Down and dirty in Washington

[T_i_B]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/sep/27/british-political-discourse-us

With people levelling the type of smears at Eugene McCarthy's wife that Damian McBride recently discussed using against senior Tories here, the US seems to have a 40-year lead on nastiness in political discourse.

This may have something to do with the no-holds-barred atmosphere on US talk shows where it is not unusual to see panellists shouting at each other. In contrast, Jeremy Paxman and John Humphrys merely repeating a question 10 times looks positively genteel. And while the serious papers seem to resist character assassination, the American radio airwaves are full of hate.

It is this kind of unbridled malevolence, accompanied by deliberate disinformation, that is so shocking.

The only thing I have seen in Britain that even comes close to the kind of viciousness so prevalent in American politics emanated from the now-banned Federation of Conservative Students, who sold the infamous "Hang Nelson Mandela" badges and had a centrefold in their magazine showing an electric chair with the slogan "IRA Terrorists: Plug 'Em In". This was back in the mid-1980s and they appear to have been reprogrammed since then.