Infectious incivilitis
McCarthy, Abigail
About the arrogance of Chicago Democrats: there were sample ballots printed which didn't bother to mention statewide offices (aren't Democrats, or for that matter Chicagoans generally, born with...
...It is difficult to know whether public behavior has made the media presentations acceptable or whether the presentations have made acceptable incivil public behavior...
...But we are talking of manifestations that go far beyond the jesting permitted to friends...
...And public participation in call-in and live audience shows enthusiastically demonstrates that indeed we do...
...His Illinois candidates are running on a platform which would test everyone for AIDS and quarantine the losers, something they manage to tie in with opposition to Gramm-Rudman...
...They forced open the exits and frantically and precipitately threw themselves down the slides...
...They spring from the same root and they, and what they describe, are closely related...
...Displays of greed and gross incivility are the staples of the tele' vision and radio shows we choose to entertain us or inform us...
...Brilliant media manipulators...
...In his precinct the LaRouche candidate beat Sangmeister...
...Without civility there is no sound civic body...
...These are the people who think Jews and Nazis are allies in the drug trade...
...That will no doubt relieve a lot of voters...
...Their names were Mark Fairchild and Janice Hart, and they opposed people named Sangmeister and Pucinski...
...Some Chicagoans are blaming the LaRouche victory on downstate fight-wing yahoos and ignoramuses...
...Incivility is now the accepted mark of supposedly rational discussion on national issues...
...It has corroded individual responsibility to the common good and motivates decisions ranging from selling secrets to the Soviets to approving unsafe spaceshuttle launches...
...Of several minds: Abigail McCarthy INFECTIOUS INCIVILITIS THE DEMISE OF PUBLIC DEBATE D URING MY short vacation from these pages I have had time to become aware of some disturbing changes in our society...
...Him," said one man intent on getting off, "he's a goner anyway...
...Novak, often called "the Prince of Darkness" by colleagues and victims alike, shamelessly bullies and shouts down everyone from cabinet members to ambassadors and, of course, members of Congress on whom there is evidently always an open season...
...For example, there is chilling evidence of it in air travel in the Eastern corridor...
...For the moment, however, I would like to dwell on the seemingly lesser evil of incivility...
...He has also suggested that if the Democrats can't legally knock them off the ballot, the Democrats will run as a third party, perhaps as "the True Democrats...
...Power travelers on the shuttle between New York and Washington have long been known to avoid eye contact with acquaintances so that they were free to push and shove past them in the race for seats and quick exits...
...In previous Illinois elections, the LaRouche people have won precinct committee battles, and precinct committee people are the people who go door to door and act nice and offer to get the lame, the halt, and the blind to the polls...
...without civility there is no civilization...
...Honest dissenters to administration policy must face attacks like that of the president's speech-writer who proclaims their party to be" with Moscow, the co-guarantor of the Brezhnev doctrine in Central America...
...So far we are talking about programs supposedly aimed at informing the public and providing a forum for public discourse of serious issues...
...The supposedly genial" Donahue presides over a show on which proponents of unpopular and untrendy stands are often badgered and treated with thinly veiled ridicule by the host and openly insulted by other participants...
...If the Democrats (if that's what they'll be calling themselves in November) lose this one it will be because they blew it...
...One problem: Illinois election law prevents third parties from using the name, or any part of the name, of an existing party...
...Because of the complacency and arrogance of the leadership, no one had heard those foreign-sounding names, and from Chicago and its collar counties to Cairo in Little Egypt, people voted for white bread and American-sounding (i.e., WASP) names, knowing absolutely nothing about the candidates...
...It is time that we gave serious attention to the growth and causes of incivility if we wish to live in a civilized world...
...they also, in a curious interchange, intensify their negative qualities...
...The resulting pile-ups caused serious injuries to the weak and elderly among them...
...Ratings convince producers and sponsors that we love these programs...
...The same thing happened in lots of Chicago precincts...
...The senior takes umbrage, as well he might, but it is, of course, good theater and the so-called "moderator" does not cry foul...
...THUCYDIDES, ET AL...
...Nothing doing, said Admiral Turner, since teaching and learning the art of war has been the mission of the college since its founding in 1884, and there's no honesty in trying to color it otherwise...
...In an even more recent news story we were told of passengers still on the ground in New York, who were alarmed by signs of engine fire, and ignored the directions of the flight crew trying to enforce a safe and orderly evacuation...
...Now the Democrats are calling foul...
...Worst of all is the phenomenon of "shock radio" with the disc jockeys and call-in hosts who pander to prejudice with tasteless "jokes...
...It has become clear to me that we Americans who once prized generosity, openness, and friendliness among our national characteristics no longer do so...
...These regional concerns aside, there is a valuable lesson here in how not to take democratic processes for granted...
...The lesson is that the Democrats seem to have lost it, fair and square, by not paying attention to anything outside an accustomed and narrow arena...
