The story is told that when the Nazi party first came topolitical prominence, some in Germany complained about the incivility of Hitlerand his followers. Goebbels is allegedto have responded: When I hear the word civility, I reach for my gun. The story may well be apocryphal, but itprovides a lesson about the importance of civility anyway.

Certainly the publics reaction to Imuss racist commentswas justified, but the larger issue to which the whole affair points is theremarkable incivility of our public discourse. (The incivility of bloggers is of course legendary.)

Let me offer a local example that is not about race orgender. Consider the coverage of analternative newspaper in Clevelandof the allegations about financial misconduct of the former bishop ofCleveland, Anthony Pilla. For backgroundon this story, see Grant Gallichos post from February 18 on the scandal inCleveland, A Fine Financial Mess.

Although the allegations have notbeen substantiated, The Cleveland Scene recently ran a storywith a picture of Bishop Pilla under the headline The Scum Always Rises. (If they were going for a literary allusion,shouldnt this be The Scum Also Rises?)

In an earlier piece, The Scene commented on the briefappearance of Clevelands current bishop, Richard Lennon, in the documentary onthe sex abuse scandal, Hand of God, whenLennon was still an Auxiliary in Boston. To say the least, Lennons on camera appearance was anything but pastoral, but The Scenes characterization of theepisode was beyond the pale; they described Bishop Lennon in anatomical termsthat I will not reproduce here.

I suppose that one could concludethat the editors of The Scene are anti-Catholic bigots, just asit might be reasonable to conclude that Imus is a thoroughgoing racist. Yet drawing these conclusions is a little tooeasy. For one thing, citing racism orreligious bigotry lets us off the hook way too quickly. After all, it is we who listen to the radioprograms, buy the papers, and watch the shows about which we arecomplaining. So who really is to blamehere?