Kanye West created a rant when he hijacked Taylor Swift's speech at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards.

Dave Schechter
CNN Senior National Editor

“We’ve forgotten our table manners.”

I heard that a couple of weeks ago, during a discussion that was supposed to focus on art but devolved into politics. The woman who made the comment was referring not to anything in particular, but everything in general - from this summer’s rancorous town hall meetings on health care to shouts from the floor when the President addressed Congress, from anger at center court of the U.S. Open tennis championships to a rant at the MTV Video Music Awards.

A couple of days later, I read a column by Elizabeth Bernstein in The Wall Street Journal. Bernstein was looking forward to a friend’s visit, until the friend said she was eager to discuss health care reform. “But now the ruckus is spilling over into our private lives. Alarmingly, people who know and even love one another are taking off the gloves and duking it out around dinner tables and water coolers, through phones calls and emails and even on the Web,” she wrote.

“Not so long ago, people tried to be polite in conversation. But that was when they actually listened to each other. These days, there's more shouting than informed discourse, as politicians, pundits and partisans attack each other on television and the Internet. . . The Internet is only making matters worse, as people feel emboldened to say things they would never dare utter to someone's face.” Keep reading

Bruce Springsteen turns 60-years-old today.

Dave Schechter
CNN Senior National Editor

Happy Birthday to Bruce Springsteen, 60-years-young today.

I bought two tickets when Springsteen came to Atlanta back in April.

Having rocked at one of his shows here several months earlier, I gave these tickets to my teenagers, so that my daughter and son could experience “The Boss” and the E Street Band in concert.

I’ve had that pleasure several times, dating back to September 20, 1975 in Darby Gym at Grinnell College.

That was less than a month after release of the album “Born to Run” and five weeks before Springsteen simultaneously landed on the covers of TIME and Newsweek, back when that was a big deal.

So what was he doing in a small town in Iowa when rock-and-roll stardom beckoned?

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Dave Schechter
CNN Senior National Editor

Honor is due.

They are old, the youngest in their early 80s, their faces etched with evidence of the decades.
They walk slowly, some leaning on canes and walkers; others make their way in wheelchairs.
What memories come to mind as they approach the World War II Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.?
They are the core of “the greatest generation,” which fought in Europe, the Pacific and other remote locales.
And we are losing them at an increasingly rapid rate.
The Veterans Administration estimates that by Sept. 30 this year, there will be slightly more than 2 million living veterans of World War II (including my favorite, an 83-year-old Navy veteran living north of Chicago), roughly 280,000 fewer than a year ago.

Honor is due.

When the light is right, the faces stare at you out of the granite wall at the Korean War Memorial.
On a cold, wet night, the statues of 19 weary troops returning from a patrol are particularly eerie.
A former colleague who fought in Korea often complained that veterans of that war were forgotten, coming as it did five years after the end of World War II.
Korean War veterans might be considered the kid brothers and sisters of the World War II veterans (though many also fought in that conflict).
As of last Veterans Day, there were an estimated 2.3 million living veterans of the Korean War.

Honor is due.

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Census bureau employees, such as this one, gather federal data.

Editor's Note: Update – According to the Census Bureau numbers released today, the 2008 poverty rate was 13.2 percent, up from 12.5 the previous year. The number of people living in poverty in 2008 was 39.8 million, up 2.6 million from the year before.

Dave Schechter
CNN Senior National Editor

On Thursday morning, the Census Bureau will release data expected to show a “statistically significant” increase in the national poverty rate, the percentage of Americans living below the government poverty line.

Based on an Associated Press interview with a Commerce Department official, the expectation is that there will have been nearly 39 million Americans living below the poverty line in 2008 – an increase of more than 1.5 million from the year before – pushing the poverty rate up to at least 12.7 percent, if not higher.

In reality, that number and that rate are something of a fraud.

In the first decade of the 21st Century, the U.S. government still determines who is poor with a formula created in 1963-64 using data from 1955.

1955?

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Editor’s note: At 12:00pm  ET tomorrow, President Obama will go to a high school in Arlington, Va., to deliver a back-to-school speech to the nation’s students. The White House plans to release the speech online today.

Dave Schechter
CNN Senior National Editor

You frequently hear claims that the United States has the best health care system in the world, despite data that suggest otherwise.

You never hear claims that the United States has the best school system in the world, because of data that suggest otherwise.

In fact, you never (okay, almost never) hear anything good about public education in this country, at least not until the subject is college or university.

Have the public schools been talked down to the point where broad-based success (rather than the individual student, school or district) is impossible – a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy?

Americans often say they distrust Congress and the whole lot of them should be thrown out – but then go ahead and re-elect their own representative.

