[jeffkrol]

Interesting survey.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/us/politics/07bai.html

The focus group that met here in New Jersey on Monday included a bartender, a lawyer and a school bus driver. The dominant theme of the discussion, in which jobs and taxes came up only in passing, seemed to be the larger breakdown of civil society — the disappearance of common courtesy, the relentless stream of data from digital devices, the proliferation of lawsuits and the insidious influence of media on their children.

One woman described a food fight at the middle school that left a mess school employees were obliged to clean up, presumably because the children couldn’t be subjected to physical labor. A man complained about drivers who had grown increasingly hostile and inconsiderate on the roads, which drew nods of assent all around. Another described the Internet as just plain “bad.”

The economy was discussed mostly in connection with these other stresses. “We all think that if we had a lot of money,” one woman said, “everything would slow down and we could enjoy ourselves.”

[Parallax]

I wonder if the meeting would have taken a different tone if the focus group were composed of
unemployed bartenders, lawyers, school bus drivers, etc.


The internet put common courtesy on life-support.
Cell phones pulled the plug.

[Nesster]

Interesting article.

To the degree a candidate can project a positive rather than a negative image, and avoid attack ads, they probably are ahead in this. For of course attack ads are a part of the breakdown of civility.

Nobody in politics seems to stay above the fray for long; even if you try to stay away from the nastiness, the opposition will infect you with their slime throwing. You need to be a Teflon politician, and there aren't too many of those around.

But I also wonder about these folk who are upset by all of this, and what they are doing about it.

[raz-0]

Hmm..

It's about common courtesy eh?

Says a group of people putting together focus groups of statistical irrelevance.

Oddly enough that very same group is also trying to push their self-generated meme onto institutions and spawn the next "diveristy", "tolerance", or "sensitivity" agenda.

That of course will have speakers, training materials, 4-color handouts, posters, books, and if they can swing it, legislation requiring you to buy into it and introduce it to your company's culture.

This isn't just speculating. I work for a large institution in NJ, and we are getting bombarded with this same crap form lots of angles all of a sudden. If you track the stuff back, it all has the same source.

I suspect plan b is to turn it into a pop culture meme with lots of swag, like the simple living crap.

[reeftool]

Common courtesy in Jersey? Are these people serious? Inconsiderate drivers in Jersey? That guy should spend a week in Boston.