# Choosing Civility



## Georgia Boy (Feb 15, 2006)

On a morning radio I listen to sometimes while taking the kids to school, there was a gentleman talking about the geberal decline of civility. He had some refreshing guidelines and reminders that users to this forum would appreciate. I discovered his site here, and I plan to see if his book can be found at my local big box bookstore:

Dr. P.M. Forni, a professor at Johns Hopkins University:
https://web.jhu.edu/civility


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## jackmccullough (May 10, 2006)

Looks pretty interesting. It's hard to argue against civility, even in the event of true disagreement.


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## Trenditional (Feb 15, 2006)

Its unfortunate that we can't have society choose civility. I know we can achieve it one person at a time, but how long until the effects will be noticable?


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## Wayfarer (Mar 19, 2006)

We could certainly use more civility. I believe part of its demise is that the media (yes, I am blaming them on this one) usually portray civil folks as weak, both of will and body. There is much more to it of course, but I think if polite and civil people were heros more often than the rude renegade or oppositional figure, we would see a shift.

Cheers


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## gsi (Nov 3, 2005)

I totally agree with you Wayfarer. It's almost like the media portrays being civil as unmanly.


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## mpcsb (Jan 1, 2005)

gsi said:


> I totally agree with you Wayfarer. It's almost like the media portrays being civil as unmanly.


So this may explain why political campaigns and discourse are so crude. They're not 'attack ads' they're 'manly ad'. I wish I could think this humorous, but it's just sad.


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## Wayfarer (Mar 19, 2006)

mpcsb said:


> So this may explain why political campaigns and discourse are so crude. They're not 'attack ads' they're 'manly ad'. I wish I could think this humorous, but it's just sad.


There could be some truth to that thought. Remember the Al Gore/Naomi Wolfe flap where he needed a feminist consultant to appear "Alpha Male"? I am sure there are examples on both sides of the aisle, that one just popped to mind as a particularly good one.


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## crs (Dec 30, 2004)

The news media's task is to reflect society as it is, within some bounds. On newspapers we have discussions most nights about whether a certain word ought to be used, or how graphic we ought to be in describing a crime or sex, or whether a photo is in poor taste. But you can try to clean it up only so much before readers begin to wonder, incorrectly, what else is being sanitized. We try to not make blanket rules but to consider each thing in its context. I call it the "Jimmy Carter rule." Newspapers at the time considered the word "ass" a vulgarity that should not be used. When Carter said of Ted Kennedy's challenge, "I'll whip his ass," the use of the word was news itself and we had to run it, whereas if a plumber had said it, we'd have used, "I'll whip his [butt]."

I would prefer a more civil tone in print because I don't believe slobs are especially interested in reading even if we wrote the thing in crayon. But some editors are afraid of looking quaint and irrelevant if they take the high road.


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