Only Your Intentions Are Good
Dear Miss Manners: I am deeply concerned about the health of a friend who is young and greatly overweight. When we were alone after a physics lecture he gave, I gently asked him, “Out of concern, how is your blood pressure?”
He said, “It’s none of your business” and left.
A year ago, a friend who was overweight suffered a fatal stroke. I thought, “This friend is even more overweight, he is a walking stroke waiting to happen.”
Weeks later, I asked a famous cardiologist I met to send him a letter, but he refused, citing “barratry.” I said, “Send him to a clinic nearer his home, then there is no barratry,” but he still refused.
What happened to the Hippocratic oath? A life is at stake here! What do I do now? When I see my friend again, what should I say to him?
Gentle Reader: Miss Manners rechecked the Hippocratic oath, but it does not bind doctors to administer health care to a person against the prospective patient’s will.
Perhaps, she speculated, you consider your friend not in a competent state to judge. But that is not easy to prove, and Miss Manners doubts that teaching physics can be considered clear-cut evidence.
She then checked the meaning of barratry, which is the offense of stirring up quarrels. And your friend’s reaction to your kind concern did seem to suggest that pursuing the matter and enlisting others to do so would lead to a quarrel.
Mind you, Miss Manners appreciates your concern, even if the object of it doesn’t.
We could argue whether barratry might be excusable to save lives. But you are not helping your friend by telling him that he is overweight. He already knows that. Nor are you encouraging him to do something about it if you are merely inciting his anger.
Dear Miss Manners: People who cheat think that others have an obligation to allow them to do so, and resent anyone who calls them on it. Many times when I am in the supermarket fast lane, with its posted limit of 10 items, people will unload well over 10 items and everyone there, including the checker, will allow these cheats and bullies to get away with it rather than incur their wrath.
But I think that it is a matter of fairness and I speak up, whereupon the person (and sometimes everyone there) acts as if it is rude, or being a snitch. I just think it is cowardly to let people get away with cheating and that this just encourages them to continue. I think that rules should apply equally to all.
Gentle Reader: So does Miss Manners. She carries this to the extreme extent of believing that pesky rule about not using rudeness to counteract rudeness applies to such worthy citizens as yourself and herself.
She does not mind your snitching to do your moral duty. But denouncing people as bullies or cheats, or even questioning their fairness, is rude.
Polite snitching assumes that the violator has entered the line mistakenly. If you say pleasantly but pointedly, “Excuse me, but this is the express line; I think you want the other cashier” you allow a face-saving retreat. Even the brazen back off when everybody in a line turns to watch.
What’s more, you may actually have encountered an honest mistake. Even moral people are required to follow that nuisance of a rule about assuming people innocent.
xxxx
The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Judith Martin United Features Syndicate