I neither put Eric on a pedestal, nor do I want to throw rocks at him. I see both as bizarre and unconstructive, although one more understandable and yet worse.
 We have a very few bright-line policies here, which makes things clearer for the herding of the vast majority of editors. It may even be right to exceed 3RR in some cases, but we still maintain 3RR because overall it makes such management workable. Likewise CIVIL. It is very clear that an editor is not permitted to use such terms towards another editor: any editor. Eric's elasticity here stretches such a policy such that we can no longer hold others up to it. I would rather keep CIVIL than Eric, I see it as contributing more to WP overall. Long experience shows that Eric can't (rightly or wrongly, I know that he does get baited) maintain CIVIL.