ISSN 2161-539X (online) © 2011 Alabama Communication Association Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric, Vol. 1, No.1, 2011, pp. 22-30. The Rhetoric of Civility: Power, Authenticity, and Democracy Thomas W. Benson  Political crisis and conflict routinely produce rude talk and accusations of incivility. Civility and incivility are communicative, rhetorical practices. As such, they are always situational and contestable. Keywords: Civility, Democracy, Sarah Palin On January 8, 2011, news reports announced that a young man had killed six people in Tucson, Arizona, at a street-corner public meeting organized by Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Nineteen people were shot. Citizens at the scene disarmed and subdued the young man who had carried out the attack with a Glock semi-automatic pistol armed with an extended magazine. Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head and critically injured. In the grief and fear that immediately followed the news of the event, there was also a search for causes. Who was this young man, and what could have made him do this terrible thing? At a news conference, Pima County Sheriff Clarence W. Dupnik said he thought the shooting called for “a little soul-searching” in an atmosphere of threats against public officials. 1 There was no direct evidence that Jared Loughner, “the shooter,” had been motivated by political views or propaganda, and it quickly became evident that he was mentally disturbed. Some argued that it was more important to ask how a man so mentally unstable, and so threatening that he had been denied readmission to his community college, had been able to buy a handgun. Why had the previous ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines been allowed to lapse? The same retrospective speculation about preventive remedies asked why he had received no treatment, possibly even involuntary commitment, for his mental illness. Nevertheless, the initial public reaction of wondering whether the tone of political discourse had contributed to the violence almost immediately developed into a more general discussion of “civility” and to a backlash of protests about misplaced blame. Within twenty-four hours of the shootings, it appeared to be widely agreed that it was not possible to establish a direct, or perhaps even an indirect, atmospheric connection between the shooting and the aggressive tone of political talk. But once established as a question, the tone of civil discourse became part of the story.  Thomas W. Benson (Ph.D., Cornell University) is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Rhetoric at Penn State University. He can be reached for comment on this essay by email at t3b@psu.edu. 1 Carl Hulse and Kate Zernike. “Bloodshed in Arizona Shooting Puts New Focus on Vitriol in Politics.” New York Times, January 8, 2011.