We all, I suppose, want our children to grow up to be upstanding, virtuous citizens. Watching the world on television with my children recently, I have been struck with how difficult a challenge this is. No, I am not talking about the crack busts and chemical warfare plants. I'm not talking about the indictments of inside traders or influence peddlars, showing though they do the moral rot in many of our institutions, nor about the gunning down of defenseless children in a California school-yard. My concern is with the messages that are regularly sent to us by respectable and prestigous figures. Start with football. During an important playoff game, play is delayed while a player lies prostrate on the field. There is speculation in NBC Sports Central that the coach may have called for the injury to be feigned --a violation of the game's rules--to give the team a needed break they could not get by legitimate means. The network commentator praises the apparent cleverness of the coach, thereby giving to millions of children in the audience the message: play by the rules when it helps you, break them when that serves your purposes better. This scene helped us better to understand the recent discussion on TV about whether our society should change the way it treats tobacco. The scientist from the tobacco industry tells us that it has not been established that smoking tobacco causes serious damage to people's health. Industry's scientists and other representatives have been saying this for nearly a quarter of a century-- throughout the time that various U.S. Surgeons General have been trying to warn Americans about this greatest cause of preventable illness. It is not clear whether there are any scientists who agree with the industry position, except those who are hired for that very purpose. Yet here they are, appearing again and again as spokesmen for that "point of view." How does one explain to one's children that the great wealth of these corporations guarantees them a prominent place on the public stage, and that their prominence does not obligate them to serve any values but their profits? How does one explain that "scientific truth" is but one more commodity available for hire? It will not do to tell them that everyone knows the truth anyway, so it doesn't matter. For the industry is not so foolish as to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a campaign of persuasion if it did not affect the consumption of their products. This kind of unwavering assumption of "innocent even after proven guilty" comes to mind again in the last days of the Reagan administration. On the news, we hear that the ethics division of the Justice Department has just completed its investigation into the departed Attorney General, Edwin Meese. Mr. Meese, we are told, did indeed violate more than one of the ethical cannons he was obliged to uphold. No surprise. But then comes the tag-line: from the White House, this president --the nation's most admired man-- says that he remains convinced that his friend, Mr. Meese, has done nothing wrong. What would it take to convince him otherwise, if the compendious reports of the special prosecutor and of the Justice Department's own staff do not suffice? And how does one explain to one's children that a president can put loyalty to his friends above the public trust and still remain highly popular, still be seen as a defender of "mainstream values"? Yet another respectable point of view is presented in a discussion of yet another threat to our social fabric. In the wake of the Stockton massacre, the parties debate whether weapons like the semi-automatic AK-47 should be outlawed. The spokesperson for the National Rifle Association says that he would be glad to ban the weapons, if he ever heard of a weapon taking itself out of the box and killing people on its own. But in fact, he says, guns don't kill people, people do. The problem is with criminals, not with weapons, which the people have a right to own. By the logic of the NRA man, it could be argued with equal force that everyone should be entitled to have a howitzer or a Sherman tank. These weapons also do not kill people by themselves. In an age where a nuclear device might be fit into a suitcase (do we have the right to "bear" nuclear arms?) the question clearly is: how much destruction should the criminal and the crazy among us be able to inflict? But the spokesmen of this large and respectable organization can evade this question entirely without ever relinquishing his place at center stage in our national councils. When it comes to teaching my children the virtues our citizenship requires, I am less worried about the dangerous influence of the law-breakers than of those who stand before us to show us how the game is supposed to be played.

Andrew Bard Schmookler is the author of Out of Weakness: Healing the Wounds that Drive us to War (Bantm Books)