Posted on 12/21/2009 4:44:23 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Ellen Goodman is morally troubled. The liberal columnist for The Boston Globe surveys the moral landscape and laments "there's no shame in the game."
Goodman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, whose observations are predictably liberal and feminist, but also marked by a keen eye for cultural detail. I still remember a column she wrote almost thirty years ago about an abandoned church being transformed into a condominium.
In "Whatever Happened to Shame?," published in the December 18 edition of the Boston paper, Goodman reports that The New York Post has hired Ashley Dupre, the prostitute at the center of the controversy that brought down former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, as an advice columnist. Goodman does not welcome this news: "I may be a cynic, but somehow I don’t think the Post was motivated by a desire to reform a wayward (call) girl. Dupre’s second act isn’t reformation. It’s confirmation, if we needed it, that there’s no shame in the game."
Ellen Goodman is not a scold. She tells us this, insisting that "Shame on you" is "not a phrase that trips off my lips." But she does see a loss of shame as an ominous moral signal. She referred also to the "scandal of the moment" centering on Tiger Woods and the financial scandals of the last two years.
Her greatest concern is the absence of shame:
If, as anthropologists say, shame comes from a violation of cultural norms, it seems to have found its match in a newer cultural norm: fame. Notoriety isn’t so notorious anymore. If Hester Prynne were around, she wouldn’t be the subject of a novel, she’d be the author of a tell-all memoir with cellphone pictures of a buff Arthur Dimmesdale.
Goodman's reference to The Scarlet Letter will, I fear, be familiar to a decreasing number of Americans each year. The story has less hold on a society that does not fear (or even understand) shame.
The problem with Ellen Goodman's understanding of shame is in her paragraph above. If shame is rooted only in "a violation of cultural norms," then shame disappears as cultural norms change and what was once condemned is now celebrated.
I share Ellen Goodman's concern about the disappearance of shame, but I do not believe that a secular understanding of morality can sustain a stable structure of shame. Cultural norms are changing before our eyes. The shame that matters is the shame that led Adam and Eve to fashion aprons out of fig leaves and hide from God in the Garden. This is shame rooted in the knowledge of sin, not mere cultural norms. It is shame rooted in the knowledge that we have sinned against God, not merely that we have violated a cultural standard.
It is a good sign that Ellen Goodman is concerned about this. I share her concern and appreciate her candor. But my greater concern is that the absence of the category of sin leaves shame floating on an unstable platform of cultural norms.
The crying shame is the absence of the conviction of sin, and that absence is explained by the cultural disappearance of God as moral judge. The formula is simple: No sin, no shame. Just ask America's newest advice columnist.
SHAME ...as in ... You keep ELECTING BWANEY FWANK????
before putting pen to paper... take a look in the mirror.
ML/NJ
I agree about the loss of shame, but I wonder where Ellen was during the Clinton years, Elliot Spitzer, Ted Kennedy and Chris Dodd sandwiching waitresses at DC restaurants after one martini too many (La Brasserie), Barney Frank’s male prostitute ring in his DC apartment, David Letterman, Mayor of DC Marion Barry smoking crack with a woman on video then claiming he was just trying to get into her skirt, so smoking crack with her was really his version of “pay to play”, the list goes on. But Ellen only writes the article because the NY Post, with a historically conservative editorial page hires an ex-call girl. Please, Ellen, spare us all the morality speech, it’s coming a few liberal scandals too late.
From the abstract: In this article, "Remorse" is a new area in social work. Narrator worked as professional remorse officer in Dept. of Human Services (where he didn't get an office, just a desk by the elevator). Remorse followers believe that people who have done bad things should feel sorry for what they did and stop doing it. Narrator cites examples of remorselessness, including criminals as well as your own best friend. City Hall demanded a full-fledged remorse program to be in place in weeks, even days. The program is to be implemented without funding. The narrator's attempts to reform people were largely unsuccessful. Former clients filed a class-action suit against the state demanding restitution, claiming the plan was damaging or inadequately administered. The narrator is demoted to the basement to "assist in the assembly and assessment" of ascertainment files. One day, his supervisor appears in the doorway asking for forgiveness for his unfair treatment. The narrator states he is going to quit. He changes jobs and now is a vice-president at Yakamoto where he has designed a remorse program for assembly-line workers. He is extremely happy and earning a large salary.
The word “sin” is derived from a term in Greek archery meaning “wide of the mark”.
“Ellen Goodman is morally troubled.”
Ellen Goodman is morally bankrupt. Isn’t she the one that was caught plagerizing one of her books or articles? Morality is somewhat relative when liberal scum are involved, eh?
Very well put!
Ellen Goodman, who thinks abortion is just dandy, is lecturing the rest of the world on “shame”?
I do salute Dr. Mohler for his principled stand.
And give a tip of a hat to an M.D. (not a theologian) that authored
a book DECADES ago on the same basic topic:
“Whatever Became of Sin ?”
by Karl Menninger M.D.
“I’m Okay—You’re Okay”
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