Posted on 04/19/2007 5:59:46 AM PDT by CharlesWayneCT
The lost art of civility
"A week of 'I can't believe you just said that'." That's how writer Robyn Disney of the Macon Telegraph described offensive comments muttered by radio host Don Imus about the Rutgers women's basketball team last week after their loss to the Tennessee Volunteers in the NCAA finals.
Imus created a stir on his morning radio/TV show with derogatory banter about the team. He started by saying "That's some rough girls from Rutgers. Man, they got tattoos." He later called the Rutgers women "nappy-headed hos." Critics want Imus fired for his statements. He has been suspended for two weeks, but that may not be the end of his punishment.
Imus says worse things every day on his show. But there was something different about this attack. It wasn't the racial slurs, as offensive as that was. See, Imus generally attacks politicians and public figures, people in the spotlight who are used to the incivility that accompanies being "famous."
But this time, his target was not a controversial national figure, or some publicity hound that might be deserving of a smackdown. Instead, he attacked a team of women who did nothing but excel at their sport, earning the right to represent their school in a championship game. They deserved admiration and respect for their accomplishments. Imus instead insulted them for a cheap laugh.
Vivian Stringer, the Rutgers coach, said it best in a Tuesday news conference. "These young ladies before you are valedictorians, future doctors, musical prodigies … (they) are the best this nation has to offer ... They are young ladies of class, distinction. They are articulate. They are gifted." She called Imus' comments "deplorable, despicable, abominable and unconscionable."
We should not be surprised by his comments. Once we accept personal attacks on public figures, it's a small matter for incivility to spread to any person unfortunate enough to gain the attention of one of these purveyors of insult.
Why should any person be the target of public personal insult? Why for example is it acceptable to trash Britney Spears for her lack of parenting skills? We used to be ashamed to gossip if the object of our uncivil language heard us, but now we are more likely to shout louder to be sure we are heard.
I don't care if Imus is suspended or fired or made to walk the plank. His offense was not against me. His offense was against the dozen or so players on the Rutgers team, and they are the ones who have standing to demand apology, retribution, or compensation.
At the press conference, one player said "all of our accomplishments were lost, our moment was taken away" by the remarks. She shouldn't feel that way. Self-esteem comes from within, and you should not give others power over you by their words. The players know what they accomplished.
But frankly, the harm wasn't just in his words, but in the media coverage that followed. Nobody was asking these women's opinions about anything when they were "just" ball players. But after Imus made his comments, everybody wanted to know how they "felt" about it, giving his words power and demeaning the team's real accomplishments.
That's part of what drives our public incivility -- the attention it brings from the media. We are desensitized to bad-mouthing because it's "news." Nobody cares if someone says something nice, but if someone attacks, that's news.
A columnist recently complained about being subjected to a cell-phone conversation on a plane where the participant loudly used the "f-word." He wondered why a person would feel comfortable shouting such language in a public place, but more so why every other person on the plane seemed resigned to accept it. Maybe it's time we responded to incivility with righteous moral outrage.
We can't stop the incivility unless we act against it. We need to turn off the demeaning shows and write the newspapers and TV stations that we are tired of people saying bad things about others. We need to raise the level of public discourse beyond name-calling and onto substantive issues. We need to call out the perpetrators of incivility in a polite but firm way. We need to reclaim our public space for civility.
Civility and debate has been sadly replaced with the Jerry Springer in your face mentality. Good editorial. Thanks for posting. - OB1
That was well considered and written. ...good job!
I posted your editorial in another web forum last week.
Well written, and timely.
It’s true. It’s sadly true.
And I’ll admit that (on occasion), I’ve been guilty of it.
Not because I’ve called anyone a nappy-headed ho - but because I’ve been brusque with people at times.
I’ve always tried to live my life as “Don’t do to others what you wouldn’t want done to yourself”.
Maybe it’s time that a lot more people start living their lives by that motto.
Public civility, public manners and courtesy.
My 2 cents as to why we can’t have it anymore it is that ti would require people to be something in public that they aren’t, and a whole generation has been raised to value being ‘just who they are.’
“Public civility, public manners and courtesy.”
I’m all for it. but whatever happened to “sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me.”
Somewhere between the time I was growing up in the 50’s and 60’s, the mantra became “words wound.”
We learned, back then, to deal with abuse and insults ourselves, to become inured to them, to fight back, if necessary, or to disregard them completely. WE LEARNED TO DEAL WITH IT.
The free speech right of the one who was doing the insulting was the given, how YOU dealt with it was the variable. Not so anymore.
Now, your fictional ‘right” not to be offended has trumped the right to free speech. Now, apparently, the government has to deal with it for you.
As G. Gordon Liddy has said, “When I was a kid this was a free country...”
