When Washington Post reporter Judith Martin transformed herself into Miss Manners two decades ago, she single-handedly resuscitated what everyone was giving up for dead. Better yet, her sly wit t made reading about etiquette downright fun. Martin's mission is to disabuse you of the notion that being rude is good for your own mental health. And damned if she now doesn't find herself perched right on the cutting edge, championing "netiquette" and creating the rules of this new form of community life on our behalf. Martin insists that most of what you think etiquette is, is wrong. But, of course, she's much too polite to tell you that herself. She will, however, tell you everything else in her latest opus, Miss Manners Rescues Civilization (Crown). Editor-at-large Hara Estroff Marano was on her best behavior when she met with Martin in Washington.
PT: What is etiquette, and why should we care about it?
Judith Martin: Etiquette is about all of human social behavior. Behavior is regulated by law when etiquette breaks down or when the stakes are high--violations of life, limb, property, and so on. Barring that, etiquette is a little social contract we make that we well restrain some of our more provocative impulses in return for living more or less harmoniously in a community.
Of course, when you throw etiquette aside, as has been roundly done over the last few decades, you end up with the "road rage" phenomenon. People say very proudly, "I don't care about etiquette," because they don't understand what it is. They have the mistaken idea that etiquette is some kind of little ritual for snobs. But when you throw it away. the violence, the frivolous lawsuits, and the not-so-frivolous lawsuits, follow very quickly.
PT: In 1979, you said that we had a rudeness crisis. What would you say, then, we have today?
JM: Today we are wrestling w the the knowledge that we need etiquette back, and with the reluctance of people to bind themselves by it. The whole country wants civility. Why don't we have it?
It doesn't cost anything. No federal funding, no legislation is involved.
One answer is the unwillingness to restrain oneself. Everybody wants other people to be polite to them, but they want the freedom of not having to be polite to others.
Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. This notion is a carryover from that very sweet but mistaken era in which [we believed] that we're all good and kind all the time, so that if you teach a child etiquette, you're spoiling something good and turning it into something hypocritical and artificial. With any luck, you are. If babies are that good, why do they wake us up in the middle of the night? Why don't they get up and go to the bathroom by themselves? The fact is that civilization requires some training in restraint so that we can get along.
The other part of it is [the belief that] if we just totally opened our souls to one another, we would love one another and get along. This trivializes the fact that people have deep and legitimately-held differences. People think, mistakenly, that etiquette means you have to suppress your differences. On the contrary, etiquette is what enables you to deal with them; it gives you a set of rules. On the floor of the Congress, you don't say, "You're a jerk and a crook"; you say, "I'm afraid the distinguished gentleman is mistaken about so and so." Those are the things that enable you to settle your differences, to bring them out in the open. Everything else just starts battles.
PT: Why does everyone think everyone but themselves lacks manners?
JM: The hardest lesson--and this is what child-rearing and perhaps all of manners is about--is that there are other people in the world and you do have to take their feelings into consideration. It doesn't mean you always have to yield to them, but it does mean that you have to know how to deal with them. A lot of people know that they want to be treated politely, but they don't make that little leap and say, Well, the other person must feel that way, too.
Etiquette is taught in the beginning of life, or should be, by the parents saying, "Darling, now don't pull the dog's tail. How would you feel if the dog pulled your tail?" The kid says, "I don't have a tail, so what do I care?" But you keep making that point of how would you feel if. It's a difficult thing to learn.
PT: I have my very own Miss Manners question. This is a real event that happened recently. I wished at the time that there was a Miss Manners hotline because I truly did not know what to do. My husband and I were entertaining a couple with a three-year-old daughter. We had finished dinner and were lounging around the dining-room table talking. The father of the little girl got up and came back to the table with a glass of water and his daughter's toothbrush and said, "Now Lily, it's time to brush your teeth." I was aghast, repulsed. I couldn't think of anything to say that wasn't horribly snide. I just froze, and walked out of the room.
JM: Health is a new religion. People think it overrides everything; they're self-righteous about it and incredibly rude. But this is a new one even for me, although I am told often about people who will brush their teeth or clip their nails on commuter trains or buses.
Tags:
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judith martin,
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netiquette,
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