R-E-S-P-E-C-T.
Does the rash of high-profile rudeness we've witnessed in the past few days suggest we've forgotten the basic concept?
First, U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., blurts out a boorish ``You lie!'' in the middle of President Barack Obama's address to Congress. Then Serena Williams forfeits a match at the U.S. Open when she talks trash to a line judge, suggesting she might shove an f-word ``ball'' down the judge's f-word ``throat.''
And then rapper Kanye West pulls another of his stunts, sauntering onstage and grabbing the mic from 19-year-old country star Taylor Swift as she made her acceptance speech at Sunday night's MTV Video Music Awards. Seems West thought his pop music peeps and the broader TV audience needed to know his opinion about how Beyoncé should have been the one to take that Moonman. And he must have thought they needed to know right then and there.
Even the usually calm, cool Roger Federer used profanity Monday during the men's final at the U.S. Open, telling a chair umpire, ``Don't tell me to be quiet, OK? When I want to talk, I talk. I don't give a s--- . . . ''
``It's not a pretty time in our society,'' says octogenarian Letitia ``Tish'' Baldrige, Jacqueline Kennedy's White House social secretary and author of several books on etiquette and taste.
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