Essay

Everyone loves a scandal

By Steve Ford

As soon as I grab hold of the hand loop on the train I look around and try to read the advertisements hanging from the ceiling. Often, posters promoting magazines that focus on the less savory side of the rich and/or famous catch my eye.

Over the past year, I saw a collection of headlines that were impossible to ignore:

"Famous announcer photographed leaving love hotel with married professional athlete;" "Pure-as-the-driven-snow singer-actress-whatever nabbed for narcotics;" "Police find Russian sumo wrestler's lost wallet with little something extra tucked inside — a marijuana cigarette."

A boy band member asks police, "What's wrong with being naked?" as they arrest him drunk as a lord and buck naked in a public park early one morning.

Well, you get the idea. There's nothing like reading about a juicy scandal to pass the time between train stations. But why does everybody get such a thrill from the failings and foibles of others?

Maybe people get a kick out of watching those who are doing well get their comeuppance. In Japan there is a saying: "The nail that sticks out gets hammered down."

It's an idea that is certainly not limited to the Japanese. In some parts of the Commonwealth of Nations like New Zealand, Australia and Canada, we have what is known as "tall poppy syndrome," which means that people who have achieved more than their envious peers need to be cut down to size.

Americans, too, are obsessed with celebrity scandals. While few Americans know the contents of the latest health insurance legislation, or exactly what is going on in Afghanistan, almost everyone in the United States can explain the recent Tiger Woods sex scandal in minute detail.

Personally, I don't get it. Tiger Woods is a billionaire because he can guide a golf ball into a hole better than anybody in the world. I never viewed him as the moral compass of a nation, nor did he ever seem to have sought out that role. So why is it anyone's business what he does in his spare time?

Although I don't get much of a thrill from the everyday run-of-the-mill celebrity scandal, I must confess to a feeling of immense schadenfreude (German for "getting pleasure from the troubles of others") when hypocritical politicians are caught in compromising situations, such as the 2007 arrest of former conservative U.S. Senator Larry Craig on suspicion of lewd behavior in a men's toilet in Minnesota.

Scandals and public reactions are similar throughout the world. It seems that humankind will never tire of discovering that the famous and the powerful are flawed just like the rest of us.

Shukan ST: January 22, 2010

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