Almost everyone I’ve ever encountered that is a member of traditional American cultural understood this rule of etiquette. It’s right up there with don’t wear a white dress and a veil to a wedding unless you’re the bride and don’t do lap dance during the reception. The only people I have known that did not understand this were either foreign born students (who incidentally were eager to learn the proper way of doing things) or individuals from very impoverished backgrounds where proper manners were not taught (who were also eager to learn the proper etiquette). Please read slowly if you have trouble understanding big words. I simply pointed out that yes, there are circumstances were saying congratulations to a bride could jeopardize her marriage which should be a considered a darn good reason to do some research into what is and is not appropriate to say.
Bullshit.
You’re outright lying. People have quoted Miss Manners herself as saying people who offer congratulations “mean well but don’t know the rule.” Another professional etiquette maven says this rule has “fallen out of the realm of common knowledge” and that “today, most brides aren’t even aware of the tradition.”
Again, you’re lying. And you’re a coward: I’ve given you an easy way to test your assumption, but you’re too much of a coward to try it out.
Given all your lies, at this point I wouldn’t believe you if you said you had done the experiment. You’re one of the least believable members of this board.
Oh please, I did your goofy little experiment over a workshop luncheon table of women last Friday. Every last one of them (and the entire waitstaff at the freaking restaurant) knew not to say congratulations to a bride. You r problem is you refuse to admit that you didn’t know the proper etiquette (and apparently have no desire to learn which is rather sad). I get it you are ashamed of all the times you came off as rude and lower class. But that doesn’t mean you can’t change in the future.
Seriously, where do you encounter all these people that don’t know basic etiquette? Housing projects? Homeless shelters?
You’re lying again. You did something entirely different, and you know you did because I explained in very small words to you how different it was. You’re a cowardly liar.
If you’re the standard bearer for classy, cover me in shit and call me untouchable.
Creating belief systems and/or rules of conduct for oneself, or as part of a relatively small social group, is fine. To some extent, everyone does this. Even, say, this board, or any group of friends. All groups display at least some ‘in-group’ characteristics. (Let’s say we believe the following: “Og is the one true God, and Cecil is his prophet.”)
Some such individuals or groups go on to assert that mainstream values are immoral, and only the values of the individual or the small group they that belong to are correct. This is still fine. Well, a bit dickish, but you know what I mean. (“Gee, aren’t most people, apart from our little group, immoral? They don’t recognize that Og is the true God, and Cecil is his prophet.”)
Sometimes, the individual or group goes a step further, and attempts to bend society as a whole to their particular views. At this point, we’re probably into “uncool” territory. (“You all need to understand that Og is the true God, and Cecil is his prophet. And we will slap you with a trout until you get it.”)
Neither of these, as far as I can tell, is the case for ZPG. She casually describes attitudes (explaining them to us like we’re dummies who clearly don’t get out much in the real world) that to her seem to be commonplace and expected, but that we’ve sometimes never even heard of. Then she exhibits shock, bewilderment and surprise in response to our bewilderment and surprise.
If I lived in a world where, say, paganism was the norm, and I held the minority view that Christianity was awesome, I might be outraged at rituals worshiping Zeus, Apollo or the deified Roman Emperors. I might refuse to take part in such rituals. I might long for the day when everyone was a Christian. I might even, if given the chance, take steps to promote Christianity among the pagans.
I would not, however, go “WTF?” when someone claimed that pagan beliefs were mainstream, and Christianity was a minority. I would know about that, and I would get it. I would be aware of the fact that I was holding an unusual opinion. **ZPG **doesn’t seem to know this.
(What I’m seeing from ZPG seems to resemble the following: “What, are you kidding me? You don’t know that Og is the one true God, and Cecil is his prophet? I must say that I’m surprised by this. I’ve literally asked hundreds if not thousands of people about this, and they all knew it. My colleagues know about it, all my friends ever, every social circle. I’ve ever been part of. You guys must not get out much. Furthermore, everyone agrees that holding a different opinion is immoral.”)
This is what I find puzzling. As far as I can tell, she’s either 1) lying, 2) delusional, or 3) telling the truth, based on observable facts. If 3), that seems to suggest that she has different facts than we do.
Zealotry, I have no problem with it. However, I don’t find it particularly interesting. But someone saying that the sky is pink when it looks blue to me? That, I find fascinating.
Quoth ZPG, where she repeats what she has stated, in multiple ways, again and again:
As of right now, I am taking her word for this. To ignore it, it seems to me, would be not seeing the giant elephant in the room, tap dancing around in a tutu.
Waitaminute, are you saying that the girl’s family DID try to go after him, or that you surmise that they PROBABLY tried?
