OXFORD — Maybe the country needs a little more of Woodrow F. Call’s view of rudeness, if not his exact reaction to it.
In “Lonesome Dove” — my all-time favorite television series — Call, portrayed by the actor Tommy Lee Jones, nearly beats to death an Army scout for trying to whip a cowboy into submission to sell his horse.
After Call is lassoed by his partner Gus McCrae, played by Robert Duvall, and pulled off the badly beaten Army representative, he remounts his own horse as astonished townspeople look on in horror.
In case they needed an explanation, Call says, “I hate rude behavior in a man. I won’t tolerate it.” Never mind that he had almost killed a man.
A lot of people don’t need to be crossing Woodrow Call these days.
Rude, according to the dictionary, is being offensively impolite or ill-mannered.
There’s more than enough of that to go around, but worse than that, rudeness can’t begin to define what much of the public is willing to put up with.
I’m thinking about the plethora of allegations of sexual harassment, abuse and even rape recently leveled at public figures, including politicians in the highest office, as well as Hollywood entertainers and media moguls.
At least some of those in the private sector have been discredited and lost their jobs, albeit with handsome severance pay. But you can’t say that about most of the politicians.
The past year, with President Trump’s rude tweets and self-aggrandizement, there seems to be more tolerance of what once was considered bad behavior.
Maybe we’re mentally calloused to it. Some of us live in an environment of constant bombardment by all-day television news channels and social media that allow anyone with a laptop or a smartphone to be extremely rude without fear of being beaten bloody
But the amount of tolerance many of us have toward scandals, especially when it comes to politics, depends on which side is doing it.
You may have noticed, if you are objective, how people can justify flaws in leaders they support by claiming what he is accused of is no worse than what somebody on the other side has done.
During last year’s presidential campaign when some video recordings came out showing Trump bragging about rude behavior with women, he and his supporters immediately brought up former President Bill Clinton’s history with females.
Trump, of course, weathered that scandal and was elected president because, among other things, a lot of people thought the Clintons would be worse.
Also, as USA Today pointed out in a recent editorial, when Bill Clinton was under threat of impeachment in 1998 for an affair with an intern, the highest approval ratings of his presidency came in the midst of those proceedings. That was after voters in 1992 and 1996 overlooked sexual harassment allegations leveled against the former Arkansas governor.
So I won’t be surprised if Roy Moore isn’t elected U.S. senator for Alabama in that special election next month, despite the polls showing him trailing and the flack he is catching from leaders in his own Republican Party outside the state for allegations that he repeatedly hit on and sexually harassed young girls when he was in his 30s.
I wouldn’t vote for him, but I’ve never lived in Alabama except for one summer a long time ago when I worked there and couldn’t wait to get out on weekends.
• Charles M. Dunagin is the retired editor and publisher of the Enterprise-Journal in McComb. He lives in Oxford.
