DEAR MISS MANNERS: My fiance and I are quarreling over a point of sports etiquette.

Suppose that you support the away team at a sporting event. Is it polite to vocalize your support?

He claims that it is rude to cheer for your own team. I claim that it is perfectly acceptable to cheer for your own team but not to boo the home team.

I have never known him to stay quiet at a sporting event when he supports the away team, but he says that he realizes that he is being rude and expects the home fans to be rude in return if he is too loud in his support.

GENTLE READER: This is not the crowd from the Sunday afternoon symphony series, you know.

Participation of a robust, informed and opinionated audience is part of the event. They are not supposed to sit there frozen, withholding their critical judgment and then issue polite applause in order to thank the professionals for allowing them to observe them doing their job. Everyone should be allowed to express the acceptable level of approval or disapproval, regardless of whether other members of the audience concur in that judgment.

But although there is no etiquette violation involved here, Miss Manners fears there may be a safety issue. These events tend to attract rough crowds, and what is not improper may, unfortunately, still be imprudent.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: At the very end of a recent full-length ballet performance, I stood up for an ovation when the curtain opened and the two principal dancers appeared onstage for their bows. After a couple of seconds, I was tapped on the shoulder with a comment that I was blocking the view of a couple of people in the rows behind me.

Given that I was seated in the middle of a row and was unable to move to either aisle without inconveniencing or blocking other peoples' views, I continued to stand and give an ovation to the various dancers who came out for their bows in appreciating of their phenomenal performance.

GENTLE READER: See above. Now, this is a really rough crowd.

Feeling incorrect? Address your etiquette questions (in black or blue-black ink on white writing paper) to Miss Manners, in care of this newspaper. The quill shortage prevents Miss Manners from answering questions except through this column.

Copyright 2002 by Judith Martin

Distributed by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.

END MISS MANNERS 8-13-02

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All of a sudden, people are asking Miss Manners how to act socially toward those who are in the throes of a public scandal. What should one do if one happens to encounter an acquaintance, or, horrors, a friend, or a friend of a friend, who, ah, appears to have done something unsavory?

This is an unprecedented etiquette problem because up until now, polite society followed such a strict standard of morality that the problem did not arise. It has been a terrible shock.

Some people are so shocked that they yearn to have the old standards back, if only they could figure out how those worked. Fortunately, Miss Manners happens to remember.

In the old, old days, we dealt with the unspeakable by not speaking about it. Therefore, there was no reason to deal with it. This was, one has to admit, an elegant solution.

True, it left a great many scoundrels loose in society, and attached unpleasant aspersions, instead, to their victims and to anyone who tried to expose them. On the beneficial side, it cut down the amount of gossip, or rather enhanced its value by making it harder to come by. More importantly, it maintained the reputation of society, which, to this day, is believed to have been, at that time, hopelessly tame.

In the last few decades, this method was rejected as unworthy of an advanced civilization. Modern methods of processing gossip have created a fast and vast distribution system that made the whispering method seem cowardly.

But when scoundrels began broadcasting their own transgressions, they became too commonplace to be interesting. To make matters worse, the bad reputation accrued to society itself for harboring so many of them.

That was solved by redefining moral standards to conform with what appeared to be majority behavior. If the standard is low enough, nearly everyone can meet it, and by definition, society's standards are being upheld. Another elegant solution. To maintain the requisite minority of scoundrels, a refusal to discuss one's sins became the worst sin.

Whether society thins out its ranks of rascals to an acceptable level by ignoring or redefining violations, there remains the problem of dealing with those who are caught by the legal system. (Miss Manners need hardly remind honorable people that we hold the accused to be innocent until proven guilty, however convenient we might find it to be frightfully busy while the outcome is in doubt.)

Here is the vocabulary of reactions, depending on the amount of disapproval, the degree of acquaintanceship and the circumstances of the encounter:

Stranger or acquaintance known to be a moral monster, encountered on neutral grounds: the cut direct, as if the person did not exist (although one is not likely to whip the head up and wheel around when heading toward something that does not exist).

Stranger: unsmiling nod if introduced, hands behind back so as to avoid a handshake.

Acquaintance under social circumstances: Avoidance if at all possible, otherwise stiff minimal civility.

Friend who did something monstrous: "I'm sure it's more complicated than it has been made to appear," put as a statement, not a question.

Friend who has done something awful, but not so morally repugnant as to be qualified for monster-hood: "What can I do to get you the help you need?"

Intimate friend with similar lapse: "Whatever mistakes you made, I want you to know that I believe in you."

Now, here's the hard part:

It is the pathetically errant friend whom you invite to dinner in the middle of his troubles, not the celebrity monster of the hour, who has piqued everyone's interest.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Is it proper to wear a black dress to a 2 p.m. black-tie preferred wedding/reception?

GENTLE READER: It is not proper for a black-tie preferred wedding reception even to exist. Black tie means evening clothes. The last Miss Manners checked, 2 p.m. occurred in the afternoon. And as hosts only state dress codes they prefer, the instruction is also redundant.

It is also improper, by standards commonly violated just as flagrantly, to wear a black dress to a wedding. Perhaps you are wondering, therefore, if your hosts' ignorance or defiance of the conventions of dress would justify -- or disguise -- your own.

Miss Manners is afraid not. If that were the case, the ignorant and defiant would be in charge of setting the standards.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: I created a substantial presentation kit to nominate a good friend who is well-off financially for a national award to honor her for her volunteer work.

Before she won, my friend said she wouldn't think of traveling without me to the major city for her to receive the award at a dinner. The award carries a prize of several thousand dollars, which she plans to donate to one of her charities.

I am a retired public relations professional living on a small income, but I have been a generous donor, within my means, of time and money to all of my friend's various charities. Would it be unseemly of me to ask that she pay my airfare? (I would be staying with friends, so there would not be lodging expenses.)

GENTLE READER: Miss Manners would never be so crude as to characterize your suggestion as something of a kickback.

She does wish to remind you, however, that although you were kind enough to nominate your friend, that should not be regarded in the light of a favor. You presumably did so because you recognized her merit, and she presumably won on the basis of that merit.

It was gracious of your friend to issue you such a warm invitation, and it would not be gracious to reply, "Only if you're paying."

What you can say -- and Miss Manners is pleased to be able to tell you that it conveys the identical caveat -- is "Oh, I'd adore to go; I'd be so proud. And I have a friend there I can stay with, so if I can scrape up the fare, I'll certainly be there. When is the latest I can let you know, so you'll have time to invite someone else if I find I can't manage?"

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Employment opportunities being scarce, I have been on my absolute best behavior at work. I have been going the extra mile with the attitude that no job is too small.

A consequence of this action is being very overworked and stressed out. I find myself having to bite my tongue a lot, and it is a struggle to keep a smile on my face. Recently I was actually motivated to such desperate levels of impatience that I had to remove myself from the area and not come back until I was able to talk to, not yell at, the goober I was dealing with.

Was my leaving without saying anything a rude way to stop myself from verbally abusing this person (deserved I must say)?

GENTLE READER: If walking the extra mile takes you over the brink, Miss Manners is afraid that it will not assist your career.

She cautions that in your state of exhaustion, you are probably prone to making mistakes yourself, and co-workers you have alienated will be only too happy to point these out.

Walking away without a word is rude, even if it is not as rude as what you might have said, and you should at least murmur, "Excuse me," or "We'll deal with this later." Miss Manners does hope, however, that you will find a more satisfactory way to control your temper than by biting your tongue -- although she supposes that if you do this often enough, it will remove the possibility, if not the impulse to make uncivil remarks.

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