On Name-Calling and Civility

The Right simply has lost all sense of decorum, all sense of respect, all sense of what is proper. Today on MSNBC conservative news commentator Mark Halperin succumbed to this decline of civility by calling President Barack Obama a d…, a d…, the shortened version or nickname of Richard. Here’s the video of the moment as well as his on the air apology.

The remark was allowed out because a new producer in the control room did not know where the 7-second delay button was and failed to catch and bleep the word.

Halperin was subsequently suspended from MSNBC. I really don’t like Mark Halperin’s regressive opinions so I won’t be missing seeing him on TV. I don’t like his opinions but I always respected his right to have them. Now I’ve lost all respect for the man.

Civility Goes on Holiday in Belarus

When George Bush’s campaign fired the opening salvo in what became Bush vs. Gore, a lawsuit that became a landmark Supreme Court decision when it awarded the presidency to the Texas governor, probably no one expected very much repercussions. This is America, after all, and America takes its civil discourse, well, civilly.

Then George Bush became president, because Americans are a civil people.

Then George Bush turned a country at peace with a budget surplus into a country with two wars of aggression and in hock up to its armpits, if America had armpits, that is.

Makes you wonder, huh? And it makes you wonder now that we see ultra conservatives carrying guns to political rallies, when we hear of candidates refer to their plans to win elections as a 2^nd Amendment solution. Makes you wonder if civility will come to an end as it apparently has in the former soviet republic of Belarus.

In Belarus, in Minsk, they just held a presidential election, and the sitting president won another term in office.

Except the opposition candidates say the election was rigged.

And 10,000 of them turned out on Election Night to protest. And one of the opposition candidates was attacked by government riot police and he spent the night in the hospital as a result.

In Belarus, you see, civility has given way to survival of the fittest. And in Belarus, like in America, the fittest have all the guns.