HOW MANY KISSES ARE POLITE? I remember how back in the sixties how much comment there was back home in the Midwest because Lady Bird Johnson frequently kissed people on the cheek. I remember a few years later being advised by a French girl: “deux bisses” (One on each cheek. I once mistakenly used the word baiser and was corrected.) The Economist article gives some guidelines: “Kissing is all over the place, twice in Paris, thrice in Polish, four times in the south of France.”