Does anything go? Does anyone care?

by Judith Martin  - There used to be a proper standard related to what was funny and what was not in public.  These days there seems to be no standard except for what is approved for children age 13 and younger, and acceptable for children over the age of 13 and grownups.But entertainers and even classroom instructors seem eager to try to push the envelope of "what goes" and "how far can it go” or even "anything goes." These are the issues that can stretch more than the imagination of the senior citizen, and some other folks who just plain wonder what is going on.

I’ve been thinking about this for awhile, but recently it came up for me dramatically when I was visiting a senior citizen activity center one morning. The activity is held on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, in the fellowship hall of a local church. Today, Monday, August 15, was art day, and I had brought samples of my own work to show to a friend. Before the art class started, the instructor thought it would be funny to tell a story about some impolite language he had heard in a Wal-Mart while standing in line to check out. The snippet of conversation he reported as being funny had to do with female anatomy and women's intimate apparel, and that is all I will say about it.

He recounted his story once, and that should have been it. But he kept repeating the same ugly line over and over. I began to feel as though I were under attack. At last, I had heard enough. As I gathered my artwork samples and left, I wondered how the older ladies in the class could tolerate such effrontery. On my way out, I informed the program director that "There are some things that are funny to others, but not to me." The pastor of my own church advised members repeatedly that if we find ourselves in circumstances that do not show respectfulness to others and responsibility for one's actions, that we should simply leave.

Where did we lose sight of standards of what is acceptable and what is not? Consider the downfall of censorship, that might have been too extreme, when what most of us seek is balance.  By way of example, in the 1960s, there was a song called "Tutti Frutti" sung by Little Richard. There were two sets of words, one for black audiences with all "those words" right there, and a sanitized version for white audiences.Of course, white kids went right out and listened to the black lyrics anyway. Censorship fell flat in the mid-1960s and was gone altogether by the middle of the 1970s. The permissiveness towards the Baby Boom generation , courtesy of Dr. Benjamin Spock philosophy, who later recanted it,  led to the kids going out of control altogether.   The hippie movement, and the exploration of oneself and a higher purpose, became, for some, simply a demonstration of the ego and the worst of oneself. 

A new philosophy was engineered by the media, about who was to set standards for what was appropriate and what was not. It was placed squarely on the shoulders of the parents. If the parents did not teach the children how to tell "good" from "bad", that was nobody's business unless the kids began to have run-ins with the law. The question of what defined "good" or "bad" was never adequately addressed. (For the scholarly nitty-gritty, there is the study of Aesthetics, which is beyond the scope of this commentary.) If the kids -- and I speak of 6 year olds and up today for example -- listen to music laden with "those words", the parents basically shrug and say that they had done their best to teach their children right from wrong, or "good" from "bad". The same goes for parental controls on the internet. Firewalls do help, but away from home, the same rules may not apply at a friend's house as they do when Mom and Dad are around.

Again, the pastor of my church would say, "Teach your children your standards, according to your belief, and that by going against them, they dishonor you. If your child is to visit at a friend's house, and entertainment is to be shown that is inappropriate, your child should have nothing to do with
it -- and stay away altogether. Or, if your child is already at the friend's house, he or she should find a way to leave."


The ultimate question becomes, "Does anything go?" Or should there be limits to how far someone can go with what they say or do or publish, depending upon whether they do so in the public sector, or among a private group of friends? Most importantly, does anyone care? Some parents still send their children to church or synagogue school to be inoculated with "the right thoughts". At Christmastime, parents have their kids watch the animated programs that seem to teach the difference between what is "good" and "bad" for the same reason.


I do not propose a return to the strait-lacing of Victorianism or Puritanism. What I do propose is that there should be standards for respectability and decency,  that reinforce the basic fact that humans do have importance and worth. Anything opposite of this, from racism to sexism, that tears down people and seeks to degrade them in the eyes of another group altogether, is, as my own Sunday School teacher would say, "just not nice." 

There is another art class coming up at the center this Wednesday.   I will attempt to join in with the group again, because there will be a different instructor then, someone from my church, no less. There will be none of this "Tutti Frutti" nonsense when she is there.

For some people, anything does not just go.