July/August 2001

CRUDE and RUDE
How Low Can We Go?

by Doug Trouten

During the opening moments of this year's Super Bowl, a worldwide television audience heard a player shout, "Let's get some! Let's get some of this mother*%#@er!" It was a shocking moment. But even more shocking was the fact that this public use of the mother of all vulgarities went virtually unnoticed in today's America. We've come a long way, baby. America has become a coarse, crass society. Our movies drip with vulgarity -- a single R-rated film may contain hundreds of profanities and vulgarities at a rate of two or three per minute. Scatological humor has been joined by jokes about cannibalism and vomit.

Television networks routinely air words and images that would have been taboo a generation ago. Series creators who have run out of original ideas attract audiences by "pushing the envelope" -- Hollywood-speak for gratuitous vulgarity and sexual content.

Professional athletes who display "attitude" are rewarded with endorsement contracts. This year saw the debut (and demise) of a new football league that valued attitude over athletic skill, the pro wrestling-inspired XFL. Among other things, the now defunct XFL seemed to stand for "Extremely Foul Language," since on-field microphones often caught players cursing, and even announcers slipped in vulgarities without being bleeped.

Howard Stern rules the radio waves with a program that focuses on lesbians, strippers and deviant sex. And while talk radio may have the potential to offer a forum for civil discussion of vital issues, it's more likely to be presided over by "shock jock" hosts who emphasize put-downs over politics.

Incivility isn't limited to the media. While some may talk about "committing random acts of kindness," the random acts of rudeness are much easier to spot -- particularly on a freeway during rush hour. Casual profanity in public has become so common as to be almost unnoticed.

In the political realm, incivility has become so prevalent that it's been given a special name: "The politics of personal destruction." Confirmation hearings have become battlegrounds in which differences of opinion over social issues can lead to baseless charges of racism, sexual harassment and worse.

A 1996 survey by U.S. News & World Report found that 89 percent of Americans believe incivility is a serious problem. And in a finding that may indicate how difficult this problem will be to solve, only one percent of those surveyed said their own behavior was uncivil.

How We Got Here

What happened? How did we go from Gilligan's Island to Temptation Island? How did we get from Will Rogers to Jerry Springer? There are plenty of theories -- each of which may have some merit.

Growing incivility may be rooted in a fundamental shift in the value we place on human life, says Dr. Frank Wright, executive director of the Center for Christian Statesmanship.

"I think objectively it is true that our society and culture have become more coarse in a number of different aspects," says Wright. "I think one of the roots of incivility today is the view of human life that seems to hold sway in a large part of our culture. When life is disrespected to the point that an unborn baby who's inconvenient can be eliminated, and when an elderly American can be euthanized simply because they're no longer making a meaningful contribution to society, that fosters an idea in our culture, perhaps subliminally, that we don't value others.

"That may be the subtext for why we disrespect one another more today than before," Wright continues. "There's a whole class of criminals who show no visible remorse for their crimes. They have no reason to show it. They don't see the destruction of innocent human life to be something to have remorse over. There's something in the culture related to the value of human life that has led to where we are today."

The media certainly plays a role, argues Dick Rolfe, president of the Dove Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the production and distribution of family-friendly entertainment. "The tolerance we've developed for television programming like Temptation Island is probably symptomatic of our coarsening, along with the tolerance we have as Christians for the blaspheming of the name of God and Jesus Christ, even in PG movies."

In fact, according to a story in Electronic Media, a survey of more than 4,000 adults found that over one-third have seen television programming they considered "personally offensive or morally objectionable."

Donald McCullough, former president of San Francisco Theological Seminary and author of Say Please, Say Thank You: The Respect We Owe One Another (Putnam, 1998), agrees that the media plays a role in the coarsening of American culture. "We have entertainment based on shock value," he says. "The thing about shock is that it's sort of addictive, like a drug, and you need more of it to give the same kind of a hit. XFL football was almost a cultural admission that the NFL is not enough -- we need more violence, more taunting."

Wright adds, "Turn on any nightly news program, and what kind of content gets the most coverage? It's the controversial, the argument, the shouting match. There are whole programs dedicated to it, such as The McLaughlin Group and Crossfire, in which people who are uncivil and disrespectful of basic manners are rewarded. People who attack people are rewarded in spades in the media."

Our consumer culture may be a factor, suggests Dr. Stephen R. Graves, a founding partner of Life@Work Journal. "We live in a more consumptive culture than ever before," he explains. "I love Wal-Mart, and I love Willow Creek [a mega-church in Chicago]. But one of the unintended consequences of the Wal-Mart effect and Willow Creek effect is that the world is beginning to rotate around the consumer. All of a sudden there's a lot of magnetic me-ism. I, the consumer, am the focus of all of life. I think it has had an effect on the way we look at ourselves, our jobs, our churches. If I'm at the center of my world, I'm not a servant. Serving means having the energy and ability to focus on someone else's interest other than my own. If I'm a consumer, I need whatever makes me feel good."

The pace of modern life may also be to blame, notes McCullough. "There are more of us. If you're driving on a country road in Kansas, it's not too difficult to wave courteously to another car, but on a freeway in Chicago or New York or Los Angeles in rush hour, it's much harder to be courteous. There are just more people and that raises the irritation level. We're busier. We live intense lives now, and when we're tired, we're more irritable with the people we love, let alone strangers."

