Jim Hopkins: Manners do matter ... unless you're in a TV studio

Just before the start of World War I, there was a great to-do in Europe about some long-forgotten and boorish German diplomat who, while on some very important mission, had allegedly barged into a female pedestrian on the pavements of Paris, thus forcing the good woman off the footpath and causing her much discombobulation.

Unhappily, having collided with this unlucky lady, the diplomat offered no apology.

He simply strode off, heedless of her circumstance, grunting the teutonic equivalent of "Get out of my way, you daft besom."

Strange as it seems now, this incident rapidly became the issue du jour. Had there been talkback in 1914, Monsieur Smith and his ilk would've experienced an inundation of incensement.

As it was, the correspondence columns of The Harold's counterparts overflowed with letters denouncing this Hunnish descent into barbarity.

Fast forward 90 odd years (and they have been) and a contrary view prevails. Now it is the failure of a man to "barge into" a woman, albeit metaphorically, that has earned condemnation.

At least from those privileged to acquaint the rest of us with their erudite opinions.

These knowledgeable persons have been almost universally scornful of the suggestion from the Leader of the Opposition, when asked why he hadn't been more "aggressive" in debate, that perhaps he would have been if his adversary had not been a lady person of the opposite sex.

"Tosh!" they've said, emphatically. "He's just a wuss who got whupped and needs an excuse. You don't show mercy to sheilas these days. That's sexism!" And perhaps they're right, although it must be said that this dismissive assessment has not been unequivocally shared by those untutored souls who have chosen to express a view on the wireless and elsewhere.

Still, it would be impolite to challenge the competence and objectivity of the commentariat.

It would be discourteous to suggest that those comprising our "panel of experts" are essentially political sports journalists rooting for their team and that Dr Brash's "quaint"explanation is no more likely to be heard sympathetically than the quaverings of Brian O'Driscoll.

So we won't. Instead, we'll say they are absolutely correct in every particular.

Which still leaves unaddressed the larger question of manners and whether they're anything more than an antique curiosity.

It appears not, if the experts' assessment of the leaders' debate is correct.

Restraint is a liability and ruthlessness an asset, at least in the discussion of public affairs.

"Take no prisoners, male or female," is the message. "Go for the jugular, reduce 'em to tears" and we'll cheer. Fail to do so and we'll write you off as a soggy gingernut in the teacup of life.

Or life as it's televised, anyway. It's long been clear that television has decapitated history, but perhaps it's also dulled compassion.

Perhaps the screen's anaesthetising effect has meant that we've all been pushed off the footpath, not by a diplomat but by our own numbed appetite for sensation.

But things are not thus outside the studio.

Outside the studio, we fret about rudeness in all its guises.

Outside the studio, on the city's streets, we hear the strident curses of the rootless urchins (many of them echoing television) and we yearn to give them a kick up the bum and tell them to stop polluting our mental atmosphere. Their indifference to others is offensive.

Outside the studio, we campaign to eliminate bullying, which is, at its heart, bad manners. And so is throwing concrete off a motorway bridge.

That is not to trivialise a murderous act, but rather to make the point that behaviour is a continuum, and that every gross act of cruelty and contempt is the culmination of many other smaller acts of insolence and discourtesy.

The same is true between the sexes. With rarest exception, a polite man will not harm a woman; and vice versa, should the times require that qualification.

For years now, men have been told they must listen to women, be sensitive, sympathetic and certainly never abusive, either physically or verbally.

Such behaviour has been labelled the epitome of chauvinism.

Until you get to a television studio where its absence suddenly becomes ... the epitome of chauvinism.

What makes this doubly mystifying is that we've seen fit to make the new etiquette more than an unofficial code of conduct.

We've bolstered unofficial codes with laws prohibiting sexual harassment and such - thereby tacitly acknowledging that biology inevitably influences encounters between men and women.

And also, ironically, that good manners are the essence of a healthy society.

They're the first law of decent interaction. And the best. Choice is always better than compulsion and, inasmuch as legislation measures the collapse of voluntary codes, then we live in a less happy place.

Except in the studio. In the studio, the reverse applies. In the studio, the rule (if not the law) is, put bluntly, dog eat dog. Well, it could be put more bluntly, but that would be ... rude.

And that's what we should be. Or so say those in the rarified world of the wise.

Responding to such counsel, a vulgar chap might say, "There's nowt so queer as folk."

Although that might be regarded as hate speech. Which is, as we know, the legal term for bad manners.