Culture Vultures: To the Manners Born
Steyn, Mark
"Culture Vultures: To the Manners Born" by Mark Steyn To the Manners Born The British manners movement believes the decline...
...of English civility is all our fault...
...Go to the middle-class spa towns of the English Midlands and marvel at the civic decay: even if you avert your eyes from the obscene graffiti, the storefronts barricaded after 5 p.m., the baying yobboes staggering out of the pubs and disgorging their "pavement pizzas," and the pre-teens jacking some chump's Honda to go "ramraiding" down the shopping center, you'll still be amazed at how almost every humdrum transaction -at the newsagent's, at the grocer's, at the petrol station-is conducted in an atmosphere of bored indifference, sullen defensiveness, or outright aggression...
...In Britain it's the preserve of a bunch of inbred ninnies prancing around in faggy clothes-which is why, sadly, it's proved impossible to rouse popular support against the Labour Party's inclination to abolish it...
...Course, they don't mean it," scoff the Brits, as if 4 I'm not a great fan of reversed caps myself, but the British have taken to American clothes-and food and pop culture for one very simple reason: they're more democratic...
...The British are sniffy about American manners, despising the burger-flipper for her cheery "Have a nice day...
...I never got the Full English either, as it turned out this could be served at any time of my choosing between 8:30 and 8:45...
...by then I was back on the highway, where a salesman who reckoned I'd jumped the lights half a nanosecond before him chased me down the bypass at 9o miles per hour...
...Full English or Continental...
...The question is why...
...But the Americanization of the landscape is a consequence of Britain's ill manners, not the cause of them...
...Why on earth not...
...You all say that, don't you...
...With facilities or with view...
...I inquired...
...they exist strictly to fleece Yank tourists, whom they know they'll never see again but to whom they're happy to peddle "Traditional English Afternoon Tea: Pot of tea served with complimentary milk and sugar £6.99 (includes use of individual cup and saucer...
...As American readers of his National Review columns in the "Arts, Books and Manners" section will know, Anderson is nothing if not proscriptive...
...British manners have collapsed precisely because they got mixed up with gentility, deference, and other considerations of class...
...But, after the third, fourth, fifth reference to the evils of informal appearance, it begins to sound like the most ludicrous obsession in the face of the country's present woes: quibbling while Rome burns...
...Anderson & Co...
...Anderson's crowbar is strictly metaphorical...
...Both men apparently feel strongly about the subject, though for the moment Dr...
...And so we proceeded down her list, checking everything from the wake-up call, which I ordered, to the adult video channel, which I declined...
...The British have always loved dress codes...
...want to return us to a world where the working man wears a sturdy British cloth cap and doffs it to the squire in his deerstalker-a world of gentility, social hierarchy, and deference to one's betters...
...In this, as in so much else, British life was excessively burdened by regulation...
...C U L T U R E V U L T U R E S by Mark Steyn To the Manners Born The British manners movement believes the decline...
...These people are not economically deprived...
...It's breakfast, innit...
...In June I stayed at a self-described "prestigious country hotel...
...Can I help you...
...she does mean it-at least to the extent that she's understood the basic connection between my satisfaction and her continued economic well-being...
...In Gentility Recalled, Anderson and fellow essayists from the new British manners movement come up with various reasons, but one in particular keeps recurring: "Many people in Britain," says Bryan Wilson, a sociologist at Oxford University, in his introduction, "appear to be on holiday, en route for a fancy dress-or undress 44 August 1996 . The American Spectator ball, any or all of the time...
...He flipped me (in British fashion) two fingers, and roared an epithet which implied I was a devotee of the sin of Onan...
...Ah, baseball caps...
...But no locals go there...
...Anderson, DeeDee couldn't tell you whether the second son of a Duke takes precedence over the widow of a Baronet in table placement but she treats everyone equally with effortless easewhich is what real gentlemen do...
...As to "gentlemen," I've never come across a satisfactory definition, except for the old motto which used to be nailed above the toilets on British trains: "Gentlemen Lift the Seat" - which is, I think, unarguable...
...You can see the Continent...
...Unlike Dr...
...What a lot of rot...
...So, English civilization is kaput...
...But if American leisurewear is to blame for Britain's descent into depravity, how come the same ghastly clothing has produced the most courteous and well-mannered society on earth in the United States...
...Sure, the Americans sometimes overdo corporate sunniness: a year or two back, NYNEX took to answering the phone, "Customer service, Shelley speaking...
...insincere politeness is by definition inferior to genuine indifference...
...The pedestrian did not think to acknowledge the kindness with a cheery wave or silently mouthed thank-you-so the motorist got out of his car and clubbed the ingrate to a pulp, using a crowbar he keeps handy for such deplorably graceless behavior...
