The Civility Glut.

• Author: Ehrenreich, Barbara
• Position: Brief Article

The professional chin-strokers and morality-mavens keep telling us America could use a little more civility. To which I say--with all due respect, of course--heck no, what we've got here is a civility glut.

Take your morning news on CNN, where the expert of the moment--some former deputy assistant secretary of such-and-such--is being hauled away after his ninety-second interview.

"Thank you," says the anchorperson.

"Thank you," insists the former deputy assistant secretary.

"Appreciate it," the anchorperson retaliates.

Who knows where this frenzy of competitive gratitude would take us if the former deputy assistant secretary were not peremptorily replaced with a Geico commercial?

Here's my personal favorite: I call some corporate bureaucracy and, whether out of loneliness or confusion, opt for "0"--the chance to speak to an actual human. "Kelly" or "Tracey" wants to know my account number, which I willingly share.

"Great!" says Kelly.

Next she wants to know my zip code, and it turns out to be "perfect!"

Or suppose I'm calling a publishing company and get an administrative assistant with a pricey British accent. When I tell her my phone number, she declares that it's "brilliant!"

I should be flattered, of course, to be associated with such an admirable collection of numbers. But unless these ladies are mathematicians who have speedily determined that my zip code is a perfect square and my account number is the exact distance in light years between here and the nearest ongoing supernova, then I see no reason to comment on them. My zip code is OK at best, my account number a little stodgy, and nothing you say, Kelly, can make me swell with pride when I recite them.

Or consider the standard, all-purpose sign-off, "Have a nice day!" There were grumblings when this one took hold--sometime in the '70s, I think--and you still see a surly bumper sticker now and then warning, "Don't tell me what kind of a day to have!" No one, however, is complaining about the recent escalation to "Have a great day" or "Have a really great day."

You might think it would be enough to commend a departing companion to the care of an omnipotent deity, as in "good-bye," which is shorthand for "god be with you." But compared to the competition, "goodbye" has come to sound dismissive or even impertinent. It has no future. In fact, the day will come when one of the tearful lovers will cry out to the other, as they are torn from each others' arms by rival clan members, "Have...