American freedoms, including free speech.

But he so misses my point.

I'm not attacking free speech. Nor am I unappreciative of his sacrifices and risks on my behalf. What I have is a question: Exactly how "free" is a people who have earned the right to publish whatever they want about whomever they want when and wherever they want with zero accountability? Because I don't know what's "free" about that. There is no authentic freedom not born of accountability.

Here's another question: Since when is a self-confessed social networking site a "reliable database"? Using Cheaterville to acquire "information" about my mate's fidelity would be like a seventh-grader getting "information" about a peer in a school cafeteria. How would you ever know what's true versus what's gossip versus what's just plain vindictive falsehood?

"It's therapeutic," James says. I say there's a huge difference between something being therapeutic and something being cathartic. I mean, beating your children is cathartic. Therapeutic?

In the new morality of shamelessness, we often confuse prurient exposure with justice; that is, so the culprit "doesn't get away with it." I say that, at the end of the day, an unfaithful mate cannot get away with anything you don't agree to give him or her. Certainly not your self-respect. Only you can decide to parlay your self-respect on a website.

At the break, I tried to be conciliatory, because I really like James, and I'd love to buy him a beer. I told him we agree about Kum Bay Ya.

In hell, you join the damned sitting around a campfire with a nerdy guitar player leading us in Kum Bay Ya for eternity.

Steven Kalas is a behavioral health consultant and counselor at Las Vegas Psychiatry and the author of "Human Matters: Wise and Witty Counsel on Relationships, Parenting, Grief and Doing the Right Thing" (Stephens Press). His columns appear on Sundays. Contact him at 227-4165 or skalas@ reviewjournal.com.