I believe the OP was referring to them as two seperate periods (“society is much less cohesive than it was even 20 years ago, and absolutely different to the 50s”). That said, there might be a partisan slant to choosing those two periods as exemplars of civility - both were periods when Republicans were in charge. Does Angry Lurker also feel that people were more civil back around 1940 or 1962?
I have a theory that one reason people think that times are so much more racy and people are less civilized is the rise of mass media. Prior to television, and now the internet, people were still screwing around, doing drugs, committing crime, etc. You just didn’t HEAR about it so much. People have always been pretty scuzzy – it’s just that now, it’s out in the open, rather than so hush-hush.
Look back to the 1920s? Or prior to the Victorian era? The Regency, or Georgian period, was extremely lax, a time of excessive indulgence and vulgarity. (Look at the children of George III, – they make Bill Clinton look like Mike Brady!)
Study history – you’ll find that that society has ALWAYS been lamenting how vulgar society is becoming. Maybe we’re swearing more, and not so “polite.” But even that’s debatable. Are times as violent? Is wealth desparity as wide?
Starving Artist keeps harping on the fifties and the sixties…but go back further, and you’ll see that nothing much has really changed.
I don’t have time for this today (and thanks, Angry Lurker), but you seem constitutionally incapable of regurgitating anything that I’ve actually said correctly. I’m not the one who keeps ‘harping’ on the 50s and 60s, you and your compatriots are. I harp on things post-1968. 
As I’ve plainly said, my opinion is that there have essentially been two Americas: the one that existed prior to circa 1968 and the one that has existed since. You and your cohorts keep narrowing the focus to the 50s and 60s (probably so you can incorrectly claim that people like me long for an Ozzie & Harriet life that never existed, totally oblivious to the fact that we who lived during that time know perfectly well that life was not like that era’s sitcoms), and then when I address comments within that more narrow context, people think I’m “harping” on the 50s and 60s.
You desperately need to work on your reading comprehension. Virtually nothing you say about what I think or have said is ever correct.
I disagree. I think this is the perfect time to do something about it. Racism is a shadow of its former self, to the degree it exists at all; so-called ‘sexism’ no longer seems to be much of a problem; and we are on the threshold of gay rights that include marriage. So even assuming that a rude, crude and vulgar society was necessary to achieve these changes (which of course I don’t agree with), those reasons no longer exist. So why, other than a mere unwillingness to go to the trouble, is it a good thing to allow things to continue down the present path rather than start to lobby for the adoption of more polite and considerate social mores?
A wonderful example of how a literal translation can miss the point entirely. The puns in “Wilt thou, whose will is large” are no accident, and this is where the ‘spacious’ reference occurs. Large dimensions are being implied, but they aren’t feminine ones!
In addition, Shakespeare’s sonnet cycle has a lot of poems directed negatively against the Dark Woman. Although she’s portrayed as beautiful and desirable, there’s an edge to a lot of the images. The narrator feels attracted to her almost against his will (and sometimes, he says, better judgement). Most of the sappier, more famous, love poems in Shakespeare’s sonnets are addressed to a young man. Whether the intention was homosexual or to emphasise the pure, Platonic nature of the love expressed is obviously debatable.
Will was also used to refer to a vagina and sexual desire (note that it’s the addressee, thou, who has a large will). Truly, the art of punning is not what it used to be. 
By the way, poor Will, with a name like that, and a surname of Shakespeare, he must have been the butt of endless jokes. Which, coming back to the topic at hand, most people would not hesitate to make, probably more ribald than what most of us can come up with.
This is what has always intrigued me about this point of view. Everyone talks about the Golden Age of the '50s, and how society has degenerated since. But few would deny, if forced to think about it (which they don’t, because there aren’t many sitcoms about life in 1764), that that has not always been the case. So, the logical conclusion must be that the 1950s were the anomaly, not contemporary society. We’ve simply “regressed” back to the natural state of affairs in which fart and sex jokes are funny.
Were the '50s (and maybe a few decades before, which can be romanticized as the time when society was Thrifty and knew the Value of Work - the 1930s - and when society was United in Fighting Evil - the 1940s) really the only time in history when people were nice and neighbourly? I believe the prevailing opinion among historians is that people had a vested interest in believing that themselves at the time (following the war, people were often uncertain about the rapid changes in their society and wanted to create an illusion of peace and stability), and the media we get from the '50s is more prescriptive than descriptive.
