Why are we so concerned again these days about projecting refinement?  When in doubt, check the power equation.   Today, as in the end-game aristocratic systems of Europe, power has shifted away from being independently asserted and claimed

Like Europe’s aristocrats, we Americans once had a more self-reliant, hunter-warriorish way of achieving power and status.  In place of confrontations in chain mail and armor, we used our economic accomplishments to establish our social position.  At least in the beginning of our history, we were economically independent enough—whether as farmers tilling our own plots, or as self-employed artisans or mechanics or merchants or whatever—that we could all "stand on our hind legs" in good hunter-warrior manner, establishing our positions more or less openly and naturally.

This pattern was undermined as corporations came to dominate more and more of the economic landscape.  The majority of us lost the opportunity for independent status, and were consigned always to work for someone else.

Today, in the most recent era of corporate consolidations (a side thought: do these represent a kind of "end game" for corporate society?) even top executives have been placed in a heavily dependent position of derived power, much as their aristocratic counterparts lost self-sufficiency with the rise of the nation-state. 

Business today isn't about some rich guy who owns a factory chewing on a wet cigar and bossing the world around.  In the contemporary corporate environment, power is more about cultivating and stroking various constituencies—in the boardroom, among institutional investors on Wall Street, in the business press, etc..   And as just as it did among the aristocracy in the emerging modern nation-states of Europe, this condition is tilting our methods of competing for status and position away from more traditional hunter-warrior forms.

The underlying dynamic is essentially unchanged from the days of the courtiers:  when power needs to be conferred on you by others, you do better by presenting yourself as charming rather than formidable, clever and refined rather than in any way threatening. 

Likewise, when you must superficially appear to get along with people who are aggressing against you in countless subtle ways, you may not be able to fight back any other way than cattily.   And if you face the potential of being damaged by a gossip mill, perhaps the only way to protect yourself is to actively plug into it, and start working it to your own advantage.