dr. bill, anticipating that others may disagree with your last sentence, I for one heartily agree.

IMHO nasty PM's -- which may be coming from only a small number of ayleurs -- have generated so much hurt as to be destructive to our board. One would wish that simple self-restraint would suffice avoid such nastiness, but experience has shown that it does not. To decry it, without doing anything about it except wring our collective hands, is not going to help.