Issue185 [Jet小组] 第十七次作业 随机

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题目：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."

Can scandals be useful whether in which area? In my point of view, the answer is absolutely yes. Scandals meet the very nature of human beings thus can easily focus our attention on problems in ways that even great speaker or reformer could not.

The reason is simple and obvious. Such as human nature, we usually tend to interest in other people's privacy or mistakes made by Mr. or Ms. "all right". A case in point is the recent "photo gate" scandal related with Edison Chen, a Hong Kong pop star, and several famous actresses taking thousands of photos on sex lives with him. People are used to see shining faces of these stars on screens or stages, thus will be excited about the unknown private lives of them. Mass media reported this issue for months and debate on whether we should forgive such behavior occurred in this handsome young man on internet has continued day and night. This scandal simply meets the needs of people to seek drawbacks on celebrities which are usually considered to show only bright side to public. Compared with the more important issue, the snow disaster in southern China, this "photo gate" scandal did focus most of our attention in ways that no speaker or reformer ever could.

Another reason has to do with another human nature, jealousy. People are more or less jealous about those who stand under the light and enjoy great popularity. At this case, when any scandals about the celebrity has ever been discovered, could be taken onto board and discussed for months because people enjoy talking about them and criticize them. As a matter of fact, celebrities are human beings who have their own private lives as every normal person. Such as former president of the United States Bill Clinton, who suffered the scandal of having sex with Lewinsky, has been criticize by the public severely. It is easy to understand that every ordinary person will not be judged in this way like Clinton because Clinton stands on the height that everyone could easily see and intend to know more. At such height, every single drawback of a person could be magnified and cause a so-called scandal because of the human nature, they want it.

Notwithstanding scandals have such appealing, they sometimes can work in a negative way that too much attention is drawn towards these personal situation. Scandals, whether in politics, academia, or entertainment industry, are usually derived from personal mistakes. These may cause the public consider about the whole society in similar aspects, but more attention are still put into specific issues on these people that situation behind these superficial scandals are ignored. Go back to the case that Edison Chen’s “photo gate” scandal, aside from the public criticizing Edison, few ever think about undermines inside the entertainment industry.

Besides, too much scandals can also be harmful to society as scandals are usually involved negative respects on any fields in concerned. Such as college professors cheat in their academic researches and “black whistles” on sports field, may give the public an impression that there is little justice is the contemporary society and therefore leading to a chaos that few ever trust the others.

Of course, problems with great significance don't need such way to draw public attention. Such as Martin Luther King, who used to give one of the most significant lecture "I have a dream", has draw attention of every person in the world now and then. Such problems themselves have lasting values, which scandals usually don't have, thus can lead people focus more on these issues.

To sum up, scandals are useful in focusing public attention on problems in their unique ways but sometimes they may cause overreaction on these less important issues compared with those speaker or reformer have done.