Reality Bites by James Norton

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville News belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not neccesarily reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville News)

It has been way too long to go without “opening a vein” as someone once said to me. I used to relish the opportunity to rant and ramble in these pages because it is very cathartic and I truly enjoy writing, but putting your own opinion out there with your name on it is not as easy as it seems. Okay, maybe it is to the nut-jobs who enjoy sensationalizing things to get their point across Рthere are several of those mentally deficient people running around this city, no doubt.

For example Рthe moron who equated this paper and everyone associated with it as paranoid, anonymously courageous “McCarthyists” or whatever silly-ass words he used. This from the same so-called intellectual who was so eager to “wag the dog”, he flip-flopped from coming at this newspaper with the “anti-Semitism” slant (realized he would get nowhere with that pretty fast) and decided to land where he did with the Joe McCarthy characterization Рand in a spot where even his own friend called him out publicly for being wrong.

Bill Shelton (in his piece describing the two sides) made a good point Рseveral of them actually, and yes, there are truths that belie the facts. One clear fact is that this newspaper has gone way beyond where anyone else has in the past to make sure that the local news is never biased in any way, the commentary overall is fairly balanced and the criticism acknowledged. That, plus giving the readers a healthy dose of straight up “this is how we feel about this…”

Just because you can’t wrap your mind around the fact that there are people in the world who don’t agree with others, and yes, they might have the opportunity to make their opinions known – all the while making it crystal clear that those comments should be taken with a grain of salt – doesn’t mean that we are out to con anyone, promote divisiveness in the community or fabricate a ‚Äúwitch hunt‚Äù – saying stupid stuff like that only reinforces my personal opinion that SOME of the PDSers (not all, hello) practice poor politics, disregard long standing members of this community and give the sense of being better than the rest of us who grew up here.

Just so anyone reading this understands clearly РI believe that only SOME of the members of the PDS act in this manner. I am, like Bill Shelton, both progressive and conservative Рit is a strange, strange combination (which probably explains why we get along well personally). So here this is, with my name on it Рmy personal opinion Рwith much more appropriate language than I would prefer to use, considering my anger at the “straw” who thinks he was clever and the people that put him up to doing what he did. How embarrassing for the community.

You know something, that’s funny, I don’t remember my family making this much of a fuss and bitching this bad when the Somerville Community News did a wickedly slanderous, multi-page story on my father and a couple of his friends in a blatant attempt to literally put him out of business. Let me guess, Ken, the people who goaded you into writing that piece of crap didn’t tell you about that, did they? Didn’t think so.

Hey, notice how they’re no longer around? Wait a second, they are – some of them are heavily involved with the PDS, and oh yeah – the very same people are trying to gather support for a new local web site ‚Äúdedicated to non-aggressive discussion‚Äù about matters that affect us all as Somervillians. Same dog, same wag, same tricks.