Salina Journal News:

12/9/2009

By DAVID CLOUSTON

Salina Journal

Regardless of your feelings about President Barack Obama's being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, reaction to the announcement by the Norwegian Nobel Committee last week was swift and starkly partisan.

*"The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists -- the Taliban and Hamas this morning -- in criticizing the president for receiving the Nobel Peace prize." -- Democratic National Committee communications director Brad Woodhouse.

* "This fully exposes the illusion that is Barack Obama. The elites of the world ... love a weakened, neutered U.S. and this is their way of promoting that concept." -- Conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh.

After cheers erupted at the headquarters of the conservative Weekly Standard magazine when the International Olympic Committee rejected Chicago's bid to host the 2016 Summer Games, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote that conservative Republicans showed "the emotional maturity of a bratty 13-year-old."

Some well-publicized public outbursts of late are showing a spate of bad manners spreading from politics to music and sports -- from Kanye West snatching Taylor Swift's moment at MTV's Video Music Awards; Serena Williams gesturing, with expletives, to cram her ball down a lineswoman's throat at the U.S. Open; and Rep. Joe Wilson, a South Carolina Republican shouting, "You lie," during President Obama's health care address to Congress.

Our ability to debate

Are Americans becoming a crude, bare-knuckled, loutish bunch of narcissistic haranguers? From town hall meetings on health care to newspaper opinion columns, the comments are shrill, the rhetoric heated.

"I think we're losing the ability to debate with words and ideas, and instead we're debating with volume and shouting. I don't think it's effective," Mark DeMoss, one of the co-founders of The Civility Project, said recently.

DeMoss, a Republican public relations consultant from Atlanta, founded The Civility Project with Democratic consultant Lanny Davis, as a grassroots movement to promote less name-calling and tantrums, and to foster opposing discourse -- without being disagreeable.

Some sources say the cause of these vitriolic attacks is the acting out of habits that have been cultivated online, where the anonymity of screen names often lets participants "flame" or insult each other with impunity.

"At some level perhaps we've felt -- 'I can do this online, maybe I can do this in person,'¬¨ " said Carl Isaacson, associate professor of communications at Bethany College, Lindsborg. Isaacson teaches classes in mass media.

On being a jerk

The other aspect to the rise of the Internet communications era is the ability to restrict our interaction online to the groups -- political, sociological, religious and others -- we agree with.

This restricted interaction feeds our own beliefs, and to a certain degree makes us more intolerant of those who disagree with us, Isaacson said.

"One of the consequences of being a jerk is that you end up with friends. I think Joe Wilson is a good advertisement for that. And Michelle Bachman as well," Isaacson said, noting how donations to Wilson's re-election campaign, as well as his opponent, Democrat Rob Miller, quickly escalated to the million dollar level after Wilson's outburst.

Bachman, a Republican U.S. House member from Minnesota, has drawn attention for her view that Barack Obama "may have anti-American views" and calling for an inquiry into whether there are "anti-American" members of Congress.

While in sports and entertainment there may be more examples lately of boorish behavior, history shows that politics has always been a rough business, Isaacson said. A walk through the Abraham Lincoln history museum in Springfield, Ill., for instance, he said, shows that the political cartoons circulated during Lincoln's terms were downright ugly.

"(Opponents) were quite nasty to Lincoln; they were nasty to Mary (Todd Lincoln, first lady), too. That was quite par for the course," he said.

Take the civility pledge

DeMoss and Davis' Civility Project is a Web-based organization (www.civilityproject.org). It's home page urges viewers to take the "civility pledge" -- "I will be civil in my public discourse and behavior. I will be respectful of others whether or not I agree with them." and "I will stand against incivility when I see it."

Through the Web site and media coverage, DeMoss and Davis are encouraging all people, not just politicians, to bring back civility and respectability as staples of American politics and life, said Karen Dye, an organization spokeswoman.

The site intentionally doesn't collect names or contact information from those taking the pledge, to avoid being misconstrued as a fundraising effort, she said. Thus it's hard to tell what progress has been made.

"We've received calls and e-mails from people who are tired of the mud-slinging and insults, and they are encouraged to hear of an effort to restore civility in the way we talk to each other," Dye said.

Talk radio doesn't help

Bethany College adjunct English professor John Highkin thinks part of the coarsening of our public discourse is talk radio hosts are playing to their audiences and "making a great deal of money" doing it.

"They're being inflammatory, and certainly not encouraging open-ended discussion. What I would rather see is people being able to find ways of reaching common ground. Rather than beating each other up or closing off discussion," said Highkin. who is teaching a freshman composition course this semester.

"That's the kind of approach you have to take in teaching composition, getting students to look at multiple sides of an issue and understanding it," he said.

One of the biggest changes in the last few decades has been the demise in the Senate of former leaders such as Bob Dole, who had the ability to work with politicians with whom he didn't share the same ideology, Highkin said.

"With older senators, like Dole, that was their stock and trade," he said.

The animosity shown by some at recent town hall forums is to some a sign how much our boundaries of public behavior have changed.

Opportunity to explain

Even when constituents of his district would show up upset by one of his votes in the Kansas Legislature, former Rep. Josh Svaty says he was given the opportunity to explain himself without interruption.

Svaty stepped down from 108th District earlier this year to become acting Kansas Secretary of Agriculture. The 108th District includes all of Ellsworth County, all of rural Saline County, parts of south Salina and one precinct in Dickinson County, in Solomon.

Most of Kansas' political districts have rural constituencies small enough that lawmakers form bipartisan relationships with their colleagues as well as a personal relationship with the citizens they represent, he said.

Some states' districts have such large constituencies that it's easier to attack a politician with whom you don't feel a personal relationship, Svaty said.

"Our biggest risk is the outside groups with money that come in during election times," he said. "They don't care about accountability."

"I don't think it's only the conservatives that have a problem. Lately, all (political parties) are failing to recognize that sometimes you're in power and sometimes not," Svaty said. "Most times people adjust when there are swings of power.

"People are starting to calm down and are starting to realize it's better to have stronger conversations, than shouting matches. But who knows?"

* Reporter David Clouston can be reached at 822-1403 or by e-mail at dclouston@salina.com.