She realizes this runs counter to a world that is impatient when the package just ordered is not already at the door. True, Miss Manners' approach does not always provide the instant gratification of smacking our fellow citizens under the guise of good manners. Nor is it because the solutions proposed do not work. This is not because there are no solutions to rude behavior or because one must either accept rudeness or be rude oneself. It takes time to improve the world - or even, truth be known, one's friends and relations. This should be apparent, as even Miss Manners' most caustic advice is too late to touch a driver who has long since sped away, a line-cutter who is off offending new people out of reach of the Gentle Reader, or everyone else who has long forgotten what happened at that date, luncheon, meeting or class reunion. This is because the goal is not to strike someone who struck you first - the goal is not to get hit in the first place. But she more often counsels more subtle responses, which, even had the reader known them when the event occurred, would not have required a fire extinguisher. Miss Manners does, on occasion, supply responses which, though faultlessly polite, cause an offender to explode in a burst of mortification and apology. Miss Manners' field is external behavior, not internal squirming, but her concern is the implication that the victim has, or should have, given up hope of improving society.Ī fourth type of letter underscores the point: It seeks a polite response to a slight, real or imagined, that the Gentle Reader already answered with a taunting rejoinder, a rude gesture or worse. What follows is an example of something that was never OK. "Am I just being hopelessly old-fashioned or.
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