Earlier, I had commented on the potentially dubious practice of "celebrity shame-baiting", how it can bring out the worst or the best in the public, depending on the motivation for practicing it.
To recap, "celebrity shame-baiting" is the process of repeatedly exposing the foibles, follies, and wrongdoings of high-profile individuals, whether actors, politicians, or world leaders. Today's media frenzy has enabled anyone with access to the Internet, by computer or cellphone, to contact, communicate, and excoriate another for any act committed.
If taken to the extreme, the viewing public becomes fixated on vapid foolishness which has little bearing on our daily lives. Rather than informing us or enlightening our conduct, incessant exposure can demean us, stealing our attention away from more important matters and cluttering our focus with things of little worth.
"Celebrity shame-baiting" can bring out the worst in us, making us invasive, vindictive, and petty. Consider the chronic blasting from Perez Hilton, whose needless shameful exposure has ruined lives and contaminated the common conversation.
In one case in history, "celebrity shame-baiting" evoked not just the depressed moral integrity of a community, but the greater instability of a society. Beyond deforming us, constant calumny against public officials of any rank can enslave us to a foreboding outcome.
During the 1640's, England practiced celebrity shame-baiting against the highest ranking official, King Charles the First. He was in a public trial for high treason against the English people.
The shameless pillorying of the Stuart monarch twisted a legitimate desire for broader freedoms into a slanted court destined to put him to death.
The only true dignitary throughout the disgraceful mob-mass trial, Charles the First declared succinctly, if not persuasively, that the tribunal which judged him had no right or reason to be assembled against him. He was their legitimate monarch by divine right. Despite every inquisition posed by the tribunal, King Charles pressed for his inquisitors to explain by what right, by what authority they empowered themselves to question him, to condemn him, to execute him.
His judges, stymied, shamed into confusion before the massive jury assigned to hear the case, pushed ahead with the charges against him, stating that his at-will dissolution of Parliament, his rampant raiding of the public treasure, and his insurrections against the English people during the Civil War all underscored his guilt. Yet the judging authorities never adequately reconciled how they could authoritatively terminate one "divine-right" authority without providing sufficient legal authority of their own. It is critical to establish the basis for attacking a position or a person in order to replace what is being removed with something more stable and substantial.
The trial of King Charles the First, from beginning to end, was celebrity shame-baiting at its height: a captive king in court before disgruntled citizens who used every tirade, evidence, and onslaught to bring him down. Yet at the end of the trial, the jury of English citizens entered a decidedly predictable verdict of guilty upon sentence of death by decapitation.
Notwithstanding the summary judgement against him, King Charles managed, despite his feeble mien and certain doom, to denounce the tribunal and the jury as more despotic, tyrannical, and arbitrary than he.
Even before his execution, King Charles' subtle, passive indictment against the masses exposed the darker despotism which would later oppress the English landscape. Under the Protectorate rule of Puritan Oliver Cromwell, the English would endure moralist martial law, which suspended freedom of speech and the press, and even closed down the theaters and gambling houses. Free speech, which had helped bring down a king, now muzzled the people seeking that freedom. Cromwell even considered exterminating the Irish — in order to provide the Jews a new homeland. Not once did Charles the First ever consider such massive violence.
In the public zeal to bring down a wicked leader, the English gave birth to a greater, more terrifying evil. Small wonder that the English welcomed Charles the First exiled son Charles the Second to resume his place as chief of state in 1660.
When entertainment journalists hound hapless stars behaving badly, the whole thing just reeks of immorality. But irresponsible exposure which attacks the rightful need for authority, weakening our character and cheapening our sensibilities, may give rise not just to chaos, but an order far more oppressive, cruel, and base, one which undermines the very right which we had initially abused.