How did we come to this?

On an old episode of All in the Family daughter Gloria dared to utter, in mixed company, the word 'menstruation'. Archie was aghast. "Private," he wailed in dismay. "That's private stuff, and you said it in mixed company!" Now, we know Archie as a troglodyte reactionary buffoon, so we found this to be the stuff of fine comedy. And it was.

But somewhere we seem to have crossed a line in which any subject, no matter how personal, is open to discourse, thanks to TV advertising. Last evening I saw a TV add in which a guy is sitting in an office boardroom looking highly uncomfortable. Meanwhile, a woman is presenting a project to the staff in which she is making every innuendo reference that could be made about either needing to or actually breaking wind (but metaphorically in the context of her presentation). And then the viewer, boasting a higher than room-temperature IQ can easily deduce, hey, this guy really needs to fart. So, in the advance of civilization down many millennia, we have come to this, dear friends. Nothing is sacred. It is finally acceptable to overtly discuss, in the comfortable confines of your living room, something that is common to us all, but was invariably, in the past, relegated to being a private matter. But, dammit, I guess if you have some sort of flatulence-fixer to merchandise, then we should just come right and do it.

Guy is sitting in a hot tob with two babes. Things are looking promising. His buddy comes by and says, "Say, Frank, how's your diarrhea?" Babes rapidly exit. Yep, chatting about having the runs is no longer taboo, either, and we must have that thrust in front of us.

Unfortunate lady is on a sightseeing bus. It becomes apparent she is on the verge of wetting her pants. Not such a nice thing to have to really "gotta go" in a public place, with no apparent relief in sight other than a humiliating 'accident'. But, do we really need to be informed of this in such a manner. Don't people with such problems already have some inkling of how to deal with that, or diarrhea, or flatulence, or any other of a host of heretofore extremely private matters being interspersed in an episode of CSI, or whatever happens to be on at the time?

I'm the farthest thing from being a prude, or ultrasensitive -- believe me, I am very open-minded about almost anything. But, in a way I somehow think that a certain style or grace has been pulled out of contemporary society and has been replaced with a Rabelaisian baseness that gets kind of creepy.

We are loath to discuss war, poverty, illiteracy, crime and its causes, hunger, addiction, environmental depredation and a host of other blights that can and should be addressed, because we are afraid to label ourselves politically, but it seems we can now, with impunity, talk about stuff that most people, even now, stick behind the door of the lavatory.
"Say, Mom, I think that you need some Bean-o if you're gonna keep doin' that!"