Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

"If an individual is to act with proper demeanor and show proper deference, then it will be necessary for him to have areas of self-determination. He must have an expendable supply of the small indulgences which his society employs in its idiom of regard -- such as cigarettes to give, chairs to proffer, food to provide, and so forth. He must have freedom of bodily movement so that it will be possible for him to assume a stance that conveys appropriate respect for others and appropriate demeanor on his own part....He must have a supply of appropriate clean clothing if he is to make the sort of appearance that is expected of a well demeaned person. To look seemly may require a tie, a belt, shoe laces, a mirror, and razor blades -- all of which the authorities may deem unwise to give [a mental hospital's patient]. He must have access to the eating utensils which his society defines as appropriate ones for use, and may find that meat cannot be circumspectly eaten with a cardboar...

I like La Quinta . I've stayed many times at one of their hotels in Stamford, CT, typically when I have to be in NYC the following morning. I love some of the little things, like the fact that they have real wardrobes in their rooms, rather than closets. But I'm not crazy about the television advertisements. They have a series of ads that attempt to illustrate that a night's stay at La Quinta enables you to do great things, as defined by various clichés (have your ducks in a row, pull out all the stops, get a leg up on the competition, sell ice to Eskimos and so forth). The gag is that at the end of the ad the cliché is presented literally. The whole campaign is only mildly annoying. There are far worse. But there is one that especially annoys me. A business consultant should stay at La Quinta, we're told, because  when he does he can "think outside the box" at the meeting the next morning. The other presumably inferior consultants, who presumably stayed...