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effenheimer

Isn't that nice

by effenheimer at 12:26 PM on January 17, 2002

Sorry I've been absent. Busy writing professionally and winning awards for said writing. Here is a little opus I tossed off casually.

Since Council Bluffs, my hometown, was just ranked no. 5 on St. Martin’s Press’s Most Polite Cities List, I would like to take this opportunity, if you please, to talk about politeness, good manners and the tyranny of nice people.

I am not a nice man. I have never claimed to be nice nor have I aspired to “niceness” at any time in my life. I come from a long line of frontiersmen and not nice outdoor types and should I ever get the chance to breed, I am sure my offspring will not be nice either.

I do not lament this fact. I see “niceness” as a plastic veneer of false pleasantry that can just as easily be covering something truly dark or truly vacant.

Some of the most horrible people I have ever met in my life were quite nice. “Nothing personal,” they would say and “have a nice day” as you gasped for your last breath. You never saw it coming due to all that niceness.

Nice people can screw you over just as fast as anyone and being nice is just evolutionary camoflage they use to fool you long enough to get in under your radar and sink a knife between your ribs.

I worked with one of the nicest racists I have ever met in my life while at college. She was so sweet you just wanted to dip her in your coffee like a candy cane. She sang in her church choir and didn’t engage in naughty banter. She had a smile for everyone and truly believe in niceness as a way of life. She could laugh right when she was expected to whether she got a joke or not.

She was terribly nice one day when I was ordering Chinese for the office and asked her if she might like some crab rangoon or anything.

No thanks, I don’t eat Chinese, she said.

Why, I queried, too sweet?

No, I just think those people are dirty, she countered sweetly like Donna Reed goosestepping in jackboots. They don’t have the same standards of cleanliness as us.

Wow, I thought quietly to myself, this chick is seriously messed up as I backed away slowly smiling nicely so as not to draw attention from the demon that was obviously living inside of her.

Not one of the greatest people I have ever known personally or admired from far off were nice. Mark Twain, in spite of the Disneyfied version most Americans get of him and his work, was not a nice man. He smoked and drank and made frightfully witty putdowns of people he felt were worthy of ridicule. He was fond of making off color jokes and remarks in polite society just for fun, but he wrote against slavery and hated true evil. He just knew the difference between what is truly wicked and what is just a wicked good time.

My grandmother is not a nice person, but she could kill chickens all day long and give half of them away. With a bloody knife in her right hand and a bloody Camel in her mouth — kill, kill, kill, give, give give. And she never got salmonella. Why? Because salmonella was too scared of her.

It’s like Batman. He shows us it is quite possible to be good without being nice or polite. The mistake many of us make is to assume nice and good are the same thing.

Truth is, the easiest thing to fake is being nice and polite. They say even the devil can quote Scripture to suit his needs, well I say he can act polite without bursting into flames too.

I’ve said my piece in defense of Council Bluffs. But I’ve been around a bit and we rank as one of the top most polite cities in the United States is baffling to me. We’re OK, but no. 5?

These lists are so arbitrary that their results are meaningless, but somehow, it just isn't NICE to say so. Well, at least it is honest.

The cities on this list were chosen by travelers who, for some reason, just felt like calling and nominating a city for being polite? That’s nice, but what is the standard? How dow we know where they come from isn’t just so much worse than us that we look good in comparison.

Every time I have traveled, I fully expected the cities I was visiting to be rude and they all surprised me. I thought Washington, D.C. was more polite than any other because a convenience store clerk got all chatty with me about being from Iowa and a woman in a restaurant asked me to open her bottled water for her and then thanked me. That’s it. That’s all I have to go on and I am still impressed. If I lived there, perhaps I would see the real D.C.

Common decency is necessary for any society to move along smoothly, but niceness and politeness are not. Decency is doing the right thing and politeness is just being nice when you do whatever it is you were going to do anyway.

Nothing wrong with saying “please,” “thank you” and “do you mind if I don’t?” once in a while, but let’s not pretend that’s all we need to make a decent society because the truth is, it is a lot harder than that.

Read more Greg Jerrett columns at nonpareilonline.com. Sometimes you find a good'un in the most unexpected places.

comments (10)

Oh my god that was so awesome, you GO Eff! "Nice" people suck and I totally know what you mean. I had a photography teacher who such a nice guy, everybody loved him. But if you were black or Mexican or poor, white trash and female, he would rub up against you in the dark room.

