December, 2002

It's a common complain that we have no manners anymore. One is sneered at if one opens a door for a woman, yet I have always opened doors for men as well as women and I'm at a loss as to why courtesy has recently become tainted with feminism.

But it goes deeper than that.

We're lowering our standards at all levels, at a time when America has never been richer or more powerful. What does it say of us as a culture that the ability to be our best is so confounded by our willingness to accept almost anything?

A few cases in point.

If you're able to recognize a BMW rather than an entry model Chevvy, as it passes you on the road, you're better than I am. Automobiles today are such slaves to the wind tunnel, that they've all come to look like bars of soap. Some are expensive, some cheap, but all look alike and the alike they look is boring, boring, boring. Time was, when a Cadillac was visually quite set apart from a Mercedes and both were absolutely unlike the less costly breed. No more. Bore me at $15,000 or bore me at $80,000, I'm still bored. Does no one see the opportunity of making my blood rush? 1940 Lincoln Continental, 1956 Chevrolet Corvette, how did you all morph into the 2002 Dullsmobile?

Architecturally, call it post modern or deconstructionist, why does everything have to be so slapped together and tacky? Anyone who's sick to death of slab walls and acoustic ceilings, raise their hands. We work in boxes and, more and more, we live in them as well. I'd be the last to suggest we go back to Greek Revival, but my goodness, why can't the architectural schools today give at least a nod to Art Nouveau or Art Deco, peek from behind their Less-Is-More isms to cast just a glance at Rockefeller Center or the Chrysler Building. Less Is More scoots us down the road to Nothing Is Everything and we're close to the end of the pavement in that direction.

A ticket to the Chicago Symphony or any current Broadway show sets you among the jeans and running-shoe crowd that seem to have taken over everything. Nary a suit or tie in sight and the manners have dropped right down to the level of clothing. Before the last flute has fluted, the last drum rolled, the aisles are chuck full of fat backsides running for the parking lot. Applaud the orchestra or cast? Show some degree of appreciation for what's been presented at $100 a seat? Nah. Get on the cell phone, baby. Get the car ahead of the crowd. The jeans-diminished have taken over high end restaurants, churches, air travel and even an occasional farm, where they are still to be seen atop an occasional tractor.

There used to be a restaurant travel guide, written by a guy named Duncan Hines. Pointed you toward the best place to eat from Podunksville to Pittsburgh and a very handy thing it was to have. But of course it died, along with the invention of strip malls and strip fast-food along the highways. Enough's been said about fast-food, but the fact is that there used to be some very fine places to eat in this country.

But the common complaint with which I began, was about manners. There's a connection, I think, between our national acceptance of a constantly downgraded physical and visual life, and our unwillingness to open doors or have them opened for us.

I don't think I ever saw my father in blue jeans and yet he was as much a man of leisure as I purport to be. But he dressed well. Not for others, he dressed well for himself. And it made him somehow more easy to be around, because it's difficult to be an asshole when you're nicely dressed and oh, so easy to be one when you're dressed for the part. We were a very middle class family. We ate dinner, as a family, every night of the week and we ate it by candlelight. My God, I can just hear the titters as this is read. But candlelight made us more aware of each other somehow, brought the whole thing to another level of participation, sort of like what happens when people sit around a fire of any type. There was a lot of love in our family and it showed, some of it by nothing more than candles at dinner.

If you say you haven't time or interest to care about buildings or automobiles, putting on a coat and tie or eating by candlelight---

---maybe you've made my point for me.

Get out of the Archives and read what Jim's writing today