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.”
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...”
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."
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.
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.