Flag Day.

I just watched a TV commercial in which Fred Thompson made a pitch for a company offering a reverse mortgage. Fred was standing in front of a house. Behind him, attached to that house, a wall-mounted flag staff held an American Flag waving gently in the breeze.

I liked it. The flag was pretty and it afforded me the opportunity to watch the flag and ignore what Fred was saying. But it brought back memories of another Flag Day, about 30 years ago. We were in Toledo, Ohio - in the studios of WTOL-TV - to do a live television program. Part of the set for the program were a group of telephone operators, seated at tables, each with a red telephone to accept viewer calls which would come.

Since it was Flag Day, we bought some little American Flags, on miniature staffs, and set one next to each telephone. Ooops! A station executive made an appearance just before air time and ordered the flags removed. We protested that it was June 14, Flag Day, and we just wanted to promote the displaying of the flag! Nope, station policy prohibits using the United States Flag in any commercial announcement!

How things have changed! Notably those standards enforced by broadcast stations. Not always for the better, in my opinion. And I am not talking only about flags.

Sixty years ago, as an announcer at radio station WLDY in Ladysmith, Wisconsin, I was called into the station manager's office and reprimanded for using the word "crud" on the air. Today it is okay for the President of The United States to say, on coast-to-coast network TV, that he is learning whose ass to kick. I would have been fired for using that kind of language.

We used to ask fellow announcers, "Would you use those words in front of a class of kindergartners?" "Would you say those things in a church?" No one had to define profanity. Or pornography. Or rude behavior. Everyone understood what was unacceptable in civilized company.

The next time you see some old guy with a sad face, think of this: he may be remembering the days when civility was the rule.