The Unethicist: You're Going to Learn About Loss
"The Ethicist" is Randy Cohen's long-running advice column in the New York Times. Each week, Worker #3116's "The Unethicist" will answer the same questions as "The Ethicist," with obvious differences.
I am an attorney. While a potential client and I were preparing her will, she asked how it would be affected if she committed suicide. A little flustered, I asked if she was seriously considering suicide. She said no, but did she mean it? I don't want to ignore a cry for help, but is it appropriate to try to be her social worker — she does see a psychiatrist — especially considering the rules governing attorney-client confidentiality? What should I do? J.S., Oak Park, ILL.
Oh man, have you heard this one?:
Q: What do peroxide blondeslawyers and black men have in common?
A: They both have black roots.
I don't really get it, but it's racist! Just like Oak Park! But Worker, you will probably say, Oak Park has its own Diversity Assurance Program to foster racial sensitivity and promote a fully integrated and therefore culturally vibrant neighborhood. Yes, that's right! Because racists need civic institutions to tell them not to be so mean to the coloreds!
But on to your other problem: murder by apathy. The solution has the simplicity of a shotgun blast to the face: write yourself into the will for A LOT of money. That way, when she drops a couple of Seconal and feeds the garden hose from the tail pipe into the LeSabre window while listening to "Bridge Over Troubled Water," her death won't be in vain. You can donate a portion of your windfall to suicide prevention programs. The rest you can just spend on artisanal Portuguese balsamic vinegar and Thai sex tourism, or whatever it is diversity-minded lawyers from Oak Park spend their money on. Buy your Mexican housekeeper a nice watch so she starts showing up on time.
In any case, you should sleep easy on your 400 thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets, knowing you always put the well-being of your client first and foremost. I bet you didn't even overbill her for writing this letter!
This past summer I sublet my apartment in Washington to a college student who was interning for the government. We had a dispute about the rent, and she wrote me an anti-Semitic e-mail message, calling me a "dirty, cheap Jew." While she didn't send it from her work e-mail, she most likely wrote it on her office computer. Should I inform her employer? Does the situation change because it was a government office? L.W., New York
Can we please stop dancing around the question. ARE you a dirty, cheap Jew? Obviously the solution to your problem is dependent on the answer.
Anyway, if you ARE a dirty, cheap Jew: fucking write her into a sitcom, or put her picture on the front page of the country's major newspapers. We do not control the world's media so that we can pussyfoot around and whine to other Jews in advice columns. Use your connections in the underground Jew banking cabal to empty her accounts. You have an apartment in Washington DC, and are writing from New York, and you're going to tell me that you don't have any connection to the War on Christmas? THIS DECEMBER, THAT BITCH IS GOING TO LEARN ABOUT THE SECULARIZATION OF HOLIDAY MARKETING CAMPAIGNS IN A WAY SHE NEVER IMAGINED POSSIBLE.
If you are NOT a dirty, cheap Jew: find one. Preferably with horns.
