Andy Warhol conceived of the now universal concept of 15
minutes of fame, postulating that in the future, everyone would become famous
for 15 minutes. (The Internet has made this prediction much closer to potential
fruition.) But now I believe there is a relatively recent, parallel paradigm,
due to political correctness, where everyone will have 15 minutes of shame, for
apparently everyone now says something that others find offensive, and then an
apology is demanded, and the offender becomes sort of infamous for a brief
period before the speech bullies find another quote to satiate their desire for
outrage and their need to heap scorn upon someone else. And so now, along with,
but even more likely than the 15 minutes of fame Andy Warhol predicted, I
predict that in the near future, everyone will have 15 minutes of shame, where
they will be figuratively pilloried and forced to apologize for something they
have done or said that earned them the wrath of the politically correct
busybodies of the Internet age. And as we can all clearly see, it’s happening already.
