Has America Succumbed To Ruthless, Crude Irreverence?

[Mr. Ected]

You hear it every day on the radio, on the television. It is spewed from our leaders, from our pundits, from our co-workers, from our school children. Scathing, heartless critiques of others for the way they look, sound, or choose to live their lives. We have a DU OP that tells us that Susan Boyle is ugly. The mockery of anything sweet and lovely seems to be the norm rather than the exception.

I have a couple of small children, and I try to instill in them the importance of treating others with respect and dignity and withholding abusive comments. Nothing good can come of tearing down our culture, our history, or our pride or moment of glory, be it individual or collective, when the entire purpose is simply to destroy.

In his book, Reverence: Renewing A Forgotten Virtue, Paul Woodruff answers the question of whether irreverence can ever be considered a virtue: "No, but many of our contemporaries would say yes. In an irreverent society, crude behavior may be highly successful. Crudeness then looks like irreverence, with the result that irreverence looks like a virtue. Not so. Both of these appearances are misleading. Protesting bad leadership is never irreverent. Irreverence is the violation of reverence, but in the neighborhood of bad leaders there is little reverence to violate".

Am I alone in this? Am I alone?

[The Straight Story]

1. You would be alone if no one replied to your op

You are not alone.

[Mr. Ected]

3. Thank You.

Most people don't seem to have a clue what I'm talking about...when I bring this up in discussion.

[Skittles]

2. you're not alone, Mr. Ected

far, far from alone

[L0oniX]

4. Destroy ...you mean like destroy GD with masses of S.B ops?

[frogcycle]

5. Irreverence:

:nopity:

Couldn't resist.

Like the scorpion, it is my nature.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

6. No, I don't believe you are

The media fuels this vogue for irreverence--you see it modeled on television shows, and it often blossoms online. I feel it is easy to be whatever you wish to be on the Internet. But your words on your posts do reflect on your values, or at least your mood at the time.

[DonCoquixote]

7. Irreverence

What the masses do is mistake irreverence with Humor. Let's take a main example, South Park. Say what you will, but South Park has managed to throw in some of the most potent political satire of the day. However, it does that because it lures masses in with the fart jokes. Humor is poking fun at the Religious Right, the way South Park does. Only then do people dare laugh and say "wait a minute, this BS the right wing is trying to sell us is ludicrous!" But of course, do nine out of ten people get the fact that they are the brunt of the joke, no, which is why they focus on fart jokes, because it is all they understand. Humor expands thought, Crudeness kills it.

[saltpoint]

8. I'm thinking just about any era is capable of raw, coarse, irreverent, and

rude conduct and expression.

And certainly such conduct and expression is with us in recent times. "Shit happens," said Donald Rumsfeld to reporters' questions about why the U.S. military could guard oil fields all night long but not scrape a squad together to guard the Iraqi National Museum as it was being looted in broad daylight. He actually said 'Stuff' instead of its coarser equivalent, but he intended everyone to hear it the way he would have said it had the mikes been off.

"Go fuck yourself," said Dick Cheney to the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. This is a Vice President we're talking about, and his interpersonal charm was exceeded only by his keen sense of fashion, as witnessed by the parka and boot number he wore for the international commemoration for the victims of Auschwitz:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43247-2005Jan27.html


Duke Cunningham. If you were doing a Calendar of the Coarse and Incarcerated, ol' Duke would be featured over SEVERAL of the months of the year, and properly so.

Vaudeville entertainment was felt to be too coarse for some sensibilities in its day. I'm sure the megachurch ministers rail against MTV generally and rap especially nowadays.

Joe Lieberman himself warned us all about "decadent Hollywood." Run for your lives, everyone!

Jack Nicholson's characters in film have been known to sport seriously spicey vocab. More than a little often they don't seem to handle stress very well.

I think the key might be to have the will and skill to move in and out of different contexts.

[Mr. Ected]

10. Salty Language Itself Isn't "Irreverent" To Me

It's belittling someone who deserves a whole lot better. It's mocking things simply because they represent wholesomeness or goodness or virtuousness.

Crudeness is something else; coarse and rude, but not necessarily irreverent.

[saltpoint]

11. Agree. The language does not bother me. It does appear to bother

our more 'wholesome' brothers and sisters who object to it.

Were I left to run things I would do away with the film and music ratings systems, for example.

The irreverence a Jon Stewart shows is a natural response to say, government or corporate hypocrisy. On the other hand, there is Limbaugh endorsing torture as effective because it had been used to "break" McCain. That's well past irreverence and nudging up against contemptuous sedition.

