Notes of Concern…
...Jackson Blair
A Lack of Civility
This is a subject that has concerned me for some time. It has raised an ugly head again with the outburst of a South Carolina Congressman at President Barack Obama during the president’s speech to a joint session of Congress. As you know by now, he loudly said “that is a lie” in response to a statement made by the president.
Earlier, an official at The White House resigned because of the highly emotional and inflammatory remarks he had made, on many occasions and in many settings, over the years. He had signed a petition, which he later said he had not understood, asking for an investigation of the government relative to the planes that flew into the twin towers in New York. That was only one of his actions that raised questions as to his suitability to serve in the executive branch.
Then we were all treated to Serena Williams outburst on the courts of Ashe Stadium during the U.S. Open. Ms. Williams did not appreciate a call made by a line judge so she suggested she might like to stuff a tennis ball down the judge’s throat. Unfortunately for Ms. Williams, earlier in the match she had decided to do some damage to her tennis racket in a fit of anger and had received a warning. So this second offense cost her a chance to move on in the competition.
And finally Kanye West’s outburst at the music awards was witnessed through the medium of television all over the world.
I could probably fill up the paper with stories like these but let us look for a minute at just four incidents. We have an elected member of the U.S. Congress, a respected female athlete, a very successful musician and businessman, and a man appointed as an advisor to the president of the country. And all four behaved like undisciplined children.
The sadness in all of this is that we see it every day. We see it in the way someone speaks to the checkout clerk in the supermarket. We see it on television in the way people interact with one another. We see is in the way adult children treat their elderly parents. We see it when police officers use racial profiles, or teachers tell a student he is “dumb”.
When we go to the movie theater we see it in the vocabulary that defines a “hit” movie. There seems to be a corollary between the number of four letter words used to make the movie, the number of bloody and violent scenes and the number of Academy Awards a film receives.
When we were raising our children, one of the evaluations that occurred in preschool was “plays well with others.” You may remember that.
In America today not many people could get a high mark for “playing well with others.” We have ratcheted up our rhetoric and dumbed down our manners.
We need more civility in our common life.
We need to play better together.
It requires renewed effort from each of us.
