There are many ways of being conservative, and some of them are clearly quite wise and useful. It all depends on the context. I'm conservative when it comes to getting drunk, for example. I don't. I'm also conservative about a number of other things, like driving defensively and keeping fairly near the speed limit. Clearly, I do not regard the word as necessarily being pejorative in nature.

It was my impression that you were leveling a criticism at Susan's character. Do you claim that you were not doing so? That is the "character assassination" I was referring to. You were basically saying, if I may paraphrase it, "Don't bother wasting much of your time here, Kirsten, because this place is full of *ssholes, and Susan is one of them." I call that character assassination.

And if it is so dull here, why are you here today? Why not somewhere else?