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ISSUE185 - "Scandals-whether in politics, academia, or other areas-can be useful. They focus our attention on problems in ways that no speaker or reformer ever could."
Scandals are not the unusual things in our society, the reasons are very complicated. When referring to scandals, people generally think they are full of filthy and base things and can be only detrimental to our society. But in fact, scandals focus our attention on problems in special ways. I agree with the speaker that scandals in various areas can be useful, to some extent. On the other hand, scandals can sometimes distract us from more important social issues.
Apparently, scandals can expose some problems which we may neglect. This function of sandals is usually found in politics areas. The most famous and paradigmatic example is Watergate scandal. This scandal exposed the problems about the underhand tactics used in the political campaigns, which people are easy to neglect because the surface of the campaign is always violent and attracted, it makes people only focus to the surface which are reported by the media but ignore the underhand tactics the politicians may take. This scandal also uncovered that politicians should raise their responsibility and levers of morality. The other example is about Tony Blair, the British Prime Minster, who mistaked and disseminated the mendacious intelligence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and made use of this intelligence as the excuse of attacking Iraq. Although Blair had admit his mistake for the intelligence at last, but the scandal exposed that the system of obtaining intelligence had a great fault which both the political leaders and the public have neglected for a long time.
Moreover, scandals can give us lessons or important revelations. Finding out the problems and flaws in the various respects of our society from the scandals is not enough; the more significant use of sandals is their education function. Take Enron Gate for example, it not only exposures the immoral relationship between the politics and private enterprises, which were showed by the fact that Enron gave the Bush government donations as the baits to strengthen the close relationship with the party in power and then affect it to enact the policies which were propitious to Enron itself, but also tell us a lesson that the private enterprises are also needed to supervise by the society and balancing and controlling the power of market is indispensable.
Though scandals can focus our attention on problems and give us lessons in ways that no speakers or reformer ever could, but they can sometimes distract us from more important things. Clinton's sex sandal, admittedly, called our attention to the issues of federal laws and sparked a debts about the power and duties of legal precedents, but it has make people pay overmuch attention to the public leader’s private life and distract us from more important things such as Kosovo crisis and social-security crisis. Likewise, the popular singer Michael Jackson's sexual harassment case has distracted us from the contributions and achievement of the singer and make most people only be interested in his eccentric behaviors. Scandals' influence of distraction is even more serious than the negative effect they have brought to our society.
In sum, I agree that scandals can serve to focus our attention to the social problems which are easy to neglect and more effective than the speakers and reformers can. Moreover, they bring us crucial lessons and revelations. However, sandals sometimes distract us from more important issues. So whether a scandal can benefit or harm our society should be considered on a case-by-case basis.
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