The battle of insults between these two is not high drama, it is train wreck drama.  You don’t want to watch but you can’t help it.  A battle where both sides are grossly unsympathetic, you don’t know who to bet for or against, so you just bet for drama, and entertainment.  You want to see it escalate.

Bill O’Reilly did an hour on this tonight on the radio factor, and he extracted an actual tid bit of relevance to this.  His tag line says:

Rosie vs. Trump: He said, she said
Donald Trump viciously lashes out at Rosie O’Donnell, unleashing a series of personal attacks live on television, in retaliation for some statements that Rosie made on The View. But did Rosie deserve it? What provoked it? And why can’t we move past this kind of petty bickering? That and more in the first hour of the Radio Factor.

Bill is right.  While I play hit and miss in my agreement with Bill, he nailed this one.

The issue boils down to our complete inability to deal with issues and facts without taking the discussion to insults.

Take the case at hand.  Donald may or may not have a case against Rosie if she said anything untrue in her rant about him, as she may violate laws against slander.  We have laws for that which allow him to present his claim of injury to a jury and seek compensation.

But does that justify his attacks on her, many of which are essentially ad hominem in nature?  Not really.  It actually enhances the circus-like atmosphere in this because it becomes a center court tennis match of back and forth one liners.

In a case like that there is no reliance on fact, just on insult. 

This, sadly is all too present in our modern world.  While we live in an age that has more immediate access to facts and information then any other in history, we quickly discard logic and intellectual integrity and dive head first into the gutters with our personal attacks.  Right or wrong is secondary to getting the last word in, the best zinger.

And all sides are guilty.   Yes, I suppose That I personally feel that the liberal progressives are worse, that they are quicker to lose their civility in a heated debate, but worse is not going to come near to being exclusive.  The conservatives are hardly slouches, and many take obvious delight in what they claim is just leveling the playing field.

This is not a new concept for me by the way, part of my decision to name my blog had to do with incivility, but that’s another story.  Search for rude and liberal on my blog to read about it.

But the point is I have long tried to maintain a general sense of civility, drawing I suppose on the honor of gentlemen more widely seen in previous eras, if you will.

I do not always succeed, but I try.

But another thought intrudes in this, and that concerns the balance of free speech and offense.  Most of this involved Donald being pissed off when she ranted about his press conference and mocked his hair.   All of that is free speech material, unless she said something untrue and then it becomes slander.

If slander is not present, we then have to deal with the concept of offense.

Should Donald be able to claim offense at her attack and sue her?  Why?  Because he has more money then she does and can lawyer up faster, with bigger badder lawyers, that makes his feelings more sensitive?

I am unsure I can answer that fairly, it is his decision to go forth or not.  But just as she has a responsibility to control her mouth - something she sadly shows a complete inability to do, by the way - so does he have the responsibility to deal with this as a legal matter, not an attempt to personally humiliate with fairly low attacks.

She lost me long ago with her stupidity on the air, so Donald had my initial sympathy till he started in on having a friend steal away her partner.  Honestly, that is on par with saying smack about someone’s mother.

But the question remains:  Does offense even become a real factor?  Are we not way too quick to draw these petty insults into legal disputes? 

Since when did the constitution protect us from being offended?   The reason I mention that is so many suits about religion deal with personal offense as much as they deal with the actual requirements of the constitution not to establish religion.

I am wandering here, but there is a lot of food for thought.

This is my take on the Donald/Rosie show:

I personal have no respect for either of them as they have behaved and continue to behave like children, and neither is operating on any high moral ground I can find.

I wish they would both go away, but I can’t stop waiting for the train wreck;  I can’t look away.

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