A gentlemen, allegedly, in Pennsylvania on Monday October 10.
Dear Donald — I was delighted to hear your declaration at Sunday night's debate that you are, in fact, a gentleman. That is exactly what I advised, after the release of the tape in which you casually reported and advocated for actions that you now know, as a gentleman, constitute sexual assault.
I ended that column with a call for men to return to the values of gentlemanliness, and mean it — by treating all women with the respect they deserve at all times, even when there are no women present.
So let us for a moment do the gentlemanly thing and take you at your word, or at least believe it to be an intention to begin to behave like a gentleman. Because I think you'd agree, as a gentleman, that your conduct in the election thus far has been significantly less than gentlemanly.
The complete list of ungentlemanly conduct thus far would take up too much time, and gentlemen get to the point. So let's just use Sunday night's debate as an example.
Deeds matter more than words, as you rightly pointed out. Words still matter, as your opponent rightly pointed out at the first debate. We'll get to the words, but first let's look at your deeds.
I'm sure you would agree, as a gentleman, that gentlemen do not stalk menacingly near a woman, especially not behind a woman. A gentleman graciously avoids the appearance of physical threat, even when he does not intend it. A gentleman does not loom.
I'm sure you would agree that gentlemen do not sniff after every sentence if they can at all avoid it. Even if a gentleman has a cold, modern medicine can provide the gentleman with an array of preventative solutions to the all-too human problem of nasal drip. By one measure, you sniffed 93 times in 90 minutes.
I'm sure you would agree that gentlemen do not as a rule interrupt their opponent's allotted time in a debate, unless it is to say "excuse me, I think the house is on fire." By one measure, you interrupted your opponent or the moderator 24 times. Your opponent interjected once.
Gentlemen do not sniff after every sentence if they can at all avoid it.
I'm sure you would agree, as a gentlemen, that it is profoundly indecent for a gentleman to complain that a moderator is giving his opponent more time. Even if he feels moved to do so, a civilized gentleman would apologize profusely after the debate for misspeaking if it were to be revealed, by fair and scientific timekeeping, that the gentleman was wrong.
It is also polite, when asked questions by members of the audience, to direct your answer to the questioner. Gentlemen are never afraid to make eye contact or greet a person with their name, especially when they are the people the gentlemen intends to lead on the world stage.
On to your words. At the beginning of the debate, you were called on to make an apology regarding your prior sexual abuse comments. Now, I'm sure you know as a gentleman that apologies are serious undertakings.
The apologizing gentleman must express his soul-searched, heartfelt contrition. If anything, he should err on the side of too much contrition, the better to attain forgiveness. He must direct his apology to everyone he has wronged — which, in this case, let's just say the whole world.
On no account should he muddy up his apology. He should not offer a sort of cringing half-apology, followed by a repetition of his previous non-apology for "locker room talk." True gentlemen in locker rooms do not indulge in anything close to that egregious celebration of assault, as I'm sure you now know.
A gentlemen certainly should not quickly change the subject, or point in retaliation to accusations made against his opponent's spouse. This is irrelevant to a gentleman's solemn responsibility: his own conduct. To avoid that fact would make the supposedly apologizing gentleman look like a coward.
Regarding the second apology you attempted to make, to the family of the late Captain Humayun Khan: when a gentleman has avoided military service, he would do well to speak well of the honored dead. To use a soldier's death to claim you did not support the war he died in, when you are on record saying you did, to taunt his grieving family with "he would still be alive" — well, there's a special circle of hell for people who do that, and gentlemen do not go there.
You disagreed publicly with your running mate. You praised a dictator and besmirched the rule of law with a threat to jail your opponent. You made wild accusations about your opponent having "hatred in her heart." I'm sure I need not enumerate why these were the gravest of errors, because gentlemen just understand.
On top of all this, the falsehoods you uttered were so many that if there were a gentlemanly scale of truth, your performance would rate a solid "pinstripe pants on fire."
But do not despair. There are enough days before the election for you to issue apologies for each and every misstatement — just about. I'm sure that, having turned over a new leaf in the book of gentlemanliness, you are at work on this task already.
Especially for a gentleman like you, who legendarily does not require any sleep, fulfilling this gentlemanly duty should be a piece of chocolate gâteau.
I await your reply with considerable interest. As, I imagine, does America.