RJINTAMPA
09-23-2009, 09:22 PM
Liar, liar, pants on fire!
By STEVE OTTO Steve Otto
sotto@tampatrib.com sotto@tampatrib.com
Published: September 23, 2009
The conversation, or as close as we get to conversation these days, has been about a growing lack of civility just about everywhere - on the tube, in politics, in sports and even on the road.
The catalyst for all this came during an address to Congress by President Barack Obama on health care reform, during which Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., hollered, "You lie!" In a forum where lying is something of an art form, it still was not a polite thing to yell out, especially to the president.
The dumbing down and vulgarizing of our lives has been a depressing trend for years. But in recent months, the rhetoric seemingly has escalated to new extremes.
We've come to expect isolated incidents of stupidity. Recently at the U.S. Open, tennis favorite Serena Williams overshadowed the game when she unleashed a string of profanities at a linesperson and threatened her with her racket.
We were driving down Dale Mabry Highway the other day where there was a group of demonstrators in the median. One was holding a poster with Obama made to look like Hitler.
Political partisanship has reached the point where one side is calling the other fascists and Nazis while the opposition, in turn, is calling them communists and traitors. Charges of racism are shriller than ever, and if you happen to read the comments by anonymous readers on our online service, then you can believe bigotry is alive and well.
Is anybody listening?
We live in society where instead of listening, the idea is to outshout the other guy. I think that's a tradition that is fostered on those TV talk shows where the idea of a good discussion usually ends with a gaggle of talking heads around a desk hollering their way into a commercial break.
I know we're not all like that. Go into any Cuban restaurant on a Saturday morning in West Tampa and you'll find the men gathered around a long table working over the world's ills. By and large they let each person have his say. If it's conversation you want, it's worth some cafe con leche and Cuban toast.
Just call me Mister
Mr. Carr taught junior-high-level history at our U.S. military dependents school in Munich. He was one of those teachers who called everyone "Mr." or "Miss." He demanded that whenever you spoke, you stood up and answered in complete sentences.
He was one of those bowtie-wearing types. He had a flattop haircut and always wore a jacket. His glasses hung about halfway down a long reddish nose, and his eyes perched peered over the glasses like he was looking over a fence.
What Mr. Carr seemed to enjoy most was putting us in pairs and assigning each student one side of an issue. The two would try to defend their positions and then be required to come back at the next class and do a better job with information they had researched.
In the second discussion, each student was expected to address the other as Mr. or Miss. and summarize both sides of the issue. I know Mr. Carr was trying to get us to organize our thoughts and then articulate them, but of course at the time, we thought he was just weird.
I don't know if Mr. Carr is still around or whether he would consider holding a class for a couple of hundred million of us on the art of thinking and listening before we babble, but it wouldn't hurt.
http://www2.tbo.com/content/2009/sep/23/na-liar-liar-pants-on-fire/news-columns/
By STEVE OTTO Steve Otto
sotto@tampatrib.com sotto@tampatrib.com
Published: September 23, 2009
The conversation, or as close as we get to conversation these days, has been about a growing lack of civility just about everywhere - on the tube, in politics, in sports and even on the road.
The catalyst for all this came during an address to Congress by President Barack Obama on health care reform, during which Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., hollered, "You lie!" In a forum where lying is something of an art form, it still was not a polite thing to yell out, especially to the president.
The dumbing down and vulgarizing of our lives has been a depressing trend for years. But in recent months, the rhetoric seemingly has escalated to new extremes.
We've come to expect isolated incidents of stupidity. Recently at the U.S. Open, tennis favorite Serena Williams overshadowed the game when she unleashed a string of profanities at a linesperson and threatened her with her racket.
We were driving down Dale Mabry Highway the other day where there was a group of demonstrators in the median. One was holding a poster with Obama made to look like Hitler.
Political partisanship has reached the point where one side is calling the other fascists and Nazis while the opposition, in turn, is calling them communists and traitors. Charges of racism are shriller than ever, and if you happen to read the comments by anonymous readers on our online service, then you can believe bigotry is alive and well.
Is anybody listening?
We live in society where instead of listening, the idea is to outshout the other guy. I think that's a tradition that is fostered on those TV talk shows where the idea of a good discussion usually ends with a gaggle of talking heads around a desk hollering their way into a commercial break.
I know we're not all like that. Go into any Cuban restaurant on a Saturday morning in West Tampa and you'll find the men gathered around a long table working over the world's ills. By and large they let each person have his say. If it's conversation you want, it's worth some cafe con leche and Cuban toast.
Just call me Mister
Mr. Carr taught junior-high-level history at our U.S. military dependents school in Munich. He was one of those teachers who called everyone "Mr." or "Miss." He demanded that whenever you spoke, you stood up and answered in complete sentences.
He was one of those bowtie-wearing types. He had a flattop haircut and always wore a jacket. His glasses hung about halfway down a long reddish nose, and his eyes perched peered over the glasses like he was looking over a fence.
What Mr. Carr seemed to enjoy most was putting us in pairs and assigning each student one side of an issue. The two would try to defend their positions and then be required to come back at the next class and do a better job with information they had researched.
In the second discussion, each student was expected to address the other as Mr. or Miss. and summarize both sides of the issue. I know Mr. Carr was trying to get us to organize our thoughts and then articulate them, but of course at the time, we thought he was just weird.
I don't know if Mr. Carr is still around or whether he would consider holding a class for a couple of hundred million of us on the art of thinking and listening before we babble, but it wouldn't hurt.
http://www2.tbo.com/content/2009/sep/23/na-liar-liar-pants-on-fire/news-columns/