Gimme Shelter from the Jerks

I've been thinking about cultural shifts lately - how our culture has changed so much. We've gone from a society where people used to look out for one another to a society where it's "gimme, gimme, gimme" and the individual consistently comes before the collective. But that's not the only change - we've also become "coarser" - our values have changed considerably and not for the better.

You see it in little ways and big ways. Consider, for example, how rare it is now for one person to hold a door open for another or to let someone go in line in front of them. It's as if they're so preoccupied with their rights and immediate needs that the "other" doesn't matter.

Example: this evening, I was at Sobeys picking up a few things. I parked next to the handicapped parking spots. When I came out of the store, a pickup truck pulled into one of the parking spots and a very able bodied couple got out and went into the store. They had a handicapped parking permit hanging off their rearview mirror but clearly neither one of them needed it. Did they feel justified in parking there just because they had a permit? A few minutes later, a van pulled into the spot beside me and a very able bodied woman got out and went into the store. She didn't have one of the handicapped permits. I had just seen three people who could care less why those spots are reserved. It's a gimme, gimme, gimme move. They feel that their "wants" come before everything else.

I've been following with interest the developments surrounding the New York radio announcer, Don Imus. He was fired today by CBS for racist comments he made last week about a black university girls' basketball team. At first, CBS merely suspended him for two weeks but then after advertisers began pulling their money out of his show, he was canned. It was another gimme, gimme, gimme scenario. Imus did the celebrity apology thing (which is becoming way too commonplace) and CBS said it was "disappointed" in him. But it wasn't until the major advertisers realized that being associated with him could be bad for business that they began cancelling their contracts. That put the squeeze on CBS and he was dumped. Gimme, gimme, gimme.