The Death of Imagination

I really don't think people get their manners from TV. My experience was that watching TV gave me some ideas for...er...novel forms of behaviour, but when I tried them out in front of my parents, I got slapped back down (sometimes literally). There are a lot of complaints that parents are too permissive these days but (1) that's one of those kvetches that, like the decline of grammar, has been being voiced since Cicero was a kid and (2) I'm not sure to what extant this is just a product of a growing segment of childless adults in the population. It's easy to say how you'd have your kids behave when you don't have any.