by Linton Weeks
During his address Wednesday at a memorial service for victims of the Jan. 8 shootings in Tucson, Ariz., President Obama called on Americans to "make sure that we're talking with each other in a way that — that heals, not in a way that wounds."
This week brought a high volume of hypercharged rhetoric over whether hypercharged rhetoric contributed to last Saturday's shootings in Tucson, Ariz. Yet there is no indication that the country will do better when it comes to violent speech, or that the spitting match will ever end.
The airwaves and blogosphere continue to zing with tirades and accusations and recriminations. And The New York Times reported on Thursday that the two-year-old Civility Project, an effort to get members of Congress to sign a pledge of mannerliness, is being dissolved because only three people signed it.
Does the public really want a kinder, gentler brand of politics?
