The eclipse of shame

Barbara Walters , icon of TV journalism, has published an autobiography in which she boasts about all of her promiscuous and adulterous relationships. There was a time–in fact, it was Barbara Walters’ generation!–in which people, especially women, were ashamed of their sexual transgressions and didn’t want them to come out in the open. Now, they dish about them on talk shows, with no sense of losing respectability. This shift is culturally significant: it isn’t a matter of violating norms anymore. There are no norms to violate.