CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE.(The Talk of the Town)

On a midtown residential block shortly after ten o'clock last Thursday night, as the President appeared onstage at Madison Square Garden, a series of dissonant voices joined the familiar chorus of passing car stereos and sirens. "Fugheddaboutit!" the voices yelled from a few third- and fourth-story windows. The loudmouths were heeding the instructions of the liberal radio host Al Franken, who'd called for a "Great American Shout-Out," timed to the President's speech, to protest the Republican proceedings. In the context of a week's worth of orchestrated civil disobedience and disruption, the scattered hollering was harmless, even a little silly. But was it effective?

"Effective" was a word you heard a lot around town last week, as New Yorkers and their guests debated the relative merits of various declarations, displays, and gestures that would, under ordinary circumstances, and in ordinary towns, be deemed uncivil, or at the very least undignified (taunting hand gestures on the Convention floor, journalists sucking up to political operatives for access and invitations, smug self-congratulation all around: "Hey, it's a convention," went the halfhearted refrain). Arnold Schwarzenegger's "economic girlie men" punch line, however juvenile, seemed to rate as highly effective, according to the cocktail-party consensus, while the Bush twins' surprise standup routine--Republican girls telling sex jokes at their grandmother's expense?--was regarded as a dud. New York can be a brash town, and politics an increasingly boorish game, but in both there tends to be a presumption--or a facade, at least--of common courtesy. Generally speaking, the week was a success--hardly any violence, mayhem, or folksinging--and yet day-to-day life in the city has rarely seemed so rude.

On opening day, a Yale student named Thomas Frampton, dressed as an R.N.C. volunteer, dropped his Bush-Cheney sign and attempted to jump over the wall of the Vice-President's box while shouting slogans about the oil industry and Iraq. He was tackled and cuffed. Emily Hertzer, a twenty-five-year-old Yale graduate, and a legitimate volunteer, was mortified when she heard the news; she feared that she might have unwittingly "signed him in." She'd already seen the demonstrations of other "liberal nutcases," as she called them, and she was particularly outraged by the protesters who had set fire to a papier-mache dragon on Sunday. "It was just so vile, in light of September 11th--especially with the anniversary coming up."

Hertzer, a reformed Berkeley liberal, was at a Young Republicans luncheon, wearing a peach-colored baseball cap with the word "Newportant" printed across the front. "We're starting the Newportant Foundation--not Important, Newportant--which is dedicated to bringing civility and manners, everything that matters, back to America," she said, speaking quickly and virtually without pause. "Next summer, we're going to bring back the old British tradition of the high-tea party." She interrupted herself to say, "You have to promise not to put a liberal slant on this."

Newport, Rhode Island, is Newportant's home base and the centerpiece of the civility revival. "It's because all the most important, the four hundred traditional families, like the bluebloods, are there," Hertzer said later that evening, at the Yale Club, where she had invited some friends for drinks. She spent the summer crewing on a sailboat in Newport. "A friend of mine is thinking of building a tearoom for me off ...