Scandals are useful because they focus our attention on problems in ways that no speaker or reformer ever could.

As the means of democracy are increasingly accessible, such as internet, barely scandals could be hidden from the public. Of course the scandals can show us the weak points of our society, nevertheless, we cannot wait for a scandal to make us aware of the issues of our society.

To begin with, political scandals come in handy to reveal the weak-points and loopholes of a society. It acts like an ailment, which after rehabilitation, the body of the society gets familiar with such a disease and would be more defensive toward this sort of disease in the future. Take the scandalous case of Sharam Jazayeri for instance. He surreptitiously took quite heavy loans by the political leverage of some of the Iranian parliament members, while many people were in need of the loans. After such shameful stealing from the public money, the government implemented strict laws in Iran not to see such defacing attitudes from the authorities anymore.

However, we cannot resort to scandals to concentrate our attention on the weak points of a society. First, they may not be genuine. Opportunist groups waiting for a proper time for their intrigues, they disperse scandals which are unsubstantial. Consider the late prime minister of Iran. It is not unfair to say that Mosaddegh was the Gandhi of Iran. He nationalized the revenues of oil rather than being under the sovereignty of Britain. In his time, there were many of gossips about the scandalous connection between him and the United States of America. Such canards were only to weaken the position of the great leader and gave rise to the unfortunate coup d'etat which overthrew him. Hence scandals can distract us from what is really at stake.

Finally, as we saw also the distracting feature of the scandals, they are not comparable to the enlightening endeavors of the great leaders in focusing us on the problems. Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Benjamin Franklin, each of these leaders strove to enlighten their society by their speeches. They ushered in new eras without relying on the scandals as far as they relied on the awareness of the people of their inalienable rights. Hence we cannot recognize scandals as the best source to focus our attention on the problems.

In short, we see that scandals are a double edge sword in focusing us in our problems; they can lead us and they can mislead us in our problems, hence they cannot be as efficient as the enlightening speeches of the effective speakers and leaders.