Are we a civil society?

Recent news events have me pondering this question. Feb. 27 brought us a school shooting in Chardon, Ohio. Immediately, questions about bullying arose.

In our search to explain the death of three students and the arrest of another, we cast a wide net. Were there signs the killer was violent? Was he bullied? Did the school address bullying?

Within the next week, we witnessed Rush Limbaugh’s vitriolic attack on a relatively powerless individual, Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke, who testified before a congressional delegation about contraception as healthcare.

Fluke simply shared stories of real women whose inability to get contraception was risking their health, livelihoods and life.

Enter Limbaugh whose coverage of Fluke’s testimony descended into the realm of schoolyard bullying. Although Fluke had not referenced contraception as birth control, Limbaugh proceeded to call her a slut and implied female Georgetown students wanted birth control only for promiscuous sex.

Throw into this news mix the sudden death of Andrew Breitbart, a right-wing Internet media mogul who built his career enthusiastically tearing down organizations and people with whom he disagreed. For example, he selectively edited video footage of U.S. Department of Agriculture employee Shirley Sherrod, speaking about her effort to overcome her own biases when working with white farmers.

Breitbart’s misleading video clips destroyed Sherrod’s career, leading to her early retirement and to a lawsuit against him. But for Breitbart, any means justified his endsand anyone could be collateral damage, including himself. Breitbart’s Internet vitriol and public tantrums are his legacy.

As expected, Breitbart’s sudden death at 43 prompted responses from all sides. Rolling Stones’ Matt Taibbi, who shared Breitbart’s love of inflammatory language, but uses it in service of the liberal perspective, wrote a blog post the title of which I won’t repeat here. However, in Taibbi’s own distinct voice, he paid tribute to Breibart’s relentlessness. Yet Taibbi, and his family, were bullied with threatening phone calls, e-mails, texts and posts.

So in an update to his original article, Taibbi responded to Breitbart’s fans: “But I guess no homage is complete without a celebration of the whole man, and the whole man in this case was not just a guy who once said, ‘It’s all about a good laugh,’ but also someone who liked to publish peoples’ personal information on the internet, hack into private web sites, tell lies in an attempt to get his enemies fired, and incite readers to threats against his targets and their families, including death threats.”

Add to this news mix tales of NFL managers paying players to hurt opposing teams’ key players and our consumption of reality TV shows that promote name-calling, back-biting and humiliation, and I don’t think kids bullying should be any surprise. Instead, I wonder how we can be surprised about it at all.

If we want schools to be safe places, we can’t expect educators to carry the burden alone. We need to ask what behavior the rest of us (parents, grandparents, neighbors) model, too. Do we speak respectfully to and about those with whom we disagree? Are we civil?

And maybe we need to turn off the TV and radio, limit Internet use, and talk through our disagreements. Because last week made it obvious to me our media makes a mockery of civil discourse, and I’m ready to pull the plug.