Another one of my favorites I saw in a beer commercial (although the joke precedes the commercial).
A man rushes up to a priest, looking worried and frantic. He says, "Father I need to speak to you. I just spent the entire weekend with these two young, blond, gorgeous twins."
The priest looks at him for a second, then says, "Don't worry, child, you can still confess."
The man looks confused, "I don't want to confess, I'm Jewish."
Not it's the priest's turn to look confused, "Then why did you tell me?"
The man grins, "Because I'm telling everybody!"

The CIA is hiring for new agents.They bring in two men and one woman. To test them, they hand them an unloaded gun and say that their spouse is sitting in an office. To get the job they must kill them. The first man goes in, says he can't do it, and leaves. The second man goes in, same thing. Then the woman goes in. After about ten minutes of loud banging, she comes back out, disheveled and breathing hard. When they ask what happened she says, "The gun was unloaded, so I had to beat him to death with the chair."

You make a good point, and I agree with it completely. However, I still think it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. The past two generations, Generation Y (our generation) and the next (Generation Z?) have been put on the shortest leashes of almost any generation. In trying to help children, the parents have crippled them. Kids get shuttled from event to event, constantly having their time filled with school, homework, practices and everything else. This has killed creativity (kids get creative only when they're bored) and self-reliance (kids can't learn to take care of themselves. I heard a story of a 16 year old who couldn't operate a can opener.) Additionally, kids perceive this constant supervision from parents as a message saying "I trust you absolutely NONE," which kills their self-esteem. Kids can't learn to believe in themselves unless they see their parents believe in them to make good choices, which doesn't happen when their entire life is planned in front of them.
This generation might be lazy and disrespectful, but I still think the past generation might have loaded the gun for us.