What's civil for the goose...

I guess you could say civility is a little like obscenity - it can be hard to define it, but you know it when you see it.

Or, more accurately, when you don't see it, since the only time we seem to talk about civility (and that's a lot these days) is when it's most obviously absent.

But what constitutes incivility, exactly? It's a slippery line, a shifting standard that depends on who is doing the talking.

It's easy to forgive (even to chuckle a little gleefully at) a few pointed jabs when you agree with the speaker's general message. But when it's the other team - whoop, whoop, whoop - sound the incivility alarms.

And while there's a general consensus that most of us are hungry for simple common courtesy - in our workplaces, in public discourse, in our everyday lives - few people are willing to fess up to their role in contributing to the problem.

It's always the other side that is being uncivil. Us? We are just trying to be heard.

So we keep turning the same corner in conversations about civility - rededicating and then re-rededicating ourselves to the idea of the thing.

According to one recent survey, Americans overwhelmingly told pollsters they think politics is becoming increasingly uncivil, even more than pop culture, government, the music industry or media - all overwhelmingly considered uncivil themselves.

More respondents than not fully expect this election season to even get worse, according to that second annual poll on Civility in America, released by Weber Shandwick and Powell Tate in partnership with KRC Research. Nine in 10 say they'll consider political candidates' tone as they decide their vote in 2012, but I have to wonder what that means.

Candidates aren't so naive. They'll keep slinging mud just as long as it works.

And work it will as long as people keep holding different standards of civility for political friends and foes.

It's on my mind this week after The Gazette launched new “rules of engagement” for online comments. As part of the deal, I've been tasked with monitoring the comments to my own columns and blog posts.

I've long done that just because it irks me when threads are hijacked by vicious or irrelevant attacks. But I've never deleted a comment - only responded to clarify my position, or to answer questions - for one, it wasn't part of my job.

Now that it is, I hope to maintain my record of zero deletions.

We're getting better as a community at talking about civility. Now let's get better at actually doing it.

Comments: jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net; (319) 339-3154