If good manners mean anything at all anymore, today seems to be a pretty good day to consider why. Romantic cynicism and fiscal irresponsibility aside, the big event across the Atlantic offers up a huge contrast to an American spectacle that reached a considerably less admirable crescendo this week.
Money affords a person many things, but manners, it has become clear, cannot be bought. American media are currently conducting an unseemly love affair with a rich and blustery entrepreneur, who has amassed a vast personal fortune with a combination of relentless ambition, slippery wile and considerable business acumen–and nary a single dollop of good manners.
Britons, too, know a thing or two about putting on a good show–and about keeping up appearances. And to this end, the Royal Family–comprised of more than a few wealthy people behaving badly–conducts its less flattering business mostly in private. And maybe that’s the point.
Putting on our best faces in public–rather than blithely subjecting others to our every sliver of discontent–has many benefits, not the least of which is how our behavior makes those around us feel. Anyone who’s been in the presence of an unhinged person–be it stranger or loved one–knows just how demoralizing bad manners can be. Propriety–in all its guises–still counts for something, if not to us, then, to those forced to be around us.
How the story ends–on both sides of the Atlantic–is anyone’s guess. But at least for a day, shelving the media onslaught of words that sound a great deal like hate and surrendering to a media blitz of something that looks very much like love may be a very good idea indeed.
I Know Something About Love is a current London exhibition devoted to the work of 4 artists who explore the theme of love through the lens of personal experience.
A kitschy-cute note pad from the V&A museum shop.
LOVE AND MANNERS
29 April 2011Posted in commentary, words | Leave a Comment »