badgenome said:
Dude, you sound hopelessly nostalgic for a period through which you didn't even live. Respectful? I really can't see anyone calling someone a Nazi in a public debate these days, and supposing they did, not even in the most fevered left-wing imagination would Sarah Palin respond by calling them a faggot and threatening to punch them in the face. |
I do have my moments where I get wistful like some fringe right-wing conservative hearkening back to the good ole days of the 1950s.
I would say a discussion on camera that catches each men at their worst is more polite than a media, which will take 30 to 45 seconds of a long speech by Shirley Sherrod and sound bite it to make it sound as if she is racist.
Neither Gore Vidal in calling William F. Buckley Jr. a "crypto-nazi" nor Buckley's response of calling him a "queer" and threatening to punch him in the face so that "he will stay plastered" was polite. However, the way the media handled it by showing both sides in it's entirety is more polite than Fox News or MSNBC taking a couple of words or a sentence out of context and sound biting it.