In defense of class

In the opening scene of Gran Torino, it is the funeral for the wife of Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood). As he looks on in disgruntlement his grandchildren arrive. One is wearing a Detroit Lions football jersey. The granddaughter wears a skanky, revealing dress and a second grandson mocks the self-crossing portion of he ceremony with some blasphemous words.

Hopefully, when you read that paragraph, you thought, "Very inappropriate". That is exactly what the modes of dress and attitudes were, and deliberately so as one of the themes of the movie is the disconnect between generations.

One of those disconnects is society wide. People have lost their sense of respect. "Irreverence" has become a panacea and a justification for anything someone wants to do that is morally or socially reprehensible.

There is a time and place for irreverence. But there are times for reverence, too.

People have lost that so much that they no longer are able to differentiate between bad and worse. One easy example would be language.

The other night at the Blazer game, the guys in the seats beside ours and the guys behind them both received verbal warnings for their excessive F-bombs after several complaints were registered, particularly in light of the large number of kids sitting nearby.

Yet they used "damn", "shit", "oh my God", "hell" and so forth far louder and with far greater frequency. 

I would key in on the third. I find the casual abuse of the name of God far more offensive than all the others combined yet it is so acceptable in today's society, so much a part of the national lexicon, that it even became a catch phrase for a major supporting player on the show Friends and is regularly used in commercials for television shows, movies, etc.

People no longer recognize the difference between the Holy and the propane and, in fact, scoff at the Holy and any who would distinguish between the two. And take pride in that.

Those of us who recognize better standards, who show respect for those around us and/or for the situation are "Puritanical" or "right-wing" etc. 

Uh, sure. How about "have common decency and an awareness of how my actions might offend offend others"?

I would equate it to something like a bar. There are designated places for people to drink to excess; those who wish to avoid that have the possibility. Smoking has designated places where it is acceptable and places where it is not. When it bleeds into places it is not acceptable, there are complaints.

Maybe it is time for those of us greatly bothered by the loss of the ability to show reverence to start making our voices heard.