On the lack of courtesy in public debate

I blame the media

 

It didn't start in '92 either. This has been going on as long as this country has been around. Only more recently it has become more mainstream due to the amount of mediums in existence.

You have people throwing up videos on YouTube. You have blogs trying to obtain traffic. You have radio shows trying to obtain ratings. You have television shows trying to do the same. You have columnists trying to obtain notoriety. With all of the noise, you only hear the loudest. As such, people express a more extreme position.

It isn't so much that they didn't exist before, but now everyone has a means of expressing them. Just think about how many people are logged on here now. When I click Post, this comment could be read by everyone looking at this website. Twenty-years ago, the thought would only be heard at the bar.

It wasn't more civil and it didn't have more grace. It was just heard by less people.

 

It goes back much farther than that, of course. And blame can be assigned on every side for the coarsening of American thought. But the current vogue of the political bully and shoutdown artist we can credit to Republican operative Lee Atwater - who proved definitively that if you turn the volume up, and the quality of the discourse down, you can't lose. A dear colleague, not incidentally, of Ms. Peggy Noonan.

 

Actually the guy on the Daily Show last night argued that the discourse now is much more civil, than it was back in the days of even the Founders.
His point, which I think is right, is with the advent of radio and television, people are much responsible for the image that they are presenting.

 

You go through periods where public discourse takes a turn for the better and for the worse. The current situation has been spiraling down since the late 1980s -- if you're a Republican, you say it started during the confirmation hearings for Judge Robert Bork. If you're a Democrat, you say it started when Newt Gingrich went after Jim Wright. Either way, the fact that 9/11 only made the situation worse is a very bad sign for halfway intelligent grownups. I just pray that whoever gets elected in 2008 comes from the mainstream of whatever party and doesn't immediately start cuddling up to the knuckle-draggers and lunatics. I would love to see McCain have his "Sista Souljah" moment by ripping into O'Falafel or see Evan Bayh go after the DailyKos.com crowd

 

I only say '92 because that was when people like Limbaugh really became mainstream. Not pointing out a conservative just because, but he's the standard bearer here and many (on both sides) have tried to duplicate his style.

Olbermann the other day talked about how the old Point-Counterpoint segments on 60 Minutes really spawned the current media product. Having not seen those (sorry, I've only seen Count-Pointercount from Amazon Women of the Moon), I can't say whether I agree or not. So, on that matter, I have no point, other than to say Olbermann does, or did, or whatever.

 

I'll tell you what: If the right wants to make a case for the left shouting down people with whom they don't agree, they could find more sympathic characters than the Minutemen. Do an archive search for "Minutemen" and "day laborers" of any major metro near the border -- Houston, Dallas, Phoenix, San Diego, Orange County -- and even some farther away, such as The Washington Post -- and you'll see a pattern of harassment and racial profiling by this bunch of sickos to the extent that legal day laborers are being deprived of seeking their living because employers are now afraid to go where day laborers gather and hire people.

And the man who was shouted down, Jim Gilchrist? Dig this quote in his hometown daily, which basically condones the armed overthrow of our government:

"I'm not going to promote insurrection, but if it happens, it will be on the conscience of the members of Congress who are doing this. I will not promote violence in resolving this, but I will not stop others who might pursue that."

http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/news/homepage/article_1078958.php

 

Pure pablum from Ms. Noonan.

 

This left-right, red state/blue state thing goes too far. For example, the other day I was on the National Review's Web site and they were promoting their classified ads, by saying that why do you want to do business with liberals when you could sell your shit to fellow conservatives. And I'm sure the Nation has the same crap on their site. Look, if I'm selling an old ass exercise bike, I could care less if Saddam Hussein shows up to buy it, as long as he has the cash.

 

You, hondo, lecturing us when Rush Limbaugh is one of your favorites.

Peggy Noonan, the person who quoted Mel Gibson as saying Pope John Paul II liked his movie, when the Vatican denied the Pope said that.

Do the words, "Lack of Credibility" mean anything to you?

 

To me, at least, politics didn't truly turn nasty until after Clinton got elected. By then, the right wingers had gotten used to the idea that the White House was theirs and the fact this guy took it from them drove them nuts. I didn't like Bush 41's politics, but i didn't hate the man. Clinton gave the right wing their first new pinata to hit since Teddy Kennedy. They despised him so much almost instantly that it took everything down a really ugly path. By 94 you had the Newt crew casually dropping words like treason into criticism of their political opponents and the fulltime "hating Clinton" industry revved up (as David Brock, then a major part of it, later detailed). It's been almost non-stop acrimony since.

 

Disagreement over whether the colonies should split from Great Britain got pretty heated, at least according to what I've read.
Partisanship was quite bitter during John Adams' term, 1796-1800, and the election of 1800 was a particularly acrimonious one.