Roadside Empires

...Maslow placed subjects in beautiful, average, and ugly rooms...

...And the gossip is no longer about who is sleeping with whom but about money: who has made how many millions and how the millions were made...

...They must be stopped before they proceed to the powder room, and let us pray that Miss Manners is hard at work on a sequel...

...My aunt thought for a moment...

...The husband merely bowed to her and remarked: "Think, madame, how embarrassing this would have been if someone else had come in...

...Opening one last door he understood why: There was the footman inflagrante with his wife...

...We all know what happened to Detroit, though the low-productivity, highturnover strategy has not yet led to crisis for the franchises...

...When Miss Manners reminded us of "the charm of the old custom of calling...

...Who then has the power to take on the chains...

...Such an unpretty picture of the golden arches strains credulity, but Luxenberg's evidence for it fills 313 pages in Roadside Empires~" How the Chains Franchised America...

...Only in Japan did I find some semblance of manners...

...Paychecks that should have been invested to create honest jobs were foolishly squandered on the ephemeral French fry...

...Sad to say, at the rate we are going we certainly cannot have enough of Miss Manners...

...He found an astounding number of chains--campgrounds, muffler shops, beauty salons, tanning parlors, dry cleaners, filling stations, motels, dental clinics, real estate brokerages, fast food outlets-whose only distinction is that, whether in Oklahoma or California, Florida or New York, they are indistinguishable...

...They were then shown pictures of people, and "subjects in the average and beautiful rooms on the whole took a more optimistic view of the pictures . . . . " Luxenberg draws the evident conclusion: Businessmen who advertise in public places "should be required to protect the public's psychological health...

...the barbarians are at our doors...

...These poorly-paid, highly-harassed burger flippers are, as one expert observes, "under a lot of time pressure...

...As one authority on the,subject puts it, "If contact leads to recognition, recognition to liking, liking to friendship, and friendship to social activities, then it can be said that contact leads to happiness...

...In Luxenberg's analogy, the chains are behaving as the automobile industry did in the 1950s and '60s...

...McDonald's, he insists, is responsible for the vassalization of large portions of the citizenry, the brainwashing of hordes more, the Americanization of the globe, and the Third Worldization of America...

...She felt better when I continued: "Such usage is not only undignified but makes a sham of the ideas of friendship and equality...

...It is not clear that the harshness of the strips is only a little harmless capitalist frolic," Iatxenberg cautions...

...But don't you think, my dear, that first they should have tried fire hoses to beat some order into these barbarians' heads...

...she is the premier social observer of our time...

...As a matter of fact, Auntie said, if someone spoke differently to a king than to a servant he was undoubtedly a fake...

...As a result, says Luxenberg, "the United States is coming to resemble a Third World country, where a small group of the wealthy reigns, served by the majority of the people who live in poverty...

...MISS MANNERS' GUIDE TO EXCRUCIATINGLY CORRECT BEHAVIOR Judith Martin/Warner Books/S10.95, paper Alexandra SchSnburg Judith Martin's book Miss Manners" Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior is an admirable attempt to exhume the art of manners...

...Society itself, in the end, is threatened by the chains...

...It is of no consolation to Luxenberg that "the average worker quits after four months," and that "fast food has the highest turnover of any industry...

...We cannot hold off the barbarians forever, but maybe in the meantime we can teach them good manners...

...In the end I went to Vienna, where I visited an old aunt of mine who still lives in our family'~ ancient, decrepit, and surely haunted palace...

...Moreover, their jobs prevent them from forming meaningful relationships with adults, and "most of [their] income is spent on...

...It is bad enough that the chains have suckered so many otherwise rational and efficient people...

...In Japan, for example, he is Donald McDonald, "a name local customers can pronounce...

...There is, apparently, a world of difference between money freely spent and money pulled...

...people speak familiarly in loud voices to the waiters and act like those rowdy types one used to see in Wild West movies (which, of course, my aunt has never seen...

