In the insanity of Hurricane Sandy, I never ran a post about the recent passing of Letitia Baldrige, one of the grand dames of American manners. If you think people are rude today, you should have seen things before Baldrige. She was the one who convinced everybody that when they had violent diarrhea they needed to say “excuse me” before heading to the can to let it rip. Prior to that, people would just run out of the room clutching their fiery anuses while screaming at Jesus. And she strongly suggested you wash after you were done fingering yourself, even if you weren’t going to shake hands with anyone for a couple of hours.

I am a horrible man. Seriously, Baldrige was a lovely person who did her best to make us less cretinous. I personally have a complicated relationship with manners: I think we should behave well but not repress our true emotions. It’s a difficult balance. From her New York Times obituary, written by Anita Gates:

“In the 1970s she established herself as an authority on contemporary etiquette, writing a syndicated newspaper column on the subject and updating Amy Vanderbilt’s Complete Book of Etiquette in 1978, less than four years after Ms. Vanderbilt’s death. Ms. Baldrige’s face soon appeared on the cover of Time magazine, which hailed her as the nation’s social arbiter.

After that, her own name was enough to attract readers, and in 1985 she published Letitia Baldrige’s Complete Guide to Executive Manners, which dealt with behavior in the workplace and outside it. In that book, she declared it acceptable to cut salad with a knife. She recommended that whoever reaches the door first — either man or woman — open it. And she suggested infrequent shampooing when staying on a yacht, to be considerate about conserving water.”