[ContinentalOp]

14. The problem is that more often than not...

those people who identify themselves as the arbiters of virtue, and those things which are deemed wholesome or good, are nothing of the sort. I would say the vast majority of the stuff in our society that is self-consciously "wholesome" is actually hypocritical, regressive, and actively destructive.

[chrisa]

9. Some people are just immature.

Some adults act like teenagers. Some people are just jerks because of deep flaws.

[ContinentalOp]

12. I couldn't disagree more.

Reverence is not necessarily a virtue. I see no value in unquestioningly revering an authority figure. For the most part I only see irreverence in our society where the irreverence is well deserved. Maybe it's a generation gap because to me the whole idea of "reverence" is pretty off putting and creepy.

[Mr. Ected]

15. Read the OP. It Specially Reserves Criticism of "Bad Leaders"

I would never endorse withholding a refutation of a politician's ideology or hypocrisy on the basis of protecting our reverence for their position in our society.

...and there wouldn't be a DU without it.

[ContinentalOp]

21. And I disagree with the absurd reasoning in that quote.

"Protesting bad leadership is never irreverent. Irreverence is the violation of reverence, but in the neighborhood of bad leaders there is little reverence to violate"

How is protesting bad leadership never irreverent? Much of the successful protest against Bush was highly irreverent. Calmly voiced, respectful disagreements have never accomplished anything. Steven Colbert's appearance in front of Bush at the National Press Club was shockingly irreverent and one of the most critical pieces of protest in the form of biting satire that the world has seen in decades. Certainly any irreverence at the expense of Bush is violating the reverence of his followers.

The statement that "In the neighborhood of bad leaders there is little reverence to violate" is laughably false. There was no reverence of Hitler, Mao, or Stalin?

[Mr. Ected]

27. I Disagree That Criticizing Bush...or Clinton...or Obama...Is Irreverent

Even if that criticism was biting, scathing and wholly un-PC.

But celebrating Tony Snow's demise from cancer most certainly was.

I would have no issue with McCain's daughter being demolished for her political statements.

But I took umbrage when a radio commentator called her fat.

[Bluebear]

13. And I couldn't agree more.

Respect of others, restraining and refraining from saying/writing every foul thought that comes to your mind, empathy... are all going away as things to be admired in society at an alarming rate.

[ContinentalOp]

17. And what do any of those have to do with irreverence?

The whole idea of irreverence is that you're not showing the "proper" respect to authority figures who are supposed to be automatically and unquestioningly put on a pedestal. You can be respectful of others and yet still irreverent when the occasion demands it. Railing against irreverence means that you would have been opposed to 99% of the posts on here for the past 8 years. To me a culture of reverence is one in which you can't question let alone openly mock and ridicule the President. Count me out.

[Bluebear]

18. You are completely misreading what "irreverence" means in this discussion.

It's not about reverence as in worship or unquestioning, it's about respect and thinking before you open your mouth such as starting a "Susan Boyle is ugly!!1'" thread.

[ContinentalOp]

24. So... it's not about the actual definition of the word reverence then.

Ok. Why not just say what you mean? "People these days don't think before they speak" or something like that. "Some people are rude." I don't irreverence has anything to do with this.

[Bluebear]

25. Becasue I did not post the OP?

[Mr. Ected]

19. You're Missing My Point...Go Ahead And Lambast Any Politician You Want

"Protesting bad leadership is never irreverent. Irreverence is the violation of reverence, but in the neighborhood of bad leaders there is little reverence to violate".

[ContinentalOp]

22. See post #21 -nt-

[enlightenment]

16. I'm not sure I accept the usage of the word reverence in this

context, as the word implies (and means) more than simple respect and/or politeness. It suggests something more - and it has a religious connotation that I can do without when considering the foibles of civil society. 'Irreverent', interestingly, doesn't carry the same weight - we refer to something or someone as irreverent when we actually mean rude or crude rather than disrespectful.

I do not rever my country. I don't rever anything except the power of nature - in that I often hold it in awe. That does not mean that I don't believe that it is unimportant to behave in a fashion that does no harm, as much as it is possible to do so. I don't think most of what passes for humour these days is funny (I've been told more than once on DU that I'm a humourless drone) and I don't find anything uplifting in watching someone beat another down; verbally, emotionally, or physically.

In essence, I agree with you . . . I just don't agree with the choice of word! :)

edited to apologise for the excruciatingly bad sentence structure above and the fact that I'm not going to rewrite them. I'm a bit tired, I think . . .

[Pholus]

20. Manners seem to be dead.

Was in Cosco a few months back and since the kids love the hot dogs I'm heading for the soda machine with cups in hand. Up comes and older gentleman and we get to the machine at the exact same instant. I step back and say "I'm sorry sir, please go first and I'll wait" and I swear the guy was basically ready to bawl. We talked for a while and he was just bowled over by somebody under 50 using basic manners.

