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Judith Martin
"Miss Manners"; Author, Star Spangled Manners
In conversation with Barbara Lane, Good Lit Series Director
Barbara Lane: People often say that there has been a decline in civility over the past several decades. Is that accurate?
Judith Martin: Yes, but there's also been an increase. We have seen, first of all, the result of generations of children being told by very well-meaning parents, Now you don't worry what other people think about you, you go out and search yourself and get what you want, and never mind what other people think. So they have done this beautifully, and that's the decline, I suppose, to which you're referring. And all the older people joined in; it's not just one generation or two.
But people forget the enormous progress that has been made in the last few decades. Not that long ago, people could say the most appalling, bigoted things with impunity. In the last ten or 20 years we've watched a lot of careers self-destruct by people who were making the same kind of little jokes and off-hand remarks they always made, but suddenly people realized how rude they were. And that's tremendous progress.
Lane: Some would label that political correctness.
Martin: The people who label it political correctness are always talking about ridiculous exaggerations where somebody took insult where no insult was intended. And so when they attack political correctness they find themselves in the peculiar position of defending outright bigotry, which I do not care to defend.
Lane: You mentioned children. You've written at least one book on how children change, and there's one example where a family is out to dinner at somebody else's house and the child puts his elbows on the table. The mother reprimands him and the host says, "Oh no, this is an informal dinner; we encourage our children to be themselves." This presents a conundrum for the parent who taught her child manners.
Martin: Yes, I'm not claiming that children have changed. Childrearing has changed, or disappeared. People saying they don't want to inhibit their children. Well, that's the whole idea. If you're lucky you can inhibit them a little. The scene you described sounds like all-round etiquette disaster and the elbows on the table would be the least of it. The parent embarrasses the child, the other person sabotages the parent - everybody's in on the act there.
Lane: Are these generations of children who are encouraged to express themselves whenever they see fit growing up with some semblance of manners?
Martin: When I started in this, I thought I'd be talking to a few old cranks like myself, and much to my surprise it was the people whose parents had said, "Oh, those things don't matter" - and somewhere along the line they found out they did matter. So they've had to do a tremendous amount of catching up. It's not fair to the child. It's so much easier to learn when you don't know any better, like learning a language. But people are trying to catch up because they realize that if you don't care what other people think, they don't think very highly of you, and this may be a disadvantage in life.
Lane: There seemed to be - post 9/11, and you address this in your new book - a resurgence of politeness, of compassion, of treating people kindly.
Martin: There was. It's gone.
Lane: Is that part of our president encouraging us to get back to normal?
Martin: Probably. We did, didn't we? That was about the same time that the entertainment industry was asking itself, Are our television programs and movies in the best of taste? And then they invented celebrity boxing. They got back to normal. Every time there is a disaster - and this speaks very well for the American character - people rise to the occasion. You've seen it here, when there's an earthquake. Now again, it doesn't last forever, the looters come along and it's all over. But I have been told for years that I'm some sort of a dreamer to imagine a community where people are reasonably pleasant to one another, yet everybody sees it in times of disaster. So the question comes up, Well, if we rise to the occasion when it really counts, isn't that enough? That says everyday life doesn't really count and we don't care if that's pleasant, and I think we do care. And we know how to do it and if people go into it spontaneously, it's wonderful.
Lane: What about cell phone etiquette. When dining out, what are the rules?
Martin: I'm amazed that there's still so much hostility towards cell phones as instruments, as opposed to when they are being misused, because over half the population has them now. It's not the cell phone that's rude. People get a new toy and they think, Oh boy there are no rules. There are rules about not disturbing people. That's why you can't have a cell phone on during a concert. It's an old rule; it was there before they invented the cell phone. If it's in an atmospheric restaurant, a lot of tablecloths and quiet talk, no. If it's in a lunch joint, why not? Now, people are not supposed to yell, and one day people will discover that you don't need to yell into the telephone, it has a microphone built into it.
Lane: Your new book Star Spangled Manners has a subtitle: In which Miss Manners defends American etiquette (for a change). Why does American etiquette need defending?
Martin: I've been attacking it thoroughly for 25 years, but oddly enough in my own way I've also been defending it. The idea abroad and even in this country is that somehow Americans are naturally crude and would love to be Europeans but can't quite make it. The fact is that we have our own etiquette, which was originally put forth by the Founding Fathers. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson wrote about etiquette; Benjamin Franklin was one of the greatest etiquette writers of all time. They took a look at that European etiquette, which was full of obsequiousness and class-consciousness and all kinds of things that were anathema to the society that they were planning and envisioning. They realized they needed a different etiquette, the etiquette of egalitarianism. It is an extremely noble idea - I'm not saying we're practicing it all that well - but it is also an example to the world.
Lane: It seems that one of the reasons that American etiquette also needs defending is a book that Frances Trollope published in 1832, The Domestic Manners of the Americans.
Martin: Trollope came to America with the usual ideas for coming to America: idealism and making a fast buck, and neither worked. How did she manage to get along? Because of the openness and friendliness and helpfulness of the American people, which is partly a function of the conditions of the country: It's a big open spacious country, with people moving about, trying to get along, meeting new people. Obviously the manners are going to be quite different than on a little crowded island, where she would have been frozen out as an upstart.