...It was hip to be discourteous, trendy to act primitive, and 'in' to be coarse.' " I assured my aunt that Miss Manners agreed, and quoted her the following passage: Now...

...Alas, the prospects are dim: "The chains also take away political power...

...Those whose preference for fast food has taken workers off the assembly line and left them mopping McDonald's floors should not, however, blame themselves...

...If you serve a hamburger at McDonald's you don't generate any jobs beyond that...

...No foreign competitors have emerged," Luxenberg observes...

...It is as if, hamstrung by timidity, I~xenberg forgets what he has uncovered: The victims of the chains are legion...

...with great interest as I read Miss Manners to her, but she was appalled that such a detailed guide should be necessary...

...Detroit, he points out, "focused on marketing and allowed productivity to grow slowly...

...Finally, there is the cultural menace of enforced standardization...

...Imagine, for instance, the indelicacies that will strike you when you go to a restaurant in New York: Men will remain seated when a woman comes to the table...

...There is no mistaking deprivation, but abundance can be downright bewildering...

...But it is the burger business that alarms him most of all...

...it is our faults for which we are loved...

...I expect that one day soon, Judith Martin will have to write such excruciatingly correct guides as: How to Tell When it is Raining, How to Eat with Your Feet, How a Lady Gets in and out of Her Bathtub...

...From that day on, incidentally, only mineral water was poured in the finger bowls...

...Billions have thus been invested in the expansion of low-productivity chains, hastening the decline of the industrial economy...

...On hearing this my poor aunt fell back on her petit point pillows and had to be given smelling salts...

...Imperfect table manners are considered a sign of subscribing to the principles of democracy...

...And as doom impends, it's jubilee for the upper echelon: "The low wages o f workers have financed expensive marketing campaigns, high salaries for executives, and healthy profits for shareholders...

...The fault lies elsewhere: "The powerful marketing programs of the franchise companies pulled money into businesses that offered low productivity and could do little to help generate the goods-exporting jobs the country needed...

...young girls do the same when an older man arrives...

...She urged me not to forget what Confucius had said: "As the laws multiply, the civilization decays...

...But my aunt, being who she is and having the curiosity of the well-bred, was interested in all Miss Manners's charming disquisitions...

...The goal of the chains "is to achieve predictable mediocrity...

...What do they have to lose...

...But if Ayoub is correct, there may be an additional explanation of McDonald's success: 50 million hamburgers spontaneously generated...

...Good manners reveal a generosity and a refinement of spirit which very few people these days seem to possess...

...of paying a short v i s i t . . . [which] is now regarded as time consuming and boring and has been replaced by television," my aunt reflected on the Victorian custom that required a gentleman, when visiting a lady, to always keep his hat...

...She is more than a present-day Emily Post...

...A study by psychologist Abraham Maslow conTHE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1985 43 firms this point...

...44 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1985...

...Otherwise, he would be compromising the lady...

...I quoted Miss Manners on the hideous American weakness for addressing people by their first names: "It has become commonplace to use first names promiscuously," I read, and poor Auntie had to fan herself, and have the windows opened...

...there is no difference between manners for royalty and manners for servants...

...ignorance of high culture to be an indication of spirituality...

...Shopping for meals a week or two in advance, the efficient parent could use a microwave oven and paper plates to serve the same prepackaged pizzas and hamburgers the chains sell...

...What might be seen as the good sense of the worker who quits turns out to be a manifestation of the appalling shortsightedness of the captains of franchising...

...ROADSIDE EMPIRES: HOW THE CHAINS FRANCHISED AMERICA Stan Luxenberg/Viking/$17.95 Richard Starr Who could know that, when given a land which flows with milk and honey, people would buy homogenized milk in cardboard cartons and processed honey with the comb removed...

...This is truly a global crisis...

...Laaxenberg also offers practical advice for dealing with the demands of children who have been enthralled by fast-food marketing...

