By Frances Andrews
'Man is the only animal that blushes, or needs to," wrote Mark Twain some years ago, but how true is that any more? Remember the childhood, "Shame, shame, double shame, everybody knows your name?" Today, that means you're famous.
It doesn't really matter how you acquired your fame. You may have given $100 bills to the homeless or bilked people out of their life's savings. Both deeds will get you into the papers and on the afternoon television talk shows.
In the 1990s, it is hard to be dishonored. All the old skeletons that filled our closets--the disgraces, the humiliations, the scandals, the coverups, the denials--are gone. They have ben mercilessly examined on the talk shows, nourished on the soaps and either forgiven or forgotten.
Sex was the number one shame-provoker. Under its voluminous skirts, much went on that was shocking and censurable. Today, it is the number-one topic: sex with younger people, sex with older people, sex with relatives; multiple sex, homosexual sex, communal sex; sex in the priesthood, sex in the schools, sex in the White House. We are left with no shame and little shock.
Living with someone without benefit of clergy is now accepted as "a relationship." Live-in, long-term, committed, uncommitted, open, gay, bisexual; such pairings seek legal protection and find acceptance, not shame.
Adultery? At one time this would have ended a presidential campaign, but recent history has demonstrated that this is no longer the case. Gossip columnists try to titillate their readers with spicy new gems, but no one really cares very much who is sleeping with whom.
Our secretary of sex, the impudent and salacious Dr. Ruth Westheimer, endlessly tells us how much fun sex is and to "go for it." Teenage pregnancy, the one nightmare of parents, is so common now that it raises few eyebrows and can even receive public subsidy. There are greeting cards and rules of etiquette for baby showers held for unmarried mommies.
Teenage boys need not rely on National Geographic for their female anatomy lessons. Macy's and Sears routinely run ads for bras, panties, provocative lingerie--even thong bikinis--in daily newspapers. Companies use pre-pubescent children in sexually provocative poses without any shame to promote shampoos, cosmetics, talcums. Hints of sexual desire emanate from young boys in Levi's as they bulge out of their cotton denims.
Our daily language bears no shame, despite its increasing use of vulgarity. We hear trash talk from shock jocks on the radio and from lyrics in our music. My friend's six-year-old daughter was singing to her dolls using lyrics she had just heard on the radio describing "the perfect orgasm."
Belief in the occult is not secreted, even in the Oval Office. Nancy Reagan had horoscopes done for her husband in preparation for policy-making. Books about channeling and previous lives are bestsellers.
Addiction is a badge of honor for many rather than a curse, and chic among the Hollywood community. You aren't anyone unless you are recovering from alcohol or drugs. Graduation from the Betty Ford Center is a degree to covet.
Generation X might be surprised to know that debt was something to be ashamed of only a few decades ago. Today, it is a necessity for survival. Our system demands credit cards to function, and credit cards demand debt in order to get credit. Bankruptcy no longer carries the severe consequences of old. One can reestablish credit within a very short period of time.
Gambling, once a moral weakness, is now in the hands of big business and is considered both an amusement and a community service. Lottery tickets support schools and government. Offices routinely engage in football or baseball pools. Las Vegas or Atlantic City are popular vacation spots; Indian tribes rely on casinos as a means of support.
Fraud, theft or influence-peddling are all being done on a grand scale by some of the highest officials in the land. White-collar crime abounds and commonly goes unpunished. To cheat on your income tax is smart, to steal office supplies from your employer justified; to influence-peddle is just "part of the game." Even embezzlement is punished by time in a country-club prison, with grand facilities and generous freedoms. It's a good place to write the book before the lecture tour. Private phones, tennis courts, wide-screen TV, conjugal rights, fully equipped gyms. Not too much shame attached to that jail term.
We certainly have much of which to be ashamed: the homeless, our poorly-educated children, crime, illiteracy, teenage suicide, "latchkey kids and deadbeat dads" and racism, just for starters. We are one of the richest countries on Earth but one of the most violent. We are among the top 10 in murder, gun ownership, child abduction, divorce and prisons. Drug and alcohol abuse is on the rise again.
All throughout history, shame has been used as a tool by those in authority to control would-be sinners. It is still a mighty force. Look at its effect on smoking. Garrison Keillor says, "A person who pulls out a cigarette and lights it in a room full of people might just as well spit on the floor or start munching on a dead rat. . ." Thus smoking has been relegated to the closet. We could do it to drugs or crime or any other behavior we chose to deem unacceptable. We could restore self-discipline and character to our society by tapping into the community's conscience, uniformly raising our accusatory finger and saying: "Shame on you."
Frances Andrews is a freelance writer.
OUR TOWN
Bob Aldrich, whose "Our Town" column regularly appears in this space, is recuperating from surgery for a detached retina. His column will return soon.
This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, May 22, 1996.
©1996 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved