If only things were this rosy.
Words.
"Incivility is the new secondhand smoke. Everyone feels impelled to disdain it, but nobody is willing to do away with it entirely.
Besides, it's profitable. Look at South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson. Two weeks ago, he was just a loudmouth with the bad taste to shout an insult at the president of the United States from the House floor. Since then, he's become a right-wing darling, and $2 million in new campaign contributions have flowed his way. Incivility apparently cuts both ways, though; his Democratic challenger has taken in more than $1.5 million.
When the midterm elections roll around, those millions will buy a lot of attack ads, because -- as any campaign strategist will tell you -- negative advertising works. That's the reason there is so much of it in our campaigns. People enjoy incivility -- maybe because it's easy to remember; maybe because it's entertaining. We've become a nation of Alice Roosevelt Longworths: "If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me."
...It's not that we suffer from an insufficient respect for civility; taken as a whole, our electoral politics have always been essentially uncivil, from the founding of the country to the present day. The problem is that we suffer from an insufficient regard for the facts."
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