With all due respect

From his throne, Shawn (Jay-Z) Carter once blessed the world with some bars: “Giving you respect/I expect the same thing.”

Unfortunately for Jigga, there isn’t much respect being passed around nowadays. We don’t respect those less fortunate, we don’t respect each other and we don’t even respect ourselves.

Respect for the downtrodden used to be a cultural benchmark of America. Respect for the “tired, poor, huddled masses” is literally engraved in our landmarks. 

But, alas. In light of the freezing of everything, @btowntroubles, a Bloomington/IU-focused Twitter account with 1,500 followers, tweeted Saturday, “Due to the ice, there will be more people at #IU eating shit than an impoverished African country. #btowntroubles.” 

To quote comedian Donald Glover, “You can say that?  You can say those words in that order and you don’t explode?  Like the People Police don’t come down from the sky and say ‘Oh I’m sorry, this person’s a demon?’”

Here’s a B-Town Trouble: Living in the same geographic area as someone who would find that okay to say, ever. 

Here’s a Non-B-Town Trouble: Every year, 15 million children die of hunger globally. Let’s joke about it some more, please.

So some dumb college kids made fun of dying Africans. It’s regrettable, but it’s not a pandemic of disrespect. That comes when we don’t respect one another.

Service in the Armed Forces used to be, basically, a gold mine of goodwill. Evidently, this isn’t true anymore. I speak of the incident in which an openly gay soldier was booed by the audience at Sept. 22’s Republican primary debate.

And our leaders used to be respected too. Richard Nixon resigned from the presidency and was still one of the most respected elder statesmen in American history. 

But ever since Bill and Hillary Clinton, that respect has vanished. President Barack Obama recently claimed, correctly, of his political opponents, “They talk about me like a dog.”

On Sunday, Speaker of the House John Boehner predicted President Obama’s State of the Union speech would be “pathetic.”

It’s fine to oppose his policies, but he deserves respect by nature of being our President.

That’s not to say the Left is a Zen Temple of respectful political battle. Vice President Joe Biden reportedly referred to Tea Partiers as terrorists.

And we all know the Bush years were dark — one 2004 ad likened voting for Bush to “running in the Special Olympics. Even if you win, you’re still retarded.”

We don’t even respect ourselves. A recent report from the American Academy of Pediatrics found that eating disorders were on the rise among adolescents.
 
One in five Americans suffer from a mental illness — and 8.7 million adults considered suicide in the last year.

Worse: Only 60 percent of those with a mental illness seek treatment.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T, just a little bit, please.

­— shlumorg@indiana.edu