Irreverence? Depends on what you mean. I'm irreverent on many things and I'd call it a virtue.

There's the irreverence that keeps me of knuckling under to people who TELL me that they're my betters. I'd call that a virtue.

Then there's the irreverence that nothing anymore is sacred, even respecting another person's basic dignity. That one ain't.

[Mr. Ected]

23. Yes. Yes. Yes.

The latter is what I meant by the word irreverence.

The former is righteous indignation. It deserves to be unleashed on those expecting false reverence.

[ContinentalOp]

26. I think you're stretching the concept too far.

A: "There's the irreverence that keeps me of knuckling under to people who TELL me that they're my betters. I'd call that a virtue."

Agreed.

B: "Then there's the irreverence that nothing anymore is sacred,"

This is good too, because for the most part the only things that demand to be considered "sacred" are wholly undeserving of such reverence.

C: "even respecting another person's basic dignity. That one ain't."

OK, but how did you jump from B to C? The dual concepts of reverence/irreverence IMO have nothing to do with the basic principle of respecting another person's dignity.

[Pholus]

33. While not mainstream in definition, it's in there...

Quick check of definition pages show that while the term typically has anti-religious or authority connotations (more like my "A")
at least one usage (the least credible of course) supports my joint "B/C" concept of it being a dignity thang...

"irreverent - Disrespectful, cynical, cavilling, querulous, or vulgar, where one's own feelings, or especially deference to the feelings of others, customarily command silence, discretion, and circumspection" ----- en.wiktionary.org/wiki/irreverent

Hey, I'm not a writer by trade so I'll get them wrong from time to time -- but I don't think I did here.

The OP made the reference to mocking people -- a vulgarity of action intended to communicate a disrespect for the feelings of the target. It is, in its basest
form an attack on the target's dignity.

Irreverence is not the first word I'd have chosen though. Crass, boorish, uncultured and unmannered all get more directly to the point that
if the original OOP had any actual awareness that other people exist, them they'd have self-censored their opinions about Susan Boyle's superficial
appearances.

And hence my digression onto the lack of basic manners we have today.

[hyphenate]

28. I was brought up to respect people

regardless of their age, their gender, their IQ, their religion and their race. Once that is ingrained in you, you keep it for your life.

I've come across many, many people in ordinary life who never say "excuse me" "thank you" or even a "goodbye." I've seen young people taunting and disrespecting the elderly. I've seen healthy boys and men keeping their seats on buses even if an elderly or handicapped person gets on. I've had people walk by me brushing against me without even saying "sorry."

I've seen children and babies in malls, stores, restaurants waiting, having temper tantrums and defiant behavior, all while their mothers pretend not to hear them and carry on their own conversations. I've seen days when children believe they are already adults, talking back to their parents and seeming not to give a fuck while they're doing it.

Irreverent? Perhaps. Arrogant? Willful? Totally reprehensible? All these things.

Now my ex-friend, who became a fundie, used to blame this on welfare, drug addicted parents, the dissolution of the "family" unit, and anything at all other than what it really boiled down to: the extremists on the far right. (Yes, this comment is meant to be slightly humorous, and not to be taken as righteous.) Think about it. There are many single parent families in the world right now who manage not to raise kids who are as uncaring as others. And it happens both ways all the time. It's not the family "unit" which is the cause of all these "bad" things, but simply bad parenting, regardless of whether the single parent is rich or poor, black or white. working or collecting welfare. And it goes further than that--the extreme right goes on and on about their love affair with guns and violence, and how sex is totally wrong (if it's anything other than straight, missionary position). Their value system sucks in this respect--making love, not war, is how the world needs to be run. How can we hope to have long lasting peace and cooperation if there are so many in our country who would rather shoot someone they don't like than respect them?

Irreverence is only part of the problem--it is made far worse by the attitudes espoused by people who are not willing to respect the opinions of others, and who, for some reason, believe that the world owes them something. That many of these selfish, self-centered looney tunes are on the extreme right isn't even revelatory, it's simply expected.

[Odin2005]

29. Answer: YES

Good manners and gentlemanly behavior is dead. When I hold open a door for a woman or an elderly person many are shocked, it seems...

[cliffordu]

30. Yes. Unfortunately I believe we are the most belligerent society on earth.

[leeroysphitz]

31. OMG!!111! LULz ROTFLMAO.

[Mari333]

32. nope. Im standing right beside you.

I think there are more gentle people out there then we sometimes realize. They get lost in all the 'bad news' that we see.