O Mr. Darcy! Where art thou?
Yes, the Bennett sisters had it good. The age of chivalrous men and polite women has long since passed, leaving only Jane Austen’s novels to remind us of a time when SUVs didn’t ding smaller cars just because they could, and food was a source of contemplation – not something received through the car window.
Granted, not everyone ran around in flouncy dresses and Dickens was probably closer to the truth, but at least a cell phone never went off piping Britney Spears’ latest in the middle of a funeral.
The fact is, the mothers of the general populace forgot to teach their kids some manners, and those kids have grown into adults who still haven’t figured out that it’s not OK to cough loudly and unceasingly during an orchestra concert.
The most visible incidents of rudeness can be seen on certain TV networks, the most prominent of which is Fox. Fox newscasters don’t let their guests finish a sentence and even CNN has taken to the in-your-face style as if world events are some sort of World Wrestling Entertainment match, which brings up another thing – sports.
Through the commercialization of team sports, fans watch as their teams are openly hostile to one another and cheer this juvenile confrontation. They ring cow bells and wave distracting objects, totally unaware that the game is all the more fun if one respects the challenge of the opposing team. No, instead fans write the opponents off as a force of evil and want all calls to go their way regardless of what is right.
In my one year in Little League, if nothing else, I learned that after the game is over one is supposed to line up and if not shake hands, at least slap hands with each member of the opposing team. Now, the only sport in which teams perform that gesture of common decency is hockey. Not even baseball, the American pastime, asks players to do it. No, at the recent Blaze game, the Blaze all headed off to the dugout leaving the San Jose Giants to shake hands with themselves.
And in golf, any time Tiger Woods hits a ball, some idiot in the crowd yells, “Get in the hole!” This accomplishes nothing except to tick people off. There are rules in golf which state that the crowd must remain absolutely silent while a player prepares to swing. A new one should be established that bans any sort of yelling until the ball comes to a stop.
One could cite any number of rude acts, from the extravagant lighting shows for the home team that contrast with the visiting team’s at the NBA finals to the use of cell phones while driving, a practice that leads to serious accidents. The point is that people have to take it upon themselves to reverse this trend of disregard for others. Once changed, some things will never be the same. Society’s rules will evolve but keep others in mind during the adaptation.