And they got their good manners and civility from their parents, who were just about all Republicans.

I confess I find GK's voice irritating on the radio but I often agree with nearly all he writes.

I too was in NYC, a few months back. I was surprised by how friendly people were. I am originally from Liverpool [certainly not the most twee city in England] and learned my manners from my parents. They were never Republicans. My conversations in NYC made me ashamed at how rude Boston people are.

I was in San Francisco last week and even TSA people were polite and friendly. So why do we just accept the way they shout at us in Boston? Why are we afraid to shout back?

The times...please let them be changin'

We defy generalization.

We're from small towns, big cities and medium suburbs. Our parents are conservative, liberal, independent, moderate and utterly disinterested in politics. We vote for Obama, Hillary,and even crazy Ralph. We love the arts, we think the arts elitist, and we think the true arts are fingerpaint and macaroni necklaces. We're kind, rude, selfish, honest and sneaky.

The only thing we have in common: we all hate it when tourists come to town and litter in our city. But we get that the city needs the tourist dollars.

Have a nice day.

We native NYC residents have a theory that the obnoxious NYers are really those terribly bright kids from small towns who always felt they were Masters (and Mistresses) of the Universe and came to NYC to prove it. They're the ones who rush thru the streets and knock you down as they go by.

Those of us who grew up here were taught manners by our parents, (and those nuns for us lapsed Catholics.) And, it was smart to have manners in the days when the person you didn't hold the door for might shoot you. Many of us give directions to tourists,often in their native language which we learned from our Democratic immigrant grandparents; help old ladies; and hold doors, even for Republicans like you.

Yes, it is possible in a democracy to take a sharp turn and throw the bums out, but we haven't done that to the present bums, have we? And, the way things are going, we may never get the chance again. Maybe we've just become too civil for bum-throwing. Perish the thought.

Someone steals your car one night, you take the bus to work, you don't sit home and brood over it.

And the answer is to vote the bums out? But which bums? The Republicans AND Democrats complicity in spying and torture? Should we vote the bum in who sold the Fourth Amendment for Telecom votes?

And why just the vote? Why not impeachments, investigative commissions, prison sentences for the guilty?

Keillor may be polite and self-righteous, but he is an apologist for evil.

Wouldn't it be kind of tough to take a train from Warsaw to Sweden in 1939? There's this little thing called the Baltic in the way.

If there is a polite Republican out there, I would like to meet him/her.

During my college years, you could always count on a conservative male to push himself on you. You could count on a conservative female to be a well-dressed slob in terms of her dealings with others.

Today, conservative parents don't read to their kids, who enter high school not knowing that fall and autumn are synonyms and their daughters wear "tops" that expose their breasts and their love handles.

Give me a polite liberal any day and every day!

the new crowd didn't have cronies of their own, then maybe we can finally rejoice for their entire term.

I greatly appreciate GK's wisdom and perspective though on the connection between conservatism and bad behavior, I think it is a case of sliding definitions. I've knows a lot of really wonderful people on both ends of the political spectrum and a few too many of the other kind. There is plenty of room for scoundrels of all type under the big tents of both conservatism and liberalism though those arent the only two ways to place oneself in relationship to any issue. I am against gay marriage for instance but only because I think marriage is a religious function and that gays should be demanding that the government stop recognizing marriage and start recognizing that humans want individual arrangements and it's nobody's business what my genitals look like. So?

It's not just the need to examine a third path automatically, but we'd do better as a nation seeking some kind of dialogue with those who have differing perspectives if we stopped characterizing "them" as somehow inherently different from "us" and as the responsible ones for our society's ills. Really, I'm sure there are liberals in favor of torture if the victim is Karl Rove or some other percieved threat to the pat notions of how the world works that we're so fond of constructing and defending.

It's great to say "throw the bums out" but as I see it that is still a long way from happening. We've thought that the bums were going to be thrown out twice in the recent past and it didn't happen. If anyone truly thinks that this is a done deal then they should think back to the last two general elections. A lot can happen in the next 4 months, and although nothing would give me more pleasure to see most of the bums being carted off to jail, instead of just being voted out of office, it may not happen. (Also, I had to smile when I read one of the other LW's here who expressed hope that the current bums wouldn't be replaced with a new set of bums.)

That said, I enjoyed GK's comments on NYC. I had the opportunity to work there for a couple of years back in the early 90s and found the people to be far less rude than people in some other parts of the country. It's a great city and I always enjoy visiting.