"Rude......."

We were watching the start of the 3rd game of the World Series right before we sat down to supper tonight. As the announcer introduced the players from the opposing team (which tonight happens to be the San Francisco Giants), the crowd in the stadium in Detroit boo'ed each player as he was called - with vigor, I might add...rising and escalating in pitch and fervor - right up to the introduction of the pitcher, at which time the crowd exploded with jeers. Now, I will be the first to acknowledge that I am not the worlds biggest sports fan, and I don't often sit and watch an entire game of anything from start to finish....I am more the "poke my head into the room every now and again to check the score", or the "rush in to find out why everyone in the den is hollering" kind of sports viewing gal. (With the exception of the Olympics - then you can't tear me away from the tube). I was appalled by this response from the hometown crowd....what happened to good sportsmanship, or just good old fashioned civility? I understand that emotions run high in the heat of competition and all that, but come on....it's just a game....or is it? The more I think about it, I am afraid that this pregame rudeness is a slice of what we as a society have become. Look around you - social media has emboldened youth and adults alike into a "mean girl" (intended to encompass both genders) mentality - it is a place where refuge for any and all kinds of rudeness can be found, in the impersonal nature of the typed word - sometimes in 44 characters or less. As we draw ever closer to the election, you have only to turn on your TV, or fire up your Facebook news feed to find all manner of mud slinging and the sweeping generalities of parroted hatemongering....on both sides. In so many ways, we as a society have made remarkable progress....but at what cost? At the risk of sounding like an antiquated PolyAnna, I am wondering just when we as a people lost our sense of decorum? Our code of Civility? Every where I turn these days, I am confronted by passive aggression (light on the passive), rudeness, and a thinly veiled air of mean spiritedness. Where is the accountability? The social obligation to be kind to your fellow man? To quote a Gentleman that I have known my entire life, "We may disagree, but that doesn't mean we have to be disagreeable...."...Somehow we  have come to a place where it seems we no longer concern ourselves collectively with the greater good. We have become a self centered, manners deprived, uncensored, unfiltered well of humanity whose behavior could be best compared to that of a petulant toddler, and I am weary of the by-products ....the hurt feelings, the aggravation, the constant feelings of stress that seem to stay shadow close. In short - we have become a people who display, as my Mother would have said, a serious lack of home training....I think, oddly enough, we need to become a nation of BonQuiQui's...you know, the girl from Mad TV who works at King Burger - the one who waves her long pointer finger, and calls people out with one powerfully inflected word...."Rude...."  So here it is.....maybe the next time I see someone, emboldened by our societies' seeming view of  "anything goes", I will wag my stubby, wrinkled, badly manicured pointer finger, cock my left eyebrow (a gift from my Mother), and recite - "Rude......"