Susan Wales, co-author of Social Graces (Harvest House, 1999), agrees that our increasingly frantic lifestyle contributes to incivility. "There are more women working outside the home, and mothers are not there to teach children things, to remind children of the niceties. We're also such a transient society. When I grew up I lived in the same town as both of my grandmothers and all of my aunts and uncles, and Sunday dinner is where I learned table manners. Family celebrations teach us so much about the art of conversation and taking time to talk."

For many, says Wales, that world is long gone. "We are so busy today that we don't take time out of our lives to do simple kindnesses. Years ago, life was at a much slower pace. There weren't as many cars on the road or as many traffic jams. We took the time to sit down and write thank you notes, and just to do kind things for one another. Now our time is so limited, and we're racing all of the time."

Lowered social expectations play a role, notes Family Life Today radio host, Dennis Rainey. "Things have dramatically gotten worse in the last 10 or 15 years," he insists. "My wife and I have six children, and we feel it's much more difficult today to raise our last three into adulthood than it was to raise our first three to adulthood. There is less cultural support for standards, morality, boundaries at every level, whether it's the movies you go to, the kids that your kids hang out with or dresses kids wear to the prom."

Of course, adds Wright, the roots of incivility go back much further than legal abortion, vulgar TV and busy lifestyles. "I also think from a Christian perspective that incivility is part of the fall of man," he explains. "It's our nature to be self-centered and insensitive to the needs of others. It takes a great deal of training of young people to help them see their obligations to others. Incivility is part of our fallen natures."

Do We Need Civility?

Does it really matter that our society has become a bit coarser? Perhaps civility is overrated. Maybe we're just becoming more honest. What good is civility anyhow?

"Civility has a very valuable purpose in society at large -- especially in political culture," says Wright, whose group works to restore civility to political discourse.

"Civility is the balm that allows us to disagree agreeably. In our system of government, where we have an adversarial approach to government, there is a need for us to be able to disagree agreeably. We need to be able to say why we disagree, but do so agreeably."

Wales suggests that civility is a spiritual virtue. "It's very Christian," she says. "I believe that the social graces truly are the fruits of the spirit -- love, kindness, longsuffering, joy. Jesus told us that he was the light of the world, and that we should be a light in a very dark place. We need to take the time to be kind."

Rainey adds, "The whole concept of respecting authority, others, the law, government -- that's the basis for a civil society where we live peaceably with one another. I assume you're going to stop at a red light, and I will too, because we respect the law, and we respect one another. In this way our freedoms don't encroach on one another. You lose that when you take away respect for our fellow man. You've got to have civility, in private, as well as in public."

Can We Bring It Back?

How do we restore the lost value of civility? Here are some suggestions:

· Provide an example. "Leaders in our culture, whether they like it or not, have an obligation to be role models," says Wright. "The secret to being a leader is that you must lead. You must walk in that way yourself. For those who govern their lives that way, often their civility will go completely unrewarded. You do the right thing and it doesn't seem to do any good. But there are good reasons for doing good things, even when they don't bring immediate outcomes. It shapes our national character."

· Turn to Jesus. "I think we can restore civility to our lives through our spirituality," says Wales. "It's really just simple kindness. I think Jesus calls us to be kind. We get so much grace from our Heavenly Father that I don't think it's asking too much to expect that we would share that grace with others."

· Start small. "I believe that character is formed one small step at a time," says McCullough. "We recover civility not in grand pronouncements, but in our own lives, in everyday acts of civility. Who we are will be shaped by how we treat the bank teller, our spouse, our children -- the everyday encounters that seem small but in fact are not small."

· Practice civility at home. "The family is the birthplace of

civility," says Rainey. "It's the incubator where civility is grown. As the family goes, so goes civilization. Husbands and wives have to relate to one another in a civil way. They have to keep the marriage covenant. Parents need to model civility. I know of more than one Christian home where men speak disrespectfully to their wives. If we don't model it for our children, how else will they catch it?"

· Support civility in the marketplace. "We talk about Hollywood's impact on family values, but I think it's about time family values impacted Hollywood," says Rolfe. "We must draw a line in the sand and declare that there is a point beyond which we will not go. Hollywood isn't reading our mail -- they're watching our feet." 

Evangelical Press Association president Doug Trouten is editor of the Minnesota Christian Chronicle and director of the Evangelical Press News Service.

Eminem: Icon of Vulgarity His crude, obscene, gay-bashing, women-hating, drug-loving lyrics are setting new standards for the next generation. Eminem was born Marshall Bruce Mathers III (hence, Eminem, "M & M"). The son of a 17-year-old mother, abandoned by his father, Mathers endured a violent childhood. He attended five elementary schools in four cities, often enduring severe beatings because he was too small to defend himself. He dropped out of high school after failing (twice) his freshman year. Mathers found a way to express his rage in rap music, to which he was introduced by an uncle who later committed suicide. Eminem and his lyrics are filled with anger and violence, provoking hero worship among his teenage fans, many of whom strive to emulate him in dress, crude behavior and obscene language. Many parents are blissfully unaware that the most raucous cheers at Eminem's concerts, provoked by the filthiest comments and lyrics, are coming from their children. -- Editors

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