The manners of society appear to be heading south at an accelerating rate, with our up and coming generations being increasingly sent the message from the culture, celebrities and even elected officials, that manners and civility in public conduct and speech is for snobs, nerds, dorks, and goons. It’s cool to be vulgar! I admit, I’m in at least two of those three categories, so I really don’t get it. Ethics dictates that one communicates with respect for anyone within hearing distance, and unless ugly words serve a material purpose, using them is not the mark of a good citizen, a good neighbor, or a trustworthy human being. Nor is spouting vulgarity witty, and unless you are 11, and employing obvious code words that sound like curses, epithets and obscenities isn’t especially funny either, since we pretty much exhausted the possibilities at summer camp. I have no idea why anyone would want to recast the culture as a place where professionals curse like sailors and the words “fuck” and “cocksucker” are as likely to issue from a debutante’s lips as those of a hip hop artist, but that seems to be the objective now. President Obama, the Fish Head, signaled his approval by repeatedly using the word “bucket” in a televised event when he obviously meant “fuck it.” First President ever to use fuck on TV! Yes, Obama continues to burnish his legacy. Small wonder that CNN’s John Berman thought his audience wanted to see him snigger over a colleague’s “big stones,” a testicle joke that always has them LOL-ing in the 7th grade. Making sure that there is nowhere for the civil and well-mannered to hide, all the other TV stations happily accept money from advertisers using code words for “ass” (Verizon), alluding to sexual intercourse (Reese’s), and evoking the word “shit” (K-Mart and DraftKings). Continue reading
crudeness
The End Of Manners: The President of The United States Declares That It’s Cute To Say “Fuck It” In Code
But he didn’t exactly say it, see, so it’s Presidential.
Me, I prefer…“So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. ” – Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Or…”Associate yourself with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for ’tis better to be alone than in bad company.”
– George Washington.
Or…”Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing.”
–Abraham Lincoln.
But I’m not cool, I guess…
Well, I guess there’s not much point in me trying to blow the ethics whistle on lazy ad-writers substituting vulgarity for wit in prime time TV commercials if our nation’s leader and cultural role model is going to do the same thing. The lack of common sense and responsibility, not to mention sensitivity to his obligations as Chief Executive to raise societal standards rather than debase them, has been stunning from the beginning of Obama’s Presidency, but its depth and persistence continues to amaze, depress and disgust.
Saying he maintains “something that rhymes with ‘bucket list’,” a borderline tasteless and undignified joke, Obama went further. “Executive action on immigration? Bucket,” Obama said to laughs. “New climate regulations? Bucket. It’s the right thing to do.
“The right thing to do” would be not to debase the Presidency by sniggering vulgarity in public (this was broadcast live), and to empower teens to say “Buck off!” to their parents and teachers while citing the President of the United States as authority for why it’s harmless, since he used the same code to say “fuck” in front of a black tie Washington audience.
Sure, why not? Buck dignity, buck honor, buck civility, buck the Presidency, buck Lincoln, Washington, and the rest. That’s Barack Obama, our President of the United States! Hail to the Chief.
I think you know how I’d love to end this post. But despite everything, I still have respect for his office.
Even if he does not.
Oh Fine, Now Candy TV Commercials Are Getting Smutty
At 8:46 AM, a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups commercial popped on TV. “Women want like to make it last,” bold type told us. “Men are done in seconds.”
“Typical.”
Who decided that gratuitous sexual innuendo is inherently hilarious and appropriate in every context, at every moment? Well, no one yet. Again, it is the boors in ad agencies and clods in corporate boardrooms who are pushing us down this uncivil, impolite, needlessly sleazy path. We can remind them that there are limits dictated by taste and decorum, or we can just shrug it off, part of the irreversible ratchet process called “defining deviancy down.”
Of course, we can’t expect advertisers to display respect to their audiences if their audiences prove they deserve none.
How long do you think it will be before we see a Reese’s ad featuring a kinky couple mid-sexual romp, and the naked male points to his erect penis, crying, “Hey! You got peanut butter on my chocolate sauce!” Then his partner, after, ah, checking it out, cries, “Mmmmm! But it tastes great!”
At this rate, not long at all.
Ethics Dunce: Major League Baseball
I just learned, via TV ad, that the fantasy sports company DraftKings is endorsed by Major League Baseball.
MLB needs to rethink that. The commercial I watched just concluded with the promise that if you play fantasy baseball using DraftKings, “You could win a ship-load of money!”
Stay classy, MLB. Why in the world would any sport that is trying (not so successfully, I may add) to attract more kids as fans and encourage families to go to the ballpark ally itself with a company that advertises itself during major league baseball games with dumb, gratuitous potty-mouth crudeness like that? It’s not clever. It’s not witty. Anyone who thinks that it’s funny is 12, Adam Sandler, or a moron. It’s rude, that’s all.
Professional and trustworthy operations, including sports, choose partners that are professional too. This advertising equivalent of fart jokes reflects horribly on the sport, and the people who run it.
And, I may add, the advertising industry. The wit who thinks “a ship-load of money” is a real come-on is probably the same slob who gave us Verizon’s “half-fast” internet ads. At least that one was original: this Noel Coward-worthy play on words is the same low-life effort that K-Mart embarrassed itself with in its“ship my pants” ads in 2013.
We all have to swim in this water we call a culture, and this is the equivalent of pissing in the pool. We should be able to expect better from baseball.
“Boobs on the Ground” Ethics
“We have met the boob, and it is me.”
I was going to make this an Ethics Quiz, but that dignifies Eric Bolling’s crude and disrespectful comment on Fox’s “The Five” more than it deserves. Would I accept such a sophomoric “quip” at a dinner party of close friends, at a bachelor party, in a group of women who knew me and could tell when I was intentionally tweaking them, in a setting where groans and objects thrown at my head were appropriate? Oh, probably. I’ve made worse jokes myself, knowing how bad they were, knowing they were offensive, knowing that I had the good will of my companions and that they would take them the right way. But as a presenter in a seminar? As a panel member? In an auditorium? Over the radio? On TV? Never.
Any statement is defined to some extent by the audience it was intended for (See: Sterling, Donald) For a supposed broadcast professional to say what Bolling said about the United Arab Emirates‘s first female pilot who served as the flight leader during air strikes in Syria (“Would that be considered boobs on the ground, or no?”) can’t be excused or justified: Continue reading
Ethics Alarms 