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."
观点:平衡。丑闻的确能在很多社会政治事件上进行提醒,但它也可能在一些事情上,比如隐私,不那么重要,甚至若过分关注会导致失去更重要的东西。
美国安然事件,伊拉克战争
克林顿性丑闻没有使他的支持率下降,因为私生活的错误和政治上的丑闻要分开看待
Are scandals useful in calling our attention to some problems that no speaker or reformer could? I agree that in many cases scandals can serve to call our attention to sociopolitical problems that we might otherwise neglect. On the other hand, scandals aren’t much useful, particularly when they involve private affairs.
On the one hand, scandals can serve to call nation’s attention to the pervasive problems that speaker or reformer couldn’t. The most paradigmatic example occurring recently is the Enron scandal. Before the scandal surfaced, it seemed to be a great and significant company which was the seventh biggest company in the world. At the beginning of the scandal, it would have been tempting to dismiss it as one isolated error happening in the company. But in retrospect the scandal again draw everyone’s attention to whether a company is really successful as it acclaims. The Enron scandal might be called as another Watergate scandal in the area of business.
Let’s pay our attention to the Iraq war, which more or less might be a scandal of Mr. Brush. It created wide comment in the press that one of the reasons resulting to the war seemed to be that Mr. Brush payback to warmongers who gave support when he was presidential candidate. So no public speaker or reformer could focus our attention on the significant company or president unless scandals like these happened. On the other hand, scandals can’t be so useful in some cases, especially when they involve to the private affairs. Yet even a review of the private lives of past Presidents reveals Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson and John Kennedy had extramarital affairs. Thomas Jefferson, many believe, fathered children by one of his slaves. But these scandals didn’t influence their public success. More recently, through the worst of the Monica Lewinsky charges, Mr. Clinton maintained extraordinary high approval ratings for the job he was doing as President. To sum up, I agree that scandals are useful in drawing our attention to some underhanded sociopolitical affairs. However, in other cases, particularly in private affairs, scandals can’t be so significant to influent others. So we should treat the use of scandals case by case. |