Consider the source
The NYT says the south’s manners are declining. Because we’re racists and all this social integration is getting to us. Or something. How stupid. And if I want to know about southern manners, I turn to the Paper of Making Up The Record.
November 3rd, 2011 at 9:10 am
Gosh, one day the South may be almost as rude as … New York City!
November 3rd, 2011 at 9:36 am
Maybe they should realize that it isn’t the Southerners who are Rude, but all those DamnYankees who moved down that way over the last 30 Years that are the issue.
November 3rd, 2011 at 10:13 am
I moved to the South in 1964, when I was in first grade.
Based on my accent, I obviously learned to talk in Tn.
I learned manners from my parents and from the nuns, priests and Christian brothers who ensured that I did.
I have conversations about manners with people all the time, because it never ceases to amaze me how completely boorish so many people are today.
To the credit of a good many of the young slcacker guys I see around our college town, though, I think that the threshhold for manners due to a college chick who leaves her dorm or apartment in pajamas is pretty low.
November 3rd, 2011 at 10:47 am
Of course manners are sliding, all the yankees are moving here.
November 3rd, 2011 at 11:56 am
Bubblehead beat me to it.
November 3rd, 2011 at 12:51 pm
A lot of the south’s “chivalry” has always struck me as being of the Stepford Smiler variety.
November 3rd, 2011 at 5:07 pm
Consider the source. The comments under the article go to prove that however much manners might have slipped in Dixie, the floor is still a long way away; the vitriol and language is enlightening. And isn’t it just like a Yankee to be obsessed with race? You can’t seem to go through a page of comments on a simple article on manners without it somehow being tied to Rosa Parks. Don’t they realize that most of the South got off the everlasting stool of repentance two generations ago?
November 3rd, 2011 at 5:15 pm
Having lived there for a time, I would also agree with John Shelton Ree that “Atlanta represents what a quarter of a million Confederate soldiers died to prevent”. Kinda like Florida, it ain’t exactly the same as the place was in 1861.
November 4th, 2011 at 10:57 am
Ah, yes, “some say” that southern manners are on the decline.
“Some say” in the MSM is code for “me, myself, I, and a couple of other idiots whose quotes I massaged to agree with the first three.”