When did greeting cards get so vulgar?

In June I was reading the Father’s Day cards, trying to find a funny one for my dad. It was harder than I expected because his two major activities are golfing and fixing stuff.

Judging from the card selection, most paterfamiliases (or is the plural “paters familia?”) belch, fart, fall asleep on the couch while watching moronic reality shows or non-moronic sporting events, and consume massive quantities of beer until they keel over.

Who knew? I know lots of dads besides my own, ranging in age from 21 to 91. None of them are famous for engaging in the aforementioned pastimes.

Birthday cards are just as bad. I learned how many of them base their humor (as in “base humor”) on excessive drinking when a friend of mine had a birthday coming up. He had finally joined Alcoholics Anonymous and was clean of alcohol and drugs for the first time in years. But I was hard-pressed to find a card that didn’t encourage him to “drink ’til you drop!”

Then there’s bathroom humor. I never realized that private bodily functions could be so amusing. Are these cards written by–or for–proctologists, urologists, and gynecologists? We now have sound effect cards. The next logical step will be olfactory effect cards, to add to the realism and increase the Yuck Factor. Sort of like a smell-o-gram. I can hardly wait.

Some cards are targeted to women only, who, according to the greeting card industry are (choose from the following):
Sex-obsessed, lusting after buff young men.
Suffering hot flashes, in turn adding to global warming.
Gorging on chocolate, and/or dieting obsessively.
Shopping ’til they’re dropping, mostly for shoes because no matter how much weight gain or loss, shoes still fit.

But most of all, women in greeting cards are indulging in that great all-American sport, one of the last politically incorrect bastions still allowed in public. Men Bashing.
It’s interesting that there are no women-bashing cards available. Is that because women run the Hallmarks of the world? Or because men don’t buy cards anyway?

A few years ago, the Irish-Americans protested strongly against the St. Patrick’s Day cards that depicted all Irish people as falling down, alcohol-obsessed drunkards. Their complaints were heard, and now the cards are humorous without being offensive.

I love the one that shows St. Patrick on the seashore “driving the snakes out of Ireland”–with a nine-iron! Or the riddle “what’s green and hangs out in the back yard?” Answer; “Paddy O’Furniture.”
Ya gotta laugh.
Or not.

The point is, we don’t need to sink to the lowest level with every aspect of our society. I admit there is a market for the racier, risque, off-color cards. But they should be the minority, not the majority, and need not monopolize every card rack in every store.

So, just when did greeting cards get so vulgar? And how did we get so complacent?

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