A friend of mine is a relatively recent transplant from New York City to Charleston, South Carolina. He’s gay, he’s in the arts, and he’s a card-carrying, bleeding-heart, tree-hugging liberal. Nothing about his lifestyle screams “move to the South.” Yet, he did, and he’s having the time of his life. When I asked him about hanging out with Southerners who might not share his progressive views, he was chipper. “It works out just fine,” he said, “because in the South, everyone respects the rules of polite dinner conversation: 1) Don’t talk about politics; 2) don’t talk about religion; and 3) don’t talk about football.”
These rules of polite dinner conversation are so powerful that a gay expat from the supposed liberal elite, nestled in the most bubble-iest of bubbly cities, managed to feel totally at ease in Charleston, South Carolina, a place associated with an entirely opposing type of bubble, which was once dubbed the “Cradle of the Confederacy.”
Are rules of politesse so powerful that they override identity politics? Does this mean we could all benefit from national rules of polite conversation? It seems logical that our divisions fester in part because of an endless stream of hot takes—because of our willingness to dole out opinions on nearly everything regardless of who is in front of us to receive them. Somehow, politics have become our main attribute instead of just a set of opinions lurking under the hood.
The idea of conversational etiquette is nothing new. In the late 1700s, Thomas Jefferson famously had a “no politics” rule at his dinner parties. He instituted it because he wanted to avoid “political arguments” and “awkward scenes.” He wouldn’t even allow toasts at dinner because, to him, the tradition often had a “marked connection with politics.”
Jefferson had seen firsthand how a revolution could tear at the seams of a country. He knew instinctively that social harmony needed preservation, which required work. It needed some rules of social etiquette. “I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend,” he once mused. Well, I’ll raise you that, Jefferson, and I give you a nation willing to abandon entire branches of the family because of political opinion! (Of course, any of his sensible teachings should be weighed against his incredible moral bankruptcy on the issue of slavery.)
By the twentieth century, Emily Post had many rules—some might say an excessive number—about how to behave in polite society. Her work codified the “no politics” rule at well-heeled tables around the country. She also laid out another 627 pages of dictates, so that you would never be in danger of doing something spontaneous or with independence of thought. Thank goodness, we wouldn’t want that!
I wonder what Post and Jefferson would say about the rise of the cursing politician? I was struck by how frequently Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth uses the phrase “FAFO”—which can roughly be translated as “make love indiscriminately and be made aware.” (That, but way more threatening.) Clearly, the current administration has excelled at public cursing—even the once literary JD Vance has sunk into its depths with regular blasphemous tweets. Lest the left feel superior, no single party has a hold on cursing—even old Chucky Schums has dropped the f-bomb.
What is the downstream effect of the abandoning of civility among our country’s leaders? How could we possibly retain Southern rules of dinner table etiquette when civic leaders at every level let it rip so publicly? Not only do they yammer on boundlessly, they ask to be praised for this breach of decorum. What’s worse, because we either A) hate ourselves or B) can’t beat the algorithm, we then reward them with clicks! And memeification! And endless Internet slop! Such that they’ll . . . do it AGAIN.
To be honest, I’ve never really thought about etiquette. I grew up in the 1990s, when the grunge era taught us to indulge in radical authenticity—to, ahem, come as you are. Nearly everything was acceptable, especially unkempt hair and well-worn flannel shirts. To us, etiquette mostly felt like a way to control women and, thus, we discarded it with glee.
That was a golden era for liberalism. And perhaps our noisy self-regard is partly responsible for the anti-liberal, anti-feminist backlash we’re living through today. But what if, instead of wearing our political hearts on our (flannel) sleeves, we pull back?
The Postian level of rules-yness sounds dauntingly stifling. But somewhere between Jefferson and Post is a comfortable ground where people can inhabit shared spaces with a measure of care so that everyone can enjoy everyone else’s company. It’s a style of comportment that stops us from being antagonistic and argumentative. At the end of the day, part of the social contract is that everyone be . . . social.