Lack of shame about cheating is a disgrace

I don't really keep up with major league baseball — I'm more of a minor league guy myself (go Warthogs!) — I found this column about Barry Bonds to be especially good.

From Leonard Pitts for the Miami Herald, reprinted in today's Winston-Salem Journal:

Bonds... is hardly unique. He's just the latest manifestation of an ongoing national embarrassment. Meaning the prodigious amount of cheating uncovered in recent years in fields as varied as pop music, education and journalism. To the best of my knowledge, nobody keeps stats on this sort of thing, so maybe people are cheating now with exactly the same frequency they always did, but it sure doesn't feel that way.
In any event, was cheating ever as brazen, as thoroughly rationalized or as high-profile as it is now? I mean, when people were caught in the wrong back in the day, didn't they at least have the decency to be embarrassed?
What a difference a generation makes. Caught lip-synching when she was supposed to have been performing live, the ''singer'' shrugs it off. Caught fabricating when he was supposed to have been reporting, the ''journalist'' writes a book. Caught cutting and pasting the report they were supposed to have written, the ''students'' -- this happened in Piper, Kan., five years ago -- complain to mom and dad, who threaten the teacher.
Now there's this. Caught -- allegedly -- using steroids to enhance his performance, Barry Bonds trots onto the field like nothing's wrong. Just another day at the office. Just another shameless man in a shameless era.