Colour Me Red in the Face

When I was a little girl (somewhere near the dawn of the Cretaceous Period, according to my three boys), there was an awesome Coca-Cola commercial on t.v.  It had a bunch of good-looking, long-haired twentysomethings on a hillside, sharing bottles of pop, singing “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing”.  Never mind United Nations:  this group looked like a United Colours of Benetton ad.   The whole vibe was typically 70’s.  Everyone shared, everyone smiled and everyone looked high as kites.  Authentic or not, the deal back then (at least, to my tender mind) was that taking care of your neighbor was just as important as taking care of yourself. 

Then the 80’s happened.  Greed was good, according to “Wall Street” and it was every man (or woman) for themselves.  Screw the “we”; what about the “Me”?  Me, me, me.  Like a bunch of Italian tenors warming up at the Met.  I can’t say I cared or knew about this at the time.  No, the 80’s for me was all about surviving high school, finishing university and finding a job (any job) that would pay the bills.  Which I did, to varying degrees of success and the utter surprise of my family.  Busy times. 

The next time I looked up, everything in the media was about what my dad used to refer to with disgust as “The Big ‘I Am’”.  Forget the collective good.  Everyone was out for Number One, and screw the rest of you pigeons.  Bill Clinton got nailed (pardon the pun) with the Monica Lewinsky scandal and what was his response?  Did he hang his head in shame?  Did he turn faintly pink, even?  Nope.  Goodtime Billy came out of the starting gate with all guns blazing, defiant as a middle-aged European tourist in a Speedo, talking about “that woman” and playing footsie with the English language to slime his way out of the situation.  Ew.   

I read a quote from one of the NHL players at the hockey lock-out talks yesterday.  Eric Staal (captain of the Carolina Hurricanes) said “…I feel…embarrassed to be part of this whole situation” (the “situation” being the millionaire players and billionaire owners arguing about money and screwing up the hockey season for the rest of us schmucks).  I’ll tell you, it just about jumped off the page and slapped me in the face, it was so fresh.  Who says things like that nowadays?  Is anyone embarrassed about ANYTHING?   You see it in the news all the time:  people get caught doing unspeakable things, and not only are they not ashamed, they talk about their rights and their need to be understood. 

You know what our society needs right now?  We need a heapin’ helpin’ of good old fashioned shame.  We need people like Eric Staal.  We need people who aren’t saying “I’m sorry, but…”  (Newsflash:  when you follow any apology with “but”, you actually haven’t apologized.)  People who are genuinely embarrassed by their actions and want to make amends.   That’s what I want to see, anyways.  In the midst of the horrific Phoenix Sinclair inquiry (for those of you who don’t know, she’s the little girl whose murder at the hands of her own mother wasn’t discovered by child welfare agencies until well after the fact), it seems like the last thing you’ll ever hear from anyone involved is that they’re ashamed of what they’ve done, or what they omitted to do.  Twenty-six people are shot to death in Newtown (most of them six-year-olds) and the NRA crowd isn’t ashamed of what their right to bear arms has wrought.  No, all they do is talk about putting an armed guard in every school or giving every teacher a gun.  (I wonder what happens when a guard or a teacher shoots a student, accidentally or otherwise?)

I vote for the return of shame, pure and simple.  Take ownership of what you’ve done, apologize sincerely, and make an honest effort to make amends.  It’s what I’ve tried to teach my three sons to do, and they’re only nine and fourteen.  I’d like to think we’re all capable of doing the right thing. 

Whether it’s with a Coke and a smile, or not.