Morals

Jodi Picoult is a familiar name to those of us who race through the Hudson News stores at LAX just before we board a plane. We are smug in our certainty - we know what we're getting when we pluck one of her novels from the pile. Her prose goes down easy, and she fills her stories with characters confronted by moral quandaries and life-changing decisions. That's certainly the case in "The Storyteller," which opens with the narration of Sage Singer, a lonely young baker who befriends a 95-year-old man in her grief support group.

The Indian film "I, Me Aur Main" (Me Myself and I) wastes no time establishing its chiseled rake of a protagonist. A music producer named Ishaan (John Abraham), he's a guy primed for a fall - coddled, arrogant and commitment-phobic toward his beautiful, long-suffering live-in girlfriend, Anushka (Chitrangda Singh). When she finally throws him out, it precipitates a downward spiral that exposes his depthless existence. This being a pop-sheen fantasy of a playboy's comeuppance, though, Ishaan naturally meets gorgeous redemption right away in new neighbor Gauri (Prachi Desai)

The growing friction between Vietnamese LGBT groups hoping to march in Sunday's Tet parade and resistant organizers of the Lunar New Year event has exposed a deeper cultural struggle over gay rights in Orange County's sprawling immigrant community. For three years, LGBT activists have participated in the colorful gathering in Little Saigon, but this year - with the event shifting from city sponsorship to private hands - they have been rebuffed and quietly told to make a "sacrifice" and stay away, members said.

Actor Esai Morales has sold his home in Hollywood Hills West for $1.175 million. The Midcentury-style house, built in 1957, features vaulted wood-beam ceilings, skylights, French doors, two fireplaces, four bedrooms, three bathrooms and 2,479 square feet of living space. A swimming pool sits in the backyard. Morales, 50, played Lt. Tony Rodriguez on "NYPD Blue" (2001-4) and starred with Lou Diamond Phillips in "La Bamba" (1987). More recently he had a recurring role on "Fairly Legal" (2011-12)

Re "Charges unlikely for Mahony," Jan. 23 In response to the question of whether calling the police immediately about child abuse was the right thing to do, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony's answer that involving law enforcement wasn't the way such cases were handled in the 1980s is telling. Mahony, the former archbishop of Los Angeles, appears to accept that the morality of an action or inaction is dependent on the societal framework in which it occurs. This contrasts with the Roman Catholic Church's stance that morality is fixed and independent of current cultural norms.

About a dozen readers have sent their reactions to The Times' front-page story Tuesday reporting that Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, archbishop of Los Angeles from 1985 to 2011, plotted to conceal child molestation by priests from law enforcement. While several of the letters raise legal questions for Mahony, many also call out the former archbishop for his moral failure to protect children. Others blame Roman Catholic Church policy for setting the conditions that led to child sex abuse.

Every time we learn something new about the molestation scandal in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, it becomes more obvious why Cardinal Roger M. Mahony and his minions have fought so tenaciously to keep things under wraps. Not to protect the privacy of victims or the rights of suspected abusers, as the church hierarchy has contended. But to hide the unconscionable deception by church leaders, who repeatedly did more to protect their own image than to help the victims of horrific crimes.

I came to Staples Center on Friday night pretty darn excited, the Lakers coming off two incredible moral victories and Magic Johnson and Jim Buss full of good cheer. Happy days are here again. Or, as Buss put it in a radio interview, "How can you not believe in this team?" Magic had said almost the same thing a few days earlier, pointing to the team's thrilling turnaround in playing "with passion" and holding Houston to 125 points. Then the Lakers almost beat San Antonio, and how cool is that, almost winning?

Are people, by nature, kind or rotten? This question has kept philosophers, theologians, social scientists and writers busy for millenniums. A vote for our basic rottenness comes from scholars such as Steven Pinker of Harvard, who has documented how it is the regulating forces of society, rather than human nature, that have brought a decline in human violence over the centuries. A vote for our basic decency comes, surprisingly, from work by primatologists such as Frans de Waal of Emory University, who have observed that other primates display the basics of altruism, reciprocity, empathy and a sense of justice.

The Angels have traded first baseman Kendrys Morales to the Seattle Mariners for left-hander Jason Vargas, a move that deepens the Angels' rotation and opens up a spot for speedy center fielder Peter Bourjos. Morales, who is one year away from becoming a free agent, spent most of 2012 as the team's designated hitter, batting .273 with 22 home runs and 73 runs batted in. He is projected to make $4.8 million this season, his final year of arbitration. Vargas, 29, who played at Long Beach State with Angels ace Jered Weaver, went 14-11 with a 3.85 earned run average in 33 starts for the Mariners last season, striking out 141 and walking 55 in 217 1/3 innings.