Jenice Armstrong: Where did 'class' go?

WHEN DID America get so crass?

We've lost our sense of politeness and don't know how to treat each other any more. Manners are out. It's hip to be boorish and in-your-face.

Instead of being America the beautiful, we've become America the crude. Somewhere along the way, we have gotten the collective message that it's acceptable to be discourteous.

We confuse freedom of speech with freedom to drop f-bombs and to flip someone the finger when we are cut off in traffic. We take the right to peaceably assemble to mean we have the right to jump up in someone else's face when he makes us mad. It's an epidemic. All you have to do is turn on the TV to see glaring examples of bad manners.

President Obama, interviewed on "60 Minutes" Sunday night, blamed a coarsening of the culture for what's going on and said he hoped for a return to civility, referring to the heckling he got from U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., who shouted, "You lie!" during last week's presidential address to Congress. During the "60 Minutes" interview Obama discussed the overall tenor of the discourse that has taken place at town-hall meetings and tea-party events over the issue of health-care reform.

There's nothing inherently impolite about disagreeing with someone else's point of view. That's healthy in a democracy.

But you should at least have some class about how you do it. Some folks, though, act as if the only way to get their position across is to interrupt and shout over someone else the way Wilson did during the president's speech.

Which brings us to Kanye West, who lost major cool points, as they say, when he disrupted Taylor Swift's acceptance speech during MTV's Video Music Awards Sunday. It was a classic bully move. West wouldn't have dared to upstage a more experienced artist, like Pink or Nas, by grabbing a mike from their hands as he did to Swift and shouting, "I'm really happy for you, but Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time!"

Poor Swift was left standing there in shock while West stole what rightly was her moment. It was a new low for West, who already has racked up a reputation for childish outbursts. You'd think that at this point in his career he would have more class than to pull a stunt like that.

But class and restraint seem to be in dwindling supply as evidenced by tennis star Serena Williams, who, during a profanity-laced tirade, told a line judge Saturday at the U.S. Open, "If I could, I would take this [expletive] ball and shove it down your [expletive] throat!"

Like West and Wilson, she eventually apologized for her offensive behavior, adding that she would like to give the line judge she yelled at "a big ol' hug."

Some things, though, you can't just apologize your way out of.

We should expect more or better. But the new standard seems to be crass over class.

Send e-mail to heyjen@phillynews.com. My blog: http://go.philly.com/heyjen.