...Miss Manners writes with equal charm, wit, and perceptiveness on any number of other topics: house guests, romance, weddings, the importance of "little" dinner parties and writing letters...

...On the strip the customer is encouraged to drop in and leave quickly...

...Her book has come in the nick of time...

...My aunt listened Alexandra Sch6nburg, whose family dates back to the llth century, practices good manners in Manhattan, Southampton, and the A lps...

...Before dessert a finger bowl was placed in front of him...

...Their very garishness, their signs and designs, are an assault on all who see them...

...after all, these were subjects that anybody from her world and generation understood instinctively, or at least by the time nurses, mademoiselles, frauleins, tutors, Jesuits--not to mention his mother and father and forty or so aunts and uncles--had finished with him and prepared him for the world...

...There is no such thing as instant intimacy...

...When I finished the book I was so troubled that I decided to fly off to civilized climes to view for myself the condition of contemporary manners, hoping against hope that somewhere on the globe there might still be a civilized society...

...In the fast-food outlets, Luxenberg finds a new underclass: workers, mostly school-age, who are forced to perform boring tasks at dizzying speed...

...Thus Luxenberg's syllogism: Mom and Pop's provided contact, contact leads to happiness, franchises destroyed Mom and Pop's, no more happiness...

...He drank it...

...Luxenberg hit the road three years ago to discover the America of franchised businesses...

...In order not to embarrass the good man, everyone at the table did the same...

...She told me of a day when the gamekeeper of their country estate came to lunch...

...Luxenberg fails to comment on this novel insight from Ayoub...

...In a variation on this theme, Stan Luxenberg wants to know: Do people truly hunger for Big Macs...

...Under the guise of protest for a better world, rudeness became de riguer, and boorishness a virtue...

...cars, records, extra clothes, cigarettes, alcohol, and marij uana...

...He is not the first to take on the empire of the golden arches...

...When I left my aunt was quite exhausted, for my visit had been taxing, although she was careful to assure me that our discussion had deeply interested her...

...Her discussion of jealousy--she considers it a most disgraceful human weakness--reminded my aunt of a friend of hers, who decided one day to visit his wife at the family castle...

...Some are even inside with their feet up on the sofa...

...My aunt's cardinal rule is one with ~vhich Miss Manners would no doubt agree: Good manners know no social barriers...

...The reasoning here shows Luxenberg at his best: "Franchises have destroyed local businesses that served as informal community centers and places for people to make contact," he says...

...Children, especially, have been known to whisper about kangaroo meat and wormburgers...

...I am sure," she said, "that this book has instructed very well...

...Yet Roadside Empires offers only graddalist solutions--unionization, FTC regulation, local zoning...

...Regardless, it is obvious that the desire for fast food will cost us dearly...

...Luxenberg quotes Edmund Ayoub, an economist for the United Steelworkers: "The real danger is that the service industries don't have any regenerative power," he says...

...Surely it is time for them to unite and rise up against the burger behemoth...

...Richard Starr is assistant book editor at the Washington Times...

...To his surprise he found room after room unlocked and no footman in sight...

...Ex nihilo Big ~ac fit...

...Ronald McDonald, Luxenberg warns, "now speaks ten languages...

...She has not left its chill walls since the end of the Second World War and is therefore safely protected from modern society...

...Even worse, they have destroyed the Morn and Pop businesses of yore, foreclosing for millions the possibility of ever leading a happy, healthy life...

...He did not give it to a footman, but would keep it at his side," she said...

...Alas, gentle reader (as Miss Manners would say), I searched in vain...

...But Luxenberg distinguishes himself by taking the broader view where others have only picked nits...

...When she had regained herself, she said, "Perhaps my favorite writer, Taki, is right: 'Manners and etiquette died when the sixties generation decided that solipsism was more important than humanism...

...and blurting, rough speech to be a cure to perfect honesty...