It's amazing how many different etiquette traditions there are in the world, all of which are designed to allow the person practicing them to ride roughshod over the feelings of others. Miss Manners knows this because every time she slams a widespread practice for being greedy, inconsiderate or vulgar, she is told she is culturally insensitive.
"You don't understand," she will be told. "Among my people, it is traditional to shake down the guests." Or "We have a proud custom of pilfering from our hosts."Well, no, they don't quite put it that way. But ringing defenses of methods for collecting money in return for hospitality and plundering food and flowers during parties for later use are routinely offered in the name of multiculturalism.
Then there is the Spring Break Defense (which grown-ups in otherwise disciplined professions, such as the military and the police, have also been known to invoke), to explain the time-honored custom of being a public menace. "That's just the way we've always let off steam - going totally wild that week, doing fun stuff like mooning, groping, throwing up, destroying property. It's a tradition."
Even criminal behavior has been cited as an expression of cultural authenticity. (Miss Manners isn't responsible for those awful expressions.) A student who committed armed robbery in his home-town during vacation pleaded that he did it to prove that despite attending an Ivy League school, he was still loyal to his roots. Public drunkenness that culminated in a neighborhood riot was defended as valid within the tradition of the immigrants involved, although the detail that it is not tolerated in their countries of origin, nor by these traditionalists' own wives and children, was omitted.
Because etiquette is wildly fond of tradition, all these arguments are supposed to stab Miss Manners to the heart. Well, pooh.
These people don't know their own cultural traditions or professional regulations. The customs they are trying to dignify turn out to be pesky habits or major nuisances that their own people have been trying for years to stamp out. What an insult it is to any society to claim that it has an obnoxious cultural heritage requiring disregarding the interests of some of its own members by other of its own members.
Such a thing is not totally unknown, Miss Manners admits. "Sure, we've always pinched women in the streets. They love it. If they didn't, why would they go out of the house?"
Well, if people have been behaving disgustingly for centuries, then it's high time they changed. It is a miscalculation to count on etiquette's being mindlessly mired in the past to the point of considering everything ancient to be hallowed. Miss Manners isn't quite so tradition-bedazzled that she can't tell a valid ritual from a history of having gotten away with murder.
All this not only defies etiquette and defiles rugs, but obscures legitimate multicultural questions:
Which genuine tradition of etiquette should be followed by whom and when? Why should Americans, with their varied backgrounds, follow an English-based etiquette, rather than their family heritage?
The answer is that both have claims, and it is possible to do both. Many Americans speak both English and their ancestral language.
No society can operate without a common language of etiquette. Being able to interpret the intentions of strangers, and to follow patterns that they will recognize is an essential skill of civilized life. Aren't there enough people running around asking suspiciously, "And just what did you mean by that?"
We use the English-based system, as we speak English, for historical reasons. It should not be overlooked, however, that the American version has its own highly honorable history. The same people who wrote our Constitution did a lot of work altering the prevailing etiquette, so that it would better express American egalitarianism. Equal respect - for example the custom of using the same honorific for the highest dignitaries as for every other citizen - was a decidedly novel touch.
But societywide etiquette is only the beginning. Everybody knows other traditions - regional customs, generational ones, special occasion ones, job expectations and the little rituals of one's own family. Those who also know the customs of their ancestors are especially well-endowed.
The overriding requirements of a polite person from any culture or subculture are:
- to have the sense to use the appropriate forms at the appropriate time and occasion,
- to have the delicacy to avoid using specialized customs, whether hoity-toity or high school, to embarrass or confuse people who can't be expected to know them,
- and not to have the gall to try to pass off nasty tricks as cultural tradition, especially not on Miss Manners.
Dear Miss Manners: I have noticed that when friends call me up for homework assignments or other things, they will ask for the information and, as I begin to give it, interrupt to say, "Hang on - I need a pencil and paper."
I admit I have been guilty of doing this but am trying to have all my writing utensils ready, now that I realize what a pain it is to the person on the other end. Am I just being picky? This has been bugging me for a while.
Gentle Reader: Miss Manners identifies with you (she always knows what the homework is, and she has always has pencil and paper at every telephone, too), and this entitles you to refer to your feeling as proper, rather than picky.
Although she would prefer that you be generously tolerant and use the time when your friends go for their supplies to reflect that life ultimately rewards those who know the homework, she wants to allow you some relief. If you promise to use a polite tone, you may respond, "That's OK, just call me back when you're ready."
Dear Miss Manners: Isn't it a sign of excessive pride to refer to oneself in the third person? You seem to do this quite frequently.
Gentle Reader: Does she? Oh-oh.