What do you think accounts for the rise in incivility?

[KansDem]

29. I think it started with the "put down" that marked 1970s TV sitcoms

If you remember the 1950s, TV shows were about family life with kids getting into "trouble" and a wise parent helping them. When you think about it, "Leave It to Beaver" was a weekly portrayal of the Faust legend: Beav enters into questionable "contract" with Gilbert, Larry, or Lumpy, because of his want for instant pleasures, then realizes his error and with the help of Ward, learns a lesson and finds redemption.

Then the 1960s we had the "goofy" TV shows, like "F Troop," "Beverly Hillbillies," "Green Acres," etc. There was usually one sane person among the zanies.

But in the 1970s we saw the cultivation of the "putdown." Inspired perhaps by Don Rickles "hockey-puck" humor, shows like "All in the Family," "May Tyler Moore" and "M*A*S*H" had casts of reasonably sane characters with one doofus. "Archie Bunker," "Ted Baxter" and "Frank Burns" became the butt of ridicule and the target of the "put down."

Then we had the "filmed before a live audience" shows where the characters hurled insults at each other while the audience laughed hysterically and applauded approval.

I don't know much about TV shows toward the end of the 1970s as I had taken a evening job and lost track of prime-time sitcoms, but I believe, if I recall correctly, that Rush Limbaugh got his start in the early 1980s. And it all went downhill from there...