In Praise of Bad Manners

Now stay with me here, this is a bit nuanced: impoliteness can be wielded to good effect in good causes by people who also know how to be very polite. Not entirely unlike the way that dissonance and noise can add extra flavor to music by musicians who can tune their instruments well and know all the chords and changes and modes. A great part of Mark Twain's genius, for example, of his great gift to the world, consists of nothing but rudeness, impiety, unfair exaggerations of others' faults for comic effect, of taking the low road and delighting quite unabashadly in it and so forth. But it's all done with the style, warmth and friendly earnestness -- the earnestness about friendliness -- which are the heart of good manners.

Lorraine Devon Wilke has just posted a very rude piece on Huffington Post calling for good manners. I've decided to take it personally because the title contains a phrase I use often: "I know you are but what am I?" As if that weren't enough, there is a cartoon on the webpage in which a crudely-drawn girl asks a crudely-drawn boy the very question. That's the whole cartoon. No context. No inkling of a hint what prompted the remark. Groenig, Schultz, Steig or the person who created the immortal "Someone is WRONG on the INTERNET!"-cartoon it ain't. As if no-one ever had reason to say such a thing. Yeah, I say it now and then. When someone has demonstrated that they are determined to be unreasonable and resist any spirit of give-and-take, and nothing remains to be done but to ignore them or mock them, sometimes I mock. I don't apologize. The world needs laughter. Readers of articles like this one by Ms Wilke or Ms Devon Wilke as it may happen to be, need laughter especially badly. She purports to be there in the cause of good manners, and all she does is complain and find fault. That ain't how it's done, girlfriend! Check out Judith Martin, aka Miss Manners. The way to encourage good manners is always, always to accentuate the positive.

And there's always a place for that. But that's not why I'm here today. My first comment on Lorraine Devon Wilke's denunciation of snark was eloquent, well-reasoned and to the point. I quote: "Oh shut up!" It has not yet been posted. I fear the moderation may not have laughed as heartily when they read it as I did when they wrote it. Or maybe they did, and regretted that they felt they had to delete it, bowing to pressure from higher up the HP food chain. So far 7 comments have been posted and another 7 are pending. If some have already been deleted before posting, then only a minority of the comments are getting through. All of them, so far, bursting with praise. I wrote a second comment: "To sum up: you yourself have nothing to say, and so you're going to complain about the way others say what they say. You can't take a joke. The very thought that someone somewhere may be mocking you fills you with a towering moral rage. Got it." I'm not particularly optimistic about that one getting through either. Sadly, some public figures are not interested in a dialogue with their public, no matter how constructive. It's fawn or go home.

As I intimated with my reference to Miss Manners, the way to encourage good manners is to lead by example. To praise, not to complain. And as you may have gotten already from my reference to Mark Twain, there is a place for bad manners. Some people deserve them. Namely, tyrants, big and small. People who have risen to levels of authority incommensurate with their modest talents to lead, and who do not inspire and cultivate those in their charge, but bully and oppress them. Dixit Ms Wilke or Devon Wilke:

"If I were running schools my curriculum would include such mandatory subjects as "How to Become a Good Conversationalist," "How to Intelligently and Respectfully Debate," and "Learn How and When To Shut Your Pie-Hole" (I'm big on that one!)"

Yeah. She's big on YOU shutting YOUR pie-hole. Sadly, very sadly for the whole world, many people of her ilk actually are schoolteachers. Like her they hate the larger world because they can't control it the way they control their unfortunate students.

Here's to teachers who actually like kids, who encourage and channel that wild energy, inspire it to grow stronger and wilder and do great things, rather than punish it. Here's to pundits with a freakin' sense of humor. Here's to impoliteness properly used, to pop the balloons of the buffoons who shouldn't be running the show.