We were a nicer country when we weren't all stand-up comedians

One of the worst decisions we ever made in this country was when we started kicking the crap out of people for nothing more than being sincere and caring.

I didn't get the memo on that ...

Actually, it wasn't a conscious decision. It's just that every time you see a television show or a movie these days, the coolest characters are the ones whose comments tend to be biting and sarcastic.

The last time I remember anyone standing up against that was in 1991, and he got slapped down. President Bush -- the good one -- made a remark about wishing we had an America that was more like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons. Homer, not O.J.

This might be hard to believe, since "The Simpsons" has been around since Christ was a corporal, but when it was first on the air, it was controversial. Mostly because of Bart, who may have been the most disrespectful child on TV who wasn't actually a criminal.

Anyway, President Bush said it and he got it back in spades. A quote, ostensibly from young Bart, said that the Simpsons were just like the Waltons.

"We're just sitting around waiting for the Depression to end."

Within a few years, every show aimed at families had its own Bart, a kid who if he wasn't smarter than his parents, was at least more glib. And who basically didn't care about anything more than being cool and getting a laugh.

A generation that had been raised on Opie Taylor and others like him now found that their kids would have beaten up Opie and taken his lunch money.

Opie and Andy

Of course, the cartoon Springfield of "The Simpsons" was a very different place than Mayberry, N.C., just as it was very different from Walton's Mountain, Va., a generation earlier.

I don't have much use for Dennis Miller anymore, but back in the days when he was still funny, he had a very insightful line about what had happened to our country.

"The TV beast ate us whole."

An odd point of view for a man who without television might have been working the night shift at Denny's? Maybe so, but there is no question the shows we watched and the characters who peopled them changed the way we looked at ourselves, each other and the outside world.

In the '60s, we still had people who wanted to look at the country through eyes that weren't bloodshot or jaundiced, when we learned -- mostly through television, go figure -- how bad things were for people who lived in urban ghettoes.

Most of us, especially those of us who were still in the process of becoming adults, didn't know much more about black people than what we had seen on "Amos and Andy." Seeing people rioting, burning and looting jarred us into wondering exactly what was going on.

New York

New York had a young, photogenic liberal Republican as its mayor (yes, there once existed liberals in the GOP), and John Lindsay worked to raise awareness. The whole "Give a damn" movement grew out of a Queens woman who had been raped and murdered while nearly 40 of her neighbors watched from inside their homes and chose not to become involved.

Give a damn, indeed.

It may have been the height of '60s liberal idealism, but of course very little happened. Republicans who weren't liberal came along, like Nixon, Agnew and Ronald Reagan. And when people saw nothing being done, they punted on sincerity and decided sarcasm was an easier survival mode.

And because we are the people we are, we didn't just abandon sincerity. We started crapping all over the people who still wanted to be sincere.

"Duh ..."

"Ya think?"

After all, we were hip. We weren't going to be seen as naive. We weren't going to be Barney Fife with our one bullet in our shirt pocket.

And in the end, we all lost. It's a pretty good bet that maybe 99 percent of us aren't as hip or funny as we think we are, so what happens is we end up looking like idiots.

And deep down inside, feeling like we really ought to be better people than we are.

Give a damn?

If only we could.