0910G【Try Best】第二小组 issue185 by tianshi02

tianshi02UID: 2362794

TOPIC: 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."
WORDS: 660          TIME: 01:40:00          DATE: 2009-7-7 16:49:27

For thousands of years, people's intense desire to watch the scandals has never faded. It might be human nature to pay close attention to the scandals. Contrast  to the opition of the speaker is my heartfelt opinion that even though scandals can arouse people's attention, they might not always useful. Political scandals tend to spur the government to perform better, whereas the scandals of private life, isn't of much use, and maybe detrimental to the society.

As the famous saying goes (and I paraphrase), "failure is the mother of success", this is also true of politics. Political scandals, or wrong-doings of a government, more often than not, have a far-reaching and positive effect in society. In the contemporary world, where freedom of the common people are called for, when a government does something wrong, it is unlikely for it to shirk the duty. The misconduct of a government will provoke voices of its people, which are valuable suggestions on how the society is supposed to advance. More importantly, after the misconduct, the government is under the scrutiny of its entire population or even the world people, making it feel obligatory to remedy the errors. One good example is a scandal of Chinese government - Tiananmen Square protest in 1989, which is in part sparked by the pervasive phenomenon of corruption of ruling class. This event focused the worldwide attention to Chinese government. Under such enormous pressure, in no other time had Beijing endeavored to check the corruption of the government since its establishment. Though unable to eradicate this problem, Beijing has eased the situation, primarily by means of severe punishment of the corrupt officials and politicians regardless of their rank. It was not until this scandal that the government indeed place importance to corruption. It's not presumptuous to say that the scandal had such a powerful impact that no speaker or reformer can ever transcend.

Despite the occational positive effect, scandals may not always be useful. Worse still, it is not unusual that the scandals are detrimental to the society. This is particularly true in the private scandals of celebrities. No one will deny the role of scandals to catch people's attention. People are overwhelmingly interested in the currents of private lives of public figures, such are political leaders, movie stars, sports stars. This is driven by people's mere curiosity. If  one thinks that satisfying the mass public's curiosity is highy beneficial to the society, then scandals can be useful. However, this is untenable in that satisfying people's curiosity may not sound a fundamental goal of society. I see at least three respects of negative effects of scandals. First, the scandals of public figures might serve as models for the common people to emulate. How many men, besides Clinton, are longing for extramarital affairs? I suppose not few. A psychological research has shown that the the sex scandals of celebrities would increase people's desire and courage for a love affair.  Hence, some scandals are probably not good for the harmony or even civilization of a society. Second, the scandals make the stars feel important, and thus drive them to lead a dissolute life, which, in turn, has a bad effect on the atmosphere in society. Observable as a tendency in our society is the increasingly disloyal loves.  The frequent partings of entertainment stars is inseparable from this tendency. Last, the scandals cast shadows on the hearts of celebrities. One example is that after a famous sports star was reported use of drug in his private life, he couldn't stand the public pressure and never rehabilitate to his prime state later. He even  thought of suicide.

All in all, it is an undeniable fact that the scandals call people's attention.
However, whether it is useful or not is to be judged on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes, scandals can create an incomparable effect to make societ advance. There are also many cases demonstrating that the scandals are intrinsically meanless or even harmful.