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https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/2018/November/43/11/magazine/article/10845669/

Taki Theodoracopulos

..Perhaps it sounds stuffy, but I am nostalgic for the good old days when manners were exquisite.  You might think that this is a bit “de trop,” but not really.  Things are so bad at present that even returning to the time of strict etiquette I find would be a blessing.  Manners, you see, are as important as morals, and have very little to do with a man’s outer attributes—birth, rank, or education—but rather involve his inner qualities of character and behavior.  At present, people take phony offense at anything and everything, yet rudeness is de rigueur, and boorishness a virtue.  It is hip to be discourteous, trendy to act primitive, and “in” to be coarse.

Those who form our culture—magazine editors, TV writers and producers, and of course the Hollywood elite who put out the absolute dirt emanating from the West Coast—bombard us with stories and shows of coarse people using the coarsest language possible, but always cast in a favorable light.  Gentle folk speaking without using the f-word are always depicted as bigots.

In language, of course, is to be found one of the most crucial lines of demarcation between the vulgar and the gracious…

Edmund Burke insisted that manners are more important than laws, but I wonder how many of today’s television producers eager to push the boundaries, and other promoters of “edgy” art, have ever heard of the great man.  If they had, perhaps they would not have contributed so much to the incivility corroding our society today.  These talentless ruffians like to claim that they espouse a counter-courtesy in the shape of political correctness.  But p.c. is nothing but political manipulation, communism in disguise, a central control of peoples’ lives, the imposition of political agenda by a minority on the majority.  One day not far off, good manners will be deemed politically incorrect, just as they were in Orwell’s chilling Nineteen Eighty-four.

Good manners are not a superficial activity.  They serve a moral purpose.  They are the outward signs of an inner unselfishness.  They are what W.B. Yeats defined as the essence of civilization—the direct opposite of the me, me, me mentality.  Manners are the opposite of brute force.  The duel, once a benchmark of settling differences between gentlemen, had a mannered code and was a great deal better than a knife in the back or a street brawl.

How did we get to live in such a mannerless world?  How did we breach the period when that grand lady asked the waiter to hurry up with the dessert to today’s world of nonstop, four-letter expletives?  I suppose it was when those possessed of triumphant ignorance took over responsible positions in the media and entertainment and publishing industries.  Better yet, when these above-mentioned industries related popular culture with obscenity, boorishness, and a constant diet of puerile filth.  Anyone resisting these affronts to good taste and civilized living is seen as a reactionary, which brings me to the vile and coarse phenomenon of texting, and the filth that happens on the Internet.  (Personally, I do not text and do not tweet and do not allow comments on my website that use vulgarity.)  There is no doubt that the boundaries of taste and decency are being pushed ever further back in the name of connecting with each other through such useless and horrible inventions as Facebook.  (Sadists regularly troll grieving families who have lost children, desecrating their memories.  Zuckerberg and his gang of billionaires call it “freedom of expression.”)

And another thing: Lack of talent breeds four-letter words.  Show me a writer of a TV series with great talent, and I will show you a program that will have the minimum of four-letter words.  In fact, people with talent do not need to use them.  Lack of talent, however, guarantees nonstop filth.  Expletives are also part of the culture of triumphant ignorance—the belief that to behave like a slob or a gangster is an indication of manly virility.  To a certain sort of halfwit, obscenities are testosterone turned into the spoken word.  I fear that this is a sign of the times.

The fact is that the use of obscenities has become smart—the symbol of a generation that disregards majority opinion but thinks itself clever.  Yet not so long ago, I remember going to Yankee Stadium as a teenager and not hearing a single swear word in the crowded bleachers, and certainly none from the players.  Today no professional athlete is worth his salt unless he used the f-word as adverb, adjective, and verb.  Ditto for celebrities.  They consider themselves cutting-edge when being boorish and using profanity.  Yet no one from mainstream media or those ghastly late-night show hosts has had the courage to point out that those who rely on profanity display a woeful lack of imagination.  F–king this and f–king that are the equivalents of a caveman’s grunt, nothing else.  But you’ll never see a New York Times editorial denouncing such vulgarity because it emanates from the street, a street that is mostly black and brown, and it would be politically incorrect to criticize anything blacks or Latinos do or say…

I was recently watching something called The Affair on television.  A well-known writer is introduced to a Prince ton University writing class by a fellow writer.  “My God, you’re f–king Noah Solloway, that’s f–king amazing,” says a student to the visiting writer.  The visitor smiles and feels proud to be recognized.  Now that’s simply gratuitous swearing injected by the know-nothing director or writer to exhibit hipness.  Back during my time at the University of Virginia, one f-word would have had me thrown out of my fraternity and, if used in class, expelled, especially while addressing a visiting writer.

Hollywood etiquette is all about reminding others that you are more important than they are.  And Hollywood does educate large parts of America.  Certainly, television does, and TV is just as bad as Tinseltown, probably worse on cable.  The printed word is not much better.  Glossy magazines such as Vogue and Vanity Fair now promote only minorities and the LGBT community.  In fact, under the egregious Anna Wintour, a Condé Nast Vogue for teens ran a long article on how to test which sex gives you more pleasure.  This was for the children’s benefit.  My proudest achievement has been that I once managed to drive the ghastly Wintour to tears of frustration.  The argument was over politics, and I managed to show what a phony she is, while praising her for her successful social climb posing as an English member of the upper crust.  She is nothing of the sort…

Last but not least, do not believe a word the so-called experts tell you. For example: Harvard researcher Robert Putnam’s research demonstrated conclusively that racially diverse communities are more suspicious, withdrawn, ungenerous, fractured, and fractious. But he delayed the publication of his own findings for years, knowing that such an incendiary refutation of the unquestionable p.c. slogan “diversity is our strength” would face enormous opposition within academia. Publication of the facts stalled so he could spin out theories as to why diversity should still be considered a public good. And even so he has been attacked by his fellow experts, who claimed that by merely presenting the facts he was influencing the immigration debate…

The circus in Washington makes one ashamed to believe in democracy, which I do up to a point.  It worked in Ancient Greece because it was selective.  People had to prove their responsibility as well as their education.  The idea that Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut senator who pretended—until caught—that he had fought in Vietnam, can showboat and say that the hearings were “tainted and stained forever” makes by comparison Caligula’s naming his horse a consul a wise choice.  At least Judge Kavanaugh has the nonchalance of the well-born.  The Democrats remind me of Madame Defarge in A Tale of Two Cities.  But without her conviction.

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The “F” man.