Wait: someone’s saying we’re rude? What the $&!@$!!%!!! do they mean by that? The AP:
From road rage in the morning commute to high decibel cell-phone conversations that ruin dinner out, men and women behaving badly has become the hallmark of a hurry-up world. An increasing informality — flip-flops at the White House, even — combined with self-absorbed communication gadgets and a demand for instant gratification have strained common courtesies to the breaking point.
“All of these things lead to a world with more stress, more chances for people to be rude to each other,” said Peter Post, a descendent of etiquette expert Emily Post and an instructor on business manners through the Emily Post Institute in Burlington, Vt.
In some cases, the harried single parent has replaced the traditional nuclear family and there’s little time to teach the basics of polite living, let alone how to hold a knife and fork, according to Post.
Time, schmime. It’s more a matter of will, and a matter of the culture. For many years, particularly starting in the early 20th century, there has been a constant relaxation of older standards with nearly each generation that entails manners, dress and even in music, where the stylistic values of one generation’s music is literally thrown out and often forgotten by the next. Note the near extinction of the male dress hat since the late 50s, early 60s. And the tie — the most useless piece of clothing ever invented — seems to be slowly on its way out.
A slippage in manners is obvious to many Americans. Nearly 70 percent questioned in an Associated Press-Ipsos poll said people are ruder than they were 20 or 30 years ago. The trend is noticed in large and small places alike, although more urban people report bad manners, 74 percent, then do people in rural areas, 67 percent.
Peggy Newfield, founder and president of Personal Best, said the generation that came of age in the times-a-changin’ 1960s and 1970s are now parents who don’t stress the importance of manners, such as opening a door for a female.
So it was no surprise to Newfield that those children wouldn’t understand how impolite it was to wear flip-flops to a White House meeting with the president — as some members of the Northwestern women’s lacrosse team did in the summer.
A whopping 93 percent in the AP-Ipsos poll faulted parents for failing to teach their children well.
“Parents are very much to blame,” said Newfield, whose Atlanta-based company started teaching etiquette to young people and now focuses on corporate employees. “And the media.”
As AP notes, just look at the athletes, movie stars and politicians who have lapsed into “boorish” behavior. Look at the tone of American politics and compare it to what it was just 20 years ago. Just look at comments under blog posts (with the exception of this blog’s cultured readers, of course). The trend is towards a less formal and more coarse society. It isn’t just the “dumbing down of America” but the vulgarization of America where some past niceties such as opening a door for a female could even spark the rolling of eyes in some quarters.
Here in California it’s necessary not only to use your hands when you drive but exercise your middle left finger out the window, since Californians are always giving each other half a peace sign. And the media?
“It’s not like the old shows ‘Father Knows Best,'” said Norm Demers, 47, of Sutton, Mass. “People just copy it. How do you change it?” Demers would like to see more family friendly television but isn’t holding his breath.
Nearly everyone has a story of the rude or the crude, but fewer are willing to fess up to boorish behavior themselves.
Only 13 percent in the poll would admit to making an obscene gesture while driving; only 8 percent said they had used their cell phones in a loud or annoying manner around others. But 37 percent in the survey of 1,001 adults questioned Aug. 22-23 said they had used a swear word in public.
Why do we think those numbers should be much higher? 21st Century America was typified on one of our trips:
In a motel’s breakfast room, yours truly and about six others were trying to wake up and read our newspapers. One guy sitting next to us put his cell phone on — speaker phone. Dirty looks from the others, people sighing loudly, an elderly lady shaking her head — nothing sunk in as Mr. Listen-To-My-Cell-Phone-And-Hear -Me-Talk-Loudly-Into-It returned some 5 phone calls and made everyone listen to both sides of his boring conversations.
Then there’s road rage — and supermarket rage. Beware of the racing supermarket carts and people who run as they see you go to a checkout counter, to make sure they get there first. And parking lot rage: the smirking idiot with the waddayagonnadoaboutit attitude as he quickly pulls into a parking space before you do.
As standards relax, the question is: if these are so relaxed, what comes next as these standards relax?