Someone find me Doc Brown, because I need a flying DeLorean to get me the hell out of here.
Because I’m terrified of present and scared of the future.
The future used to hold so much intrigue: what we would be, how technology would shape us, how life would be different. But what I’ve come to realize is that all we’ve done in the course of our history as a society is screw up a really good thing.
This isn’t about politics or gender or any one particular thing. It is wholly about a feeling that we’re not as dignified as we once were. Not stuck up, or hoity-toity. Just dignified. Certain things were beneath us as individuals or as a collective unit known as America.
Not anymore. There’s nothing beneath us because we’ve reached the bottom.
Two things this week have made me very sad and very sacred and very, very certain that we’re headed down a path that apparently only bothers people like me.
First, President Obama appeared on “The View” yesterday. Talked shop with Babs and Whoopi, got in a little celebrity gossip time about Kim Kardashian. Showed those middle-age housewives who are home at 10:00AMon a Tuesday that he’s totally cool in touch with how they feel on important issues like knowing that Kim was married to a basketball player for 72-days last year.
What?
How is this dignified? How is this befitting the stature of the office of the President of the United States? How is this a good resource of government time and money? And those who say he’s just like everyone else are missing the point – I don’t care about the party as much as the office he holds and what it should mean to us. At least Adam Carolla agrees with me.
I had friends who claimed it was a ridiculous argument or conversation to have. And therein lies my point: why is this out of the question that someone would find this to be beneath the President? How far have we slipped that this doesn’t warrant some commentary from someone in the media? It has little to do with politics. Again, I could care less about which party is doing it – I want them all to stop and have some dignity. Carry themselves with class. Why is that so much to ask?
My second travesty of the week was the news that the NBA is planning on allowing advertisements on uniforms at some point in the next few years.
“We told our owners that it was not something we were considering doing for next season,” NBA deputy commissioner Adam Silver said a few weeks ago, “but that it was something we should at least discuss doing for the season after next. We showed them some of the traditional soccer jerseys used in Europe and we showed them some of the valuations that soccer jerseys are getting and some estimates of ranges of values for logo rights on NBA jerseys.”
Wow. Well, by all means, let’s be like Europe. And let’s make the concession that we won’t be doing it next year – we’ll keep our dignity, damn you – until 2014. Then, let’s kill the last bastion of decorum in sports by squeezing out every available dollar possible.
Do you like the MLS New York Red Bulls? Then you will love the Toyota Spurs. Estimates say that the four major sports leagues in the United States are losing about $370 million by not advertising on uniforms. What about the dignity gained by not advertising on uniforms?
This isn’t us. Or at least tell me it isn’t us. Do we honestly care that much about squeezing in every revenue dollar that we’re willing to put a name or logo on everything? At least Nike makes the uniforms.
Please tell me that we still hold a few things valuable. Please tell me we have a little bit more integrity and decorum than this. My fear is, we don’t, because in so many others sectors of our daily lives and our society, well, we don’t.
Just take a look around sometime – our self-involvement is all encompassing. Because people believe they, themselves, are the most important person in the world. That’s why people cut you off in traffic: wherever they are headed is more important that where you are going. It’s why they sneak in and grab the nearly-sold-out-hot-toy-of-the-season from your hand during Christmas shopping – their kid or relative is much more deserving or more important than yours is.
People who have no children or one child and a part-time job will look someone who has two jobs, five kids and a whole lot more going on in life and tell them without sarcasm and in a completely straight face that “I am are just so busy, you couldn’t possibly understand.” It’s why your kid’s accomplishments top anything another kid could do. It’s also why your wedding, birthday or bar-mitzvah is the most important day in everyone else’s life – because it’s yours.
We are inherently self-centered people that have very little self-awareness and thus we’ve lost all appropriate decorum in a given situation.
We go to people’s homes and don’t offer to take off our shoes because we don’t even think about it. We don’t offer to clean-up or bring a dish when invited to dinner. We don’t call and cancel reservations we can’t keep. We are rarely honest, rarely sincere.
And we are dumb enough to expect more from our politicians and from athletes? We’re just like they are. They fail to keep promises. Fail to be more dignified than someone else in debate. We don’t clean up our messes (like the national debt) and we bring nothing to the table – like taking a pay cut as a member of Congress, giving back healthcare or pensions.
Well, what I meant was, YOU need to give back…I’ve earned mine.
We are what we are now: greedy and selfish. I’ve had people thank me for being so kind for opening up doors recently. That’s because my father taught me politeness. You compliment people. You walk on the outside of the sidewalk to protect people. You say pardon me, excuse me and thank you. Or at least we used to do those things.
Now, you can be on a Monorail with a stroller in Walt Disney World, the doors open and there’s a crush to push your stroller with a sleeping two-year-old out of the way just to get 14 extra seconds in the Magic Kingdom. That thing is in MY way!
What the hell is wrong with us? Everyone’s gotta get theirs. We are reaping what we’ve sewn. Decades of telling everyone they are special in their own right, passing out trophies and awards to everyone for everything – for just participating – so that no one feels left out.
Here’s the thing: it’s OK to work harder than someone else and have that acknowledged. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. There is a lesson in both.
We should open doors. We should be polite.
But we are not. We are just plain rude.
We are obsessed with us. We are a Culture of Me and Is.
We have no sense of unity, no common purpose. We can’t even agree to disagree most of the time.
If “Back to the Future” were made now, Marty would have just taken the DeLorean and not tried to save Doc. He would have used the Sports Almanac and never admitted his mistake. He would have left Doc in the Old West to get run down by Mad Dog Tannen.
Maybe I’m just a curmudgeon (at the ripe age of 32), who thinks with longing about a simpler time when we actually gave a damn about manners, decency and showed a little decorum in how we presented and carried ourselves.
And maybe that never truly existed.
But man, if it did, I’ll be waiting on a time machine to take me there.
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