The Question of Scandal

For a number of weeks, I've been trying to grasp and understand how the news media grades and invokes "scandal".  Some networks and news organization say X is scandal but Y is not scandal.

If you grow up in Bama....you generally know scandal.  There's roughly ten versions.

1.  The local Baptist minister is caught with three choir ladies....which none of them knew that the other two were involved.

2.  The local water department clerk is finally audited after fifteen years of employment, and is noted to having stolen over $100,000 through the years.  All of the money is gone....primarily due to her gambling habit at the casino over in Mississippi..

3.  The local mayor and city council are discovered to have hired up relatives for various town maintenance jobs....of which none of them ever work more than twenty hours of week for a full-up pay-check.

4.  A city council pair of dimwits rig up a property swap, where some guy gets a $150,000-valued piece of land in exchange for a $10,000-valued piece of land that the city owns.

5.  The local high school agriculture instructor is caught buying state property at some state auction, in the name of the school and then turns around to sell the former state property at the normal price....walking away with $5k in profits in his pocket.

6.  Two deacons from the local church use church funds to travel off to a deacons conference in Plano, Texas.....but later are discovered to have stayed at some fancy resort in Dallas, and pay for strippers with the church credit card.

7. The local doctor is arrested and charged with Medicare fraud for asking for blood tests for every single patient they see.  The extra profits made from this gimmick?  They pay for a Bahamas property they bought and intend to retire to within ten years.

8.  The local bank loan officer is discovered signing loan papers for her lover....over and over and over.

9.  The minister's wife runs off to Oklahoma City with a local farm implement salesman.

10.  The police chief from town is found undressed in his squad car with two Memphis transexual lady-guys who just happened to stop in the middle of Alabama on a warm July evening.

The thing is....most folks know what is scandal and what is not.  A news reporter can pretend he knows better....but it just doesn't work well.  People tend to ask stupid questions....why this happened, where the trail of money went, and how someone fell from the lofty position they held.

Sometimes, you feel sorry for the scandal folks.  You'd like to help them somehow.....maybe send up a prayer, or just look the other way on something.  You'd like for the scandal to just go away, or get fixed by some judge in a hurry.

The fact is.....we pretty much know scandals so well.....because we've seen them so often.  A typical Bama guy will swore that he sees an average of one scandal every ten days.  Sometimes with his neighbor....sometimes with a church member....sometimes with a relative....sometimes with a former school buddy....sometimes even with a hunting partner.  It's life, in a difficult way.  And it's not exactly pretty.

Entertaining?  Well....yeah.  It does beat talking up weather, GM brake pads, bad mowers we've bought at Wal-Mart, loose women we know from the flea market, and swanky gals who shop along side of us at Piggly Wiggly.

The truth is....we enjoy scandal, and probably rank it higher than NCAA football.  Well....up until the bowl games anyway.