The American public is getting worse and worse when it comes to civility. Conversation, by it's very definition, is the exchange of ideas between at least two people. It is not the shouting down of opposing opinions by some dunderhead. Talk radio and TV are major culprites of this type of discourse.
I've noticed it a lot in the Globe-News office because I sit opposite Features Editor Margaret Myers and hear her side of telephone conversations. In the two-and-a-half years of her reign, I have yet to hear her complete a sentence without being overridden by her callers. The same is true of many of News Editor David Warren's phone calls.
If any one of us sticks to our guns and tries to complete a sentence or an idea, talking over the interrupter, we're accused of being combative or rude.
Didn't your parents teach you how to be polite? Did you forget about your upbringing once you became legal adults?
Let's start a Keep America Polite grass roots effort!