I don't expect much when it comes to manners and respect in political discourse. Whenever any candidate, left or right, comes along and says they're going to change the tone in Washington, I'm inclined to pretty much just roll my eyes. "Reaching across the aisle in a spirit of bipartisanship" is one of those expressions that is just the speaker insulting the intelligence of the listener.
However, one thing I think is NOT beyond the realm of reasonable expectations, and still a point of some severe disappointment. Is it too much to ask that we not resort to disgusting schoolyard sexual slang as part of the discussion. I'm referring to the left's recent giggling use of the dismissive term "teabagger" to slander anyone whose only perceived crime might be daring to disagree with their own notions. For a bit of history on the term, check out http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=teabagger, it's a term whose only origin is a fairly ugly sexual term.
The statements by some on the left that the tea party movement is somehow rooted in a concern with the President's ethnicity are stupid. The statements that the people who populate these rallies are planted or paid somehow are also stupid.
But assigning and publicly using vulgar, indecent terms to refer to people exercising their right to peaceably assemble isn't stupid --- it's just rude and uncivilized. And it adds nothing.
I'll promise never to use an ugly sexual term to refer to public interest groups on the Left. Let's see if any there will do the same.
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