That it would not have been rude in some other society in some other time is irrelevant.posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:37 AM on September 5, 2013 [9 favorites] But at the same time, America, particularly in the last hundred years, has become not so much a largely egalitarian society as one that focuses on the aesthetics of an idealized egalitarianism, and finds it somewhat shameful to have or call at