It is the public scandal that offends; to sin in secret is no sin at all.

– Molière

It would be perfectly understandable if it was discovered that Queen Elizabeth had remained on her knees in prayer for the duration of Prince Harry’s trip to Jamaica. Let’s face it, the island’s reputation isn’t exactly unimpeachable; the possibilities for scandals involving the red-headed royal abounded. (Which red-blooded woman among us – regardless of age – could remain immune to the charms of the rascally grin of that royal bad boy had he been so inclined?)

But, praise the Lord, all went well and I think it’s reasonably safe to say there were no unseemly consorting of any kind; there are, to the best of our knowledge, no island/royal buns in the oven. And Buckingham Palace was able to let out a long, shaky sigh of relief.

What would have happened, though, if there had been an occasion for some scandalous, salacious tête-à-tête? What, then? Much as we love, love, love Olivia Pope, that character Kerry Washington plays on the frothy new ABC political drama, Scandal, not even former George HW Bush administration aide Judy Smith, the real person on whom that character is based, could have helped the Royal Family wriggle out of that hot mess.

But the Queen has long known that scandals involving any member of her family ultimately reflect on her personally. Her image has never quite recovered from the debacle of Princess Diana and Prince Charles’ marriage and the attendant messiness of the divorce. The movie The Queen is a testament to this. Is this fair, though? If Charles and Diana’s marriage was less than perfect, why should she have had to bear the weight of its failure? Especially, especially, when hers has lasted so long?

I know: “regular” folks experience this kind of thing, too. Case in point: A seemingly nice normal suburban couple get launched into the harsh glare of media scrutiny when the husband is accused of a murder-for-hire plot. Suddenly the wife has to pack her belongings and move from out of town because everywhere she goes, everybody’s looking at her and judging her for her husband’s actions.

All throughout high school, the one fear I had was of bringing shame to my family’s name by getting pregnant and becoming a teenage castaway. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t engaging in the activity that could make me get that way – or maybe I fancied I would be the celebrated case study of that one virgin to be impregnated by a mosquito bite or from sitting on a public toilet seat, I don’t know – but I simply couldn’t bear the idea of scandalising my parents. I learnt from their reactions to people who’d had this particular burden fall on them that scandal was a toxic contaminant that affected the offender’s entire family. Why should it, though? Why should my getting pregnant have reflected badly on my parents, who were good people who spent considerable effort inculcating within me their values and morals? Why should they have had to hold their heads down had I become pregnant? I would have been the one led away by my own inchoate desires; not them. The bigger picture would have been the tragedy of becoming pregnant when I was clearly emotionally unready, the tragedy of my life taking an alternate course to the one it was originally meant to take.

In Washington last week, headlines swirled around President Barack Obama’s so-called prostitute scandal. Of course, when one allowed the surge of nervous adrenaline to subside so that one could actually investigate the story without blacking out, one discovered it was really some Secret Service personnel – none of them even part of his detail – who were allegedly involved in a Boys Gone Wild kind of situation, and which came to the fore because one of them haggled with a prostitute over a $50-fee. (I know: a bargain, right? Washington pros wouldn’t get out of bed for that.) How did it become Obama’s prostitute problems, then? There’s no direct connection to him. None whatever. You would have thought, however, that Obama himself was chilling in a South American resort somewhere, sipping on a 40 while smoking ‘dro and checking out the fetching local talent.

Still, there were instant howls of outrage from Republicans. The media pounced like rabid dogs on the story. A recent article in The Daily Beast, titled “Obama’s Sexy Scandals: Secret Service Colombian Hookers, GSA Vegas Trips”, pointed out: “This president is well over three years into his term, and, until this month, the man’s only brush with real scandal (as opposed to fevered conspiracy theories regarding his birth certificate and religion) involved the possible preferential treatment of a solar-cell manufacturer. I’m sorry, but it’s tough to gin up too much outrage over that, even in our outrage-happy political climate.” Elsewhere, there was speculation about the amount of responsibility Obama would have to shoulder in the wake of the story. As if he personally signed off on that stimulus package for agents who bring prostitutes back to their rooms. Where’s the outrage at the guy who tried to stiff a working girl? Isn’t that the real scandal here?

But such is the nature of scandal in this era of a sleaze-addicted media and an even more sleaze-addicted public. And this, I suppose, is to be expected in the rush to gain political points in an election year.

Even in non-election years, as it turns out. Look at the recent brouhaha over the missing green from the backdrop representing the Jamaican flag at the mayoral swearing-in in Montego Bay. With no evidence that the mayor was directly involved in ‘Greengate’, that he took leave of his senses and decide to do some personal landscaping with the colour palette of the Jamaican flag, the Jamaica Labour Party, which lost out ignominiously in not one, but two, polls in the last few months, felt they were perfectly within their rights to politicise the situation and demand his resignation, despite the resignation of the actual guilty party, creating a mini scandal along the way and the added bonus of embarrassing the government.

To what avail?

I’ve found that, very often, scandal isn’t so much about the questionable actions of the offender as it is about the ones on whom the actions are reflected. It’s what the guilty create and project onto others to distract from their own failures and weaknesses.