WEST CHESTER (PA)
Daily Local News
July 10, 2018
By Christine Flowers
In this #Metoo era, reputations have been devalued to the point that even if you have one to protect, the avenging angels of society (prosecutors, investigative journalists, tweeting A-List actresses) will run roughshod over it. Now that we’ve decided that pretty much every accusation ever made against a film producer, a CEO of a Fortune 500 company or a Catholic priest must be true, our collective concern for avoiding slanderous accusations against someone who cannot defend themselves has pretty much evaporated.
Raymond J. Donovan, Secretary of Labor under President Reagan once famously said, after he was acquitted of corruption charges, “Which office do I go to, to get my reputation back?” It was a rhetorical question that was once considered legitimate, but that today is mocked. Who cares about the reputation of the wrongly accused if we can advance a political agenda that comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable, right? Who cares if that film producer never laid a hand on that starlet, enough of them did so let’s not worry about the details of a particular case. Why worry about that Fortune 500 CEO since his accuser makes about a tenth in her entire lifetime what he makes in a month? And that Catholic priest? We know he did something, and if he didn’t, so many of them did that it’s a literal sin to obsess over Father Expendable.
I’ve heard a lot about cover-ups these past few weeks, as the Pennsylvania Supreme Court blocked the release of one in a continuing series of grand jury reports that detail alleged abuse in several Catholic dioceses across the Commonwealth. The high court refused to release the report immediately because of a concern that the interests of many people mentioned in that report could not be adequately protected. The interest, obviously, is what Shakespeare called “the eternal part of myself,” a person’s reputation.
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