Thinking a bit about Toobin and moral luck. Some defenders have pointed to the fact that his exposure was (allegedly) accidental and this is somehow exculpatory or at least makes it worthy of compassion. He was unlucky, so the line goes, so deserves something.

What’s interesting about the concept of moral luck is the fact that have bad luck doesn’t get you out of moral blame (and good luck doesn’t remove your praise). We do generally think that mere matters of chance don’t deserve moral attention but if you look carefully it’s hard!

The classic example of two people, each running a red light (due to inattention) but one hits a kid (who comes out of nowhere) but the other one, fortuitously, doesn’t. We don’t think these actions are morally equal (and certainly not legally equal) and yet it’s the same action!

So even if you can get to masturbating during a work call is no big deal, it doesn’t follow that accidentally exposing yourself masturbating during a work call is no big deal. You may have been morally less lucky than other zooming secret masturbaters, but that’s the point.

Now secretly masturbating during a work call is a big deal (up through extremely big deal). But even if it weren’t, not so secretly doing so can still be a big deal (and is)! The fact that chance is involved doesn’t change that.

And of course defending Toobin in public on shaky grounds isn’t a result of the same sort of moral luck and is a really bad move.