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Mind Your Manners
Emory Magazine
Spring 2003
By Mary J. Loftus
When one is about to see the Queen of Etiquette,
even riding an elevator can become a matter of propriety. “Which
floor? Oops, I mean, may I push the button for your desired floor?” said
the woman who found herself by the controls. “I suppose that’s
how Miss Manners would say it.”
When Judith Martin spoke at the Michael C. Carlos Museum in January
on “Star Spangled Manners,” it gave pause to those
gathered in the reception hall to hear her.
Was bunching your coat under your chair the correct way to uncloak?
Should an introduction be made before asking a question? And had
everyone remembered to turn off their cell phones? (Unfortunately,
Gentle Reader, everyone had not.)
As the host of the event, Professor of Anthropology Bradd Shore
reassured the murmuring crowd that Martin was not merely a “contemporary
Emily Post or a walking rulebook.”
Instead of simply providing a guide for which fork to use at dinner,
Martin teaches us how to “move through our daily encounters
with grace by keeping alive the sacred rites of social engagement,” says
Shore, who invited the syndicated columnist to Emory to speak as
part of the Center on Myth and Ritual in American Life (MARIAL)
colloquium series.
Martin, gray hair pulled into her trademark bun, smiled tolerantly. “You
study the rituals,” she replied. “I have to try to
keep them respectable!”
Since crowning herself Miss Manners in 1978, Martin has seen fit
to do just that through her column, which is printed weekly in
more than two hundred papers in the United States and abroad, as
well as on the Internet. A graduate of Wellesley College who spent
twenty-five years as a writer and critic at The Washington
Post,
Martin also has authored several best-selling books, including
her latest, “Star-Spangled Manners: In which Miss Manners Defends
American Etiquette (For a Change).”
Despite her jabs at America’s laid-back attitude (she calls
casual Fridays our “national costume party,”) Martin
admits to a certain fondness for American manners, which were born
of revolution. “Driven by our dreams of equality for all
and stardom for each, we . . . have always been eager to test the
standards of social behavior and create our own rules for interaction,” she
writes.
Martin finds constant inspiration in a society that relishes freedom
of expression so much that it relies on etiquette, rather than
law, to restrain people from openly insulting its leaders, shouting
awful things at crowds, wearing vulgar clothes in public, and stomping
on its flag.
As for the argument that etiquette restricts freedom, Miss Manner
would agree wholeheartedly. “Of course,” she says. “That’s
the idea. There is always a trade-off between the rights of the
individual and the rights of the community.
“As far as we know,” she said, “the intention was not
to create a country that was perfectly free and perfectly unbearable.”
Enter the code of civility: a voluntary system of politeness that
restrains bad behavior. Its weapon? Social disapproval.
Judging and even condemning others for inappropriate actions or
comments, says Martin, is often necessary as a tool for social
change. Because it is no longer acceptable to make bigoted or sexist
statements in public, bigotry and sexism has–for the most
part–been banished from civil discourse. If speakers choose
to ignore this rule of etiquette, they do so at their peril.
“
I believe we saw a recent example of that,” Martin said,
alluding to the Trent Lott debacle.
In a world terrorized by acts of violence large and small, people
are searching for a way to live together in tolerance and respect.
“
Etiquette,” says Martin, “compensates for our failure
to love one another.”–M.J.L.
© 2003 Emory University
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