Change your ways

A couple of New Yorkers, Leonard Bernstein (adopted) and Stephen Sondheim (born), wrote the music and lyrics to a song half a century ago that defines civil behavior for men in America.

The song arrived in a Broadway musical called "West Side Story," first staged in the fall of 1957, before hitting the silver screen four years later. A couple of gangs on New York's west side - the Sharks and the Jets - one Puerto Rican and one Anglo, hate each other and face off violently. But their members are ultimately redeemed (though not saved) by the tender love of a Puerto Rican girl, Maria, and an Anglo boy, Tony, who ignore the old loyalties and biases.

Against the odds, the two decide to celebrate their love in the face of powerful cultural imperatives against them.

If the names seem antiquated and the story itself ancient (Shakespeare completed a similar story, "Romeo and Juliet," in 1595, after all), its reflection of love remains as contemporary as ever.

Equally as timeless is the prescription for young males, couched in the lyrics of a song called, "Cool." Here, one of the Jets tries to talk his homeboys into restraint rather than an aggressive response to an attack on their gang.

"Boy, boy, crazy boy,

Get cool, boy!

Got a rocket in your pocket,

Keep coolly cool, boy!

Don't get hot,

'Cause man, you got

Some high times ahead ?

"Boy, boy, crazy boy!

Stay loose, boy!

Breeze it, buzz it, easy does it,

Turn off the juice, boy!

Go man, go,

But not like a yo-yo schoolboy?

Just play it cool, boy,

Real cool!"

Such advice is an antidote to the impetuous whimsy of anger, the desire to wound a perceived enemy without further consideration.

The same civilizing wisdom - restrain your urges and use them to make your world better, not worse - holds when it comes to how boys and men treat women, too. Or more specifically, how boys and men use their sexual urges to treat anybody.

The prescription in "Cool" is straightforward: Learn to control yourself. And the idea is simple enough to define: If you want a better life, control your instinctive emotional and physical actions. But it has to be taught and practiced. And whose job is that?

It's our job.

So when people like Harvey Weinstein, Roy Moore, Kevin Spacey, Louis C.K., Brett Ratner, Terry Richardson, Ben Affleck, Michael Oreskes, Dustin Hoffman, Oliver Stone, Dr. Larry Nassar and others become exposed as kings with no clothes - when they're seen in the naked light of their misbehaviors, their use of power to sexually harass and abuse women and children because they have no discipline or control - one thing becomes abundantly clear to me: Somebody didn't do his or her job, once upon a time.

So, did these turkeys have unloving, unable or undutiful parents?

Probably. Obviously they were never taught how to behave and chose not to learn later. Either that, or they were taught how to misbehave and chose to continue misbehaving, later.

But parents aren't the only ones who can teach proper civil behavior. So the chance for boys, in particular, to learn is not limited entirely to the home. Teachers, coaches, ministers, friends and the parents of friends can help do the job, too, if they choose.

Teaching takes work, however - it takes time, commitment and relative sobriety. But it has to be done or we get herds of male users and abusers.

In my view, it all comes down to this: If you have children, your job is to teach them that each person they encounter must be accorded respect and a general acceptance, at first glance - regardless of race, sex, creed, or style and appearance.

It doesn't matter how you voted or where your political loyalties lie. It doesn't matter how rich or poor you are, how mad you are at your spouse or partner, how drunk, violent or inept your own parents once were. None of that matters.

What matters, instead, is this: You teach your children how to behave, now. Not tomorrow or the next day.

In addition to the simple creed above, parents and teachers must also require children never to take advantage of any who might be weaker, less savvy or less stable - whether male or female.

It's an American thing, not a liberal or a conservative thing. This is what we do, unless we aren't doing what we should be doing.

None of the current revelations, by the way, has to do with restraining the urge or hobbling the courage to love. Willing lovers may have to push past social boundaries or restrictions imposed by others - by religion, by race, by time or age, by sex, by occupation, by geography.

Such was the case for Romeo and Juliet, for Tony and Maria in "West Side Story," and for many real-world couples. Love is not always easy to define, nor does it fit into neat categories.

But what the Roy Moores and Harvey Weinsteins undertake has nothing to do with love.

Instead of loving, they bully and abuse. Nobody told them: "Go man go, but not like a yo-yo school boy. Just play it cool, boy - real cool."

Or, they chose to ignore it.

If you have children like I do, or you work with children now and you don't talk about this, you're ignoring it, too.

In which case, change your ways, starting now. ¦