Politics fans, I have some bad news: A lot of very nasty people claim they speak for you when they scream and curse about how <em>The Kansas City Star </em>covers the news.</p><p>Truth be told, I don&#8217;t end up airing many of the harshest critics anywhere outside of my weekly internal report to the newsroom. That&#8217;s because, well, a lot of them have credibility or civility problems that diminish what they say.</p><p>Case in point: A belligerent caller last week insisted that <em>The Star </em>hadn&#8217;t devoted any coverage to the scandal involving Barack Obama&#8217;s vacated Senate seat, because its major players are all Democrats. The 45 or so stories and columns in print alone so far &#8212; an average of more than 1.5 per day &#8212; make those objections and the accompanying emotion difficult to take seriously.</p><p>It would do everyone on the right a disservice to give such an illogical argument a wider audience, because it would reinforce the stereotypes that I know are generally untrue. Conservatives as a whole are no more bigoted bullies than most liberals are irresponsible, delusional na&#239;fs.</p><p>In the runup to the 2004 elections, it was much more common for me to encounter destructive incivility from the left. But in recent months, there&#8217;s no question that the rudeness pendulum has swung back to the right &#8212; and hard. I think it&#8217;s obvious that it goes with the groups who feel disenfranchised politically.</p><p>Last October, I asked conservative pundit Jonah Goldberg what he thought was behind this phenomenon, which I&#8217;ve witnessed firsthand literally hundreds of times, particularly online.</p><p>&#8220;I&#8217;m sure you&#8217;re right about the rightward tilt of the feedback you&#8217;re getting, but that might be a sign that <em>The Star </em>angers conservatives more than it does liberals,&#8221; he wrote. &#8220;&#8230; The social problem you identify is real, I think. E-mail has lowered the barriers to offering feedback without increasing the costs of rudeness. Even jerks used to have to at least think a bit before they put pen to paper. Now, that process is nearly instantaneous. &#8230;</p><p>&#8220;That doesn&#8217;t excuse conservatives &#8212; or anyone &#8212; for their rude behavior. But I do wish liberals and journalists generally understood that they play a role in this process as well.&#8221;</p><p>He&#8217;s right: It&#8217;s a two-way street. Mostly, I feel bad for the good, kind and thoughtful readers who see their beliefs hijacked by childish invective and name-calling. No bully speaks for a set of beliefs.