The Demise of A Civil Society
Are there no more polite Americans?
Have we become a nation of Jerry Springer audience members?
When did we become so rude? I know how hard it is on a fat person in America. I'm still surprised how nasty John and Joan Q. Public can be to fat people, and (un)fortunately (depending on your view) so do Health Care Reform town hall attendees. It is amazing, ludicrous, disappointing, mind-blowing and completely distasteful how Americans are behaving at these town halls! One guy gets a piece of his finger bitten off, an official is booed off the stage, freaks in Phoenix (oh joy, something else to add to my "I'm not proud to be a Phoenician" walk of shame) praying for President Obama to die and go to hell, and just today CNN reports a woman in a wheelchair is heckled.
What the heck?
It used to be you could expect to find hecklers at comedy shows or sports games. Or, you could safely heckle anonymously on the Internet. With the recent decision by Blogger to release identities of bloggers, even that's come under fire. "Let us heckle in private!" the public roars. "We have the right to our opinion be it nasty or nice. And we can do it anonymously!" Or, if you're FoxNews, you can heckle 24 hours a day.
Remember when "shock jocks" could cause stirs because of their controversial comments? Now we have shock jocks appearing everywhere! When is it going to end? When someone is beaten to death because s/he voiced their dissenting comments at a town hall?
Given our rate of uncivilized public behaviours, I can see these scenarios in the very near future:
-college professor is heckled during class by students who don't agree w/his manner of teaching, or his selection of textbooks
-pastor or priest is heckled during church services because of their teachings/beliefs
-hecklers disrupt courtrooms due to the judge's rulings
I'm not naive. I know that hecklers have been here since Henry James began his career as an author. It's just that lately it seems to have gotten out of hand. Every time I turn on the TV there's coverage of some street brawl. How soon before we read about these brawls and they become permanent fixtures?
Shaking my head.
posted by Debo Blue | Friday, September 04, 2009
11 Comments:
Boy, I do so agree with you on this, Debo. One lady even wrote on her blog that the heckling, harassment and such at these town hall meetings is nothing more than what the protestors of the 60s and 70s did then pertaining to VietNam, the Civil Rights Movement, etc., etc.
If that person that poorly about those actions during those demonstrations then, do two wrongs now make it right for people to act in such a despicable manner today?
And how about the people who don't want their children to hear President Obama's speech pertaining to education and staying in school? How is that going to turn people to socialisim or communism or whatever else "ism" they think Obama is brainwashing all of us with anyway?
Something is drastically wrong with the attitudes of way too many people these days.
I agree with you - things have gotten completely out of hand. The question is... what will it take to get the pendulum to swing back the other way? It seems like anything and everything is made into an intensely partisan issue. No middle ground is possible, and people have a "take no prisoners" attitude.
yikes, touchy subjects on blogger today, michelle touched on this topic too only looking at the view of people and being racist...
WOW.
Like I posted over to her blog (I don't know what's wrong with people maybe it is just me - on my blog roll) is this:
America is scared and has gotten soft. By being soft the American people are allowing this to happen. It started with politics'. See our elected officials take pay offs (most personal) from special interest groups and then put the tax payers money to a cause. Right? We the people foollow suit and feed these special intrest area's. Welfare is a great area of discussion. We allow them to abuse the system. I would love to heckle someone buying crap food with food stamps. I bite my tongue on a regular basis. We can't afford to buy rib eyes et al. But they can because they are getting (undisclosed money from other sources) to pay for what they need and using the food stamps to pay for what they want.
Basically our government is allowing this. I am working on a blog in regards to something of this nature too.
I have an errand to run, maybe I can post a blog when we get home.
Most of the town hall controversies are media hype. We have a news media that thrives on controversy, and is more than willing to create controversy where none exists - look at the coverage of Obama speaking to the schoolkids. Most of the town hall meetings were peaceful and informative.
wow you're ahead of your time
you posted this before someone had the audacity to shout out "you lie" at the president, in front of congress!!
We are a country divided. Health nuts versus those of us who enjoy our vices, Fat versus skinny, rich versus poor, Hawks versus doves, politics, organics versus conventional, oil versus green, Peta versus meat on the table, and on and on and on.
I have many things that I believe, but people are forgetting that I have the right to believe what I do. Just the same, I have the right to be fat, eat meat or whatever just as long as I don't tread on the rights of others.
People get so convinced in their own minds that they are right they trample over the rights of others to make their point.
I just don't know what happened to civility, decorum and respect in this country. Probably it is because those of us with respect for others and their rights don't speak up and trample the rights of those who shame America and take advantage of the silence.
It is so sad.
Later Y'all.
Write more, please.
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Hello. And Bye.
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