AP/Ipsos Poll: Americans are rude

[destruction]

How rude! That's us; you can blame parents

October 15, 2005

BY DONNA CASSATA

WASHINGTON -- Americans' fast-paced, high-tech existence has taken a toll on civility.

From road rage in the morning commute to high decibel cell phone conversations that ruin dinner out, men and women behaving badly have become the hallmark of a hurry-up world. An increasing informality -- flip-flops at the White House -- combined with self-absorbed communication gadgets and a demand for instant gratification have strained common courtesies to the breaking point.

''All of these things lead to a world with more stress, more chances for people to be rude to each other,'' said Peter Post, a descendent of etiquette expert Emily Post and an instructor on business manners through the Emily Post Institute in Burlington, Vt.

In some cases, the harried single parent has replaced the traditional nuclear family, and there's little time to teach the basics of polite living, Post said.

Worse in urban areas

A slippage in manners is obvious to many Americans. Nearly 70 percent questioned in an Associated Press-Ipsos poll said people are ruder than they were 20 or 30 years ago. The trend is noticed in large and small places alike, although more urban people report bad manners, 74 percent, than do people in rural areas, 67 percent.

Peggy Newfield, founder and president of Personal Best, said the generation that came of age in the times-a-changin' 1960s and 1970s are now parents who don't stress the importance of manners, such as opening a door for a woman.

So it was no surprise to Newfield that those children wouldn't understand how impolite it was to wear flip-flops to a White House meeting with the president -- as some members of the Northwestern women's lacrosse team did in summer.

A whopping 93 percent in the AP-Ipsos poll faulted parents for failing to teach their children well.

''Parents are very much to blame,'' Newfield said. ''And the media.''

Sulking athletes and boorish celebrities grab the headlines while television and Hollywood often glorify crude behavior.

Few willing to admit it

Nearly everyone has a story of the rude or the crude, but fewer are willing to fess up to boorish behavior themselves.

Only 13 percent in the poll would admit to making an obscene gesture while driving; only 8 percent said they had used their cell phones in a loud or annoying manner around others. But 37 percent in the survey of 1,001 adults questioned Aug. 22-23 said they had used a swear word in public.

Yvette Sienkiewicz, 41, of Wilmington, Del., recalled in frustration how a bigger boy cut in front of her 8-year-old son as he waited in line to play a game at the local Chuck E. Cheese.

''It wasn't my thing to say something to the little boy,'' said Sienkiewicz, who remembered that the adult accompanying the child never acknowledged what he had done. In the AP-Ipsos poll, 38 percent said they have asked someone to stop behaving rudely.

AP

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-rude15.html