… It wasn’t an Uncle who said that.
(c) 2018, Davd
“If you can’t say something Nice, don’t say anything at all.”
In Bambi, a children’s animated cartoon film which is iconic in a profane, secular sense, Disney put those words into the tiny cute mouth of Thumper, a baby bunny rabbit.
The film has Thumper quoting them as what his uncle had taught him… and if the secular icon Walt Disney indeed chose an uncle, rather than a mother, aunt, or grandmother — Disney goofed. That is not something an Uncle would say, much less teach.
I have spent at least three-quarters of this year’s social time — of time with people of my choosing rather than people i interact with because they have some particular office or job employment — with men. This is normal for men choosing their social companions (rather than having family or some formal organization choose those persons for us1.) I don’t hear those men directing me to be Nice. I do hear such directives, “from time to time”, from women.
Nice is about other people’s feelings. Truth, charity, fairness, fidelity, prudence, temperance. fortitude, are principled virtues2. Virtues are lived the same way “all the time” — whoever it is you’re dealing with, they lead to the same basic conduct. Especially back when Bambi first came to the theatres, uncles, like fathers and grandfathers, taught virtues. The women of the family (even of the school) might teach “manners” that put feelings ahead of principle.
Today, sadly, Governments are to be seen putting feelings first: Corry, in this month’s Equal Justice Foundation newsletter, refers to the tyranny of feelings in some Feminist laws. The Government of Canada is explicitly Feminist. In these times, it is a brave man indeed who disdains Niceness… and such bravery (or fortitude) is a virtue, while Nice falls short.
So today, an uncle who falls short of total fortitude, or whose nephew does; might counsel a nephew to be Nice, as a matter of prudence (that is of prudent timidity.) When Bambi came to the theatres, not normally. A valid, typical Fifties Uncle would not teach that. Even today, a real true Uncle would not teach that famous Disney phrase, rather something like “Be on the safe side — act Nice.”
This blog may seem to belabour a nuance3. It does so in service to truth, since the admonition If you can’t say something Nice, don’t say anything at all is famous, since the original film did attribute it as the teaching of an Uncle when virtuous Uncles did no such thing, and since the Uncle attribution can be misused, can be cited to misrepresent men as a human type.
The sexes are more different than the races. Uncles, like fathers and grandfathers, have virtues to teach. Nice Manners should be learned, in context, from the sex that values them (often, sadly, values them more than the virtues); and men and boys should always have social spaces to which to retreat, where Nice is known as the four letter word it is.
Ponder that last paragraph, and you should see that we have a long way to go to reach societal virtue.
Notes:
1. The bank in the village where i have spent all of May so far, has only women tellers. The Village Office has all women staff. The church i attend has all women on their Board of Directors: Not one man among all those officials with whom i meet for various working reasons.
2. Virtue begins with vir, which is Latin for — man. A virtue is a quality seemly to a man.
3… or “nicety”, but that follows a different, esoteric meaning of the 4-letter N-word.
