Moral outrage

Late last night I watched the first episode of an excellent new documentary about Vietnam on the History Channel. It was sad. The policy of Search & Destroy, take  no prisoners, is sad and horrific. Early this morning I heard the excellent Mike & Mike radio show go over the Penn State scandal in great detail, including considerable sharing of passionate moral outrage. Justified moral outrage.

But even at the time, even being part of those against the war, I don't remember any visceral gut-wrenching moral outrage about dropping napalm on unarmed peasants. More recently I don't remember visceral gut-wrenching outrage at torturing prisoners. Disagreement, yes, even outrage, but not to the degree being shown now regarding Penn State.

Then is one evil greater than the other? Or in the latter two cases, does the context, War Is Hell, lessen our outrage?

Penn State also brings to mind my 1996 play Who Forgives?, which asks if pedophiles can recover, if we can forgive them (a play that bombed here after opening in Ireland and being a finalist for a drama prize. Same script, different production and most definitely a different audience.)