What we recognize, inevitably, is that we've all become gossips, prying into other people's private lives, sifting through their garbage, peeking in their windows, wallowing in their pain. Fifteen minutes of fame have morphed into 15 minutes of infamy. The sensation of the consumer is the same we feel at a friend's funeral. Someday it will be ours.
When I was a little girl, my best friend was Mrs. Brown, a 65-year-old widow who lived on the corner across the street. Several times a week, I joined Mrs. Brown for lunch. She always ate the same thing: a hamburger patty, a scoop of cottage cheese, two slices of tomato with pepper, and a cup of hot tea with lemon.
One day, Mrs. Brown veered from course and also ate a slice of pecan pie. No sooner had she taken her last bite than her telephone rang. It was Mrs. MacQueen, another widow who lived on the opposite corner: "I saw you eat that piece of pie," she said.
Mrs. Brown and I were both horrified, even though I knew that Mrs. Brown also watched Mrs. MacQueen's every move from her own dining room window. They gossiped incessantly about one another. Heaven forbid, one should have had a night visitor.
Or that either had been a blogger.
In a matter of decades, we have become a nation of Mrs. Browns and Mrs. MacQueens -- nosy little old ladies who can't leave each other alone to eat a piece of pie, or even to fall from grace and suffer sorrow in the privacy of our own hearts. Ruinous humiliation is the coin of this wretched realm.
That's the real scandal, and there may be nothing we can do about it.
In a free society where standards of civility and manners are voluntary, few are signing up.