The Post-Civility Generation

It’s the callousness of it that’s so disturbing. It’s the inhumanity of it that’s so heinous. It’s the senselessness of it that so heartbreaking. I’m referring to the tragic death of Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi. Here are the reported details so far. On September 19th, Clementi’s roommate, Pharun Ravi and his friend Molly Wei set up a webcam in his dorm room, spied on a Clementi date, streamed it on to the internet and later tweeted to his followers to watch an upcoming sexual encounter. (This according to various articles in the New York Daily News.) Upon finding out what Ravi and Wei had done, Clementi tried to go through university channels, grew despondent over this invasion of privacy and committed suicide by jumping off the George Washington Bridge on September 23rd. The Clementi tragedy raises so many important issues from homophobia to voyeurism to bullying to the inept bureaucracies which fail to protect our children that it’s hard to know where, as a writer, to begin. After all, we now live in a time where civil discourse has been distilled to the diss. He who yells the loudest gets the most attention no matter what the subject or the substance. It’s anything goes for this post-everything generation. Oh, marketers and headline writers have tried to come up with a definitive moniker like post-racial or post-9/11 but the true term for them is post-civility. Again, in the modern age, it’s all about me, my opinion, what I want and that I want it right now. If your needs and opinions fall in line with mine then we’re cool. If not, than you’re scum that should be silenced. Is that too extreme for you? Well then consider this. Thanks to the proliferation of computers, we live in an age where the internet rules all. Now on the internet, anybody can anonymously write anything about anybody so outrageous rumors abound. (At least, in newspapers, when penning a letter to the editor, one must use one’s real name.) Your social network photograph can be disseminated without your permission. Your words, your image can be twisted and reedited into a falsehood. And in a rush to be first, the so-called mainstream media corporations will broadcast with a somber face the refigured images thereby legitimizing the lie and turning rumor into fact. Don’t believe me? Then talk to Shirley Sherrod, a smeared victim whose cautionary tale has already receded into the ether of memory. Yes, there’s meanness afoot in the culture; a viciousness oft hidden in the cute-and-cuddly term: snarky. (Snarky sounds like a character on a Saturday morning cartoon.) Sacha Baron Cohen exploited snarkiness in the smash Borat and Bruno by letting the audience in on the joke. It’s a canny move that enhances the protagonist’s and the viewer’s feeling of superiority. As he and several MTV shows like Punked and Jackass demonstrate, it’s “funny” to deride da common folk. (Unless, of course, you’re the object of ridicule). In this world, it’s the person with the camera crew who triumphs. (Or, in the Clementi case, the one with the webcam.) The irony is the same tools that once caught quack doctors on 60 Minutes and pedophiles on Dateline are now used to clown the ordinary Joe. And speaking of clowns, isn’t that the real reason reality shows are so popular? So that the viewer feels superior to those people/clowns on-screen. It’s instant gratification of the basest level. “Are you not entertained?” screamed Russell Crowe at the bloodthirsty Roman throng in his Oscar-winning role as Maximus in Gladiator. Well, a decade after that film’s release the question Maximus posed still resonates. See, the internet and television has become the arena and we, the viewers, the bloodthirsty throng. And the price for our merciless cold-hearted amusement, was the life of a young gay man, a gifted violinist, a beloved son, who was found floating in the East River, an apparent suicide. Ask the question once more: “Are you not entertained?” Then let your answer ring loudly: “No, we are not.”