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I'm Stephen Metcalfin. This is the Slate CultureGab Fest, Kill Rockstars Edition.

This is also the daily podcast from slate.com for Wednesday, September 16th, 2009.

On today's program, we're going to talk about Joe Wilson, Serena Williams, Michael Jordan, and of course, Kanye, a random cluster or a new low in American

civility, Jay Leno's Monopoly on the 10 p.m. slot and Claude Monet at MoMA. Joining me today

our Slate's deputy editor, Julia Turner. Hello, Julia. Hi, Steve. And our film critic, Dana Stevens. Hey,

Dana. Hello, Steve. Julia, I don't have it in front of me, but there's a great Edmund Burke quote,

who Ed Burke famously believed that manners were more important than laws, that they somehow

create the atmosphere more importantly than the black letter of the law within which we all live

as a common society. Quite a lot can be made of this little cluster of

insolity. Quite a little can be made of it as well, and I'm curious how you feel about it.

But to me, it seems significant that you have a congressman from South Carolina yelling

directly at the president, as the president speaks to Congress and the country.

You have a prominent tennis player, not exactly

threatening to kill a lines person, but nonetheless making quite a vivid threat to a lines

person at the U.S. Open. And you have Michael Jordan making a, I think, quite graceless

speech in his induction into the Hall of Fame ceremony. And finally,

you have most famously now, I think, or most likely to be replayed on MTV. Most likely to be

replayed over and over again. You have Kanye West grabbing a microphone from Taylor Swift at the VMAs.

Where to even begin with this giant Nugat of teasing out its various constituent parts,

this giant Nugat of Incivility.

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