Bar now still lower

Recently waylaid in an airport by a TMZ interviewer, CNN Of Parts Unknown host Anthony Bourdain grinned of his desire to poison the President of the United States.

Bourdain, of course, is far from alone in political assassination fantasizing. Kathy Griffin, Johnny Depp, Missouri State Senator Maria Chappelle-Nadal, Reza Aslan, Snoop Dogg. It is a shameful list that seems to grow weekly.

In crashing counterpoint to long-held conceptions of decency and basic respect for the Oval Office, political assassination is increasingly accepted in common conversation.

"Never in my 53 years have I seen people so casually and cavalierly advocate the murder of the President of the United States," wrote Deroy Murdock, in the march National Review. "Trump haters are eager to make assassination great again."

(Admittedly, candidate Trump also freely used rhetoric of types not previously common to national politics. A case could be made that he, too, served to reposition the discourse standard. But, he never advocated assassinating political opponents. Besides, supporters like myself found his bluffness refreshing, inspiring, and of distinctly real-world nature.)

The terrible assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy plunged America into hellish depths. And, for many years, talk of political killings was eschewed and reviled by all good people.

I remember watching MSNBC's Hardball one evening during the Democrat 2008 primaries. Barack Obama seemed likely to be that party's eventual nominee. Competitor Hillary Clinton had remarked that the situation could change to her benefit, as the California primary still lay ahead.

Many observers were critical of her, considering her comment a reference to the 1968 California assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Kennedy had just won that state's primary. Following his death, Democrats nominated George McGovern.

The 2008 night I watched Hardball, panelists began discussing Hillary's gruesome, hopeful intimation. Matthews, though, immediately squashed the conversation. All who are in the public eye, he stressed, and who travel the country as speakers, harbor apprehensions about anonymous crackpots with homicidal inclinations. Any conversation on the topic, he warned, might encourage killers.

Sadly, such common-sense solicitousness no longer seems to matter. Not so long ago, Matthews, himself, joked on MSNBC about a Trump White House assassination of advisor Jared Kushner.