THE BELL CURVE:

Both the news last weekend that the Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez — baseball’s highest paid player — had come out of the steroid closet, and the actor who won fame as Batman enjoyed a well-publicized out-of-control rant at a cameraman on his movie set hit me as very much in keeping with the growth of a new strata of Americans.

They’ve always been around but their numbers seen to be growing despite the problems they share with us in these troubled times.

Their fuel is power, their style is arrogance and their mantra is contempt for the rules by which the rest of us live. And they are likely to turn up in almost every identifiable segment of our population.

Money buys power, and lots of money buys lots of power. But money isn’t the only route to power. So is ambition, greased along by street smarts and a code of ethics that would make P.T. Barnum look like a saint.

Baseball arrogance is going to be in the news for a while. Barry Bonds’ trial on charges that he lied to a grand jury will be coming up in March.

And Roger Clemens may not be far behind. His body language in denial under media questioning when his name turned up on a list of users was painful to watch.

Both players seemed to be counting on a free ride by idolatrous fans who would supersede the law. Instead, they ended up by turning what would have been a baseball slap on the wrist into a felony.

Similar examples in a variety of settings abound. One classic has just played out in an Orange County courtroom where former Sheriff Mike Carona was found guilty of tampering with a witness.

Although he was acquitted on a handful of other charges by what several jurors said afterward were technicalities, he was exposed in ugly testimony as operating by his own set of rules so flagrantly that he clearly saw himself as above the law.

So did his sidekick, Donald Haidl, whose recorded conversations with Carona made up most of the prosecution’s case.

With this kind of parenting, it is hardly surprising that Haidl’s son and two of his high school pals filmed their rape of an unconscious girl and felt secure enough to circulate the film as entertainment for their friends.

When one of them went to the police, young Haidl and his compatriots were arrested. Bailed out to await trial they should have stayed squeaky clean, but Haidl’s arrogance took him back to his old behavior patterns and helped land him in prison.

This arrogance of power operates on two assumptions: that the ordinary populace is either too stupid or too scared to challenge its owners openly.

And so they get away with it often enough that they keep pushing the envelope until they are confronted.

There is the bank that planned an expensive holiday for its officers shortly after receiving bail-out money and was apparently surprised by the public outrage that led to the cancellation of the party.

There is the withdrawal of several cabinet appointments by President Obama because the appointees hadn’t paid back taxes — especially the case of Tom Daschle, who owed $140,000.

This should have waved an enormous red flag to the people checking him out. If they knew and thought they could run it suggests a high degree of arrogance and lack of connection with the voters who put them in office.

And if they didn’t know, it was incredibly sloppy checking. Either way, it offered an unnecessary diversion to a president with too many crises already on his plate.

Some of this may seem almost like penny ante screw-ups contrasted with champions of arrogance like Richard Nixon’s hit list and Bill Clinton’s sexual encounters with an intern in the hallway outside his office that almost got him impeached.

But what our current run on arrogance lacks in drama it has gained in frequency, particularly under the take-no-prisoners scowl of Vice President Dick Cheney, who managed for eight years to beat off demands from Congress for names conducting public business with him.

Along with this growth of arrogance in our society has come a retreat of humility. The tough guys took over, forming ranks behind Cheney who made it clear that he regards humility as a crawling place for wimps.

And given a world in which suicide bombers are no longer a novelty, he led us — with his president’s enthusiastic support — down a road where the end always justified whatever means were necessary. This is how we are seen by the world.

Humility has no place in that picture because it has been perceived as weakness, a picture Obama hopes to change. The dictionary defines humility as “the quality of being modest or respectful, a modest sense of one’s own significance.” Its antonyms are arrogance, egoism, pretentiousness and self-importance.

One unknown author calls humility “greatness in plain clothes” And John J. McCloy, a Medal of Freedom winner and advisor to presidents in World War II wrote: “Humility leads to strength and not to weakness. It is the highest form of self-respect to admit mistakes and to make amends for them.”

The 104 major league ballplayers who are known to have taken steroids but have not surfaced might want to ponder that statement. Alex Rodriguez was forced out of the closet when his name was leaked.

But for the 104, finding the strength and humility to take that step themselves might well increase their batting averages as much as the steroids they turn down. And it would assuredly add multiple points to their own self-respect.

JOSEPH N. BELL lives in Newport Beach. His column runs Thursdays.