You should be ashamed of yourself.
Shame is the message of the moment.
General Colin Powell wooed voters and wowed pundits with his call for a renewed culture of shame in America. The Return of Shame even made the cover of Newsweek . On the other side are shame's toxic avengers, psychologists and others who point to shame as the first cause of every psychic ill. Tour the self-help section of any major bookstore and you'll be deafened by the silent screams of millions of inner children, all desperately trying to heal the clouds of shame that smother them. Those two warring perspectives came face to face last summer when Powell and novelist Dorothy Allison shared a podium at the annual booksellers' convention in Chicago.