Savage & Coulter "rhetorical terrorists"

That's Tim Rutten's take. His Regarding Media column in the L.A. Times today looks for an upbeat note, saying that the recent coolness toward Michael Savage and Ann Coulter on the right (the left and center have long disdained both) is a good sign for political discourse. Of Savage's firing for wishing death by AIDS on a gay caller, he says:

His sacking may be another sign of the growing realization, especially among thoughtful conservatives, that the culture wars' rhetorical slipstream may have sucked us all across a line that shouldn't have been crossed.