Bless your heart, New York Times!

(First of all, apologies for being so lax in posting lately. I started my new job not quite three weeks ago, and I love that it's so fast-paced... but naturally that leaves me less time for pontificating.)

True story: this summer, my family, traveling in a tourist-y area in the Blue Ridge Mountains found ourselves entering a restaurant at the same time as a small party of men. The men visibly raced to the door to squeeze in after the first half of the family, and allowed the restaurant's screen door to slam directly in the face of the second half of the family, which included me. My instantaneous, instinctive first thought at getting a face-full of spring-loaded screen door was, "Yankee." (I wish I could say that this was followed by "Bless his heart, he doesn't know any better," but it wasn't. Those guys pissed me off.)

Yep. Guilty. In my hind-brain, any full-grown man in the South who fails at anything so basic as holding open a door just MUST be ... well, not from here. Call me prejudiced. I am.

This morning, I read this New York Times story about how the South - the world's last bastion of courtesy, apparently - is gradually losing our trademark hospitality. (Ah, the South. Even our war was civil!) For what it's worth, they also blame the Yankees. Now, I love the Times' reporting of actual news events, with their ability to place a multitude of reporters in all 47,000 places that news might be breaking. But their "lifestyle" stories tend to go something like this: Question? Competing anecdotes. No objective data. Page clicks. etc. Or, as Gawker put it, "Manners Down South: Killed by Anecdotes."

As a Southerner, I love that "has manners" is a major part of our identity, even as I can understand that our region doesn't in fact have a monopoly on saying "Ma'am" and holding open doors. In my experience, people in rural areas anywhere tend to be more cordial than those in large cities, simply because the city peoples' personal encounters tend to be more anonymous. If you live in a town of 627 people, there's not a lot you can get done if people aren't nice to one another.

But, aside from the lazy reasoning, the Times story bugged me for a number of reasons. Mainly, the argument that Southerners came up with manners just so we could get away with racism, and now that we can't have Jim Crow laws, we just don't know what to do with ourselves. There's a big difference between etiquette designed to enforce unwritten oppressive social codes and just plain courtesy. When I think of the former, I picture an elderly black man being called "boy" by any white person who addresses him, or a woman whose doctor won't talk to her about her own health. That happened, and not just in the South. (Newsflash! Racism and sexism do in fact happen in other parts of the world.) But I don't put that in the same category as saying please and thank you.

I'm not insensitive to the gut reaction of people who are suspicious of the racist/sexist origins of some points of etiquette. The man who cuts my grass calls me "Miss Sara," even though I've told him he can call me plain old "Sara." It bothers the hell out of me; I feel like a plantation owner. But he still says it. And, if it's true that manners are ultimately about making other people feel at ease, then am I the one being rude by repeatedly correcting him?

But, again, rigid social codes are a far cry from basic manners. I don't feel discriminated against when a man holds open a door for me. I hold open doors for people every day, men included. That's because slamming a slab of wood or glass in the face of a woman with a stroller or a man toting a stack of boxes or a person of any gender who's right fracking behind you is just rude.

I was raised right (and not by parents with scads of money or privilege, either). I still put my napkin on my lap; I stand when people enter the room; I say please, thank you, ma'am, sir, etc., and I don't call my elders by their first names unless they tell me I may. I write thank-you notes. I by God hold open doors, and say thank you when others do so for me. As proud as I am to be from the South, I certainly hope that a child raised in Westchester or Palm Beach or Minot, North Dakota is able to say the same thing.

(And side rant - "bless your heart" or "Isn't that nice" aren't passive-aggressive. They're just courteous. Again, manners are about putting others at ease, not crowing from the rooftops that you've got Emily Post memorized, for pete's sake.)