Before Commenting, Ask Yourself: Would Mom Approve?

The tone of America's discourse seems to have taken a wrong turn, and many people are worried that we are no longer treating each other with the respect and courtesy that we expect in our society.

Who knows when it all started. It didn't start when Republican Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina shouted out "You Lie" during President Obama's speech to Congress Sept. 9, nor in June when MSNBC host Rachel Maddow said that Rush Limbaugh is the "guy who says the assassin of Martin Luther King, Jr. should get the Medal of Honor." (He didn't say that, according to NewsBusters.org).

It didn't start when then-Vice President Dick Cheney said "F*** yourself" to Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy in June 2004, nor in 1984 when Barbara Bush described Democratic vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro this way: "It rhymes with rich."

Sadly, these problems have been around so long that we can't even figure out when the protection of free speech morphed into a misuse of that right.

Whenever it started, perhaps it's now gone too far. Is there no limit to what can be said or done on the Internet or in public?

I am open-minded to criticism as well as compliments -- as both a teacher and a Politics Daily contributor, I am often subject to both. The comments on my PD posts are generally directed from one commenter to another rather than at me, and I'm often surprised at how nasty the back-and-forth can become. Still, I appreciate this window into their world, as the posted comments give me insight into what the readers are thinking and how I can address their concerns. Without feedback, I could end up writing in an echo chamber. Just as a politician must be willing to take criticism, so, too, must I. That's just one consequence of writing what you think.

But, many of us feel that a line was crossed in the comments posted on Carl Cannon's obituary of journalist Deborah Howell. Some of the remarks exceeded any boundaries of civility. Politics Daily's Editor in Chief, Melinda Henneberger, wrote a response to these comments and later, on National Public Radio's "Talk of the Nation," discussed the importance of standing up for civility.

Melinda is right that some of the reactions were over the top and exceeded the bounds of civility. But, removing hateful comments from the debate also raises a troubling issue. Have we now become so thin-skinned that we have to start censoring people's comments just because they might offend someone? Some things may be best left unsaid -- my mom always advised that if I didn't have anything nice to say, then I shouldn't say it -- but where do we draw the line between what is my free speech and your hate speech? Conversely, does allowing this vile behavior to continue have a pernicious impact on society as a whole?

It is this latter point that troubles some of us. For example, Peggy Noonan, President Ronald Reagan's speechwriter, wrote in The Wall Street Journal that although most Americans think the economy is on the wrong track, they are concerned about much more than the economy. She cited the sexually suggestive performance by Adam Lambert of American Idol fame on ABC in November, writing, "It's things like this, every bit as much as taxes and spending, that leave people feeling jarred and dismayed, and worried about the future of their country."

The responses to Howell's death and Lambert's crude performance do not represent where America is headed, but they do show that we are increasingly questioning and perhaps violating traditional boundaries in the public domain. Many commenters on Noonan's article noted that the boundaries of what is acceptable are changing. Fifty years ago, television only filmed Elvis Presley from the waist up to avoid showing his gyrating hips; now, as some commenters note, television networks broadcast performances that might have been x-rated in Elvis' time.

The list of boundaries that have fallen and those that have yet to fall is way, way too long. Just read any article that mentions President Obama and you are likely to find a stream of vile, racist comments. Pushing over boundaries does not have to mean pushing over boundaries of decency. And, that's where I part with those who think "anything goes" on the Internet.

That's my opinion. But for those who would like some objective analysis, economics provides a good justification for editing comments. Consider the Nobel Prize-winning research known familiarly as the "Lemons Dilemma" by Professor George A. Akerlof of the University of California at Berkeley.

Akerlof used the analogy of a used car lot to demonstrate how the "bad" can drive out the "good." Because customers couldn't tell which used cars were bargains and which were lemons, and because they did not want to risk overpaying for a clunker, prices fell for all used cars, both the good and the bad. As prices fell, the owners of quality used cars stopped putting their vehicles up for resale, thus driving the price down further so that the car lot quickly became filled with lemons. The result was that customers grew discouraged --- and ultimately gave up --- when they had to wade through lots with more lousy vehicles than quality ones.

A similar outcome occurs with comments. Because you don't want to have to weed through a bunch of garbage to get to the insightful remarks, you stop posting your views, and this cycle continues until the comments are dominated by garbage. The bad comments drive out the good comments and, when this happens, we're all worse off because we don't have the benefit of a broad range of views.

How is an editor supposed to address this issue? Politics Daily has what is jokingly called the "PD PD" or the Politics Daily Police Department. The PD police deletes comments that are inappropriate, offensive, and unrelated to the topic so that the readers can engage in a civilized discussion online. By improving the quality of the comments, i.e., by solving the lemons' dilemma, the PD police provide a good service to our readers.

Commentators can, of course, do their own editing by following a simple rule, or checklist. The value of a checklist has been recently documented by Atul Gawande, Brigham and Women's Hospital doctor, Harvard professor, and staff writer at The New Yorker, in his book "The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right."In essence, Gawande says that if you run through a checklist before you act, you are more likely to make the right decision than if you don't. This analysis provides useful guidance for how to determine where to draw the line in posting comments.

Here's the checklist, which has just one question:

Would you post this comment if your mother knew you were posting it?

That's it -- a simple test that may force all of us to really think about the impact of our words.