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Stuck in the middle

Posted at 12:21 PM on August 11, 2009 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Politics

By now, you've no doubt been following the controversy surrounding protests breaking out at political town halls. I mean, everyone's doing the story:

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Us against them. Good vs. evil. You're either for us or agin' us. The perfect scenario for our let's not scratch the depth too much society.

Today, the story moves to Portsmouth, New Hampshire where President Obama gets to experience the love firsthand (live blog)

With supporters of Obama on one side of the street, and opponents of Obama on the other side of the street, Greg Meyer, 39, of Hampton Falls, N.H., was able to get a mention in Boston Globe coverage by standing in the middle of the street.

"If we did not believe in that separation, maybe we'd find a way to work together," Meyer said. "I'm on the side of the dialogue."

Comments (3)

I don't care which "side" is doing the shouting, but I'm starting to believe these people should be arrested for inciting a riot. I was raised to listen politely to someone else's point of view, but even though the 1st Amendment guarantees a right to free speech, it does not guarantee anyone has to listen.

Posted by Tyler | August 11, 2009 12:47 PM

Really.. is it really that hard to talk about this without calling people Nazi's, or bringing up the Death Panels?

Why do people even believe that rubbish?

Posted by bobbydole | August 11, 2009 1:29 PM

Nuance is uncertain, compromise is messy. It's much easier if the only choices are right and wrong. Then if its not right according to your world view then it's wrong. If it's wrong then the patriotic thing to do is to stand up to the insert preferred bogeyman here and tell them to back off.

This happens on both sides. Fortunately the genius of the American system almost insures that the actual result is somewhere in between. The process is boring and tends to be drowned out by the fight at the fringes. The stories are about town hall disruption and ""death panels". In the mean time Senators and House members, in relatively small groups do the boring and messy work of compromise.

Posted by JackU | August 11, 2009 2:25 PM