Ben Affleck's Guilty Secret

"Ben Affleck SDCC 2014 (cropped)" by Gage Skidmore - https://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/14783041472/. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

I have never seen a Ben Affleck film.  I only know him as a determined liberal activist.  I also remembered him as the man at the Democratic National Convention a few years back who described the excited crowd around him as "enervated."  Maybe he meant "energized," but, it's of no consequence--just one of those small things you can't forget.

Now there's something new I won't forget, and it's not a small thing.  Affleck appeared on a PBS genealogy program--presumably voluntarily--and had his ancestry traced.  When research uncovered a slave owner in his past, he had that piece of information expunged from the show.  A cover-up, no?

But why would anyone do that?  It makes no sense.  We aren't culpable for the actions of our ancestors.  But now, suddenly, Ben Affleck, PBS, and Sony are guilty of perpetrating a lie.  A lie by omission is still a lie.  And it's that--not ancient secrets over which he had no control--which makes Ben Affleck seem a little deficient in the intelligence department.  As for character?  Well...

These misplaced guilt feelings are a major problem in our society.  It's likely that no one involved will feel guilty about what they've actually done wrong.  Lying, distorting, misrepresenting are OK as long as you don't get caught.

In the 1960s, we were told "If it feels good, do it," "Don't be judgmental," and countless other bromides that allowed impressionable young people to enjoy living dissolute narcissistic lives.

But the society still had a conscience, and all that guilt had to go somewhere.  It seems to have been projected onto the past.  Narcissists could feel like self-righteous humanitarians when they compared their lives to historical lifestyles we now condemn.

Ben Affleck should not have destroyed his credibility by being misguidedly guilt-ridden.