I figured this sort of argument was inevitable: right wing moral relativism, in the form of a defense of Dick Cheney's dropping the f-bomb last week. As I wrote at the time, I was less outraged at the shocking fact that the Vice President swears than the fact that he was so unapologetic about it later. And when you have someone as sycophantic as Charles Krauthammer defending you, it's no wonder that the Bushies are so clueless when it comes to the way normal folks perceive them.

That Krauthammer is unable to distinguish between the angry use of the f-word by someone cut off on the 405, or a coach arguing a bad call, and its use by someone who is arguably the most powerful man in the country, who holds the positions of both Vice President and President of the Senate, on the hallowed floor of Congress, uttered within the context of a debate on a matter of public interest, is remarkable. Besides the fact that the odds are nil that the same justification would have been made if the recipient of the vulgarity had been Dick Cheney or Arik Sharon, it goes to show how one-sided the calls for civility in our public discourse have been. That it should not be surprising that this sort of conduct can be defended, in much the same way Southern slaveholders defended the caning of Charles Sumner on the floor of the Senate by Preston Brooks more than a century ago. The breakdown in civility back then led to the Civil War; I only hope that there are still enough people of good will on both sides of the fence, who recognize that some sanctified arenas, such as a courtroom or the floor of Congress, should encourage polite, reasoned debate, and that f-bombs should be reserved for barroom quarrels between drunks.