...Adlai Stevenson said without laughing that he finds their beliefs "completely unacceptable...
...Tribal anarchy gives way to civil order," is cited as an example of use...
...Little wonder that retiring senators cite as one reason for their leaving the poisoned and rancorous atmosphere in which most debate now takes place...
...They are fight to think the LaRouche people are awful...
...Think of the Washington area personality defended by his hearers when he said that if Martin Luther King, Jr.'s death had given us a national holiday, killing four more blacks would give us a whole week off...
...But things have gone far beyond that...
...You could etch glass with his broad A's...
...WHAT'S GOOD FOR ITS OWN SAKE i HAPPEN TO LIVE about a mile from the United States Naval War College, located in Newport, R.I., and I'm especially fond of that institution for a couple of reasons...
...As to the stupidity and prejudice of those who voted in the primary, the fact is that the LaRouche people managed to get their names first on the ballot in many places through entirely legal means...
...ABIGAIL McCARTHY II Of several minds: David R. Carlin, Jr...
...We are talking about the open attack on character and motive, the open acCommonweal: 200cusation of treachery, the denigration of an adversary's intelligence, the shouted abuse, and the shameless goading of interviewees...
...A very junior and undistinguished senator smirkingly breaches traditional senatorial courtesy by accusing a senior senator of always voting to weaken America -- and does so on a Sunday TV forum...
...In the process, they let you know who the candidates are, and what they stand for...
...They took votes, and voters, for granted, and ignored something happening right in front of them...
...Incivility in all areas of life leads, as it has on the airlines, to disorder and' violence...
...It is reflected in the entertainment contests which glorify acquisitiveness...
...It began, perhaps, with the elegant sneers of a William F. Buckley, Jr., and has escalated to the verbal brawling of the "McLaughlin Group...
...LaRouche is a man whose estate is surrounded by armed guards to protect him from what he imagines to be death threats received from agents of Communism, Zionism, international terrorism, the drug trade, the Trilateral Commission, and the Queen of England...
...Defenders of the latter will ascribe the name-calling and altercation to showmanship -- which only proves the point about the contemporary American audience...
...In one case, departing passengers refused to give way to a rescue squad trying to reach a man who had suffered a heart attack in flight...
...There is certainly an interaction...
...The peak is probably reached in the good guy vs...
...Americans, generous and open though they might have been, were always given to rough banter and the friendly insult...
...bad guy performance on Tom Braden and Robert Novak's "Crossfire" show...
...That's part of the way democracy works, and part of the way it worked, and failed to work, this time...
...They have a point, but Michael Madigan is the House Democratic Speaker and as Chicago as you can get...
...A certain amount of such give and take was the mark of congenial get-togethers (although this was markedly more true of all-male gatherings...
...The historical courtesy which was meant to facilitate civil debate is dead...
...First, because it calls things by their right names...
...But the virus of incivility infects shows meant to entertain...
...but dealt only with local ward battles...
...Signs of our descent into social anarchy as we lose civility are everywhere...
...Nor the next day when the senior senator rises to defend himself on the floor of the Senate does any member of the opposition rise to express regret or apologize...
...At their first post-victory news conference they berated newspeople for not covering them and insisted that they would answer questions only when they were good and ready, if they felt like it...
...If the Democrats lose in November, it will not be because of the brilliance of the LaRouche people or the subtlety of their tactics...
...About the arrogance of Chicago Democrats: there were sample ballots printed which didn't bother to mention statewide offices (aren't Democrats, or for that matter Chicagoans generally, born with a knowledge of who's been slated and who hasn't...
...A recent Sunday feature in the Miami Herald detailed frightening behavior on the New YorkMiami run -- so many incidents of passengers fighting with, and harassing, each other and the flight attendants that it has become usual for Miami police to meet the plane and remove passengers over whom the crew has lost control...
...A few years back, when Stansfield Turner was president of the college, certain folks (no doubt the same enemies of the English language who got President Reagan to call his MX missile the "Peacekeeper") wanted to rename the place the "Naval Peace College...
...It is also easy to see why James Thompson, who up until the primary election had some reason to worry, is a very happy man...
...BENEDICT DRISCOLL (Benedict Driscoll is a Midwest~base_d, free-lance reporter...
...The M.C.s of quiz and game shows twit the contestants unmercifully in order to draw laughs...
...It is no accident that the words "civil," "civic," and "civilization" sound alike...
...Call11 Apn~ 1986:201...
...Reporters shout unwelcome questions at a reluctant president who responds by calling them -- not so sotto voce -- "SOBs...
...The programs reflect their viewers and hearers...
...Webster defines civil as "marked by public order" and "quiet and peaceable in behavior" -- the opposite of the "uncivilized and primitive...
...Greed has so corrupted our business climate that true national productivity takes second place to the artificially produced profits of merger-mania...
...It's easy to see why Hitler changed his name from Schicklgriiber...
Vol. 113 • April 1986 • No. 7
