Outrage

Perhaps it's the explosive growth of social media that is causing a surge in outrageous comments made by the famous and the famous wanna-bes, but clearly we are in the midst of a frenetic fibrillation of popular discourse. We see outrage after outrage elbowing each other out of the way in order to garner the next day's headlines on the Drudge Report or the Daily Show. The old filters of what was acceptable behavior have virtually disappeared ... so a presidential candidate can dis a news anchor about her menstruation and get away with it. And the president of the United States, with impunity, can compare congressional leaders opposing his Iran nuclear treaty with those Muslim fanatics chanting, "Death to America."

Not long ago there was a cable television populist, Howard Stern, who pretty much started this death spiral into media banality. He felt he could say or do just about anything uncensored ... and thus achieved unprecedented popularity with millennials and the X-generation. Fortunately he is now relegated to satellite radio and as a judge on America's Got Talent. But now we are experiencing this sewage seeping into our political process with very few filters on what some candidates are willing to say or do. I sometimes feel that this country is in a race to the bottom propagated by a ratings war between the old-line media outlets and our newer means of communicating.

Apropos to this growing outrage, there is the poem, "If," written by Rudyard Kipling that should be required reading by anyone (including media anchors) who might be on the center stage in this upcoming election season:

If you can keep your head when all about you
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools: 

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’ 

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
    If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Or a Woman!

Wouldn't a return to cultural comity be a nice surprise?