But I’m not an expert in this - my field is the seventeenth century, and nothing can inspire any kind of nostalgia about that era. I’ve read criminal court transcripts, and the number of people accused of fornication (by far the most common crime) and adultery doesn’t really lead me to see it as a “moral” time at all, and the fact that people were commonly found innocent for lack of evidence, but banished from town under threat of death anyway is just another reason why I’m glad I live in today.
Besides, there’s ancient Greek pottery bemoaning the laziness of today’s youth - it’s not exactly a new sentiment.
Because “it’s not nice to talk about things like that” is too often used as an excuse for not addressing a glaring wrong. You don’t change history by being polite.
And the key word there is “opinion.” You have yet to show any evidence for this other than your own experiences. (Although pre-1968 fashion was divine!!! Dior’s “New Look”, anyone?)
You’ve offered mostly comments about hippies screwing in the mud, gangsta rap and people going around saying “fuck.” And blamed most of it on “liberal permissiveness” or whatnot. Hardly anything concrete. You have yet to show any actual connections, other than your own opinions. No evidence of a connection.
(Oh, and btw, shouldn’t this be in GD, or IMHO?)
Aw man, these cubes are really trying to put us on the road to Squaresville.
Ya dig?
I must have gone to twenty weddings in the late Fifties and early Sixties. I can think of only one marriage that survived and she was married to a minister. So many of the women weren’t happy then. I can remember my mother telling me that if she had a gun she would shoot herself. She was crying and she was dead serious. I was about 12 or 14.
I would have been unhappy too if I had been working a 16 hour day and was not considered an equal partner in the marriage.
[quote]
Starving Artist: …so-called ‘sexism’ no longer seems to be much of a problem;
Don’t put quotation marks around a word that way unless you want to imply that there really wasn’t any sexism. You wouldn’t like it if someone said that you were a so called “artist.” That would not only be an insult to you and it would be implying the opposite.
I know that you know that there certainly has been plenty of sexism.
Let me know when men are granted physical custody of children as often as women in divorces. Let me know when men are called as frequently at work to come and pick up their sick children at school. Let me know when women’s haircuts cost the same as men’s or when good blouses cost the same as good shirts or when the dry-cleaning bills are comparable.
When you’ve kept an eye on these things for forty years, you are not so quick to think they don’t really exist or are you so off-handed in declaring these problems more or less solved.
Other than that, of course, you are brilliant. 
Excuse me? I’ll agree that sexism still exists, sure, but the above is just an example of women’s fashion gone overboard.
Haircut? Go to SuperCuts, they’ll cut your hair for $12, male or female. If you want to sit in that chair for an hour and a half while somebody massages your neck, washes your hair, dyes it, cuts it, styles it and rubs all sorts of pomades or whatnot, that will cost more, sure.
If you buy the same old cotton shirt as a man, it will cost the same. If you want a fancy silk blouse with frills, decorative buttons, and one of those useless belts that go across your waist, it might cost you more. Not to mention that many women seem to get a big kick out of paying too much for clothes anyway. It makes them feel dainty and refined.
Dry cleaning is the same issue. Expensive materials plus fragile designs cost more to clean. Furthermore, men wear suits, that’s about all they need dry-cleaned. Women have all sorts of fancy everyday clothes that need to be dry-cleaned, not just for special occasions or stuffy corporate jobs.
I mean, I don’t doubt that sexism is still a problem, but use better examples, please.
When I do this, at the same salon and same stylist that my wife uses, and we both have the same length hair, and mine is $38 and hers is never under $70, we still have a problem. 
Really, I think I’m aboard with a few others here–StarvingArtist, the rudeness was a means to an end because a lot of the people championing things like racism, sexism, etc, couched their statements in appeals to decorum and tradition. I’d guess that when the Baby Boomers start going away and the 1960s pass out of living memory, you’ll see more formal politeness being coupled with the increasingly liberal social values we enjoy post-1968 (I’m not interested in debating whether those value improvements with regard to racism/sexism/whatever-ism were caused by or inevitable in spite of the “dirty hippies” (tongue-in-cheek shorthand)), as more people will desire to enjoy the benefits of politeness and decorum without the (perhaps perceived rather than actual) baggage of the traditionalistic/decorum arguments for perpetuating the -isms back in the day.
