Whatever Happened To Shame?
Shame is now an oldfashioned word. What used to send people into hiding is often a cause for celebration these days. It’s hard to believe but a generation ago, a girl got pregnant before she got married and the whisper mills began churning. However, yesterday’s “illegitimates” are today’s “love children.”
Becoming a parent without bothering about marriage is virtually in vogue, especially among celebrities. But standards have changed so dramatically that some bridal shops are even hawking gowns for “burgeoning” brides. It’s not unheard of for a couple to marry, each for the first time, and have their children from other relationships serving as flower girls and ring bearers.
To gain fame and fortune in America these days requires little more than a spot of gall or an ounce of nerve.
People who once would have been shamed into obscurity are now filling space on prime-time TV. Daytime television is crowded with women who boldly speak of having affairs with their daughter’s boyfriends. Sixtyish sexpots in shameless search of 25-year-old boyfriends are hardly unusual. Everything goes today. Nobody speaks of shame anymore.
I saw a father on TV last year who was the parent of his daughter’s four children. Everybody in the family talked quite openly - and lovingly - about the arrangement, including the man’s dutiful wife.
I had never heard of Hugh Grant before he was pinched near Hollywood’s Sunset Strip while using his car to do tricks most often associated with cheap motel rooms.
Did Grant slip off into oblivion after his notorious faux pas? Of course not. He soon appeared in the date books of Jay Leno and David Letterman, two gentlemen of the evening. He’s been using the medium of TV to “apologize” for his mistake and to promote his latest movie.
Making almost as big a splash is his prostitute friend “Divine Brown.”
She’s all smiles, these days, and with good reason. Brown was reportedly paid $150,000 by the British press for some of the telling details of her time with Grant. And she recently picked up some walking around money - $30,000 - for touting a line of clothing for a Brazilian lingerie manufacturer. She’s doing radio, too. She recently made an ad for a Los Angeles soft-rock station, KXEZ-FM, Easy 100.3. The ad begins with a bulletin about Grant’s arrest, then immediately cuts to Brown, who tells the listening audience that the station is perfect to listen to while “on the job.”
During the commercial, a male voice says: “Famous British actors know. Hard-working people in the Southland know. And now the whole world knows. Tell ‘em, Divine.”
Brown purrs flirtatiously: “Easy 100.3 is the perfect radio station to listen to while you work.”
But she’s now so busy with commercial ventures, she no longer has time to work the strip.
The third leg of the Grant-Brown triad is Grant’s girlfriend, Liz Hurley, who insists that marriage to Grant, with whom she has lived for nearly nine years, is definitely out of the question. Reporters had some questions of their own for her when they learned about some nude photos of the Estee Lauder glamour girl shot early in her career.
No question about it: Society has changed. Nothing that can be exploited for its shock value is left unexposed. At the top of the list are intimate personal relationships. The media rarely pause in parading personal gossip about celebrities (or less) before an insatiable public.
Even Michael Jackson’s genitalia have become fair game to a scandal-hungry media vying for evermore details concerning accusations that Jackson sexually exploited at least one of his young male playmates.
One of the most sensational murder trials in the annals of American jurisprudence has attracted the world’s attention for more than a year. The O.J. television ratings have surpassed nearly every other event on television.
Privacy, modesty, disgrace and morality are nearly gone from our language. What is left is our obsession with our own individual self-esteem. By today’s standards, shame and guilt are for sissies and saps. We live in a “feel-good” world. If it feels good, do it - and don’t feel guilty about it. Just run to television and the tabloids, where you’ll gain fame and be welcomed with open arms.
xxxx