Killing them with Carnegian kindness

Today on Slate, Jack Schafer describes the owner of the Atl. Monthly thusly:

"If kindness can oppress, then count Atlantic Monthly owner David G. Bradley as one of the great tyrants of our day. A gracious, deferential, generous, self-effacing, patient, and excessively polite man, he may be the first media mogul—he owns the National Journal Group—to practice nonstop goodness.

He doesn't yell. In fact, a lingering throat ailment keeps him from speaking loudly. He has no enemies (whom I can find). Every act of decency—and there are plenty—he commits comes wrapped in an apology, and if he doesn't offer an apology, he extends an equally bizarre request for forgiveness or permission. And then comes the flattery, which he spreads like frosting over cotton candy. Bradley illustrates Clay Felker's observation that formal manners are a marvelous way of fending off people—without offending them."