Shame

In the London school I attended during my teenage years, the most shameful act any student could commit was one that incurred personal punishment by the Headmaster. This befell me only once, when I was still fairly new to the British Education system, after spending my childhood on this side of the Atlantic.

It was just after World War II, and corporal punishment was still permitted in British schools. Minor offenses might earn a “caning” on the hand by the teacher, in front of the class. But my offense was so serious that it got me sent to the Headmaster’s office, where I had to bend over a desk, and he caned me on my buttocks. He then wrote to my parents, and asked them to withdraw me from the School.

And what was my shameful act? On an examination paper I had written that I could not answer one question because the subject had not been properly taught by the teacher. I had not realized the gravity of this misdeed. But my parents had to go humbly to the School, and beg that I be given another chance.

Of course I was – and thereafter, I was always careful to avoid doing anything that might be considered shameful.

But I wasn’t careful enough – in the eyes of the U.S. State Department. After immigrating to the U.S. in 1955, I applied for U.S. Citizenship. The process normally takes five years – but, in my case, it took nine. Why? This was the height of the Cold War, and American officials were paranoid about anything suggestive of Communism or Soviet Russia, or even of “immorality.” I had committed the shameful offense of attending a Communist-inspired “Youth Festival” in Vienna, followed by actually visiting the USSR. And I had done all this accompanied by a woman I wasn’t married to.

While still permitted to live and attend college in the U.S., I was constantly under surveillance by the F.B.I., to whose office I had to periodically report. And I made the terrible mistake of bringing that woman I had travelled with, and with whom I was now living, to testify as a witness to my good character. 

It wasn’t until after I had married someone else that the Bureau relented and allowed my application for citizenship to go forward. Becoming a citizen was important to me because I was training to become a teacher, and most school districts required American citizenship of any applicant for a teaching position.

I’m glad to tell you that, since those days, I have done nothing officially shameful. By the time I got interested in partaking of cannabis, even that activity was no longer being actively sought out and punished as a crime.

And now that having marched in political protests – such as those against the Vietnam War – is hardly an issue, we may be running out of issues to generate shame. Perhaps the most sensitive one concerns illegal crossings of our southern border, and the increasing number of people living among us to whom are applied the shameful label of “Undocumented Aliens.”

This situation may also reflect the diminished number of people who used to make their living by publicly exposing the shameful misdeeds of others. Perhaps some of these professional purveyors of hearsay can still be found online. But their pinnacle (as I remember it) was that of network radio pundits and syndicated newspaper columnists. One such pundit whose voice, once heard, could not be easily forgotten, was Walter Winchell.

If I may share a trivial memory, his broadcasts always started with these somehow thrilling words: (I first heard them when I was about ten years old.)

“Good evening Mr. and Mrs. North and South America, and all the clippers and ships at sea – Let’s go to Press!”

By “clippers,” I think he meant the large planes, designed to be able to land on water, which could carry a number of passengers quite luxuriously, across the Pacific. One was called “The China Clipper.”

And “gossip” reporters like Winchell specialized in publicizing the names of who had been seen with whom – if at least one party was already married to somebody else. Nowadays the offender would have to hold very high public office in order for their behavior to be condemned as truly disgraceful. Such a case was that of President Bill Clinton – but even that was not enough to force him to resign.

My own most relevant epigram was #4561, which says:

Sometimes it’s an honor to be discovered –
Sometimes it’s a disgrace.