A Blow for Civility

Special Guest Blogger Rosanne Thomas, certified etiquette and protocol consultant and founder of Boston-based Protocol Advisors, Inc., continues the conversation about the recent Jet Blue incident and what it means for civility.

In yesterday's New York Times, Benedict Carey wrote of Steven Slater, the Jet Blue flight attendant whose dramatic exit from a plane after an encounter with a passenger has elevated him to folk hero status. The veracity of Mr. Slater's account is now in question after several other passengers offered different views of what actually transpired.

But whether the messenger is ultimately to be believed, light has been shone on the very real challenges faced by those who deal with the public every day, and perhaps what happened is a good thing. Or perhaps it isn't.

Time will tell if Mr. Slater's claims have merit. If they do not, time will also tell whether what he did for the "working man" was more harmful than helpful, a potential ironic blow to customer service workers who deserve a credible advocate.

In the meantime, what we know for sure is that Mr. Slater struck no "blow for civility" as Mr. Carey asserts. Answering alleged rudeness with rudeness, and in this case involving an entire plane of innocent passengers, lowers the bar of respectful discourse across the board. These are undoubtedly stressful times, yet nothing can be gained by lauding such behavior. Civility, unfortunately, was not on board that day.

Yale Professor Stephen Carter to Join Civility Panel

The Connecticut Forum Announces:
Stephen Carter to Join Gergen, Buckley and Barreca at
The End of Civility?
Saturday, October 2, 2010

Recognized by Time magazine as one of the fifty leaders of the next century, Stephen Carter is one of America’s leading public intellectuals.

The author of four novels and of seven critically acclaimed nonfiction books on law, ethics and politics, he has been shaping the national debate throughout his career on issues ranging from the role of religion in our politics and culture to the role of integrity and civility in our daily lives. He currently is writing a book on the future of democracy and speaks on “Democracy’s Future: Books or Bumper Stickers,” among other topics. Carter has just published his fourth novel, Jericho’s Fall, a sophisticated, topical, thought-provoking thriller about issues ranging from the morality of intelligence operations to the meltdown of the world financial system.
And it creates, in Beck DeForde, an unforgettable heroine for our turbulent modern age.

Carter’s extraordinary fiction debut, The Emperor of Ocean Park, spent three months on the New York Times Bestseller List and has appeared on bestseller lists in several European countries. His other acclaimed novels are New England White and Palace Council.

Stephen Carter is also a Connecticut local: he is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale University. Carter served as a law clerk for two of the great veterans of the civil rights movement, including Justice Thurgood Marshall of the U.S. Supreme Court. As a trustee for the Aspen Institute, he moderates seminars for business executives on the role of values in leadership.

Carter's recent work focuses on the role of human affection in ethical and moral discourse and the intersection between theories of unjust war and unjust law.

Local Author, Academic and Humorist Gina Barreca Joins Civility Panel

The Connecticut Forum Announces:
Gina Barreca to Join David Gergen and Christopher Buckley at
The End of Civility?
Saturday, October 2, 2010

Deemed a “feminist humor maven” by Ms. Magazine and “Very, very funny. For a woman” by Dave Barry, Gina Barreca is most recently the author of It's Not That I'm Bitter: How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Visible Panty Lines and Conquered the World. She has appeared on 20/20, 48 Hours, NPR, the BBC, The Today Show, CNN, Joy Behar, and Oprah to discuss gender, power, politics, and humor.

Her earlier books include the bestselling They Used to Call Me Snow White But I Drifted: Women's Strategic Use of Humor, and Babes in Boyland: A Personal History of Coeducation in the Ivy League; her books have been translated into several languages, including Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, and German. She’s the editor of seventeen books, including The Signet Book of American Humor and The Penguin Book of Women’s Humor as well as The Erotics of Instruction and A Sit-Down With the Sopranos.

You may recognize Barreca's name from her weekly column in The Hartford Courant, "Irreconcilable Differences". She also writes for the "Brainstorm" section of The Chronicle of Higher Education, blogs for Psychology Today, and occasionally spars with her former co-author (of I'm With Stupid: One Man, One Woman, and 10,000 of Misunderstandings between the Sexes Cleared Right Up) Gene Weingarten in his "Below the Beltway" column in The Washington Post. With degrees from Dartmouth College, Cambridge University, and the City University of New York, Barreca is Professor of English and Feminist Theory at the University of Connecticut.

Dr. Barreca on her female students and their fear of not dating:

Christopher Buckley, Best Selling Author & Satirist, to Join the Civility Forum

The Connecticut Forum Announces:
Christopher Buckley to Join David Gergen at
The End of Civility?
Saturday, October 2, 2010

Tom Wolfe has called Christopher Buckley, "one of the funniest writers in the English language." Buckley is the author of 13 books, many of them satirical, including Little Green Men, Supreme Courtship and Thank You For Smoking, which was made into a major motion picture. He is most recently the author of Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir.

Christopher Buckley comes from a conservative pedigree; the son of William F. Buckley and Patricia Buckley, he was a long time columnist for The National Review, the conservative magazine founded by his father, as well as the chief speechwriter for George H.W. Bush when he was Vice President. In 2008, Buckley surprisingly endorsed Barack Obama in a piece for The Daily Beast titled "Sorry Dad, I'm Voting for Obama." His column in The National Review was promptly revoked.

Buckley has written for most national newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, TIME, The Atlantic Monthly, US News and World Report, Vanity Fair, and Vogue. He is currently a regular columnist for The Daily Beast. He has published over 50 comic essays in The New Yorker. In 2002, Buckley received the Washington Irving Medal for Literary Excellence.

Watch Christopher Buckley on The Daily Show:

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Christopher Buckley
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David Gergen Joins "Civility" Panel

The Connecticut Forum Announces:

David Gergen to be a Panelist at
The End of Civility?
Saturday, October 2.

Few know the political backroom as well as David Gergen. As an adviser to four U.S. presidents and a senior political analyst for CNN, Gergen has made a career of bearing witness to some of the most compelling political figures of our times. In 2000, he published the best-selling book, Eyewitness to Power: The Essence of Leadership, Nixon to Clinton.

These days, Gergen works as a political journalist and analyst. He was the first managing editor of Public Opinion, a magazine affiliated with the American Enterprise Institute, and from 1985-1986 he worked as an editor at U.S. News & World Report, where he remains an editor-at-large. Gergen’s career in television began in 1985, when he joined the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour for Friday night discussions of politics. Today, he appears frequently on CNN as an analyst for Anderson Cooper 360 and The Situation Room.

Gergen is also a professor of public service and the director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School, having joined the Harvard faculty in 1999. He is active as a speaker on leadership and sits on many boards, including Teach for America, The Aspen Institute, and the Center for Global Development. He is a member of the Washington D.C. Bar and the Council on Foreign Relations, and holds 18 honorary degrees.

He graduated with honors from both Yale College (1963) and Harvard Law School (1967), and served as an officer in the U.S. Navy. In 1971, Gergen joined the Nixon White House as a staff assistant on the speech writing team, a group of heavyweights that included Pat Buchanan, Ben Stein, and Bill Safire. Two years later, he took over as director. Gergen went on to become the Director of Communications for Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan, a counselor on domestic and foreign affairs for Bill Clinton and his Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, and an adviser to the 1980 George H.W. Bush presidential campaign.

For more information on Gergen, visit his website or his Harvard faculty profile.

David Gergen on the issue of civility during the 2008 Presidential Campaign: