Scandal Without Scrutiny

The long shadow of unaccountable power

David Garrick as Richard III by William Hogarth, c. 1745 (public domain - Google Arts Project)

“Keep no company with those whose position is high but whose morals are low.”
— G.E. Hong, c. 320

Not long ago, scandal was a matter of consequence.

Careers ended. Reputations burned. The disgraced retreated into private silence, perhaps to write memoirs filled with regret and literary apologia, licking their wounds at their country clubs as they waited for less prominent opportunities or board seats.

But in the present age—when a CEO’s dalliance at a Coldplay concert trends for thirty-six hours and the Epstein files remain sealed beneath the bureaucratic equivalent of a shrug—the machinery of shame appears to have rusted into abstraction.