The re-writing of cultural history

There's a wonderful little moment in an episode of The Simpsons. Marge is berating Homer for crashing the car yet again. Homer turns round and says:
"But Marge, that was 20 minutes ago! Stop living in the past, Marge!"

In the white heat of all the revelations about Jimmy Savile, many people came forward to say that a lot of the cigar smoking one's behaviour might have been considered to be more or less normal for its time. I am 62 years old, which places me as a young adult during the "golden age" of Savile's abuses of young girls- the 70s. And sure, things were different in those days. There was more innuendo, and pinching and groping too, but not by me, or by the vast majority of the people I asociated with back then- young men who had been educated to respect women as different, but equal human beings, or to put it another way, had been "brought up properly" We knew that sort of thing was wrong in the dark ages of the 70s, not just now.

The commissioner of the metropolitan police was interviewed on the TV last week about an iniquitous practise that had been uncovered in the Met: the discouraging of women from making complaints of rape, in order to massage the figures favourably for the force. Some women were even told they would themselves be prosecuted for perjury if they insisted on taking their cases forward.
The commish deprecated the practises, as well he might, but added that such things were part of the past, when a different culture was operating- yet these events were happening just five years ago.  Is he kidding us? Is he saying that 2008 can now be viewed as part of a kind of less enlightened, medieval culture from which we have now advanced immeasurably?

Last week we also saw a similar argument deployed to explain the alleged actions of Lord Rennard- The "Hey man! That was the past!" justification was dusted off and presented to the public yet again

I find that argument difficult to swallow when it refers to 40 years ago. When it comes to 5 years ago it becomes ridiculous- and dangerous.