Yesterday, I posted on the provinciality of New Yorkers, most of whom hail from the provinces anyway.  In my accidental and ongoing series about New York, then, is this piece by Joan Acocella, where she wonders why New Yorkers seem so rude.  Here’s a good hypothesis: the rest of America spends more time in private, and so we’re ready and rested to put smiles on for the rest of the world when we go outside.  New Yorkers, however, have less domestic space to be alone, and so:

[T]hey make less separation between private and public life. That is, they act on the street as they do in private. In the United States today, public behavior is ruled by a kind of compulsory cheer that people probably picked up from television and advertising and that coats their transactions in a smooth, shiny glaze, making them seem empty-headed. New Yorkers have not yet gotten the knack of this. That may be because so many of them grew up outside the United States, and also because they live so much of their lives in public, eating their lunches in parks, riding to work in subways. It’s hard to keep up the smiley face for that many hours a day.

If you’re going to the city anytime soon, or if you live there, read the rest, which suggests why New Yorkers act the way they do, and why they seem smarter than everyone else.

Here’s a real, live ex-Hippie who’s eating her words, and her ideas about music: “I never thought I’d be ranting over the music and youth of today, much less championing the cause of polite society. But I never thought I’d be a parent either.”  It turns out that high school dances aren’t what they used to be.  Maybe this is just another Good-old-days article, and maybe that’s okay.

Last year, I was walking down the sidewalk, pushing my daughter in the stroller, when a small group of kids approached.  They looked to be in junior high: too old to be cowed by the very presence of an adult, and too young to stab me with any mortal force.  The kids - about seven or eight of them - were walking home from school.  The boys in the group were hooting and screaming and generally acting like they had rabies or Mad Cow.  I approached, and they approached, and we approached each other, but they never slowed the screaming.  My presence, as an adult, had no effect on their behavior.  I thought it might scare my daughter - and I was also offended that my adultness had no effect on them - and so, when our paths converged on the sidewalk, I stopped and said: “Can someone please make your friends hush?” 

The kids were shocked.  I might as well have been a talking tree.  The boys stopped braying for a moment, but quickly shared choice words with me when they were too far for me to correct without looking like an old corkscrew.  Granted, there were no parents around, and I was a teacher at a military school for boys, where I regularly made young men do pushups for far less, but still, I wondered: Why do I not do this more?  This column from Newsweek explores why we don’t discipline other people’s children as much anymore, and asks if we shouldn’t bring it back.  It’s a question of pluralism, of moral authority, and of shared/not shared values. 

But, in this culture, moral authority - rather than self-righteousness - shocks Americans of all ages, which is, I think, perfect reason for wielding it.