reality bites By James Norton

What seemed to be a sleepy little special election turned into a feeding frenzy for the infamous pod people.  It would be fair to say that even the so called ‚Äúprogressives‚Äù have been inducted into the pool of political bottom feeders this time because in the last few days they certainly showed their teeth, finally.

Over the last week, there has been much rumination on our weblog regarding the different political pieces distributed by both sides of this battle.  The lines were clearly drawn and there was much to debate regarding the validity of certain claims.  The weblog was flush with one-sided, misinformed rants directly and indirectly aimed at purposely misleading the issues – from gang members in the Youth Center to sketchy endorsements and everything lumped in between.

It was fun to watch for a while and when it seemed like nobody would step in to set the record straight, I will give credit to Alderman Roche for logging onto the weblog and laying out the facts for people to chew on.  This seemed to set the other side afire for a brief moment, much to the delight of both sides.  It was funny to see the weblog alive with conflict, once again, much as it has been so many times over the past three years.

Part of the problem, as I pointed out last week, with the gang members being invited into the Youth Center had nothing to do with reaching out to ‚Äúat-risk‚Äù teens and young adults ‚Äì it had everything to do with the emotional wreckage inflicted on the general population of kids who went there to utilize the services it was meant to provide in the first place.  Such a reckless misstep only caused kids and parents to become very wary of ever stepping foot into the Youth Center again, and that is truly a shame.

Just as the so-called ‚Äúprogressives‚Äù tasted the blood in the water, the ‚Äúold school‚Äù machine kicked into high gear in the final days of the campaign and came through on Election Day.  Don‚Äôt get it all twisted ‚Äì the progressives acted in the same way and manner in which they complained originally brought them into the local political arena to begin with ‚Äì with slight of hand political maneuvering, misinformation and ultimately even Republican-style scare tactics.  In the end, the truth won out.

The night before the election the online bloggers were stopped in their tracks.  I will give at least one of them credit for having the guts to put their real name to their posts (other than the usual suspects, myself included), while most of the rest posted anonymously.  It was good to see another great online interaction between two opposing sides that this city has needed for so long and thanks to the powers that be at The News, carries on every day at www.thesomervillenews.com.

So here we sit, election night and Jack won after overcoming some impressive odds against the progressive machine (modeled so closely after the people they supposedly despise) and after a string of successful campaigns (Jehlen and Provost for example), the progressives thought they had this in the bag.  They weren‚Äôt alone ‚Äì until the very end ‚Äì when everyone who is anyone seemed to come together.  For a minute or two it seemed as if it wouldn‚Äôt come together for Jack, who was clearly the better candidate from the very beginning, but it worked out in the end.  Thank God.