In any list of qual­i­ties that ide­al­ly ought to define peo­ple, espe­cial­ly those who aspire to, or hold posi­tions of author­i­ty, I doubt there is much argu­ment that it should include cour­tesy, per­son­al integri­ty, con­cern for the com­mon good and dignity.
Yet it has come to pass that these virtues, along with per­haps less impor­tant, but still valid ones, have not just fall­en by the way­side, they are as good as scorned.

That holds in spades for the polit­i­cal class.
In order to get the chance to rail against and obstruct any piece of leg­is­la­tion not ful­ly com­pli­ant with what­ev­er pass­es for their ide­ol­o­gy, regard­less of whom among the pop­u­la­tion it is designed to  help, politi­cians amass “war chests” of uncon­scionable sums to pay for “attack ads” that take the place of cogent, care­ful­ly con­sid­ered and formed pol­i­cy ideas.
The recur­ring rit­u­al U.S. “debt ceil­ing cri­sis” comes to mind, but one could pick almost any bill or proposal.
Those who oppose mere­ly for the sake of it are so obvi­ous­ly short of ideas that one would think they would fall by the way­side as can­di­dates, nev­er mind gar­ner votes. And yet some­how, the halls of demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­ern­ments are replete with them.
Pow­er and prof­it lie in crass­ness. Truth is what­ev­er you want it to be. Lies, even when exposed, are less a cause of shame than a cause cele­bre.
Even dis­play­ing a mod­icum of tol­er­ance of  points of view oth­er than one’s own seems to be con­sid­ered aber­rant behaviour.
That applies in equal mea­sure to “lib­er­als” and those whose brains are being cooked in MAGA hats.
Or, as the late, great musi­cian Frank Zap­pa put it near­ly four decades ago: “Mod­ern Amer­i­cans behave as if intel­li­gence were some sort of hideous deformity.”
As evi­dence,  con­sid­er that because they con­sid­er it some­how part of a dread­ed “woke” ide­ol­o­gy, “Repub­li­cans in the Texas leg­is­la­ture have turned hard against renew­able ener­gy, with a raft of pro­posed mea­sure that would sub­si­dize fos­sil fuels, impose restric­tions that might block many renew­able ener­gy projects and maybe even shut down many exist­ing facilities.”
Two cen­turies ago, the Ger­man philoso­pher Friedrich Niet­zsche coined a fine admo­ni­tion for today’s vot­ers: “But thus I coun­sel you, my friends: Mis­trust all in whom the impulse to pun­ish is pow­er­ful. They are peo­ple of a low sort and stock…;”
And if “old dead white guys” don’t fit in your list of cred­i­ble or accept­able sages, I offer this from the 1968 Buf­fa­lo Spring­field  hit, “Something’s Hap­pen­ing Here”: “There’s bat­tle lines being drawn/ Nobody’s right if every­body’s wrong…” 

                              DOWN WITH FUN AND CLASS

Satire, defined as “the art of mak­ing some­one or some­thing look ridicu­lous, rais­ing laugh­ter in order to embar­rass, hum­ble, or dis­cred­it its tar­gets”, goes back to the great writ­ers of Ancient Rome and has roots in the Greek classics.
Today, only the brave and bril­liant dare risk it.
In the name of not offend­ing, the bril­liant John Cleese said he had been ‘strong­ly advised” to cut the famous “Loret­ta” scene when he brings a stage ver­sion of his clas­sic forty year-old movie “Life of Bri­an” to the U.S.
Not unex­pect­ed­ly, his reply was: “I have, of course, no inten­tion of doing so.”
On a more pro­sa­ic, but no less impor­tant or indica­tive lev­el, good groom­ing also seems to be an out­dat­ed virtue.
I has­ten to add that I fall seri­ous­ly short when it comes to dress sense or style. Dur­ing my years at CBS I was more than once described as the scruffi­est cor­re­spon­dent on net­work TV. My only defence (read excuse) is that I was more often than not in places where fash­ion counted for nought.
(FULL DISCLOSURE: I also rel­ished the mild notoriety.)
Leav­ing aside that and my bias against; hats worn indoors, flip-flops and shorts on air planes, men in sin­glets, delib­er­ate­ly torn jeans, gar­ish design­er labels dis­played for effect, obscene words or slo­gans on tee shirts…the list does go on and on…I think so-called “fash­ion state­ments” have reached the point of out­right ignorant.
When we were grow­ing up, our Dad made my broth­er and I shine our “dress shoes” once a week, whether we’d worn them or not. His pro­fessed ratio­nale was: “Unpol­ished shoes make even a tai­lor-made suit look cheap. A well-shined pair can make one bought off a depart­ment store rack look classy.”
Today, there is actu­al­ly debate over whether so-called “dress sneak­ers” are accept­able in places like the White House.
Cult men’s wear com­men­ta­tor Derek Guy tweet­ed that the foot­gear was a clear lapse in dig­ni­ty, if not actu­al protocol.
One of the offend­ers was Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Hakeem Jef­fries (D). The oth­er two were Speak­er of the House Kevin McCarthy and Sen­a­tor Mitch McConnell…which brings this back go where it all began, methinks.

Com­ments are wel­comed. Click CONTACT on the site header.
To receive e‑mail alerts to new posts, Click SIGN-UP on the header.