The only coward I see is the person that doesn’t want to admit they were so lazy as to not bother looking up (since obviously they didn’t learn it at home) the appropriate way of acting at a wedding, decided to just wing it with whatever that assumed was correct, and now doesn’t like to admit that they were boorish and trashy. Miss Manners tries to be nice to everyone and sometimes in being overnice people get blown apart in the social mind fields out there.
Me, yes yes yes, because you’re also insane. If you were sane, you’d realize how cowardly your behavior is, but then you’d probably not engage in it.
I am 100% okay being thought of as trashy by a vicious little nutjob like you :).
I think I’ll take this wiki article on Romani over Zealot’s weird little interpretation of reality.
The girl’s father tried to go after him. Apparently the thought of daughter sending pictures of her bikini wax to this olive skinned boy wasn’t something he just accepted as part of the natural progression of teenage behavior. We had our defense lawyers, before long they had theirs. Our lawyers and the police said private investigators are always a possibility in situations like that and there’s some evidence that adults (other than the school and law enforcement) was asking a lot of questions of all the teenagers friends and associates. Our lawyers think they could have been looking for evidence of suggestive photos of my nephew or questionable behavior he may have engaged in as part of the girl’s defense.
In a nice bit of irony, emilypost.com titles its article on tips for the newly engaged: “Congratulations–You’re Engaged!”
Those trashy boors.
My WAG is that since the ZPG in ZPG Zealot stands for “Zero Population Growth,” she thinks any contact between the sexes can eventually lead to the sexes.
Her post here seems to suggest she thought that allowing boys and girls together on the playground gave the boys permission to molest the girls. What does she propose, that males & females be separated from each other all their lives until marriage? Maybe she’s still pissed because the boys tagged her in the “It” games and she was too slow to tag them back.
“Tag, you’re it!”
“Huff… puff… You molested me you serial rapist!”
In case anyone is having trouble reading between the lines:
This dad found out that his daughter’s boyfriend’s aunt had called the cops and tried to file a rape charge against his daughter, and was showing cops naked pictures of his daughter. He hired a lawyer to protect his daughter from the crazy lady and, afraid the crazy lady was going to ruin his daughter’s life, might have tried to find some evidence that her nephew was also sending naked pictures, to try to get the crazy lady to back off.
No wonder you think everyone else in the world is terrible; otherwise, how could you live with yourself?
I get pissed off because too many times sexual abuse of girls and women gets dismissed as innocent flirtation when there is nothing innocent about it. The standard should be, teach your sons they are not ever to touch a female without her permission (actual permission, not just “I guess it’s all right because she wasn’t trying to fight me off”), and that other than live saving procedures, there is no exception.
Ah, this explains it. ZPG Zealot saw an episode of Mad Men.
OK, just to get this straight. Is this what you are describing?
Stage 1: There was no legal action or any other problem.
Stage 2: You (unprovoked) took legal action against the girl and her family.
Stage 3: The family responded by way of their own defense lawyer.
Stage 4: Nothing came of it one way or another.
Stage 5: Your teenage nephew got married to a Roma girl?
Just wondering if I missed something.
No, that’s not the standard, and it shouldn’t be. The standard should be the same for boys and girls, and it should be the same no matter who they’re touching.
The standard SHOULD be to teach people that there are certain kinds of touch that are socially acceptable and others that are not. Tapping someone on the shoulder to get their attention? Often acceptable. Grabbing a butt? Not often acceptable.
When a female colleague places her hand on my back and murmurs, “'scuse me,” she’s not attempting to assault me. If I touch her shoulder and say, “They’re looking for you down at the office,” that’s not attempted rape.
If you have an exception to this rule, whether it’s because you’re orthodox Jewish or autistic or a germophobe or whatever, it’s up to you to let people know.
Your proposed rule is deeply sexist and will never be the standard.
No, the wise aunt found potentially criminal photos on a cell phone she had in an unwise moment bought for her nephew. Rather than risk having herself (because she was a the legal owner of the phone) and her nephew arrested on child pornography charges, the wise aunt (after she calmed down and stopped yelling at her nephew) called her lawyer for advice. The lawyer took the smashed phone (okay, I let anger get control of me for a few minutes with the phone ) and went to the proper authorities in his professional capacity to make damn sure the wise aunt and the nephew were not caught up in some of the nasty legal entanglements that result when stupid teenagers send very stupid photos.
It seems that she was in her nephew’s face every day for a while there.
So the only thing I got wrong is that you didn’t actually try to file a rape charge against his daughter like you said you were going to do? Well, that’s good.