"Quiet, please. There's a lady onstage."

Is it because we have become addicted to a new roman coliseum theatre that is reality television that we have become a callous audience? Do we text our approval to the new emperor as a sort of "thumbs-up" or "thumbs-down" on the 888 line? Are we so quick to cut our losses when our immediate gratification genes aren’t titillated that we demand blood? An "aye" for an "eye" is how we seem to appreciate entertainment now; meaning we are lowering our standards for excellence and judging quickly and superficially. And if our needs aren’t met, we turn on a dime.

New restaurants are subject to horrible scrutiny. When you appeal to people’s primal instincts, as eating, you can expect equally as primal responses to stimuli. It’s a well-documented fact that restaurant patrons are seven times more likely to say something nasty about a property as they are to say something nice. People want to save humanity from the arduous torture that they endured and are more motivated to spread the bad word. Here’s a motivating factor, go home tonight and find out what your children are doing in their lives. If you want to reshape society, start in your backyard and help future generations. Nasty doesn’t have to be so tasty. Get a grip, not a gripe and do something positive and we’ll all applaud.

Scurrilous comments led to a horrible incident in a comedy club recently. The performer lost all bearing on his show and launched into a deep seeded rant of Hate. This is not excusable as all performers have a responsibility to the wellbeing of their audience. But was there an environment created where a sect of the audience was quick to stop the performance as their needs, and only their needs, were not being met? Heckling is expected, but it can’t be acceptable when the audience becomes the performer. Maybe in that instance the performer was not performing well, I wasn’t there and I don’t know. Is heckling to an extreme degree fair to the rest of the audience? That the needs of the few outweighed the needs of the whole is not what we strive for in an audience. David Letterman says it best,

"This audience is not a competition, it’s an exhibition. No wagering in the audience, please."

The situation that night was deplorable but indicative of the new needs that an audience has; entertain us now or pay the price.

Another episode happened recently where an audience turned on a performer. The material was not to the audience’s liking and so they took the matter into their own hands. Poor, poor Paulie Shore took one right on the chin for comedians everywhere when in a Texas comedy club he and a heckler went one on one. I’m sure Jethro has spent enough quality time with his buddies in the local Spearmint Rhino to know the basic rules; you never touch the dancers. He seems to have forgotten this and decked Mitzi’s little boy. I remember when a simple "Boo" was enough, or even a hurled tomato when there was REALLY something bad. Back in the day Katherine Hepburn stopped a performance when seeing a audience member with his feet on the stage. She chastised him and continued her work. We seemed to have gotten away from this.

We should probably take a lesson in how to handle an audience from the current administration. If the president can unrepentantly refer to a reporter as a s.o.b. in front of a live microphone, and his vice president can tell a senator to shut the ‘f’ up on the senate floor, then obviously respect is a commodity and being rationed.