#METOO AND THE DEATH OF AMERICAN MANNERS:

The #MeTooer of the moment is Rebecca Traister, a writer who relishes the broadside insult. In a recent New York Times interview, she was quoted on the beneficial effects of white-hot anger: ‘In early 2017,’ outraged by the defeat of Hillary Clinton, ‘I was walking with my husband, and I felt like my brain was going to boil. I was telling him how hard it was for me to think because I was so angry. He said to me, “Well, maybe that’s your book: anger.” I was like: “Of course, that’s my book.”’ The resulting volume is titled Good and Mad.

I also feel incoherently mad sometimes, but mostly I manage to keep it under wraps. One of those recent occasions was in a crowded elevator headed to a party on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where normally I could expect to meet lots of likeminded liberals. During the ride up, a left-wing editor with whom I’ve had friendly relations for years practically shouted at me: ‘Well, you’ve been in trouble lately. How’s it feel?’ She was obviously referring to the piece by the banished male malefactor, and I was frankly shocked at the aggressive tone and at her asking the question in front of strangers on the way to a social event. Suppressing the urge to rebuke her for rudeness, I used what’s become my stock response: I had published far more controversial pieces that provoked much more dangerous reactions, so the #MeToo Twitter storm wasn’t much to fear. Unsatisfied with my response, she shifted her attention to my wife: ‘How do you feel about the piece, as a woman?’ It was a rude question, given my female editor and I had published the piece, not my wife.

Once at the party, I thought I was safe. Almost immediately, however, I was introduced to another defenestrated ‘male aggressor’, a radio personality whose show I very much missed. Assuming he was an ally, I told him that I’d published the controversial piece by his former radio colleague, who happens to be paralysed and confined to a wheelchair. Rudely, he dismissed my writer’s case. ‘I didn’t do anything,’ he confided. ‘He [my writer] actually was culpable — he did some bad things.’ No solidarity among liberal victims, handicapped or not, but plenty of nastiness and no politesse.

As Glenn noted last year, “Bourgeois culture is bad because it limits the flexibility of the elites. When the middle class was ascendant, it had the power to force bourgeois norms on elites, and even many of the poor. This led to social goods that people miss now, but it was also experienced as confining by those so constrained.”