How polite should one be to a telemarketer? I can always tell when they’re calling. First there’s the long pause, then the tired voice mispronouncing my name. What follows must be my mother’s doing, early years of training in being polite to strangers on the phone, even though I know full well the stranger in question is trying to sell me something I don’t want or need. Every one of my polite demurrals is anticipated and the telemarketer has a scripted response ready, each one pulling me closer to switching my long distance carrier, even though I’m satisfied with the carrier I’ve had for years.
Eventually, it becomes clear my good manners are being used against me and I have to abruptly reverse course and hang up. The same indignities are visited on us all, several times a day, by phone and mail and e-mail, although the latter two do not involve the same degree of personal interaction. If there is an erosion in manners and pubic spirit in America today, perhaps we need not look any further than the nearest telephone for the reason.
If that’s all there was to it, a few calls during supper, a handful of junk mail, it could be accommodated, but it’s more than that. The same impulses toward cordiality and away from confrontation are being used against us and our democracy, and a high price will be paid for it.
Last week’s debacle in Texas is as good an illustration as any. Once every ten years, after the census, legislative districts are redrawn to reflect population shifts. The census was taken in 2000; the districts were redrawn in 2001. This year, the Republican Party took control of the Texas legislature and attempted to redraw the districts again, with prompting from Congressman Tom DeLay. As no law expressly forbids this, the Texas GOP decided to ram an extra redistricting through, and while politicians of both parties have grown increasingly creative in drawing political maps to suit their ends, the Texas map made a mockery of representative government, with one district two blocks wide and 300 miles long.
Like the consumer whose good phone manners have led her or him deeper into the telemarketer’s script, Texas Democrats had no choice but to hang up, which they did by fleeing to Oklahoma.
That was a good thing and perhaps it means Democrats – at least in Texas – have learned something. In the 2000 Florida recount, Al Gore and his team brought in a bunch of lawyers to argue the merits of how the ballots should be counted. They maintained their composure, acted with discretion and got their asses kicked. George W. Bush brought in busloads of Republican congressional staffers to swarm and shout and stamp their feet and intimidate election officials in counties with disputed votes. He brought in Jim Baker, who is not called “The Velvet Hammer” for nothing. Al Gore appealed to reason and logic while George Bush made whatever deal he had to with the Supreme Court to get five of its members to set aside clearly written statutes and their own judicial philosophy to hand him the presidency of the United States.
From that day to this, the pushing, the goading, the taking advantage as not stopped. The Bush administration pushed through one tax cut for the rich because the economy was strong. Now a second tax cut – also for the rich – is being pushed through because the economy is weak.
The Bush administration failed – repeatedly, demonstrably – to deter or interdict the terrorists who attacked this country. Then the White House cynically manipulated goodwill at home and abroad to aggregate power to itself and pursue an agenda that does not make Americans – or anyone else – safer.
We never found the anthrax killer or Osama bin Laden. We have not stabilized Afghanistan, we have not brought democracy to Iraq, we have not found Saddam Hussein, we have not stopped Al Qaeda.
Our economy is in tatters, our civil liberties are a memory, our security is a myth. This week, as the security alerts changed colors again – anyone who dares to question authority is called unpatriotic.
Nice Guys Finish Last
How polite should one be to a telemarketer? I can always tell when they’re calling. First there’s the long pause, then the tired voice mispronouncing my name. What follows must be my mother’s doing, early years of training in being polite to strangers on the phone, even though I know full well the stranger in question is trying to sell me something I don’t want or need. Every one of my polite demurrals is anticipated and the telemarketer has a scripted response ready, each one pulling me closer to switching my long distance carrier, even though I’m satisfied with the carrier I’ve had for years.
Eventually, it becomes clear my good manners are being used against me and I have to abruptly reverse course and hang up. The same indignities are visited on us all, several times a day, by phone and mail and e-mail, although the latter two do not involve the same degree of personal interaction. If there is an erosion in manners and pubic spirit in America today, perhaps we need not look any further than the nearest telephone for the reason.
If that’s all there was to it, a few calls during supper, a handful of junk mail, it could be accommodated, but it’s more than that. The same impulses toward cordiality and away from confrontation are being used against us and our democracy, and a high price will be paid for it.
Last week’s debacle in Texas is as good an illustration as any. Once every ten years, after the census, legislative districts are redrawn to reflect population shifts. The census was taken in 2000; the districts were redrawn in 2001. This year, the Republican Party took control of the Texas legislature and attempted to redraw the districts again, with prompting from Congressman Tom DeLay. As no law expressly forbids this, the Texas GOP decided to ram an extra redistricting through, and while politicians of both parties have grown increasingly creative in drawing political maps to suit their ends, the Texas map made a mockery of representative government, with one district two blocks wide and 300 miles long.
Like the consumer whose good phone manners have led her or him deeper into the telemarketer’s script, Texas Democrats had no choice but to hang up, which they did by fleeing to Oklahoma.
That was a good thing and perhaps it means Democrats – at least in Texas – have learned something. In the 2000 Florida recount, Al Gore and his team brought in a bunch of lawyers to argue the merits of how the ballots should be counted. They maintained their composure, acted with discretion and got their asses kicked. George W. Bush brought in busloads of Republican congressional staffers to swarm and shout and stamp their feet and intimidate election officials in counties with disputed votes. He brought in Jim Baker, who is not called “The Velvet Hammer” for nothing. Al Gore appealed to reason and logic while George Bush made whatever deal he had to with the Supreme Court to get five of its members to set aside clearly written statutes and their own judicial philosophy to hand him the presidency of the United States.
From that day to this, the pushing, the goading, the taking advantage as not stopped. The Bush administration pushed through one tax cut for the rich because the economy was strong. Now a second tax cut – also for the rich – is being pushed through because the economy is weak.
The Bush administration failed – repeatedly, demonstrably – to deter or interdict the terrorists who attacked this country. Then the White House cynically manipulated goodwill at home and abroad to aggregate power to itself and pursue an agenda that does not make Americans – or anyone else – safer.
We never found the anthrax killer or Osama bin Laden. We have not stabilized Afghanistan, we have not brought democracy to Iraq, we have not found Saddam Hussein, we have not stopped Al Qaeda.
Our economy is in tatters, our civil liberties are a memory, our security is a myth. This week, as the security alerts changed colors again – anyone who dares to question authority is called unpatriotic.
It’s time to hang up on this call.