<p>The centenary of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land reminds readers of the rumors that the poem was published as a hoax. While pulling off a hoax takes cleverness, invoking the word to dismiss inconvenient facts is an abdication of responsibility that plagues political culture today.</p>
Shame and guilt seem equally foreign to many politicians and public figures these days. Rather than cover their bad behavior with a veneer of hypocrisy, they revel in it, a classics scholar says.