More food for thought on Raytheon's Cheese

The Boston Globe’s Brian McGrory is spot on when he said Raytheon’s CEO used a ‘mere five words to tell two big lies’ see Executive Privilege.

Membership has its privileges, eh Brian?

Of all the coverage of Swanson’s obvious and sleezy attempts to downplay his plagiarism, (even in the wake of Harvard’s Viswanathan’s crucifixion and the million little lies of another famous flame-out) only McGrory has the stones to put it into proper perspective, in my opinion. Only McGrory calls Swanson out as the fraud he is.

While others' coverage merely notes Raytheon is "one of the Pentagon's top suppliers", McGrory alone asks why we should still be buying missiles from a company whose leader is so obviously ready to dismiss his own plagiarism in a book espousing rules for living. Remember the old mafia saw: "the fish stinks from the head."

Swanson was forced to admit he should have credited the author of a 1944 book (he had to: over half of the aphorisms in Swanson's 2004 booklet are similar or identical to the adages published by King! ) but he still dismisses his plagiarism with a cavalier joke about 'original thought.'

Still, when the likes of Jack Welch and Warren Buffet, laud the fraud rather than call him out, can we really expect Swanson to feel any external pressure to even fake contrition?

He clearly has no true internal compass, but we might have hoped for a nod toward the values he's just espoused in a book whose ink is barely dry.