Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink" contains a discuss of a study done on honesty in children. Essentially, the children were tempted to cheat on tests, then observed. What the researchers found is that there were no honest children, and no dishonest children. There were children who cheated by using the dictionary by not by using crib notes. Children who cheated on time but never by looking up answers. Each child followed a consistent code, but none were truly honest all the time, and none were truly dishonest all the time. Honesty, the researchers concluded, is not a unified trait.

We like unified traits. It's easier to say, "If Clinton would lie about having sex with an intern, he'd lie about things critical to the welfare of the country," than to admit we know nothing, nothing at all, about anyone, until we see that person in a specific set of circumstances.

This article was about Tony, but my favorite morally ambiguous character was Vito. I have a dear friend whose quest to wed his boyfriend was playing out at the same time these episodes aired, which made me that much more sympathetic to Vito. (They are married now, having flown to another country for the ceremony.) Vito was a dear, sweet man, a brave man, a loving father and a guy with a good eye for antiques; and also a lazy fucker who couldn't survive if he had to hold a regular job, someone who would murder a man over a traffic accident. The show refused to take sides, to say that he was one thing or the other. He was all these things, which made him real.

Can you say "contempt of court"? Paris showed up hours late for court dates, mocked the judge, her mom insulted the prosecutor, then bragged about how much money she had spent to get Paris off. The judge's specific instructions were that she serve her entire sentence and that she not be given special treatment or house arrest, and the sheriff defied the sentence. Paris was also given officer's food in prison instead of prisoner's food.

Once again, I'm going to say to the guy going on about staph infections and overcrowding in the jail: Jail conditions will never improve as long as rich, white people think there is no chance that they will ever go to jail. The way to improve publicize bad conditions is to put the people with money and influence in the same jail as everybody else when they break the law. If Mimsy Soccermom gets a staph infection and six weeks of baloney sandwiches when she cheats on her taxes, then Mimsy will mount a campaign to overhaul the jail system. Mimsy doesn't care how badly poor black folks are treated when they get arrested for having a nickel bag in the car, because "those people" might as well live on another planet as far as she's concerned.

Gary's not saying he forgives Tony for being a murderer - at least I don't believe he is. Just that being a murderer doesn't make someone ugly, talk with a harsh accent, mean to his dog. People who are murderers are sometimes lovable. And there's the corollary, which is why, contrary to some of the statements below, I find this a VERY moral show: sometimes people who are lovable are murderers. Human beings are poorly equipped to deal with that. They need to be reminded over and over not to go for the easy answer. Don't overlook that Tony is a murderer. Don't pretend he's not darned cute in those slippers and rewrite history to say that everything he ever did was evil, even the nice things. He's both.

Look, here's a story from real life. When I was in college, my boyfriend and I took a two week camping trip, leaving our pets in the care of our roommate. When we returned, we found that the roommate had met a woman and moved in with her, absconding with the money we left for the utility bill. The power had been cut off. The pets had been left in a boiling hot apartment in Memphis in August for two weeks without food or water. Miracle of miracles, the ferret was still alive, having escaped into a duct to the outside world. The cat was less lucky.

So, a couple of months later, I bumped into the guy at a party. He came up, arms outstretched, and hugged my boyfriend, then turned to hug me. I could see that my boyfriend was totally nonplussed - same charming guy as ever, the warm roommate who was always there to lend an ear, willing to stay up to all hours with someone in crisis. He couldn't be a murderer, could he? Same old guy - we had LOVED HIM - and my boyfriend was treating him like the same old guy, because that's what you do when a friend you love comes up and hugs you.

"You killed my ****ing cat, don't touch me," I said. Which was something of a buzz killer for everyone. Old roommate looked hurt and pouty. Boyfriend looked like someone waking from a trance. The thing is, he was still the same roommate we used to love - everything we loved about him was still the same - same warm demeanor, same willingness to stay up late listening to people in crisis - only now we knew something new about him, that in addition to those things, he was a thief and a killer. And being a thief and a killer trumps being a good listener.

Tony isn't one thing or the other. He's both. It's possible to pass judgment on him for his crimes and see the things that make you love him at the same time.

Well, you ARE the resident expert on what people who drop the name of their Alma Mater are like. Maybe you have some insight for the rest of us?