So maybe it's not swine flu, but the nation seems to have come down with a serious case of impulse control disorder.
Symptoms include (but are not limited to) Kanye West snatching Taylor Swift's moment at MTV's Video Music Awards; Serena Williams threatening, with expletives, to cram her ball down a lineswoman's throat at the U.S. Open; and Rep. Joe Wilson's inability to contain the urge to denigrate President Obama while the president was in the middle of addressing the nation on a topic of critical importance.
Wilson's House colleagues formally chastised the South Carolina Republican on Tuesday.
In the wake of these high-profile outbursts across disciplines -- politics, entertainment and sports -- many Americans have found themselves asking what is going on. To some, it's not a coincidence but rather the manifestation of a deepening social dysfunction.
"It's extremely regrettable, but not shocking," said Pepper Schwartz, a University of Washington sociologist. "And there is a viral element to it. It's like Malcolm Gladwell's book 'The Tipping Point.' You get to a critical mass of something and it spreads like wildfire."
Theories for the behavior abound.
Some say it reflects a general collapse of manners, rooted in the anti-authoritarian strains of the late 1960s. Some offer a psychological explanation: that such outbursts reveal the person beneath the mask of a public persona. Some see an element of racial animus at work.
And one etiquette authority offered an uncomplicated explanation, in particular for West: He just wanted attention.
Schwartz, a political liberal, believes that the flowering of rude behavior -- call it the New Boorishness -- took root in the late 1960s when students began challenging authority "for a very good reason: Authority was leading us into Vietnam."
Over time, she said, "we have shredded respect for every kind of institution, every kind of profession, and have indulged ourselves and our emotions at every level of society, from how kids treat their parents, how students treat their teachers and all the way up the line. So why wouldn't it ultimately get onto the tennis courts and presidential speeches?"
Many have bemoaned the erosion of civility represented by these rants, but cultural critic and writer Joseph Epstein thinks civility was purely a facade to begin with.
