Barry Gossage / Getty Images file

Charles Barkley owes a Vegas casino $400,000.

The amazing thing is none of them ever learn anything. They see others go down for offenses against common sense and they go right out and do the same thing. How hard is it to pay a debt when you have the cash to do so? How hard is it to tell the truth when you know lying can ruin your life? How hard is it to show a little discretion when you’re out with a woman who’s not your wife?

Apparently, very hard.

It’s not just athletes, either. You can expect a politician every couple of months to be caught in some scandal. You can expect executives to be nailed for sexual harassment. You can expect cops to play kick the crap out of the suspect in front of surveillance cameras they know to be filming them.

And then there are guys like Michael Vick, who apparently thought he could run a dogfighting operation without anyone noticing. Or, for that matter, Bill Belichick, who thought he could spy for years on other teams without getting caught despite knowing that people who were in on the spying were constantly going to other teams.

I don’t know if it’s a sense of entitlement, a sense of privilege or just plain human stupidity. What I do know is that Barkley is proof that there are too  many of us who never learn anything until reality bites us on the nose.

So from now on, I’m through saying that someone's sin should be an example for us all and a warning to impressionable kids. Yeah, it should be an example, but Barkley proves again that it won’t be.

Next week or next month or next year, another smart person will make the same dumb move and a lot of us will ask the same question: “How could he be so dumb?”

There will never be an acceptable answer.

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