...But, such bizarre formulations aside, the British are missing the point...
...Athena S. Leoussi, another sociologist at another university (Reading), argues that those who wear modern leisurewear are in breach of their "aesthetic obligations" to society...
...What's the view...
...The receptionist had a badge which read "Hello, I'm Nikkii...
...In rural America, hunting is a widespread activity practiced by anyone who can afford five bucks for those frightful plastic orange hats...
...One reason why the British countryside is now beset by unprecedented levels of rural violence, car theft, and property crime -all occurring at rates much higher than in the U.S.-is that, for generations, the "gentlemen" whom Anderson hymns ran rural England as a private club...
...Indeed, the more I considered Dr...
...It's no longer just the urban wastelands with their urine-stinking tower blocks...
...Indeed, I was curious to know in which situations he would recommend the use of such an implement...
...Those who pine for the age of "gentility" and "deference" to those of better breeding have muddled good manners with social intimidation...
...I thought about this fellow-the motorist, not the former pedestrianwhen I read Digby Anderson's new book about the decline in British manners...
...The next morning, the wake-up call never came, and Nikkii tried to stiff me for the adult video channel, which I'd never gone anywhere near...
...When DeeDee at Glory Jean's Diner in Rumney, New Hampshire bids me farewell with a perky "You have a great evening now...
...she asked...
...And, as for breeding, Mark Twain said it best: "Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person...
...I'm not a great fan of reversed caps myself, but the British have taken to American clothes-and food and pop culture - for one very simple reason: they're more democratic...
...Everyone from the president to an unemployed logger shooting beer cans off the back of his pickup can wear a baseball cap...
...In Britain they've never figured that out-and, as a result, round the corner from my place in South Kensington, lined up in a row, you've a choice between Burger King, Haagen-Dazs, and KFC...
...Unisex fashions," adds Dr...
...In the more picturesque Cotswold towns, you can still find the odd English tearoom, the local equivalent to Glory Jean's...
...thus relieving her of the obligation to say it herself...
...If I sound a little defensive on this point, I should explain that my regular TV reception in New Hampshire is so fuzzy and indistinct that, when I'm in hotels, the scrambled, blurred porno channel seems quite explicit enough without paying an extra $6.95...
...Facilities" are a bathroom and, for complicated reasons, they and a view are mutually exclusive...
...So I felt sure that somewhere in his new Gentility Recalled-in the chapter on "Being a Gentleman" or "Knowing Your Place" or "Keeping Up Appearances"-there'd be a pertinent admonition: "A gentleman never wields a crowbar except with white gloves, a four-fold scarf, and galoshes, and then only to chase the Jehovah's Witnesses round to the tradesmen's entrance, where they can be set upon by the Rottweilers and the Malaysian houseboy...
...On Anderson's central point, though, there can be no dispute: British society is crumbling...
...New Yorkers like to boast of their rudeness and honor the city's most ferocious scions-like Manhattan's short-tempered short-order "Soup Man" (on whom the "Seinfeld" character the Soup Nazi has been modeled) -but they're a bunch of well-meaning wussies compared to your average London restaurateur...
...Anderson himself, "erode the normal structure of relations between men and women...
...It's of the outside," she replied...
...MARK STEYN is theater critic of the New Criterion and movie critic of the Spectator of London...
...It is "dangerous to society as a whole," pronounces Bradford University philosophy professor Anthony O'Hear, "when the middle-aged comport themselves as if they were young: when they dye their hair, have their faces lifted and wear baseball caps back to front (or even the right way round...
...When the British rage against the ersatz McManners of "Have a nice day," they're railing against their own failure...
...She had lost my reservation and was understandably resentful at having to take down all my details again...
...Anderson's thesis, the more I concluded that his fatal confusion of class and manners seems to be at the core of England's decline...
...How may I offer you excellent service...
...Alas, proper application of the crowbar appears to be one of the few subjects on which he has no view...
...So that's the problem: American leisurewear...
...she said...
...As their incomes and leisure time and exotic vacations (if a teenager gets a job in the typing pool, she's immediately entitled to six weeks' paid leave) have risen, their sense of social interaction has regressed to that of a Neanderthal cave dweller who's been clubbed around the head once too often...
...The British spent too long clinging to form, rather than promoting modest, good-humored, all-American, democratic ease...
...Anderson and his form-troopers can't be bothered hiding their contemptwhich, when you think about it, is the worst manners of all...
...For someone such as Digby Anderson, then, strolling down Oxford Street these days must be like living in an occupied country...
...45 The American Spectator • August r 9 9 6...
...Brown is not for town," Savile Row tailors used to say...
...I n England, in May, a motorist stopped to let a pedestrian cross the street...
Vol. 29 • August 1996 • No. 8
