Inflammatory campaign rhetoric: nothing new

Reading through the IPDI report on online political videos, my only thought is that, fundamentally, this isn't anything new. Yes, it's in a new medium, and has a further reach, and is therefore a revolution in the scale of such things. However, the rhetoric described in the article is nothing you wouldn't see in a direct mail piece, or an anonymous flier distributed the weekend before an election. American politics has a tradition of inflammatory, hurtful, and destructive rhetoric in its campaigns, much of it in mail or other forms that rarely catch the attention of the media, and so are rarely scrutinized. Just because such messages are put online does not herald a new low in American politics.