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INCLINE VILLAGE, Nev. — In my mind, it all started with John McEnroe. McEnroe's daycare tantrums on center court launched this country's behavioral avalanche. “You're PATHETIC!”
Young tennis protégés saw McEnroe's churlish behavior replayed on ESPN and naturally assumed such behavior was a way to make the sports highlights.
Keeping the ball on the court a moment longer, Serena Williams surpassed McEnroe last week by telling an official at the U.S. Open that she (Serena) should, “…shove this (expletive) ball down your (expletive) throat!” Check YouTube if you don't believe me …
In Bill Tilden's day there were no words spoken on the tennis court — the winner merely jumped the net to congratulate the loser on his good play.
America's standards of behavior have been in decline since 1776, but the latest big plunge occurred during President Barack Obama's recent address to both houses of congress. Here is a venue where decorum should reign, and did reign until a legislator interrupted the president by shouting, “You lie!”
That legislator's wife asked him when he got home, “Who's the nut that hollered out, ‘You lie!'” Imagine her surprise when he confessed it was Joe Wilson — her husband. I can only guess what he got for dinner that night — hot tongue and cold shoulder.
Joe broke the congressional custom of liberal comity, and custom always trumps rules.
Mark Twain tells us, “discriminating irreverence is the protector of human liberty.” I imagine Twain intended “discriminating” to be the operative word.
Personally, I feel sorry for Joe. As designated class clown in grade school I was sent to the principal's office on a regular basis for speaking out at inappropriate times. The incident that smolders still in my mind took place at the Oakland Museum of Modern Art on a fifth grade field trip. My teacher, Mrs. Blumburger, stopped the class to admire a rendering of Willem de Kooning's, and I offered my opinion of it in a whisper, which in retrospect might actually have been my outdoor voice: “It stinks!”
The most attentive students I've had the pleasure of addressing over the past 21 years as the Ghost of Twain are the cadets of the New Mexico Military Institute. I don't know what their secret is, but those charges are eager to learn, and polite? Why they are as polite as pie, and we get along just fine. There are other schools, many others, that I would not go back to on a dare. At one high school in Las Vegas I arrived to see scribbled in chalk on the sidewalk something that I know Mark Twain never did, or could do, and in fact is quite anatomically impossible.
So I guess what I'm trying to understand and accept, is the basic precept that where public dissent is in fact our precious right, and at times our dire responsibility, custom dictates that there are norms that we do not transgress without suffering reckoning from society.
My feeling is we need to try to determine where those norms lie, and attempt to present those norms as part of our curriculum in the schools.
Meanwhile, as today's social experiment from Mr. Manners, the next time somebody says, “Thank you,” instead of responding with, “No problem, try, “My pleasure.” If you don't receive a smile my name's not Joe Montana…
McAvoy Layne is an Incline Village resident who visits area schools as the ghost of Mark Twain.
Young tennis protégés saw McEnroe's churlish behavior replayed on ESPN and naturally assumed such behavior was a way to make the sports highlights.
Keeping the ball on the court a moment longer, Serena Williams surpassed McEnroe last week by telling an official at the U.S. Open that she (Serena) should, “…shove this (expletive) ball down your (expletive) throat!” Check YouTube if you don't believe me …
In Bill Tilden's day there were no words spoken on the tennis court — the winner merely jumped the net to congratulate the loser on his good play.
America's standards of behavior have been in decline since 1776, but the latest big plunge occurred during President Barack Obama's recent address to both houses of congress. Here is a venue where decorum should reign, and did reign until a legislator interrupted the president by shouting, “You lie!”
That legislator's wife asked him when he got home, “Who's the nut that hollered out, ‘You lie!'” Imagine her surprise when he confessed it was Joe Wilson — her husband. I can only guess what he got for dinner that night — hot tongue and cold shoulder.
Joe broke the congressional custom of liberal comity, and custom always trumps rules.
Mark Twain tells us, “discriminating irreverence is the protector of human liberty.” I imagine Twain intended “discriminating” to be the operative word.
Personally, I feel sorry for Joe. As designated class clown in grade school I was sent to the principal's office on a regular basis for speaking out at inappropriate times. The incident that smolders still in my mind took place at the Oakland Museum of Modern Art on a fifth grade field trip. My teacher, Mrs. Blumburger, stopped the class to admire a rendering of Willem de Kooning's, and I offered my opinion of it in a whisper, which in retrospect might actually have been my outdoor voice: “It stinks!”
The most attentive students I've had the pleasure of addressing over the past 21 years as the Ghost of Twain are the cadets of the New Mexico Military Institute. I don't know what their secret is, but those charges are eager to learn, and polite? Why they are as polite as pie, and we get along just fine. There are other schools, many others, that I would not go back to on a dare. At one high school in Las Vegas I arrived to see scribbled in chalk on the sidewalk something that I know Mark Twain never did, or could do, and in fact is quite anatomically impossible.
So I guess what I'm trying to understand and accept, is the basic precept that where public dissent is in fact our precious right, and at times our dire responsibility, custom dictates that there are norms that we do not transgress without suffering reckoning from society.
My feeling is we need to try to determine where those norms lie, and attempt to present those norms as part of our curriculum in the schools.
Meanwhile, as today's social experiment from Mr. Manners, the next time somebody says, “Thank you,” instead of responding with, “No problem, try, “My pleasure.” If you don't receive a smile my name's not Joe Montana…
McAvoy Layne is an Incline Village resident who visits area schools as the ghost of Mark Twain.
