Email Tom with feedback and ideas for new columns. tompol@ earthlink.net "Back in my day, we did things right." We've all heard that saying. Tried-and-proven ways more often than not are best because, well, they're tried and proven and grounded in common sense. Bailing out banks and insurance companies? Doesn't seem right. Aren't they there to bail us out of jams? And we're in a jam all right.

We're in this jam because people try too hard to be right these days, and they throw common sense under the bus in the process. Today's leaders will look back someday and say, "Back in my day, we did things righter than right, and man did we blow it."

Just about anywhere you turn, common sense is an endangered species. This bending over backwards to be "righter that right" brings to mind a concept in writing known as "over-refinement." I wrote some marketing copy for a businessman who caught what he thought was an inexcusable error. Here's an example of what this was about. Consider the sentence, "The audience held its breath." Mr. Business Wiz, scrunching up his eyebrows and working his brain overtime, said, "Now, Tom, you know there are many people in an audience so it should be 'The audience held its breaths.' "

You can outthink yourself for sure. And so can a society. When you do, logic gets thrown out the window. Now we have people trying to be too correct, too fair, and the results sometimes portray an unfamiliar world.

When I see a commercial with Blacks, Hispanics, and Whites sitting around the living room chitchatting about skin cream, it sends a message all right. Not one about the product, rather it tells me the people who regulate commercials think we're stupid. I'm throwing the "R" word at you. Here it comes. These ads just aren't realistic.

No one I know knows any Asians, Blacks, and Whites who get together to discuss carpet cleaners, skin creams, or a better way to meet their calcium needs? It's as if M&Ms is in control, doling out a precise mix of colors in today's commercials. This fantasy comes from the Fair Housing Act, which prohibits housing discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, disability, familial status, and national origin. Nothing wrong with that, but now a host of products— with no housing connection— feature ads representing as many groups as possible.

We want fairness in society but we drop the ball in other areas. What's fair about letting that sleazy Bernard Madoff stay out of jail? His Ponzi scheme bilked investors of billions of dollars, but he's living like a king in his posh apartment in New York's Upper East Side. Go hold someone up at an ATM for $200 and see where that gets you.

Add parenting fantasies to our desertion of common sense and reality. Some parents don't want scores kept in their kid's ballgames. They don't want little Johnny to feel like a loser. No score means everybody's a winner! Here's a news blast for little Johnny's parents. Life will keep score and little Johnny better get used to it.

Benjamin Spock's unrealistic righter-than-right ideas on childcare led several generations of parents to spoil their kids instead of focusing on discipline and character. Thanks, Spock, for sowing a rotten crop of leaders and executives.

Don't you just love how those big shot executives give themselves millions in bonuses for running corporations into the ground? What's sensible about that? I had occasion once to watch fat-cat executives talking shop in a lobby. Every so often one would swing an imaginary golf club as if he were at the country club. Then another would do it, and another. Their arrogance and elitism make you want to throw up. You better believe some rarified executives perceive themselves as royalty, more deserving than you, my friend.

The fat cats' company, by the way, went down the tubes. I believe in free enterprise but it's time to rein in these megalomaniacs. Their kind of excess is criminal. The country is on fire but it's business as usual for these self-crowned kings and queens who are out of touch with reality, and apparently, out of common sense.

I've always respected engineers and scientists because clear-cut principles and laws govern their work. Theirs is a world of boundaries. Politicians, financial experts, and social scientists, however, make their laws up as they go. Look no further than the impenetrable Tax Code to see where that kind of thinking leads.

So, we're in a downward spiral that seems to have no end thanks to our abandonment of good old common sense. We wring our hands over every election and yet the cornerstones of society continue to erode. For a long time, our so-called leaders— in Washington and boardrooms— have succumbed to this malady. They have not just let us down; they have led us down a primrose path to ruin. Can't someone put a little common sense back into our country and stop this freefall?

So, how far have we fallen? A trip down memory lane provides a measuring stick. In the 1950s, we'd go to sleep at night with the doors unlocked and the keys in the car. We knew we were safe. The Spocks, apologists, and people eager to sweep proven ways under the carpet in the name of progress had not gained fashion. Richard Speck had yet to begin the slide of fear we're on nor had the blinding rush to be a Wall Street tycoon.

Back then, working hard and saving money in the local bank not only made sense, it was the American way. If you couldn't afford something, you saved up for it. Now, a credit card provides instant gratification. If you get in over your head, so what. Everybody these days seems to have a little Donald Trump in them. Now we have people charging themselves into debt while hoping to strike it rich on Wall Street. Doesn't make sense.

So here it is 2009: the Age of Unreason. Are you going to sleep tonight in an unlocked home? No way. That'd be insane. Today, on top of deadbolting your home, you better have an alarm system too.

And your investments? Well, they aren't safe either. Other Madoffs are out there overlooked by a Securities and Exchange Commission that's asleep at the wheel.

Because common sense and a clear idea of right from wrong have yielded to bending-over-backwards, righter-than-right complex shades of grey, expect more misery. Spank your kid today for stealing and you just might go to jail for abuse. And your kid? Maybe he'll end up on Wall Street where that kind of behavior is acceptable. The truth is we live in a graceless age, and as Walter Cronkite would say, "that's the way it is in 2009."