Well, something like that goes on when the topic is public education.

In the most recent edition of an annual poll by the educators association Phi Delta Kappa International and Gallup more than half of those responding graded their local schools with an A or a B but gave the nation’s schools overall significantly lower marks, with fewer than one in five awarding an A or B. "This continues a long-standing difference, suggesting that Americans like the schools they know but are much less positive about public education in general," a review of the poll observed.

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Sen. Arlen Specter, left, answers questions Tuesday during a forum in Lebanon, Pennsylvania.

Dave Schechter
CNN Senior National Editor

If we have learned – or been reminded – of one thing during the debate over health care reform it is this: Democracy can be messy, noisy, loud, raucous, rude and crude, barely resembling the stereotype of the civilized New England village town hall as depicted in Norman Rockwell’s painting titled “Freedom of Speech.”

Of course, as Winston Churchill so famously offered: “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.”

One of the guys in the often-entertaining “Barbershop” segment on National Public Radio’s “Tell Me More” program found a visual metaphor for some of the town hall gatherings in the 1999 film “Fight Club.”

Given the apathy the American people display on so many issues that may not be an entirely bad thing, though.

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Author’s note: This blog contains more metaphors than considered healthy.

Dave Schechter
CNN Senior National Editor

I confess to not having read the entire 1,000 pages-plus that make up the bill at the base of the current debate, a proposal being torn apart and rebuilt by three committees in the House and two in the Senate in a time-honored and time-consuming process often derisively referred to as “sausage-making.”

Not to mention the debate ongoing in often raucous online and public forums.

As Dr. Bernadine Healey cautioned in U.S. News & World Report, “Reading H.R. 3200 is not like curling up with Harry Potter. “ It certainly is not, though for some people the current debate seems to pit good vs. evil (which is left to the individual). If you’ve never read a piece of legislation, take a gander at this heavyweight.

The length and complexity of this bill apparently is taxing the hired help in Washington, D.C., as well.

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Dave Schechter
CNN Senior National Editor

Sitting on the edge of the bed in my parents’ bedroom upstairs.

That’s where I watched the Apollo 11 astronauts step onto the moon.

If you are of a certain age, you remember where you were on July 20, 1969.

I remember when a television would be wheeled into my grade school classrooms so that we could watch the launch of the Mercury or Gemini missions and later the splashdown and recovery of the astronauts by Navy divers.

I remember a plastic space helmet and wanting to be John Glenn aboard “Friendship 7,” the third Mercury mission and the first to orbit the earth.

By July 16, 1969, when Apollo 11 launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the public was still a ways off from becoming inattentive to the space program.

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Fireworks? Family picnics? What makes you feel patriotic on 4th of July?

Dave Schechter
CNN Senior National Editor

For many years, my friend Eve hosted an old-fashioned Fourth of July picnic in the meadow behind her home. Hayrides, sack races, softball and tug-of-war. Grilled chicken, marinated onions, tomatoes and smores. Red, white and blue bunting. After dark, fireworks.

And a flatbed equipped with a microphone and speakers, for anyone who wanted to do a reading, lead a sing-a-long or, in general, speak their piece. After three decades, a production of this magnitude for some 200 invited guests became too much. Knowing that last year’s would be the final large-scale Fourth of July picnic in the meadow, I took my turn.

After suggesting that it was unfortunate that people have their patriotism questioned when they voice a vision for their country different than whatever holds popular sway at the time and that intolerance could be found at all ends of the political spectrum, I read a selection of quotes about patriotism, some of which are included in those offered here:

“I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” – James Baldwin

“Each nation feels superior to other nations. That breeds patriotism – and wars.” – Dale Carnegie

“There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured with what is right in America.” – Henry Clay

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Security officer Stephen Johns reportedly opened the door for the man police say was his killer.

James W. von Brunn is a native of St. Louis, Missouri. His online biography says he served in World War II.

Dave Schechter
CNN Senior National Editor

If anything positive can come from the tragic shooting at the U.S. Holocaust Museum, it is to shine a light on the creatures who occupy a dark corner of American discourse.

I’ll resist a temptation to compare them with a particular species of insect, but the dictionary on my desk uses the phrase “destructive, annoying or injurious to health” to describe their ilk.

These are people whose lives are consumed by hate for “the other.” They may use a bullhorn in the public square, their free speech rights often protected by police, or the keyboard of a computer at home, sometimes hiding behind a pseudonym.

In the case of Wednesday’s tragedy in the nation’s capital, the alleged shooter – based on the venom on his website – held Jews and blacks in particular contempt. The unfortunate irony is that the security guard killed protecting visitors to a museum recalling the greatest horror inflicted upon the Jewish people was African-American.

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