Faint praise

Lord Chesterfield Be Wiser Wisdom Onesie, from Zazzle.com.

David Brooks on The News Hour (via Driftglass):

And so, if I had interrupted Mark -- or if anybody came on the "NewsHour" and behaved the way Biden did, we would kick them off in the middle of the set. It is just not what discussions should be like.

Or, as Lord Chesterfield memorably advised his illegitimate son in 1748,

I would heartily wish that you may often be seen to smile, but never heard to laugh while you live. Frequent and loud laughter is the characteristic of folly and ill-manners; it is the manner in which the mob express their silly joy at silly things; and they call it being merry. In my mind there is nothing so illiberal, and so ill-bred, as audible laughter. I am neither of a melancholy nor a cynical disposition, and am as willing and as apt to be pleased as anybody; but I am sure that since I have had the full use of my reason nobody has ever heard me laugh.

Someday, Brooksie, somebody might name a couch after you. "Appalled by his crude remarks, Lydia fell fainting upon the plushly upholstered brooks." Or maybe wait for you to walk comfortably off the set, and then kick you downstairs, something known to have happened on occasion in the 18th century, in spite of everybody's good breeding. It's hard to say. I don't watch those TV shows but I'm sure you're occasionally in company less refined than that of Judy Woodruff.

Brooks, Shields, and Woodruff on The News Hour.

Lord Chesterfield certainly thought good manners were much more important than telling the truth. Citing the biography from the great 1911 Britannica, Wikipedia goes on to say,

Chesterfield was selfish, calculating and contemptuous; he was not naturally generous, and he practised dissimulation until it became part of his nature.... As a courtier he was utterly worsted by Robert Walpole, whose manners were anything but refined...

And of the famous letters to his son, my old Tory avatar Dr. Johnson observed that "they teach the morals of a whore, and the manners of a dancing-master," a formulation increasingly apt to young Brooks, as his teeth grow longer.

MaartenDeCeulaer Mutation Series Blue Sofa on ISaloni, 2012.