When I read your stuff I feel like I am getting in on the ground floor of a great future talent. Not to sound like a stalker or anything, but I will follow you until the end of time. Or you die. Just kidding.

by Missy at January 17, 2002 2:40 PM


Now, there’s "nice" and "fake nice" in the world, and I can’t stand the fakers. It’s an insult that lays way past sarcasm and is much more insulting than just being mean. I think Eff is talking about a third "nice" — an "ignorant nice". This is what troubles me the most. It’s where the person genuinely believes that they are doing good but in reality they are being the biggest ass hole in the world. These people scare me.

by MrBlank at January 17, 2002 5:31 PM


Yeah, Mr. Blank hits it. I disagree that we can't be nice. In the South, we're often very nice and polite when insulting and putting down someone. In Texas, we can say "fuck you" with a smile. It's a subtle skill I don't think Yankees have really developed.

I also think Americans are about the rudest people on earth already. Look at our language. We don't use "please" or "thank you" with any regularity. In Spanish, many sentences are simply incomplete without "por favor" or "gracias" - the same in French, without "si vous plait" and "merci."

The French are always stereotyped as rude, and I have just never seen that! This is what I see: An obnoxious American coming up to a Parisian and asking directions a mile a minute: "howdowegettotheLouvre? C'mon we knowyouallspeakEnglish! Huh? Huh?" Think about it. You may know a foreign language, but to understand someone they are going to have to speak slowly and clearly and politely. Imagine someone coming up to you on the street in your town and asking questions in French very quickly, and then acting huffy when they don't receive an immediate reply. And wouldn't you prefer they try asking in English first? Is it really so hard for an American visitor to learn how to say "How do we get to the Louvre?" in French? Even if you don't know how to ask something, the effort will be appriciated and most French people will be happy to then help you in English.

I think the thing that surprises me most about this post is the St. Martin's people consider Council Bluffs a "city."

by Charles at January 17, 2002 10:08 PM


i am nice. i am as polite as i can manage, but i am also direct. if i have a problem with somthing (or someone), i express it. nicely.

i go about my life, with the intent to be nice to people. i don't backstab or fuck people over. i don't use niceness as a thin veneer over a vicious bitch interior.

perhaps i am a freak. perhaps people hate me for my niceness. i say, fuck 'em.

by kd at January 18, 2002 3:31 AM


I think that a lot of people use the words "nice" and "kind" interchangeably. When a person is well-mannered, I don't necessarily consider him to be a "nice" person. I suppose that I am guilty of misusing the word "nice", when I actually mean "kind". Semantics...

by staci at January 18, 2002 11:34 AM


"perhaps i am a freak. perhaps people hate me for my niceness. i say, fuck 'em."

kd..that's awesome, and I couldn't have said it better myself. (obviously, since I DIDN'T say it)

You're a good writer, eff...I always enjoy reading your stuff...even when it pisses me off. LOL

by skits at January 18, 2002 12:12 PM


Charles, I can't believe you consider Texans people.

NO JUST KIDDING! But seriously, let's make some kind of distinction.

by eff at January 18, 2002 5:19 PM


As a native New Yorker who spent nearly a decade (cripes, what was I doing in school that many years) in the Midwest, I can say you folks are polite. Hardly nice, because there is a distinction.

Being back in New York now, I realize the stereotype is untrue. We are very nice, but not very polite. If Texans can say "fuck you" with a smile, New Yorkers can "Thank you," mean it, but still have it come out like they said "fuck you."

Having spent time here and in the midwest, I've taken the best of both attitudes. I'm nice and polite. I hold open doors, always say "please" when ordering lunch, and push in chairs for ladies. No on ever notices, so made I should stop.

by mg at January 18, 2002 5:47 PM


Well eff, I can't believe you think Geocities is a real domain, but I digress . . .

No, but seriously - how big is Council Bluffs? I would think like a quarter million people or something at most? I was just surprised to hear it called a "city" instead of a town...but again, that may just be semantics.

by Charles at January 19, 2002 5:39 AM


I just thought of something else I do which is very nice: I help women carry shopping carts and baby carriages up and down the stairs on the subway. I also thought of something I do, also on the subway, that is not polite: when the doors open and people don't stand clear to let passengers off, I shove them out of the way. Well, nudge them, at the very least.

by mg at January 21, 2002 11:52 PM