A writers opinion about bad manners

By Howard E. Cummins

Columnist

The motivation for this story was partially inspired by my observation of a television interview from several years ago of an individual from Southwest Virginia in which the interviewer used the term “rednecks” to describe our local population. It was not said in a fun way, but with serious intent and tone.

I can only speak for myself, but being called redneck is a sure-fire way of being kicked out of my morning “coffee break” with any television network and I suspect, and hope, that network show lost a whole bunch of so-called “redneck” viewers. I can guarantee that reporter would never be invited to sit on any of our front porches and sip corn likker and nibble on pork rinds. We don’t take a likin’ to bad manners, you know.

But seriously, bad manners seem to have taken over common sense, respect for others, courtesy, and good taste. Good manners grow in healthy spots, and the spots may be large or small, according to how well we listened to our parents and teachers. Bad manners are like grease spots, and they spread, stain and soak their way into prejudices and beliefs until they become permanent. Good manners require common sense and good judgment. Everything that happens to us when we use good manners brings its own extension and duration to our happiness.

As long as I’m on the subject of bad manners, what about those cell phones and the people who abuse them? I loved Lynn Truss’s book Talk to the Hand, subtitled Six Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door. Her book zooms in on the popular trend of a new race of human beings who walk around with a cell phone stuck in their ears, and a few other electronic gadgets hanging from their bodies, all the while looking as though they are literally talking to their hands, or to some invisible character out in space. In addition, we are regularly besieged with conversations we could live without hearing from total strangers who feel they have to communicate on a continual basis, even while in locations such as public restrooms. I digress….

Good manners are essential to the creditability of any spokesperson delivering information to the public. I believe good manners to be the face of decency, and we expect them to be employed in fair and intelligent communication.

And good manners stress an intelligent form of verbal expression to be accepted as good behavior within a group. This is especially important when using others as a butt to personal jokes. One needs to use care as this is not only cruel, but also may be devastating to the recipient. Jokes or stories that include reference to such topics as race, color, religion and nationality have the potential for far-reaching repercussions to all involved.

As far back as 30 BC, the writer Horace, in his Satires gave the world some witty discourses full of chatty, homely wisdom, however his words are hardly satires in our modern world where comedy, for example, frequently takes on the biting edge of contempt, anger and disrespect. Horace was too kindly and genial a man to indulge in personal lampoons, preferring instead to “comment with a smile” on the folly and foibles of humankind, including his own.

The late Jack Benny was a modern Horace. He was probably the most beloved, well-defined American comic in history. His pacing, timing, and inflections were crafted with precision, and he is remembered as a beloved King of Comedy, and he never delivered an insult to others – but only to himself, since he made a career of being insulted (rather than insulting ) at every turn.

Another ancient satirist, Decimus Juvenalis, the opposite of Horace and Benny, was a bitter, sharp-tongued moralist who etched everything and everyone with the acid style of hate and contempt, and he left an unrelievedly gloomy picture of his age (ca. 60-l40). He admitted that he hated the whole world, and everybody in it, and that they hated him in return.

He delighted in arousing horror and revulsion at Rome as a cesspool of iniquity. Everyone, the poor and the rich, the powerful and the underdog, felt his anger and he lashed them with his angry tongue and delivered the cruelest blows to the best minds of his time. No one was spared.

It is my observation that in our modern day and age subtlety is no longer considered “cool,” and “off-the-cuff” remarks of uncurbed words steeped in self-indulgence and contempt are often the stuff of newscasts and headlines. Pure reason, fairness, understanding, respect and integrity appear to be lost to a fundamental indifference that we Americans have adopted as a reaction to our puzzlement in dealing with an ever-challenging world.

Our individual character, our individual practice of considering the feelings of others, and our individual capacity to better understand our wandering flow of thoughts and emotions, not our individual politics, provide our hope for society. We cannot hope to win any rewards at the risk of hurting others who have no immediate forum to fight back when they are attacked.

Not so long ago, on Sunday evenings, Red Skelton appeared on NBC to provide Americans with an hour of unabashed, wholesome comedy. While other comics were offering parodies and satires, Skelton offered a lesson in being a clown. There was no biting humor and satire in his appointed hour. He was warm and sincere, and when the hour was over, he gave his send-off line: “God Bless.”