Rampant Rudeness

This fall, “The Simpsons,” the longest-running primetime animated series in the history of American television, celebrates its 12th season.

This fall, my husband, Larry, and I celebrate our third season of Simpsons-free television viewing.
“Doh!” my sons, now 9, 11, 13 and 16, protested when we imposed the categorical and nonnegotiable ban.
“Dayenu!” we responded, after repeatedly witnessing a direct and unwelcome relationship between the rude language used by the world’s favorite dysfunctional family and the subsequent “yeah, rights” and “whatevers” effortlessly escaping from our sons’ mouths. Along with some shrugging, eye rolling and attitude.

Granted, “The Simpsons” is not the most offensive show in town, and banning it has not sent my sons scurrying out to buy Bill Bennett’s “The Book of Virtues.” But the series, insidiously packaged as funny, fun and wholesome family entertainment, is symptomatic, if not iconic, of a rampant rudeness that has invaded our culture.

Shirley Levine, head of Abraham Joshua Heschel Day School in Northridge, has witnessed the transformation. “I’ve been in education 45 years and have seen a steady deterioration of manners,” she says. “I’m saddened by the lack of sensitivity and respect exhibited by some of the students.”

Most people share Levine’s concern. A 1996 poll conducted by U.S. News & World Report and Bozell Worldwide reported that “nine out of 10 Americans think incivility is a serious problem, and nearly half think it is extremely serious.”

Lack of civility is nothing new. If we had been a kinder, gentler and less stiff-necked people 3,310 years ago, Moses wouldn’t have had to trek up Mt. Sinai for the Ten Commandments. And Cicero, the Roman orator and statesman, would not have complained, as he did in 63 B.C., “O tempora! O mores!” – “Oh, the times; oh, the morals.”

Our recent decline, however, into rock-bottom rudeness, into the glorification of the anything goes, in-your-face, shock-jock culture comes courtesy of my husband and myself, along with our 77 million baby-boomer contemporaries.

Yes, we’re the Woodstock generation, the flower children of the late ’60s and early ’70s who burned our bras, draft cards and bridges to the authoritarian world of our parents. And in our pursuit of love, peace and euphoria, we eradicated all aspects of formality in language, clothing and manners, which we regarded as an encroachment on our freedom, the unwanted yoke of a bourgeois world.

Now, thrust into the role of parents, we boomers sometimes think we are barred from imposing restrictions on our own children; that we might somehow dampen their creativity, hurt their feelings or, God forbid, trample on their self-esteem.

But children need boundaries, as well as supervision and moral education.

According to Jody Kussin, a child psychologist and mother of three, our opinions actually matter. “Somewhere along the line,” she says, “parents began to believe that kids are self-sufficient entities, seeking information solely from other kids. On the contrary; children all the way through adolescence value parental input over all other sources.”

“How come you let us see movies with lots of shooting,” my 9-year-old, Danny, asks, “but you won’t let us see ‘The Simpsons’?”

“Because we’re imperfect and inconsistent parents,” I answer. “And because after watching ‘Lethal Weapon 4,'” I add, “you don’t set off on a killing spree.”

This doesn’t mean that a constant and unmonitored diet of violence is healthy, I explain. Neither is a steady diet of Krispy Kreme donuts.

But even imperfect and inconsistent, we can demand that our children say “please” and “thank you,” look people in the eye when speaking to them, refrain from eating spaghetti with their fingers and pick up their piles of dirty clothes that cover the floor like an army of little melted men.

“Say the magic word,” I once said to Gabe, when, as a toddler, he asked for a cookie.

“Abracadabra,” he earnestly answered.

Unfortunately, there are no magic answers to the difficult and interminable job of inculcating civility in our children. Nor is there avoiding the occasional and embarrassing regression or the unexpected limit-testing transgression.

But there is some truth to the words of the rapper Ice Cube, who said, “If I’m more of an influence to your son as a rapper than you are as a father, you got to look at yourself as a parent.”

Thus, Larry and I constantly and exhaustingly look at ourselves as parents. And so, surprisingly, has “The Simpsons” creator Matt Groening, who now has children of his own and who now seems to understand why many parents have reacted so vehemently to the irreverence and crudeness of his cartoon characters. In a January 1999 interview in Newsweek, he said, “I now have a 7-year-old boy and a 9-year-old boy, so all I can say is ‘I apologize.'”

Don’t have a cow, but maybe there’s hope.