What The World Needs Now Is Decency

 

Possibly one of the most underrated scenes in movie history is the courtroom diatribe by Judge Leonard White (played by Morgan Freeman) at the end of the 1990 film Bonfire of the Vanities (which is also underrated). The speech that the judge rails into after he has just ruled in a court case based on case where the film's hero Sherman McCoy (played by Tom Hanks) has just been exonerated after being falsely accused of running over a young black drug dealer,

It was actually his hussy girlfriend who ran him over.

Despite all the evidence clearing McCoy, Judge White is called a racist by the angry mob in his courtroom. In anger he goes on a tirade that contains a whole lot of wisdom and truth that today's world should take to heart:

In case that didn't sink in, here is the text:

Racist? You dare call me racist? Well I say unto you, what does it matter the color of a man's skin if witnesses perjure themselves. If a prosecutor enlists the perjurers. When a district attorney throws a man to the mob for political gain, and men of the cloth, men of God, take the prime cuts? Is that justice?

I don't hear you...

Let me tell you what justice is. Justice is the law, and the law is man's feeble attempt to set down the principles of decency. Decency! And decency is not a deal. It isn't an angle, or a contract, or a hustle! Decency... decency is what your grandmother taught you. It's in your bones! Now you go home. Go home and be decent people. Be decent.

Amen!