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Among academicians who study such things, the rituals of status seeking at the dinner party or the formal dance are as old as human memory. "Any society that has upward mobility as a major feature pays a great deal of attention to manners," says Alan Dundes, a professor of anthropology and folklore at the University of California, Berkeley. "Young people today are concerned with making it, and part of making it is setting the table properly when the boss comes over for dinner. Self-improvement is a big part of the American dream, and learning manners is part of self-improvement." Or as Author-Editor George Plimpton sums it up, "Manners are better because they help you get along and get ahead. All this provides a sense of security and belonging."
So there is undeniably a certain element of hypocrisy and snobbery in all the talk of revived elegance, but when was it ever otherwise? And what is the harm in behaving well—or trying to behave well, or pretending to behave well—for selfish reasons? It was a kind of historical aberrancy for large numbers of people to think, as they did in the '60s, that life could be improved by boorish self-indulgence. And if there is now a return to more mannerly behavior, it is not necessarily a result of a new political conservatism. "I think it is the other way around," says Martin. "I think the political conservatism is based on people's dissatisfactions with the way they live."
DEAR Miss MANNERS: I recently viewed a friend's granddaughter performing on TV, and the friend asked me how I liked it. I told her that I enjoyed it very much, which pleased her. Actually, I hated it. Was I a hypocrite?
GENTLE READER: Miss Manners tries very hard to understand the concept of emotional human duty in a society whose members are bothered by their consciences for the deed of having pleased a grandmother by complimenting her granddaughter . . . Hypocrisy is not generally a social sin, but a virtue.
Bravo, Miss Manners! For your good example and constant nagging, you deserve our thanks, perhaps even a tip of the hat.
—By Otto Friedrich.
Reported by Dan Goodgame/Los Angeles, Carolyn Lesh/ Washington and Adam Zagorin/New York