… in the matter of prematurely declaring anything the “Most X Ever.” Because something else will surely come along that’s even X-ier, sometimes sooner than you think. You liked Igor, the coroner’s assistant? Check out the Demon Sheep!

(Also, do watch Rachel Maddow’s commentary. She’s so much more polite than I am — I can think of a lot of ways to pronounce the acronym “FCINO” besides the refined “fa-SEE-no” that she chose!)

Boo!

In the epic discussion of rudeness on the boston.com blog, a number of people mentioned changes in the political/media culture as responsible for a degradation of public discourse. I don’t allow partisan politics on that site, but talking about general trends is fine, and I agreed with many of the commenters.

In that spirit, may I present the most remarkable political smear ad of all time. Yes, it is real; it’s for the coroner’s seat in New Orleans:

I’ll let you pause for a moment to take that in.

I majored in theater as an undergraduate. You know the actor who played Igor probably got his theater degree at Louisiana State or some such, dreamed of playing Mister Mistoffolees on tour, maybe getting to do the one-man version of “Santaland Diaries” someday, or even Shakespeare … I hope for his sake that his hopes and dreams were already crushed before this happened. It sounds harsh of me, I know, but I am cruel only to be kind.

Nicholas Kristof discusses some of the research on disgust that has informed my own writing (a few posts on the topic here and here), and its political implications:

… conservatives are more likely than liberals to sense contamination or perceive disgust. People who would be disgusted to find that they had accidentally sipped from an acquaintance’s drink are more likely to identify as conservatives.

The upshot is that liberals and conservatives don’t just think differently, they also feel differently. This may even be a result, in part, of divergent neural responses.