issue185[jet]firsthomework

zhxj1985UID: 2353169

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: 478          TIME: 00:50:46          DATE: 2008-3-3 9:09:46

With the convenient sharing of information all over the world, some interesting affairs of notable figures spread quickly, especially scandals. In our daily lives, we will always find articles reporting or discussing these scandals. Obviously we, as readers are interested in reading them. Therefore, scandals could sometimes serve to focus our attention greatly on pervasive social or political problems. However, over-emphasis on these affairs is harmful to a community or society as other important issues might be neglected.

Admittedly, scandals sometimes focus public attention on certain social problems in a short time and hence benefit the whole society. For example, in the political realm, the scandal of defaulting pension by scads of public figures in Japan's political circle caused a great disturbance in Japan in 2004. With further exposure of the scandal, more and more people got involved. The blast wave shocked Japan's political area and led to the downfall of a batch of important personages; in the realm of academia, for sake of the scandal of the "Egg Wave", "Korea's Highest Scientist" Woo-Suk Hwang had to apologize to the public and resign his duty as head of the World Stem Cell Hub. People realized the value of ethics in the development of scientific research till Hwang's commitment; and in other realm, such as the business world, the Enron Corp.'s fraud led the emphasis on accountings and statistics of corporations in the United States. All these scandals in these realms work a significant and lasting benefit to the whole society of our human beings.

On the other hand, undue attention to scandals would debase the authority of an institution or government and overshadow contributions attained by these people and institutions involved in these scandals, hence do harm to the society. For example, Clinton sex scandal would almost cover the entire eight-year administration as the President of the United States, which actually should not be effected. Besides, over-emphasis on some scandals would cost a lot to a nation and distract public attention from perhaps more pressing problems. For instance, Clinton sex scandal cost approximately 70 million dollars and every new development during the scandal became front-page news all over the United States. What a great deal of enduring matters in America could be settled with such amount of money and attention! What's worse, some scandals would be produced deliberately in order to cater for some people's taste in entertainment area if the public place too much attention on meaningless scandals, which is a waste of money and even infringement of privacy.

In sum, scandals sometimes serve to reveal social problems and focus public attention on these problems, which do benefit our society. However, undue attention to scandals might waste a lot of time and money and hence do harm to the society. Therefore, we should find a balance on the extent to which we should place our attention on these scandals.