When Lively Debate Turned Into Livid Hate

by Warren Bluhm

I blame it all on Jim and Shana. The anger and the hatred and the sniping, that is, the loss of civility in public discourse. It all began with Jim and Shana.

They were tame by contemporary standards, of course. Conservative James Kilpatrick and liberal Shana Alexander were tapped to provide opposing viewpoints in the "Point/Counterpoint" segment of the "60 Minutes" television news magazine program in the 1970s. It seemed as if they were encouraged to be a little feisty with each other, and it was a popular segment.

The feistiness was not lost on humorists: The cast of "Saturday Night Live" did a memorable lampoon of the segment with Jane Curtin and Dan ("Jane, you ignorant slut") Aykroyd. Media moguls had discovered that people who argue with each other could be great entertainment.

I'd guess the next step was CNN's "Crossfire" program, which debuted somewhere around 1982. There, folks from the left or right were not only encouraged to be feisty with each other, they were encouraged to try to shout each other down. It was on "Crossfire" that we regularly began to hear the expression, "Will you please let me finish?"

Talk radio began its inevitable rise a short time later. Larry King really was the first successful nationally syndicated radio host, although he did it late at night, and he didn't really host arguments -- he just hung up on people he disagreed with.

Then, of course, came Rush Limbaugh and his horde of imitators, and the references to "feminazis" and the like. The left, unable to find a talk show host who could compete with Limbaugh, responded in other media, such as Al Franken's book "Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot."

The right played back by coming up with characters more strident than Limbaugh, like Michael Savage.

And now, of course, the left has finally found its own big fat idiot, filmmaker Michael Moore, whose movies like "Fahrenheit 9/11" infuriate conservatives the way Limbaugh has always infuriated liberals. It's not that Limbaugh or Moore are necessarily dispensing untruths -- although their critics will tell you that they are -- it is the way the facts are packaged and slanted that drives people nuts.

But something odd happened from the time of Jim and Shana to the time of Rush and Mike. It stopped being entertainment; it stopped being funny. And the politicians and spin-meisters started insulting each other as an everyday routine, not just when they were in a contrived TV environment. And they started hating each other.

It doesn't matter who started it, although I must claim my small share of the blame: I hated President Clinton. I called him a liar and a crook and I'm still not so sure I was wrong about that, but the point is that I joined in the national frenzy that has turned political discourse into a competition of heat, not light. For all the evidence that President Bush has at the very least not been an improvement over Clinton, I have tried to temper my criticism not for partisan reasons but because I saw how unproductive my over-the-top criticism of Clinton was.

When I considered myself a partisan Republican, I had a Democrat friend with whom I had frequent discussions about how we could bring civility and mutual respect back to public discussion -- Remember when we took seriously Voltaire's statement, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it?" These days my friend is on the bandwagon that says George W. Bush is a crook, a liar who betrayed America, and perhaps even evil incarnate on Earth.

I sent him an e-mail the other day that I liked it better when we were fighting for civility together, and he responded that he has become cynical after putting on the positive face and getting bashed in return. It turns out that hate works: The campaign that best tarnishes the other side gets the highest ratings and the most votes.

Jim and Shana no doubt were just trying to introduce a bit of a spark to involve people in the important subjects of the day. Who knew it would descend to "Spark this, you treasonous loser?"