Are you as tired as I am of nasty name-calling parading as political discourse or social commentary? It’s as if we’ve lost the ability to disagree without disdain.

It’s easy to blame the media, and I do, but at the root of this coarsening of society is the well-founded belief that the public prefers entertainment to enlightenment and a view of the world where everyone who has a different point of view is either a fool or a villain.

What we get is a line-up of colorful, opinionated personalities paid to generate heat rather than light. I find it a tedious waste of time to hear predictable rants reflecting a flat two-dimensional perspective.

It wasn’t always this way.

From 1964 until he retired in 1977, a journalist named Eric Sevareid was given two minutes every evening on the popular CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite to editorialize on any topic he chose.

Dubbed "The Grey Eminence” by many admirers, Mr. Sevareid came across as an intellectual without arrogance. His commentaries were thoughtful and thought-provoking. He had a point of view, but I was convinced he came to his conclusions through objective analysis rather than a reflexive obsession to validate predispositions or prejudices.

I didn’t always agree with him, but because of his balanced, respectful, and insightful discussions, I understood the issues better.

Why the history lesson? As we enter a prolonged season of presidential politics, I hope you’ll join me in calling on our news agencies to find more Eric Sevareids. In the meantime, I urge you to turn down the volume every time some ideological salesman makes his pitch.

This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.