Some politicians nowadays resort to the language of the gutter, which, of course, has its place. They believe insults are more effective than reasoned argument. This fuels violence and supports a steady flow of vituperation from the President down. Using mean and insulting language appears to be the new political sport. It's a far cry from the founding fathers who, like their English predecessors, saw language as a gift from God, to be used skillfully because it reflected their identity and brought them nearer to the divine. The Declaration of Independence and Lincoln's address at Gettysburg show just how much it mattered. Now that gutter language has taken taken over, whoever can think up the nastiest insults supposedly wins. In Shakespeare's time the cleverest won: "A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave." Today the best we can come up with is calling someone "scum" by phonetically playing on their surname. Elizabethans might have seen this as verbally weak and intellectually poverty stricken. All we can do is blame the education system and the age of mass communication.