But anyway, Mrs. Trollope did make her fortune from sneering at Americans, and the reputation stuck and Americans began to get embarrassed about this. I'm trying to tell people that they have no business doing that. It was not only a noble form of etiquette that was being invented at that time, but Mrs. Trollope herself was profiting from the very kindness of the American people.
Lane: One of the specific American customs that you address in this book is the "misunderstood fork" and the American and European versions. Can you elaborate?
Martin: With people who are ashamed of American manners, the telltale sign is that they go to great lengths to teach themselves how to eat European style, because they feel it is the older, the traditional and therefore the more sophisticated way of eating. As a matter of fact, the American style is the older, more traditional and more sophisticated way of eating. Mrs. Trollope, among many other things, attacked Americans because out in the country they ate with their knives. Well so did English country aristocrats at that time. They say, Well, if it's good enough for my grandfather it's good enough for me. But the fork came into general use about 500 years after it was introduced in Europe. They had always been eating with their spoon or knife in the right hand, so they put that down and picked up the fork. That's the style they brought to America, the European settlers, and it remained here.
Meanwhile, back in the old country, they discovered that you could shovel it in faster if you had a utensil in each hand, and so that style developed in Europe. I'm not denigrating that style, but the Americans who use it defend it by saying it's more efficient. It's not more sophisticated; it's less sophisticated.
Lane: You spoke before about the role of our Founding Fathers as architects of the new American etiquette, and you state in the book that presidents have always understood questions of wardrobe. We all have images of Richard Nixon at the beach in a suit, and we remember Jimmy Carter and his fireside chats in a cardigan sweater, which people really didn't seem to like. Talk to us about George Bush's style as a president.
Martin: I do not criticize living people because I'm so polite. But I will talk to you about presidential-style clothing symbolism if you like. Everybody in America denies that clothing is symbolic. Of course it is. Everyone says, "I just wear what makes me feel comfortable," or, "I'm expressing myself." Nonsense. We are all sizing everybody up, and it's a language. All presidents have known this and many of them have gone over stylistically, in clothing and other ways, in one direction or the other. George Washington was very much criticized for seeming aloof and dressed very well and then started dressing down a bit in plainer suits. Thomas Jefferson was notoriously slovenly, dressing down so far that people couldn't tell when they came to do state business whether he was dressed or not. And people sneered at that. So here's your choice if you're a president: either you try to be dignified and people say, "Who does he think he is, this stuck-up character?" Or you try to be a person of the people and people say, "You know, he's no better than we are. Why should we look up to him?" Very few presidents are able to hit it in the middle, and practically no first ladies do.
Lane: There's a great anecdote in your book, speaking of clothes and symbolism, about the AOL Time-Warner buyout.
Martin: As I said, clothing is symbolism, so it is arbitrary. You could pick anything and decide that's what it is, but once you've picked it and people read it they are interpreting it. So this was two years in a row, the AOL situation with Time-Warner. The young guy from the West coast, who you would have expected to be in an open shirt, and the older executive from the East, you would expect to be in a tie. Well, they reversed it. And the younger man looked very much in charge in the tie. I noticed that with the next change of regime suddenly there were ties in place. If you have a situation where the open shirt or the T-shirt is the standard, then that becomes the symbolism. But we still read the suit and tie as being authority.
Lane: I've read you before on the subject of casual Friday.
Martin: Casual Friday was a huge mistake because it went from allowing people to have two wardrobes to making them have three. Anybody with any sense knew that their leisure clothing would be read symbolically, so they weren't going to show up for work in their smelly old sweats or whatever they wore at home. That was for the weekend, and there was this faux-leisure thing that says, I am really very relaxed and confident here. The funny thing is that in hard times it starts going the other direction because people like the look of authority. They've done studies in hospitals where doctors say they want to be more friendly with their patients, but if somebody's lying sick in bed and some guy in a ragged T-shirt and old jeans says, "I'm gonna do your brain surgery tomorrow," it's very upsetting.
Lane: So you speak in favor of uniforms, in that case?
Martin: Yes, as I say, it can be set at any level. Once upon a time it would be considered the most shocking thing possible allowing my ankles to be seen, and now midriff is getting up there in the who-cares department. But whatever the standard is at a particular time, people are looking to it to see what it symbolizes.
Lane: One of the surprising things that I learned from your book was that Southern hospitality in this country was strongly influenced by ideas brought here by African slaves.
Martin: Southern plantation owners were a classic example of people who thought they were leading the English country life, and of course Southern graciousness, hospitality, became famous. But it's not English, it's not French. "Ya'll come over now?" Manners were taught to the children by the house slaves who often came from a higher pedigree, if you recognize such a thing, than their owners, because they did not come voluntarily. People who came voluntarily were looking to improve their lot, because their lot was intolerable. The hospitality thing, the use of honorifics for first names and honorary titles of relatives, aunt and uncle to somebody who's a close family friend but not actually related - those are African manners.
