Are we at a tipping point in our corporate culture, at which civil discourse—politesse about our professional peers—is about to become defunct?

This spring, Jack Welch took time off from his whine column to empty a bottle of vinegar on Jeff Immelt’s head. “Jeff has a credibility issue,” said the former C.E.O. of General Electric about his protégé turned successor. “He’s getting his ass kicked.”

Welch’s bruising comments—made on CNBC in the wake of Immelt’s failure to deliver first-quarter profits that matched what he’d promised just weeks earlier—startled many in corporate America, where there has long been a code that you don’t beat up on the person who takes over from you. Reginald Jones, Welch’s predecessor, would never have gone public with criticism in this way, a source at the heart of G.E. told us.

A day later, Welch donned a hair shirt—perhaps after taking a few calls from friends instructing him in basic chivalry. “Nothing, nothing, nothing,” he said, making amends to Immelt—and also, it should be said, to G.E. shareholders—“is as disgusting to me as some old C.E.O. chirping away about how things aren’t as good under the new guy as they were under him.”

To put it in the language of the Street: Nobody was buying.

As drama, Welch versus Immelt seemed to echo a distinctly unfraternal exchange between former Citigroup C.E.O.’s in the Financial Times a few days earlier: John Reed sniped at Sandy Weill, who volleyed right back at Reed—and Chuck Prince too, for good measure. Weill spoke of “very poor management and management decisions over the past couple of years.”

What is going on here? In this, the Age of Attack, these once-mighty men are defending themselves preemptively. Surely Welch has noticed what has happened to Alan Greenspan in the past six months. It is remarkable to behold how the former Fed chairman has turned in the public perception from wizard to whipping boy. Even his immediate predecessor, Paul Volcker, has taken a swipe at him, in between kicks at Ben Bernanke (criticism unprecedented in the annals of the Fed).

One cannot help feeling that Greenspan was caught off guard and took much too long to respond to mounting criticism. This is an iconoclastic time. Bloggers have subscribed to no code of conduct, and business journalists, increasingly, seek the eye-catching—or counterintuitive—angle to make their mark. Maybe Welch, taking his cue from Greenspan’s tardy self-defense, is concerned that someone will one day write unflatteringly about his time at G.E.’s helm. After all, Immelt is still working (à la Bernanke) with methods that he inherited from his predecessor.

So look for predecessor-successor noblesse oblige to fade away and for the start of an era in which a graceful departure at any rung of the corporate ladder becomes a quaint relic, an option rarely embraced. All this makes for terrific copy, but also for the most unwholesome theater.