Well, thank you very much! I don’t think my columns get reposted very often except by me :-)
When I’m talking to someone being mean, I tell them to grow up and be civil.
When I talk to someone who is complaining about being attacked, I tell them not to let other people have control over their own feelings.
I touched on that only briefly in the column when I noted that the girls should not be letting what Imus said change how they feel about their acheivements.
We have become a people looking for chances to be offended, as well as a people going out of our way at times to offend.
The lead caught my eye, so I read it.
Nice writing.For myself, no discussion of the public discourse is complete without reference to the fact that
In short, journalism which claims to be objective is inherently incivil because sophistry is incivil, and "objective journalism" is pure sophistry.
- the public discourse is dominated by Big Journalism,
- the defining quality of Big Journalism is the solidarity of its members around the conceit that journalism is objective and is the embodiment of the public interest. That implies
- a see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil approach to journalists and others who adhere to the code of the journalist, and
- a see only evil, hear only evil, speak only evil approach to "the man who is actually in the arena" and anyone who promotes "the man in the arena" over "the critic."
BTTT
You said: "...We need to turn off the demeaning shows and write the newspapers and TV stations that we are tired of people saying bad things about others. We need to raise the level of public discourse beyond name-calling and onto substantive issues..."
If you mean as individuals, taking the personal responsibility to turn off and do not patronize those "newspapers and TV stations that we are tired of people saying bad things about others", then I can agree.
If you are suggesting that the government get involved to do it, I would disagree with you.
The whole thing about the "Imus Affair" is that is was NOT initated by a ground swell of private citizens rising up in outrage, it was initiated (in my opinion) by people who have a vested interest in things other than civility in discourse, who whipped up public outrage.
I’m not asking government to be the arbiter of civility here, I’m asking my readers to be responsible for civility by their own actions.
Okay, I am good with that.
Personally, my attitude is that I will be tolerant to a degree and will make multiple attempts to remain on a civil footing in my discourse, but when confronted by incivility that cannot be remedied by logic and persuasion, other means (including reciprocal incivility) may be forthcoming, depending on the situation.
If I can walk away, I will. But if it means I must cede the platform of discourse to an uncivil person or someone with destructive intent in discussing an important issue, I refuse to do so.
It’s hard responding to uncivil people in a civilized manner.
But most of the time it’s not a debate, and it’s simply a matter of choice.
It’s funnny today listening to Rush say he’s not promoting incivility, in the same breath as he calls Senator Harry Reid “Dingy Harry” and regularly says Ted “The Swimmer” Kennedy.
He says I don’t get humor. But I do. I see these are funny, and I laugh. But it’s laughter at the expense of civility.
I would agree with you that it IS often a matter of choice to walk away or engage in uncivil discourse.
However, in our political arena (where walking away is tantamount to surrendering the issue to the other side) I think conservatives HAVE walked away from uncivil discourse, at least our President and other leaders in the Republican party have done so.
In my opinion, they have done this to the detriment of the issues. Rather than getting down and dirty, they have turned their backs and walked away. This has enabled the Left to set the stage and display the “truth” as they see fit.
It simply is much less interesting to the Media when someone says in a rational tone “We had valid and good reasons for acting the way we did at the time we did...” than to hear someone shout out in indignant tones “HE BETRAYED US! HE PLAYED ON OUR FEARS!”
To paraphrase Ann Coulter who is detested by many as being an expert in uncivil discourse, I would say that
“Civility is a one-way rachet for Liberals”
If Fred Thompson gets in the race, I think we’ll see someone who practices the lost art of “biting civility”.
You don’t have to shout “he played on our fears” (which by the way isn’t really an “uncivil” discourse, it is an opinion about the actions of another), in order to forcefully argue for a position.
I chastise people personally from time to time for actions they take — but not for how funny their name sounds, or how ugly or fat they are.
As I like to say from time to time, a really fat person could well have sound policies that we should enact, while if Ted Kennedy looked like Brad Pitt, his ideas would still be moronic.
So where some might say “sounds like Teddy is drunk again”, I might instead say “Ted is incoherent as usual”.
Call me old fashioned, but I long for the days when people were polite to other people and if they weren’t, it was considered altogether appropriate to give them an instant attitude adjustment.
I think we agree for the most part, but I would disagree that the example of what Gore said (and other similar statements made by others) is not really discourse.
I tend to think of discourse rather broadly...for example, we were having discourse with Saddam Hussein, even though we might not have been doing it face to face or even through emissaries.
Everything that enters the public arena through a newspaper, a television interview, a web page and so on is all discourse. Messages are being sent by someone and that message is being received by someone...you and I are having discourse even though we may be at polar sides of the globe, and you might not read this and answer back in less than a month.
I see your point about name calling. That is often passed off as entertainment. But it is nothing new...it was going on in the election of 1800.
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