Keller @ Large: Rudeness Reigns Supreme
BOSTON (CBS) -- You can talk all you want about how other countries treat us, how the government treats us, or how the weather treats us. But how we treat each other is a much bigger story.
I do not ever recall a time when everyone's manners were perfect. But if there's ever been a time when manners meant less to more people than now, I'm glad I never lived through it.
Peter Gelzinis wrote about this in his Herald column yesterday, picking up on the horrendous story of the 72-year-old Chinatown woman who was, as Gelzinis puts it "fatally knocked down Wednesday morning by a fellow pedestrian in a powerful rush to get nowhere."
It wouldn't surprise me if the alleged perp in this case, a woman with a violent rap sheet, turns out to have psychological issues, but the idea that someone would knock a senior citizen to the ground in a flash of sidewalk rage seems hardly confined to the mentally ill.
Gelzinis quotes a bystander saying "This is not a Boston issue…we've seen it at Disneyland. The general level of rudeness and inconsideration that some people show toward other people has, sadly, become a fact of life."
We all know this is true. From the big things, like the dangerously selfish driving we suffer with here in the Athens of America and the F-bombs hurled in public without regard to who's within earshot, to the little things, like the selfie zombies and people talking on their phone while they interact with store clerks, rudeness reigns supreme.
I'd like to blame the internet, with its relentless validation of ignorance. But in the end, that's just a tool too many of us use to express our narcissism and poor upbringing.
If we all feel so mistreated, maybe it's in part because we've lost the hang of how to treat each other decently.
Listen to Jon's commentary:
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