Richard Edelman, head of the world's largest independent PR firm, blogs while traveling with family in Greece about how the Olympians treated athletes who broke the rules:
In Olympia and in Delphi, we saw large stadiums that were designed to host quadrennial games. During the period of the athletic contest, all warring city-states were to cease hostilities to enable the competitors to reach the games. On the path to the stadium in Olympia stood 16 statues of Zeus, the father of the gods. Inscribed on the base of each statue were the names of athletes who were found to have cheated during the competitions. This sounds like an appropriate punishment for the baseball players who took steroids to enhance performance in the past few years. Or maybe we could do the same on the doors of the New York Stock Exchange for CEOs and CFOs who have violated their fiduciary responsibilities.
I think this is a great idea, but it doesn't go far enough. Etching names on statues would only be obscured by pigeons and graffiti writers in most urban areas. We really need a national Hall of Shame. Let's have the Smithsonian erect a huge hall with the names of the cheaters in sports, business, literature, journalism, legal and financial services who have been detected all listed in one not-so-great hall? We could follow them chronologically, to see how, over time, technology has helped so many of them to deceive on increasingly grander scales. Actually this new building could be erected by some of the building contractors who have cut corners, made bucks and cost lives by using inferior welds on bridges and skimping on support of high rise buildings and earthquake protection.
It could look like ancient Greece in no time.
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