John Guiniven, associate professor of communications, wrote a column in the Sunday, Aug. 6 edition of the Greensboro News & Record on the lack of shame in today’s society.
Guiniven asserts that society shrugs off behavior that would have once been deemed unacceptable.
“As a society, we seem to have embraced shamelessness,” Guiniven writes. He compared film star Ingrid Bergman’s out-of-wedlock pregnancy in 1950 with current supermodel Kate Moss, who was photographed snorting cocaine last year. Bergman was forced back to her native Europe because of public outcry in the United States over her pregnancy, and she did not make another Hollywood film for six years.
On the other hand, Moss “checked into rehab and quickly returned to an increased schedule of modeling assignments and endorsements,” Guiniven writes.
Guiniven also writes about the lack of shame exhibited by members of the Duke lacrosse team, embroiled in a scandal over an alleged rape at a team party.
“‘We did nothing wrong,’ was the statement issued over and over by the players and echoed by their lawyers and families,” Guiniven writes. “The judicial system will determine whether a rape occurred—but “Nothing wrong”? Underage drinking, hiring strippers, racial slurs? Something is definitely wrong when that behavior constitutes ‘nothing wrong.'”
Guiniven says that because most people do not want to see themselves in a negative light, they give others a free pass as well. “We not only forgive the person who acted shamefully…we go one giant step further—we decree the behavior itself to be acceptable.”