Too easily we forgive bad behavior

The other day, a colleague at work said the best story in that day's edition of the paper was buried as a brief on Page A2. It described how television executives in Britain asked comedian Joan Rivers to leave their show during a commercial break. They were angry that she had just used two ugly and profane words.

"Don't you wish people in this country would do that?" my friend asked.

That got me thinking about what would need to happen for America to go beyond the legal wrangling that takes place whenever the FCC tries to impose standards of decency over the public airwaves and get to a place where things that offend decency are stopped dead in their tracks by universal outrage.

The main obstacle seems to be a nationwide case of amnesia. Over the past seven years, we have gone through culture-jarring events that were supposed to change us as a nation for good. But each one seemed to wear off quicker than the one before.

Remember how everyone felt right after the 9/11 terrorist attacks? Time magazine's Roger Rosenblatt penned a memorable essay a week or so later that said the attacks "could spell the end of the age of irony." By this, he meant the age in which "the good folks in charge of America's intellectual life have insisted that nothing was to be believed in or taken seriously. Nothing was real. With a giggle and a smirk, our chattering classes ... declared that detachment and personal whimsy were the necessary tools for an oh-so-cool life."

The attacks, Rosenblatt said, had brought reality home. That reality included notions about freedom, honor and fair play.

His essay was followed by opinion polls elsewhere showing that Americans had become more religious and serious-minded after the attacks. That lasted a few weeks, maybe a month or two. Then the nation's serious face broke into an ironic grin again.

Remember Michael Richards? It hasn't been two years since the comedian, best known for playing Cosmo Kramer on "Seinfeld," exploded at a comedy club, firing a racial-epithet-laced tirade against two black hecklers. That wiped the grins away again for a few weeks. Some black comedians, such as Paul Mooney, even announced they were swearing off the notorious N-word because now "it's a whole new world."

This time the pause was so short before the nation's smile returned, it almost seemed like perfect comedic timing.