All the World's a Critic

I've long wondered about this business of having to always say something nice when you feel nothing but malice. It seems unnatural to me. My father was the movie critic on the New York Times for years, and I can tell you there were times he had absolutely nothing nice to say about a film, and made no effort to find something. The world is filled with journalists, pundits, commentators, reviewers, lawyers, and college professors saying rotten things about people all the time. So why did our mothers lay this heavy burden on us? The New York Times book reviewers, on the other hand, always, without fail, find something bad to say about a book, no matter how lavishly they've praised it.