Have we officially become the United Brats of America?
The clamor is rising about the erosion of civility in this country, and sports played its typical role in the debate the past week.
Tennis star Serena Williams' vulgar meltdown at the U.S. Open wedged itself squarely between South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson's boorish bark on the Capital floor and rapper Kanye West's bizarre rudeness at the MTV Video Music Awards. It was a trifecta of epic idiocy embroiling the three most visible branches of modern American culture -- politics, entertainment and sports.
Not that boorishness is anything new, particularly in sports and politics. Ohio State coach Woody Hayes punched a Clemson player 31 years before Oregon tailback LeGarrette Blount did the same to a Boise State opponent two weeks ago. It just seems more crass and amplified these days in the era of the Internet and 24-hour info-tainment channels.
Kim Clijsters' classy success at Flushing Meadows is overshadowed by Williams' behavior. President Obama's eloquent pleas for reasonable debate are drowned out by "shrill" voices screaming at town hall meetings. The on-stage dignity of Taylor Swift and Beyonce Knowles is buried in a rising tide of West's apology press.
Those are the things that make the news clips and go viral on the Web. And we lap it up.
Would the Founding Fathers be more repulsed by Wilson's unprecedented lack of decorum or by the fact that millions of citizens have leaped to his defense and filled his campaign coffers? Would those visionary men -- who despite profound disagreements were able to compromise to build a new nation -- be appalled at the entrenched unwillingness to negotiate and govern and put the universal good ahead of partisan political interests?
There's no telling what prior generations would think of the celebrity culture of athletes and entertainers who think they can get away with whatever behavior they choose.
Personally, I believe that all of these uncivil outbursts reflect a general erosion in decorum. You see it every day on television and its combative pundits. And the worst purveyor of this kind of verbal filth is the online chat forums where any moron with a laptop computer can engage in crass dialogue from the anonymous haven of his own couch. They can hide behind their anonymity the same way Klansmen hid under hoods.
It all seems to be breaking down the filter of civility that used to govern our behavior instincts.
"There isn't any real dialogue going on," said Jerry Bowles, a cofounder of SocialMediaToday.com, who estimates that 20 percent of the people are creating 90 percent of the noise. "It's just people screaming at each other. People say things on the Internet they would never say to their face. You can do so without consequence and there's no accountability."
It's a quick trip from hateful online posts to spewing hateful dialogue in public. We're seeing it from rival ideologies in town hall meetings or from rival fans at sporting events.
We've crossed the line so far that the cliched "kill the umpire" chant of old has been replaced by Williams graphically describing exactly what she'd like to do to the line judge who dared to call her foot faults.
To a degree we've often glorified athletic misbehavior. We laugh at dirt-kicking, base- stealing managerial tirades in baseball. The squeaky-wheel jerks like Terrell Owens and Chad "Ochocinco" Johnson get far more attention than teammates who quietly go about doing their jobs in the NFL.
And I'll admit to a certain wistful regret that the great "characters" of tennis reside in days of yore. John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors and Ilie Nastase take backseats to no one when it came to crossing sportsmanship boundaries. But even their frequent outbursts never reached the point of threatening bodily harm to a line judge (though who knows what Nastase was bellowing in Hungarian).
Maybe the years have left a sugar-coating on their bygone behavior, but even at their brattiest they drew a line closer to more civil disobedience. Nobody today is as clever as Connors was to counter an umpire's warning not to "use that tone" by responding in an operatic melody "the ball was on the line!"
Could be that I'm just old and nostalgic, but there used to be a certain rebellious charm to the heckling and jeering that was professionalized by Duke students at Cameron Indoor Stadium.
If a player committed any sort of transgression on or off the court, he'd better prepare to have it thrown back at him in creative ways by a studied student body prepared to wave underwear, jiggle car keys or toss pizza boxes onto the floor.
Nowadays you can walk into a basketball arena anywhere in the country and hear students shouting unprintable, repulsive and often homophobic insults at those whose only sin is to wear a different uniform or black-and-white striped jersey.
"Not enough mommies are telling their children how to behave these days in public," Bowles said.
And it's not just the hateful discourse that is crass. It's general manners that are all too often missing. If you walked across Georgia's campus the morning after Saturday's football game, you saw and smelled a scene of trash and destruction that is absolutely unacceptable. The university has to hire people to spend hours picking up garbage that people are too lazy to carry off themselves in minutes.
"Five-year-olds understand the concept, why can't 18- to 24-year-olds get it?" wrote Jordan Shoemaker, a junior art history major at Georgia, in a letter to the student newspaper. "It's not that difficult, when you make a mess, clean it up."
Maybe what we need to do is re-establish civility as a part of structured school curriculum. Relying on parents to teach a proper code of conduct clearly isn't enough when we see every day that adults don't know how to act. Age-appropriate manners classes in kindergarten, middle school, high school and college should be required and the lessons enforced.
The only saving grace is that a large majority of people (despite a vocal minority of defenders) recognize that what Wilson, Williams and West all did was uncouth. But recognizing it is a long way from shifting ourselves away from the pervasive ugliness of incivility.
Here's a simple way to start. When you complain about this or any other column in the comments, use your real name. Miss Manners would thank you for the consideration.
Reach Scott Michaux at (706) 823-3219 or scott.michaux@augustachronicle.com.
The Augusta Chronicle ©2010 Morris Communications, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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This is an excellent editorial and I agree wholeheartedly but perhaps this type of behavior has become more prevalent because we are relying on the schools (govt. schools, day cares , etc.) to teach and train our kids. I don't think the majority of parents these days really put that much effort into it. I think this is a direct result of the breakdown of the American family and an increase in socialism.
Excellent article
I misread my own notes and referred to the co-founder of SocialMediaToday.com as Jerry Bowers. His name is Jerry Bowles. I regret the error.
First West is an idiot that was disrespectful. For those of you that watch tennis what was the difference in what Williams did from Mcenroe in destroying a camera and cursing on national tv. He wasn't reprimanded by anyone. We must stop trying to pick an choose our battles.
Great column, Michaux- and I hope everyone takes it to heart and puts it into practice. Thanks for speaking out!
Thank you for expressing what many of us are thinking. Well said.
Reading a sports editorialist who subscribes to, and eloquently expresses, Grantland Rice's theory of sportsmanship is both educational and inspirational. In an era dominated by Lombardi's "Winning is not everything, it's the only thing"-philosophy, we need reminders that "...it's not whether you win or lose that counts, it's how you play the game."
A refreshing read in the Augusta Chronicle.
Michaux can be so eloquent with his written word at times. I enjoy reading his stories most all the time. We are blessed to have a writer of his talent at the AC... I must agree with the comment about mcenroe - he was a brat also who should have been sent to the woodshed. As for Joe Wilson calling Barry Obama a liar - the shoe fits - he is not only a liar but a deceitful character in general. i think about the missile shields coming down in Europe under his command while his friends in the Muslim world are perfecting platforms to launch nuclear weapons. (that they ALREADY HAVE) And they are his friends his history, his actions and coterie of friends VERIFY THAT FACT. Scott please stick to sports writing (which you have such a gift for) and leave the political comments for the rest of your contemporaries (on the national scene) at Pravda ...