Over the weekend, the English writer Geoffrey Dyer wrote a wonderful essay in The New York Times magazine entitled “My American Friends” in which he argues that Americans are actually remarkably…polite. To which one’s natural instinct is to reply: “What?????” (Or rather…”Pardon???”)
Today I’m over on PoliticsDaily.com talking about his thesis and adding my own two…pence.
Have a look…
Image: Smiley American Girl by cproppe via Flickr under a Creative Commons License.
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If Americans are thought politer by Mr. Dyer, he clearly has had a somewhat narrow (happily for him) experience of our nationals. True, many Americans are (why else do we have mothers?) but too many are anything but. I confess to a regional bias: I grew up in the midwest, where most folks, like most southeners, tend to be courteous. It was a rude shock to come to New York. Took me years to realize that what I heard as extreme rudeness was just custom & that underneath NooYawkahs could be as kind as my Chicago neighbors.
Daryl, if you actually read the article he mentions his friends are from California and mostly did not support Bush, thus I doubt the impression of politeness came from the South or the Midwest. Honestly, why do people from middle America think they are polite? My black friend was called a “nigger” in the South as if that were the normal way to address someone of his color. Middle America is filled with anachronisms like that, it’s more stagnant and hardly a place I would call more polite and civilized than the coastal regions.