Rude Nation? America ponders loss of public civility

LOS ANGELES - Americans have often had a reputation in much of the world as brash and rude. Now a torrent of expletives, vitriol and name-calling has left many in the US convinced that the old stereotype may be correct after all.

From Congressman’s Joe Wilson’s notorious interruption of a speech by US president Barack Obama with a shout of “You Lie” to tennis superstar Serena Williams’ foul-mouthed threats to a line judge at the US Open, the lack of common civility has many gentler Americans worried about the state of their society.

Their concerns only grew when rapper Kanye West jumped on stage at the MTV Video Music Awards show to protest an award to 19-year-old Taylor Swift.

West, a provocative rapper at the best of times, had been swigging from a bottle of expensive cognac before his rude interruption. Snatching the microphone from the giddy country music singer, he complained that Beyonce should have won the prize, before being booed off the stage, and very soon afterward booted out of the theatre.

He was universally condemned by his showbiz peers - some of whom used language that wasn’t exactly dignified.

“You just keep amazing me with your tactless, asshole ways,” singer Kelly Clarkson wrote in an open letter to West. “It’s absolutely fascinating how much I don’t like you. I like everyone. I even like my asshole ex, that cheated on me, over you.”

Even President Barack Obama chimed in, telling a reporter in an off-the-record conversation that West was a “jackass”.

Even before the latest outbursts, a Gallup survey last month found that increasing numbers of Americans are convinced that the level of political civility is deteriorating. According to Gallup, 34 percent of Americans believe the level of discourse between Republicans and Democrats has deteriorated, up from 25 percent just a month earlier.

Others are hardly losing sleep over the apparent lack of public civility.

Some Obama opponents are printing T-shirts immortalising Wilson’s infamous insult to Obama in Congress, and sending the congressman donations totalling more than $1 million.

That reflects the rising temperature of the political atmosphere in the US, where right-wing opposition to health-care reform has fuelled raucous townhall meetings across the country where anyone daring to contemplate the possibility of a government-run health system is shouted down by dozens of screaming opponents.

Experts point to a variety of reasons for the apparent fall in civil standards, which prompted CBS News to come up with a report on “America The Rude-iful”.

The recession has placed many under heavy stress, while the rise of the internet has fostered confrontational and provocative communications in which people get used to saying things they may never once have dared to utter face-to-face, says Jerry Bowles, founder of the website socialmediatoday.com.

“The web seems to turn most people into adversaries,” he says. “This is particularly true for politics on the web, where the comments tend to run to the extremes. I find it scary.”

Chiming in on the falling standards is P.M. Forni, an academic who studies civility at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

“American society is among the most informal in the world, and often that informality crosses over into incivility,” he says. “Now, you add the informality of the internet to this culture, and all bets are off. It’s an age of total disclosure and total expression, with very little concern for the feelings of others.”

Lizzie Post, whose family is well known in the US as the country’s foremost arbiters of etiquette, does not see the sky falling.

“These three events were bad, but the reactions to them were significant in that people were not impressed,” Post said in USA Today.

She pointed to the actions of Beyonce, who later called Swift back on stage to complete her acceptance speech, as an example that common decency is still alive and well.

“Kanye stole Taylor’s moment, but Beyonce stole it right back,” Post said. “That’s an inspiration for anyone who would let all this bad behaviour get them down.”