In late 2011, John Oliver and his “Daily Show” cameraman made a trek to my office, then in Providence, R.I., to take me to task. I had recently referred to the Tea Partiers who had pushed America to the brink of a disastrous default as “economic terrorists.”
Oliver had apparently swallowed whole a series of barbs directed my way by a Wall Street Journal blogger who didn’t seem to like women much. The blogger kept calling me the “Civility diva” and a “Baroness Catherine Ashton lookalike.” (A member of the British parliament, Ashton was said to be homely.) He was quite the wit.
The blogger found what he thought was more ammo in learning that I was head of a journalistic organization then formulating something called a “civility project.” The mission was to debate what made honest opinion writing — not to…
