Survey finds rude awakening in America

We're a rude bunch, we Americans.

At least, that's what a national survey tells us.

Nearly 80 percent of the 2,013 adults surveyed by telephone in January by the Public Agenda research group said a lack of respect and courtesy in American society is a serious problem. Sixty-one percent said rudeness has increased in recent years.

The researchers followed up their survey by meeting with focus groups in various cities from coast to coast, including one in St. Louis.

There's no indication that they talked to Barney, although it's clear they should have sought out the purple dinosaur's sing-song advice.

Our kids grew up with Barney. For years, Becca and later Bailey listened to Barney sing those words of advice: "Please and thank you, they are the magic words. Do it in the morning, noon or night." Apparently, many Americans weren't listening to the dancing dinosaur.

Like many children, Becca and Bailey have trouble saying "please" and "thank you." It doesn't flash up on the computer screen or as bonus words on spelling tests.

Video games often display cartoon-character rudeness. There are no points for politeness on the Internet where many Americans are computer commandos intent on yelling on the Web.

Poor customer service has become so widespread that nearly half of those surveyed said they have walked out of a store within the past year because of the rudeness.

Many said they regularly see people driving aggressively or recklessly.

More than a third of those surveyed said they cussed in public. About the same number confessed they occasionally had bouts of bad driving.

Most Americans probably wish they hadn't heard about the survey. We're not like the French. We don't like to think of ourselves as rude, except when we're at hockey games.

Researchers who met with focus groups said some people blamed all this rudeness on overcrowding in malls, stadiums and other public places. Others said our increasingly busy lives are making us a ruder society.

One woman in Texas blamed Elvis Presley, although his fans would clearly say she was rude to blame him.

Besides, he's been dead for years. Still, The King continues to hang around in supermarket tabloids which are clearly some of the rudest publications around.

"It was shocking when Elvis was shaking his hips up there, but now we see whole naked bodies," she said. "It started with Elvis, and that was a little overboard, but that was the beginning of what we have today," she lamented.

A Harvard professor thinks the rudeness epidemic is a symptom of growing social isolation.

I doubt it. A lot of rude people couldn't even spell isolation.

Newspaper columnist Judith Martin who masquerades as "Miss Manners" in print won't be surprised by all this talk of rampant rudeness.

She's made a whole career out of defending etiquette and she's done so without donning a single dinosaur suit.

Miss Manners says we have two regulatory systems: Legal and etiquette. "The legal system prevents us from killing each other. The etiquette system prevents us from driving each other crazy," she once told a reporter.

Of course, based on the survey, a lot of people are clearly going crazy.

Maybe we need to send Barney and Miss Manners on a "please and thank you" goodwill tour across the nation.

It just might help as long as neither shakes their hips before that Texas woman.

Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.