NO SCARLET LETTERS LEFT...??

Remember Hester Prynne forced to wear that "scarlet letter?" Nathaniel Hawthorne's romantic novel in Puritan New England made it clear how society made it clear when someone was clearly a sinner. Not anymore...!

First of all, sin is out of fashion. It's been replaced . Personally, by individual psychoses; societally, by community conditions. Today teaches wrong-doing is mostly a situational matter (depends on where you were and what you were feeling at the time); not an absolute matter (when some fixed moral law like adultery has been violated).

Here in 2010, Hester would have written a book about her tortured marriage, appeared on Oprah, and signed a fat film deal starring Demi Moore (only this time out, Demi would play Hester very differently).

This is not a literary critique of a masterpiece. Rather, a consideration of modernity. Unchained from ancient ignorances and medieval hells, today's modern culture is not only more forgiving, it is more forever. As in the case of the sinners-who-won't-go-away. Ever!

The litany is a long one. Debatable, true, but still very long. We have disgraced governor Eliot Spitzer doing book tours and now a gig on CNN. There is disgraced football QB Michael Vick back throwing passes to the cheers of the crowd. Newt Gingrich was exposed as a serial adulterer, and yet he is everywhere teaching and preaching presidential politics.

This is not to judge. No one has the right to pick up any stones. But it is to take note of how morality is a moving target in any society. Usually if you can wait long enough -- and have your consulting firms properly time your encores -- you can get the capricious spotlight of public approval to spin back your way. Clinton did; Nixon couldn't. David Letterman did; Mel Gibson couldn't. Paris Hilton, well she owns the spotlight!

Morality was once said to have been emblazoned on a pair of tablets. Many years late Ernest Hemingway summed them up differently: "About morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after, and what is immoral is what you feel bad after." Mom and Sister Agnes never read Hemingway. Which means my generation got stuck with a lot of scarlet letters that appear nowhere in today's lexicon.

If I ever get invited, I will be sure to ask Oprah or Doctor Phil or Judge Judy just how I am to feel about this...