The author focuses on politeness, as it comes as a social commentary and formalities can be unproductive.
Social commentary is the ability to create a social awareness among general public regarding everything that is going on around us. Social awareness is very important in our day-to-day life as it helps us learn things on our own and from our own mistakes.
In the given prose, the author focuses on politeness as it is unnecessary in the social life nowadays. The excerpt - "how the animals lost their tails and got them back travelling from Philadelphia to medicine hat" says that the formalities in our daily lives are very much unproductive.
Thus, the author focuses on politeness in the given excerpt.
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