It’s already starting to happen to an extent in my generation (having been born in 1979, I’m on the leading edge of “no living memory of the late 60s/70s era” demographic) and the people born in the five years prior to/after me–we grew up with Reagan, we’re generally not racist and less inclined to oppose gay marriage, and at least with the guys I work with and talk with on a regular basis, we’ll swear and curse in private with people of the same social rank, but never in front of the bosses or admin staff (but female engineers are invited to join if they’re in the social circle anyway, and they usually are) or in public, we don’t call women ‘cunts’ or men ‘dicks’. You’ll hear statements like “You’re within your rights to say it but that doesn’t make it any less rude.” in response to stuff like that. Maybe I’m just working in the world’s only polite IT company.
Pop art will be what it will be, but just you wait–that’s my prediction, society will start getting more polite here shortly without necessarily becoming less liberal or “liberal”.
Isn’t political correctness just a form of civility? It’s based on basic principles of good manners like “don’t offend other people” and “respect their opinions”.
So why do conservatives generally mock political correctness?
My theory is that there are honest conservatives who don’t have any particular beef with political correctness as they correctly see it as a form of politeness/respect, and then there are the social repressionists (really, can we be honest here–I’ll divorce “socially repressive” from “conservative” in my vocabulary if y’all can make “liberal” and “progressive” not include “socialist” by definition) who hide behind traditionalism/“politeness” when it’s repressing people they want to repress and jeer political correctness when it’s interfering with their desire to be the majority.
I don’t think we have many if any of the latter on this board, in all seriousness, and I imagine the former get as sick of being accused of being racist sexists as I get sick of being accused of rabid socialism because I want to rethink health care (but not, y’know, nationalize hospitals or whatever).
I think part of the problem is that people take so much more offense at little things these days then they did in the past. Back in the day, if you referred to someone as “stupid” or “retarded” or “idiot”, everybody just got the gist that you were talking about a person with a mental handicap. No big deal. Nowadays it is outrageous to NOT bend over backwards in the attempt to apologize for even mentioning somebody’s handicap.
Sure, you can say “Fuck” in public now, as long as you’re not in church. But say “retard” or “colored” even in the rowdiest bar and you’re ostracized. We’ve just swapped one set of boogey-man words for another. It makes sense that the “conservatives” don’t like that change. I guess they’d rather call people “retards” as long as they don’t have to hear their daughters say “shit”.
Could you be more specific about the word ‘lobby’? Do you mean ‘encourage legislators to change or enact laws pertaining to politeness’ or do you mean ‘encourage other people to be act more politely’?
Also, what do you mean, specifically, by ‘polite and considerate’. Holding doors for women? For everyone? Cursing only in private? No cursing at all? Something to do with hemlines and necklines? Moderation in drinking alcohol?
You are issuing a kind of call to action. Maybe it’s a great idea, maybe it’s awful, but how can anybody decide to join in if we don’t have any details? What do you want people to do differently than they are doing now?
Is this the pit? drat. In that case, I’ll confine my comments to “I disagree with your premise and your conclusion”
This isn’t true, actually. When I take a black pants suit in to be dry cleaned (plain black jacket, plain black pants, white cotton or pinstriped cotton oxford shirt - suitable for funeral and/or court - in other words a “man’s suit” in every way except that it’s made for a 5’2" woman) - it costs more than the exact same suit for my husband, even though his is actually larger and, in theory, requires more dry cleaning fluid. I don’t DO bells, whistles, ruffles, belts, gewgaws or knick knacks thankyouverymuch.
While I don’t think its a huge issue for modern feminism, it does piss me off each and every time I got to the dry cleaner.
Well, if you’ve got a case, why not take it to court? It is illegal to discriminate on the basis of sex, and while I have no doubt sexism still exists in all sorts of hidden ways, this is pretty blatant and obvious. Presumably you’ve already got all the evidence you need in the form of tickets and receipts.
It is very much a huge issue for feminism! You’re telling me you get charged extra to have a pair of pants dry cleaned, and if your husband takes the exact same pair of pants to the exact same dry cleaner, he gets a reduced price. That’s a travesty.
Actually, it is illegal for the Government to discriminate on the basis of sex, or an employer who meets certain criteria. As the dry cleaner is not my employer nor an agent of the Government, I wouldn’t have much of a case would I?
methinks you have nary a clue what you’re talking about.