ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Thursday, September 16 2010

The too-much-information age
By Colleen Carroll Campbell

I was sitting on a dark plane Friday night, savoring the solitude afforded by one of the few business trips I have taken since my children were born, when I heard him. A slight, bespectacled 20-something with a crew cut and a laptop, he was sharing last weekend's photos with his seatmate and prattling on about his drunken sexual escapades. His voice grew louder the more details he divulged, until finally a good third of the plane's passengers could hear his obscenity-laced description of his latest conquest's idiosyncrasies. I pressed my face closer to my window, hoping the engine's roar would drown out his blather. But I had no such luck and spent the rest of the flight overhearing details of a stranger's sex life that I did not want to know.

Such awkward encounters are increasingly common in public places. I no longer assume that I can hop on a plane, stand in line at a store or plop down in a waiting room without learning far more than I want to learn about the intimate lives of those around me — including details once considered shameful. Whether it is the woman at the bakery bragging loudly to her friend behind the counter that the married man she has been dating finally has abandoned his wife for her, or the one flipping through the clothing rack beside me with cell phone in ear, announcing to everyone within earshot her therapist's diagnosis of what ails her marriage, I find myself and my children increasingly burdened by the confidences of strangers.

Technology surely encourages this too-much-information craze. Cell phones tempt us to broadcast our secrets to the world. Reality television programs make stars out of show-offs most of us would dodge in daily life. Facebook and Twitter allow us to connect with a virtual public while giving us ever-new ways to embarrass ourselves in the process.

Yet the blurred lines between public and private cannot be blamed on new technologies alone. The book industry hopped on this bandwagon years ago when it began publishing reams of cringe-inducing, I-can't-believe-he's-admitting-this memoirs that made earlier tell-all autobiographies look taciturn by comparison.

Political confessions sell particularly well, even those written by proxy. The fastest way to make your name in Beltway circles these days is to work briefly for a famous politician, then write a book denouncing him and all his hitherto private faults. Such a cheap trick once got you labeled disloyal. Now it gets you an interview with Olbermann or O'Reilly.

There is no longer any shame in such enterprises — or if there is, few acknowledge it publicly. The only shame in our confessional culture is found in the failure to disclose. As the pundits clucked during the Tiger Woods soap opera last fall, the problem was not his compulsive philandering but his refusal to dish about it afterward — to divulge the salacious details that would satisfy our curiosity and earn our absolution in return.

Of course, baring your soul — and sins — sometimes backfires. Mark Sanford's admission of an adulterous affair with an Argentine 'soul-mate" last year elicited more groans than cheers for the disgraced South Carolina governor, whose sappy, stream-of-consciousness confession left even reporters wishing he would keep the details to himself.

We may not respect men like Sanford, but we cannot seem to ignore them. Children notice our obsession with celebrity confessions and disregard for discretion and adopt both as their own, using their cell phones for 'sexting" and their Facebook pages as online diaries. Some parents discourage such exhibitionism, but others clearly consider it acceptable. How else to explain the hot new trend for tween and teen birthday parties: Parents hire fake "paparazzi" crews to trail their birthday boys and girls and make them feel like scandal-shrouded stars for a day.

Most psychologists agree that shame does more harm than good for those who internalize it. But shame can play a protective role in our civic life, by alerting us when we are crossing boundaries we should not cross and reminding us that our indiscriminate revelations have consequences that extend beyond ourselves. After decades of glorifying shamelessness as a virtue, perhaps it's time we rediscover the benefits of keeping private things private.

Colleen Carroll Campbell is a St. Louis-based author, former presidential speechwriter and television and radio host of "Faith & Culture" on EWTN. Her website is www.colleen-campbell.com.