Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Casual Cruelty

From George Will:

Last week, there was nationwide merriment at the expense of an 18-year-old participant in a South Carolina beauty pageant. Asked a question about why many Americans might lack elementary knowledge about the world, she got lost in syntactical tangles and spoke nonsense. Although there was not a shred of news value in it, Fox News and CNN played the tape of her mortification, and by last Friday YouTube's presentation of it had generated more than 10 million hits. The casual cruelty of publicizing her discomfort, and the widespread entertainment pleasure derived from it, is evidence that standards of decency are evolving in the wrong direction.

I have long had similar thoughts about those who abuse college age athletes over decisions made in the heat of battle.

Hat Tip: Paul Mirengoff, who objected to another portion of the column

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