SHAME TV? CITY COUNCIL SHOULD BE ASHAMED

Officials' latest idea for stopping drug abuse and prostitution will shame
family members, not just the law-breaker.

Forget about Big Brother, it's your neighbors who are watching you now.

That's right, Shame TV, the biggest craze since Character Cities to hit the
City Council, is to become a reality. Mayor Pat McCrory has stated that
shame is lacking nowadays. So his plan is to post pictures of johns and
drug buyers on the city's own cable television station, in an effort to
make criminals think twice before they score that bag of heroin or open the
door for that prostitute.

Far be it from me to criticize the City Council, but this is ridiculous.

Does the heroin junkie care that his face has been exposed on what is
basically a public access channel? Of course not. The addict has no shame,
and addiction has no pride. A person who is chemically dependent on a drug
has only one thing on his mind: the drug. The addict's mind is consumed by
the search for the drug, and the use of the drug. What his neighbors or the
person behind the counter in McDonald's thinks of him is of little consequence.

In my idealistic phase (January 1999-September 2000), I thought that the
point of incarceration was rehabilitation. Now, I admit that if you kill 27
people with an ax, you don't deserve to be rehabilitated. But a drug user
is different. He could conceivably come clean, but flashing his face on TV
does nothing to help the rehabilitation process. Getting time on TV will
not make him take the needle out of his arm and go find a good job in the
city. The sun will still rise, and the addiction will be calling.

"But what about the johns?" I can hear you screaming into your paper.

Well, let's assume that the man has a wife and a child. His picture appears
on Shame TV with the scarlet letters JOHN below. This may be a suitable
punishment for him, but where does the punishment end? Does it stop with
just the john? Think of his wife, who has to face her friends in the
supermarket.

Think of the child who has to go to school amid the whispering, "You know
what my mom told me about his dad?" Who are we really punishing? In any
case, Shame TV really lives up to its name. Shame for everyone, not just
the person who did the crime.

Is the concept of Shame TV even ethical? I point to the case of David Cash.
In September 1998, Cash watched his best friend Jeremy Strohmeyer kidnap
and assault 7-year-old Sherrice Iverson in a Las Vegas Casino. Cash did not
participate in the subsequent murder, but he did not report it, and he even
tried to cover his friend's tracks.

Cash is a cold-hearted, evil person, but he could never be charged with a
crime. He was never punished in a court of law for what he did. But the
situation caused the University of Berkeley, where Cash was a student, to
recognize the value of shame. In Cash's case, shame was inflicted on him.
His picture and details of the incident were circulated throughout the
community. He became the target of harassment. He was chased out of a
fraternity party by an angry mob. Cash's attorney said, "Nobody is going to
drive David Cash out of here unless he's carried out on a gurney." It may
just come to that.

The residents of Berkeley apparently saw no difference between justice, and
mob justice. Cash may never be punished in a court, but is that any reason
to string him up from a redwood tree? Somebody may need to double-check my
math, but two wrongs don't make a right.

So there must be an alternative to Shame TV. Perhaps that alternative
should be Rich's Front Porch of Justice. I could stand out on my porch and
shout out the names of people who have annoyed me. Then my neighbors would
realize that it is their civic duty to shame these offenders. A brilliant
solution. It may even have more viewers than Charlotte's cable station.

Targets of the first episode: the Charlotte City Council - the people who
spend an evening debating semantics ("Do you think it should be called
Shame TV? That sounds so negative.") instead of considering the
consequences of such a move.

And therein lies the shame of it all. This whole topic is terrible. There
is a clear difference between shame and being ashamed of someone else.
Shame TV targets the latter.

I leave you with something to ponder: How is Shame TV any different than
the stocks and pillories of Colonial America, which today would surely be
classified as cruel and unusual punishment?

And what if the face on Shame TV were that of your family member? Would you
still think it's a good idea?