DEATH OF CIVILITY BODES ILL FOR HUMANITY FROM SPORTS TO POLITICS TO NATIONS, RESPECT AND DIGNITY ARE JUST WORDS.

Byline: Russell P. Friedman Local View

ONCE upon a yogic time there could be a civil discourse among people who held differing views. What happened? Civility, respect and dignity seem to have disappeared off the radar screen in all aspects of modern existence.

What is referred to as ``trash talking'' in the sports world has entered the mainstream. No longer is it possible to hear a dialogue between a Republican and a Democrat without hearing an ad nauseum of ad hominem attacks between the people speaking. And I'm talking about folks chatting over dinner, not ``Crossfire'' on CNN.

But, from Bill O'Reilly and his self-serving attacks on anyone he perceives to be wrong, and the aforementioned ``Crossfire,'' with its built-in entertainment quotient of baiting and gouging among the hosts and the guests, and anything in between, the Jerry Springer-ization of America is complete.

What happened? Where did the manners my mother, my teachers, my rabbi, priest or minister taught me go? (Talk about a multicultural child.) How did they evaporate as if they never existed? I recall being at a hockey game here in Los Angeles many years ago, when the great Wayne Gretzky still played for the Edmonton Oilers. I remember being aghast as the majority of the 16,005 in attendance chanted in unison, ``Gretzky Sucks, Gretzky Sucks!'' And I watched the fathers leading their sons in the chant.

And I felt so sad to see such a display of bad manners, bad sportsmanship and bad parenting. But what could I do? I could not stand up and implore the masses to come to their senses, to remember their ``pleases'' and ``thank-yous.'' It would have been as daft as holding my hands up to stop an avalanche. I would have been hooted out of the building, drowned in their scorn.

By the time I witnessed that uncomfortable phenomenon, it was already an established habit at rinks, stadia and courts around the country, and it carried with it the imprimatur of the sponsoring arena, with the full- fledged accompaniment of the house organist giving it a full-throated backing.

What happened to civility? I can just hear it now, ``Civility Sucks, Civility Sucks,'' followed by the chords that intone, ``Da, di, da di ta dah- Charge!''

Tough times for honorable people. It is no longer acceptable to be agreeably disagreeable. It has to be in your face. It has to be brazen, unrelenting and hurtful.

What a bad game we play. We don't realize that the consequences we have reaped are the direct result of this zero-sum game, in which the loudest and crudest dominate. From the discussions of smoking to abortion to religion to politics, there is no longer any reason or reasonability. It's my way or you're dead wrong, and, in many cases, just plain dead.

To get the bad taste out of my mouth, I must resort to my cable channel replay of the Prime Minister's Questions from the English House of Commons. The height of civility is taking its last breaths in that hall. It is there that you can hear good manners taken to absurd but delicious extremes. A member often starts a sentence on Tuesday and finishes it on Wednesday. I have watched in awe one of those polite meanderings, which never makes a personal assault yet contains a withering condemnation of a belief or a principle.

``Would the right honourable gentleman of the opposition, given his penchant for an ever-so-rare overstatement, and in light of the recent unpleasantries occasioned by his possibly misguided vote on the matter of welfare for recumbent hedgehogs, whilst at the same time holding a view that might well have held sway in centuries long past, be inclined to grant that the subject in question, though exhausted by debate, is still one which the right honourable gentleman might consider, given that the lateness of the hour precludes further research, and might tend to imply that the honourable member was willing to allow an emotional consideration into this matter ...''

What'd he say? I don't know, but I sure like the way he said it.

Not to make silly or light of this shift in communication over my lifetime, but I can truly see it as the precursor to the incivility that winds up having rhetoric ratchet up to bloody action in the space of time it takes to utter a few ill-chosen words. The national and international political scenes are proof enough of that theory. And that is a bad thing.

But I am also concerned about something with even broader consequences. Our children. Some of my friends are on the high school lecture circuit, where they are having to address the physical bullying that has become rampant on junior and senior high school campuses, as well as the verbal baiting and taunting that mimics the professional athletes, but without a referee in place to blow a whistle.

The last act of public gentility I witnessed was in the vice presidential debates between Sen. Joe Lieberman and now Vice President Dick Cheney.

Now there was some civility. There was an honourable discourse. There was rapierlike jousting with thrusting and parrying aplenty, but no personal slander. No ``Cheney sucks.'' No ``Joe's a jerk.''

And this week it is the Middle East where words are invitations to funerals, and saber rattling has given way to tanks rumbling. And there is no civility, just more funerals. We have participated in and perhaps enhanced these debacles by allowing ourselves to create sport out of our comments to and about others.

Where in the hell has civility gone? Civility is dead and so are more and more people who have died because we have lost the ability to talk to each other. We live in the age of communication, yet there is none. The dead people are very dead, and will stay that way. When are the rest of us going to wake up? Funerals suck - now there's a phrase I'll have to live with.