Table talk

Nice as it is to see the SSC all up in the NYT, not all sweetness and light in DI/DO. In a stop the presses moment, experts agree it is bad manners to text at the table:
Dr. Post Senning is here to tell you that it is not perfectly fine. Not at all. So new is the problem that her latest book, “Emily Post’s Table Manners for Kids” (HarperCollins, 2009), written with Peggy Post, covered it only generally, in a blanket ruling: “Do NOT use your cell phone or any other electronic devices at the table.”
In other news, it's also not considered polite to wipe your ass on the tablecloth, no matter how delicious the food. Had I been at the table with the kid texting during Yom Freaking Kippur,* he would be wearing the soup, and the device would have been inserted into whichever end of the digestive tract came to hand first.
One can say that these shorties are coming up in a different world, and that world happens to be one where many, many of their parents are asshats:

That means you, George d’Arbeloff. Or so his wife, P. A. d’Arbeloff, told him after she caught him peeking at the iPhone in his lap during Thanksgiving dinner at their home in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston. “I tried to catch his eye,” said Ms. d’Arbeloff, director of the Cambridge Science Festival in Cambridge, Mass., “but he was looking down.”

He may have been scrolling through work-related e-mail messages or, possibly, checking sports scores, conceded Mr. d’Arbeloff, who is the chairman of a Los Angeles-based dental laser company. Because the company is on the West Coast, e-mail messages tend to flood in just as he is sitting down to eat.

“I have never texted at the dinner table,” he said in a telephone interview. “I will admit: I do read e-mails.” He paused, listening to his wife, who was in the room with him. “P. A. says I send.”

A few months ago, a family meeting was convened. The d’Arbeloffs’ 7-year-old twin daughters made their feelings known. Their father agreed to cease using his iPhone during dinner. “I’m 95 percent reformed,” he said.

OK, George D'Arbeloff. Perhaps your fast-paced dental laser salesman business also means that sometimes you have to take a piss in the shower, but that's not something reasonable people would share with a newspaper some people actually still read. Same goes for emailing at the table. These twins appear to have the Matilda Syndrome,** but in general, these are the jackass parents who will produce the cretinous Vikings I will have to throw out of class when they are texting, and they will whine, b/c they do not know any better.***

The aforementioned Susie makes the point here, that her biz is about bringing the family back to the table. Unless the only blackberries in evidence are in a cobbler, however, they might as well stick with the TV trays.

*Confidential to New Orleans: predict the outcome had this happened on Lois's watch.
**Now and again, remarkable children can spring from sources as unpromising as these.
***Verbatim from Spring '08 evaluations: "He was quite intolerant of what he believed to be disrespectful-- a hat on in class, a computer open, a quick text message. As a college instructor, I feel he should understand that we pay to be there and if we fail ourselves by not paying attention, it is our fault and responsibility."

Comments

[Skeen]

That is an awesome evaluation. I would actually paste that to your office door as an encomium of sorts.