Celebrity Sex Allegations - The New 'Moral Panic'

A moral panic is defined in Wikipedia as a feeling of fear spread among a large number of people that some evil threatens the well-being of society. A Dictionary of Sociology defines a moral panic as "the process of arousing social concern over an issue – usually the work of Moral Entrepreneurs and the mass media".

Some past examples of moral panics that have swept the nation are:
The Salem Witch Trials
McCarthyism
The Daycare Sex Abuse Hysteria of the 1980's & 90's
HIV/AIDS Panic
Muslim Terrorism Suspicion

Moral panics are usually spread by mainstream media in order to confuse or distract from larger or more tangible issues.  The tell-tale signs of a moral panic are the lack of solid evidence to back up claims and allegations that arise out of seemingly nowhere yet are highly publicized as a trend. Most moral panics are also political by nature and politicians quickly seek to capitalize on the two-sided morality coin.

Some of the accused in 2017 (clockwise): Al Franken,
George Takei, Mariah Carey, Kevin Spacey

The problem with a moral panic (aside from the fact that the claims made at the height of it are generally false) is that it has a tendency to spread like wildfire to the point where all citizens of the affected nation become retaliatory against & suspicious of each other.

Although there might be some truth to the accusations at first, those same allegations can become warped over time due to our human tendency toward exaggeration, hyperbole and our inability to remember things exactly as they happened. Before long, both the accuser & the accused are caught in a vicious cycle of mutual blame with the general public not trusting either. The aggrieved parties rarely call a truce... especially when the allegations involve sexual misconduct.

As a blogger/journalist, I can't tell you that I know for certain what sex crimes have been perpetrated by the elite celebrity class which includes everyone from Donald Trump to George Takei (political opposites).  But what I can do is share the warning that we could be in the midst of a moral panic.  It seems they happen every 20-40 years like clockwork.

Clockwise: Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Harvey Weinstein
& Bill Cosby have all been accused sex crimes. The crimes
that Mrs. Clinton was accused of were proven false, namely
that she supposedly operated a child sex ring out of a pizza
parlor. See also: PizzaGate

Some things to keep in mind during a potential moral panic:

• Are you making accusations based on rational proof?
• Are you contributing to events that have nothing to do with you?
• Are you making assumptions based on race, gender, sexual orientation, religion or politics?
• How devastating would it be if you were proven wrong?
• Is there another issue going on that you should be paying attention to?

Where Not To Work

Can I just take a moment to say that no matter how broke I am, I will NEVER work for Wal-Mart?

Here's a few of the reasons that I will never shop at or apply for a job at Wal-Mart:

1. Wal-mart security beat a woman to death in China for allegedly stealing merchandise. After ignoring pleas to stop from the woman's family (for 2 hours!) the woman was dead and the reciept for her purchase was found in her pocket. No trial or arrests have been made in connection with the murder.

2. A Wal-mart in Michigan, being too cheap to pay for employees to scan merchandise has taken to making customers scan their own merchandise. Recently, a gay couple who were using a faulty scanner, were accused of stealing a package of Bic lighters. Once the matter was proven to be a fault of the self-scanner and not theft, the couple was still arrested and their adopted special-needs children were locked in a back room at Wal-mart with abusive employees.

3. Despite Wal-Mart security's ability to kill women and abuse gay men's children, they still can't prevent their customers from being raped in the parking lot at their stores in Florida or keep teenagers from shooting people in front of their families in Texas.

4. Wal-Mart does everything just short of waterboarding their employees who try to organize a union. They take their employees into management-run interrogation rooms where they are not allowed to have witnesses from their own employment level and threaten their lives, jobs and families.

5. Former Wal-Mart Spies say that the company has the ability to read the private emails of their employees who are on Gmail or Hotmail. They routinely dress their spies as local "liberal types" and infiltrate unions, city council meetings and anti-walmart activist groups.

6. Wal-Mart customers are internationally known as the most obese, mentally handicapped and classless people in the world.
7. Her affiliation with Wal-Mart is, to this day, a big gaping scar on Sec. Hillary Clinton's resume: