The Pathetic Decaying of Discourse

I used to watch William F. Buckley's "Firing Line" a lot, back in the day. I found it/him fascinating - to say the least. Not that I always agreed with him, of course (matters pertaining to religion, most specifically), but his intellect, I'm saying, his good-natured pomposity, the fact that he could sometimes be unpredictable (his ultimate stance that drugs should be legalized, for example) it all made for some scintillating viewing, I think........................................But there was this one episode, in particular, that has really lingered with me. It was one of the episodes where his friend, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, was the guest. I remember it not just for the high tone of the interview, the fact that both men were putting forth their positions in an eloquent manner, etc.. No, it was more the civility. This, I'm saying, in that while they probably disagreed on 80% of the topics during the interview, the politeness/lack of bellicosity was what was really most evident to me.........................................And, yeah, folks, I am in fact going to ask you to compare THAT to the present level of debate amongst all these bloggers, talking heads on cable, talk-radio lunatics, etc.. Just look, for instance, at this site called Politics Plus (politicsplus.blogspot.com). This character (refers to himself as Tomcat) does a daily screed against McCain (who is, granted, an extremely flawed candidate this time out but, come on!!), accusing him of virtually every unpardonable sin (Ethan Brand, on steroids) imaginable. He also plays this extremely retarded game where he somehow feels the need to consistently bastardize McCain's name, calling him stuff like McConjob, McRacist, McShame, etc.. I mean, talk about a de-evolution of discourse, huh?. And, yeah, he's just the tip of the ice-berg, folks. Unfortunately.