Rude, mad, and smugly

Hell hath no fury like a scholar dissed online | Janie B. Cheaney

Media commentators often lament the incivility of civil discourse, and then go on to "rip a new one" (to use the squirmy metaphor of the day) about whatever political party or ideology they consider responsible for all the meanness. Name-calling has never been rare in a democracy like ours, but it has been limited, for the most part, to those with especially choleric dispositions. In the last few years some of those limits have come tumbling down, nowhere more obviously than in internet blogs, posts, and chat rooms.

A case in point: I belong to an e-mail list dedicated to a certain literary period and personage. Among the contributors to the list are scholars, writers, teachers, and artists, many of them capable of addressing the central topic at a high level of erudition.