Have We Become a Nation of Name-Callers?

When I was a teenager, a group of friends and I made a nasty little sport out of belittling one another. We would try to top the others in hurling personal insults. We called this “selling wolfing tickets.”

Everything was fair game in our boneheaded, juvenile jousts. There was no issue, principle or point of view at stake. The only issue was the person. You could talk about his hair, looks, breath, clothes, speech, and of course the ultimate clincher was to take a shot at “yo’ mama.” The one who could be the loudest, dirtiest and vilest and drive the victim to tears or provoke a fight was the winner.

We were silly, immature, insecure teenagers. We didn’t know any better. But the crowds outside the two courthouses after the O.J. Simpson civil and criminal trials seemed not to know any better either.

I’m not surprised. From the streets to the suites, America has turned into a society where silly, immature and insecure individuals dominate political and intellectual debate. They have refined the art of finger-pointing, name-calling and personal blame. They can’t distinguish between civil dialogue on issues and mudslinging. They substitute character attack and personal diatribe for principled debate and discussion of the issues. Their goal is simple: to bully and intimidate anyone who disagrees with them and chill the open and honest exchange of ideas. There are numerous examples.

* Affirmative action. The supporters of Proposition 209 accused affirmative action supporters of pushing quotas, scheming to dump white men from jobs and shove unqualified women and minorities into them. The appeal punched the right buttons and played to the latent bigotry and fears in many whites. Proposition 209 opponents, meanwhile, branded anyone who had doubts about affirmative action as a bigot, a racist, a sexist, a homophobe.

* Welfare. Many welfare opponents vilify recipients as lazy and immoral cheats and con artists. Welfare advocates accuse anyone who opposes welfare--including those with a sincere interest in finding a way to get people off the rolls and back to work--as insensitive hypocrites out to starve babies and dump mothers on the street.

* Abortion. The middle ground of reason has long been lost on this issue. Both sides have concocted a lexicon of epithets for each other. Pro-choice advocates are called anti-Christ, anti-family and baby-killers. Pro-life advocates are branded as right-wing, anti-woman hatemongers.

Much of the media that turned the Simpson cases into a national obsession must share some of the blame for making personal invective acceptable, indeed respectable. They pawn off gossip, scandal and trivia as news, while serving up a steady diet of stories on murder, mayhem and human suffering.

At the same time, millions of Americans daily overdose on the rantings of talk radio jocks who pollute the airwaves with hate-filled personal slander against anyone who disagrees with their views. They have turned character assassination into a state-of-the-art enterprise to get big ratings. Their listeners gleefully join in. All of this has made many Americans believe that the world is a dog-eat-dog, hateful and fearful place.

It would be a mistake to think that the Simpson cases drove many Americans to make a sport of character assassination. This is just as wrongheaded as the popular notion that the Simpson saga created the great racial divide in America.

The seeds of personal and racial mean-spiritedness were planted long before Simpson. The blood-sport crowds outside the two courthouses were a tragic testament that America is reaping that bitter harvest. And this is perhaps one of the biggest liabilities of the Simpson legacy.