Provoked

Someone I respect sent me a politically-charged email about a Kerry campaign stop that provoked me today. Below is the email along with my response.

-Neighborhood Meeting

Hi! Received this from a very good friend in Pennsylvania.
She wants everyone to know what she saw.

Good Tuesday morning! John Kerry brought his "front porch
meeting" to our Canonsburg PA neighborhood on Labor Day
morning. Since you will never hear the truth from the TV
or print media, I thought that you should know from
someone who was 'almost' there.

The residents who live on the street where the event took
place were not allowed to attend.

Kerry shipped in approximately 90 invitation only VIPs.
In addition, there was a hard luck case who was about
to lose her job at USAIR and another was an elderly woman
who was having health care problems. Neither one was from
this neighborhood. The street was closed to all traffic
the night before and all residents on the street were
REQUIRED to remove their Bush/Cheney signs.

The sympathetic police officers on duty told us that
Kerry used imminent domain to claim the street
for his purposes. Residents who have homes within
the perimeter (approximately 1 full block) were kept
behind a line away from the partisan crowd.

The rest of us were not allowed within the 1 block cordon.
A neighbor from across the street came to the line where
we were being kept and asked us to come onto his property.
The police told us that we could stand on this man's
FORMERLY private property! This was set up so that Kerry's
views could be heard - but not the neighbors.

About 30 people's (mostly neighbors) shouts echoed down
the street "Let the neighbors in".

We could barely hear Kerry speaking with his microphone
because press buses were used to block us off from view!
This morning's papers are reporting hecklers tried
to interrupt Kerry as he spoke to the neighborhood
gathering, but he turned our chants to his favor
by calling us rude. Even though most of the media
was there to record our stories of not being included
in the neighborhood forum, not one of them printed
or aired the truth.

This is what America will look like if Kerry becomes
president.

Get registered and get all of your friends registered
to vote if they have not already. Kerry thinks that he
is better than the rest of us and he has the media
on his side to make him out to be what he is not!
Finally, last night as I drove down the street where
the rally was, I was shocked to see Bush/Cheney signs
in almost every yard on the street!

Please send this e-mail on to as many people
as you can.

I wouldn't be surprised to find this message, which has been forwarded all across the internet, wind up on purportal.com or HoaxBusters one day soon. It reads like a typical fake letter by someone who "received this from a good friend" and wants everyone to "know what she saw". It gets passed along the internet as the gospel truth simply because it is what some people want to hear. It sounds like a believable account of something that actually happened from someone who was "almost there", but underneath just wants to push an agenda. I would like to know who actually sent it and exactly who witnessed the events. Then, maybe some credibility could be lent to what was being said if those people were found to be reliable sources. Otherwise, it's just gossip as far as I'm concerned.

Looking at the letter, though, it isn't surprising to hear that a campaign stop for Kerry was filled with Democractic supporters. All of Bush's speeches on the campaign trail are also strictly by invitation only; he only allows Republicans to attend. That's why on occassion a Democratic supporter makes the ten o'clock news when one "sneaks" in and starts asking questions of the president at one of his stops. The secret service jump in and remove the "demonstrator", because that's not suppose to happen.

Both candidates carefully guard their image, especially in the media; that's no secret. All this letter does is make it appear as though what one candidate has done is so de-spicable (as Daffy Ducky would say) that it gives a glimpse of "what America will look like" if that person is elected while the other candidate is guilty of the doing the same thing. Give me a break! What's really de-spicable is the way our attention is focused on less meaningful things like this propaganda amidst all the important issues surrounding the election. For a more reputable recounting of what happened at this particular Kerry campaign stop read what the LA Times reported here.

News should be fair and balanced, not one-sided. I don't need to hear one side's spin on the story. Just give me the real "truth". Don't give me unsubstantiated gossip that urges me to "send this email to as many people as I can" in order to further push an agenda. That's not helping me or anyone else make educated decisions about the choice we face come November.

I'd rather debate what's important than dispute what's not.