The debasing of American culture.

• Author: Kreyche, Gerald F.

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NOWADAYS, vulgarity is in and decorum, delicacy, and civility are out. How bad have things become in our society? Consider the following:

A woman professor friend of mine was standing outside her classroom when two students, in ordinary conversation, were using practically every four-letter epithet imaginable. She politely reminded them they were in college and that she didn't care to hear that kind of language on campus. Instead of apologizing, they turned on her, screaming obscenities and, in effect, telling her to mind her own business. She complained to the dean, who told her tartly that she should mind her own business as she may have violated the students' First Amendment rights.

Trashy sitcoms and talk shows on radio and TV, as well as anything-goes movies, are part of the rising tide of porn and smut. Some of the worst talk shows catering to the prurient are those of Jenny Jones, Sally Jessy Raphael, Ricki Lake, Geraldo Rivera, and Howard Stern.

An appearance several months ago by Stern on "The Tonight Show" so disgusted host Jay Leno that he ordered the taping stopped. The cameras turned away, but one could hear the audience guffaw. Stern and the two scantily clad girls with him were enacting spankings, lesbian kissing, and toe-sucking. The fact that Infinity Broadcasting Co., which syndicates Stern's show, already has paid fines of nearly $2,000,000 to the Federal Communications Commission hardly deters his style. (Whether Leno's holier than thou action was genuine is difficult to say, since he knew what Stern would be like before scheduling him. Stern's vulgarity also is rampant in his latest best seller, Miss America.)

More recently, Stern's fellow "shock-jock," Don Imus, speaking at the National Association of Radio and Television Correspondents' dinner, reeled off a series of vulgar jokes aimed at Pres. and Mrs. Clinton, who were on the dais, as well as Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. He then turned his guns on media luminaries Rush Limbaugh, Sam Donaldson, Connie Chung, George Will, Tom Brokaw, and Peter Jennings with more off-color "humor." C-Span, which had telecast his remarks live, compounded this insulting incident by showing taped reruns, despite the White House's request not to do so.

The old James Bond movies may have had something to do with pushing violence and promiscuous sex, with leering one-liners such as "I'll be there later; something has come up" and character names like Pussy...