Has anyone else noticed that the forced resignation of Vanessa Williams has been variously described as a “flap,” a “downfall,” and a “personal tragedy,” but nowhere as —what it would universally have been called twenty years ago—a scandal? The tone of our national response to this story raises the question: What has become of shame? Is there anything that can still make us blush, or have our sensibilities become too coarsened, our capacity to make moral judgments too muddled?
When the story first broke, the buzz of speculation centered not on how it could be that a woman of Vanessa Williams’s dignity could have done what she did, but, instead, on whether or not she would “fight to save her crown.” Well-wishers filled her parents’ Mill wood, New York, home with flowers, telegrams, and letters of encouragement. Outside the hotel where she had scheduled the press conference to announce her decision, supporters carried placards reading, “We love you Vanessa and will always respect you.” Respect? Milton Williams, Vanessa’s father, explained why he wanted his daughter to fight. Giving up the title, he said, “could be seen as an admission of guilt, of having done something that was wrong and distasteful, and we don’t feel she did.” No hint of mortification from Dad. When Miss Williams announced that she would indeed resign, the assembled reporters let out a spontaneous groan of sympathy.
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