One summer, almost 40 years ago, there were two pieces published in the Opinion section of the Wall Street Journal in which separate writers commented on the lack of courtesy and respect in America in the 1980s. One of those opinions was written by the late Hodding Carter III, a native Mississippian and former editor and publisher of the Greenville Delta Democrat-Times newspaper. (“Our Public Manners, Sir, Are Execrable,” WSJ, June 4, 1987, p. 27.) The piece rang true. I thought it worth saving, and did. Mr. Carter’s comments seem more relevant than when they were written decades ago. They come to mind every time I read about or experience the crude “state of American civilization” that bothered him. Without a doubt, the deterioration of language, dress, habits, and treatment of others that Carter criticized has gotten worse.
In a lecture on free speech under the First Amendment, what I once heard a gay professor call with a long inflection for emphasis - - “the worst of words” - - has become publicly and privately pervasive in language. Its use is commonplace in every sector of our society, form of art or what passes for art, political meeting, private discussion, and on-the-street confrontation or repartee. It is heard or read in movies, novels, publications, private texts, on television, etcetera.
Although the shock effect is almost gone, to my knowledge its use hasn’t become so common as to profane a church sanctuary. But I have been anticipating that sacrilege ever since hearing on television the quote from a sermon given in a Chicago church earlier in this century. (“Obama’s Pastor: God Damn America, U.S. to Blame for 9/11,” by ABC News, March 13, 2008; abcnews.go.com.) (“Sen. Barack Obama’s pastor says blacks should not sing ‘God Bless America’ but ‘God damn America.’”) I hope to have faded out of the picture before that happens.
Several movies up for Academy Awards this past season had dialogue containing the offensive word, repeated ad nauseum. Although, the plot, range of character, and struggles of those portrayed could have been told without its use (or the actresses disrobing for that matter). The only current movie I’ve seen where the word was neither used nor missed was “Paddington Bear Goes to Peru,” truly a hero story in the traditional meaning which, in my opinion, should have won the Oscar for Best Picture.
Last week, the President ordered that a bunker-busting bomb be dropped on a foreign military target. The next day, expressing his irritation with the warring countries, Iran and Israel, he dropped the “F-bomb” on a domestic media target. (“Trump saw red and turned the air blue – it shows his frustration,” by Katy Balls, Washington editor, The Times, June 24, 2025; at thetimes.com.) On the previous day, a member of Congress used it in an ebonic reference. (“’Mo-fo in the White House’: Jasmine Crockett attacks Trump, praises Massie in anti-Iran strike rant,” by Elizabeth Elkind, Fox News, June 23, 2025; at foxnews.com.)
You’ve heard of cursing “like a sailor.” Well, I was one. In less than three years at sea by observation and practice I earned the equivalent of a graduate degree in that vice. Thus qualified, it is astounding to hear the poor efforts of amateurs, citizens with no training in the crude art or syntax in general, who make offhanded remarks describing the sex act or accusing another of unnatural maternal relations. As Carter wrote, this is language “best confined to more private gatherings of the like-minded -- actors and stevedores, pimps and reporters.” Id. And not-so-private gatherings of the military, I would add.
Beyond language, in what Carter called “a deranged perversion of the democratic ideal,” people do not know what it means to be properly attired. “Dressing well is simply a statement about the value you place on what you’re doing.” As to proper behavior, in 1987 he observed that manners “are the exception rather than the rule for many if not most Americans.” “Opening doors, showing respect for elders, eating with at least as much restraint as vigor -- all are largely niceties of the past.”
Where does the blame lie? Although he did not use the term, Carter concluded it largely lay with what another journalist, Tom Brokaw, called the “Greatest Generation”: “[P]arents and all others who didn’t bother and still do not bother to demand a different standard [and who] abdicated responsibility in the 1960s under the battering of the new barbarians [Baby Boomers].” As one from the latter category I can say that my selfish generation was largely a destructive lot, accountable for lost quality of life and squandered opportunities in the America that was handed us.
Today, coarse language, inappropriate attire, disdain for authority (temporal and eternal), and lack of courtesy (manners) are the “mark[s] of fundamental changes that have taken place in the cultural landscape” that Carter sorely missed. Sadly, the deterioration is greater than Carter lamented at the tail of the last century and not only in America but all of Western civilization. God help us.
Chip Williams is a Northsider.
