At Least They Haven’t Called Her A “Nazi.” Yet.

Same ol’ same ol’ in the local yellow rag. Commissioner Meg Larson’s not running, but she’s still the focus and can do no right. And if she pulls no punches after two years, she is full of animosity. Mayor Warner is running, but she’s doing whatever in the background she wants, and she can do no wrong no matter what she does anyway. And if she were to stay quiet in the background for too long, they would (as they have done in the past) drag her stories out from time to time to show us how great she is.

The author of this article says we and other people online “hide behind cowardly anonymous facebook pages.” Could ya be more dramaticalized? Just because you don’t know someone’s name doesn’t mean they’re hiding, or even “anonymous,” especially if your friends know it. It probably just means you ain’t heard yet. But if we went around throwing our name out every time we posted here, then he’d say “he’s just trying to make a name for himself.” You can’t win with some people if they don’t want you to win. There’s always a way to bend things into faults or criticisms. Even things you just don’t know about.

And you can repeat it and repeat it and it might come true, but probably not. If you want to be serious about making future decisions, then hanging on to the untruths of life is not the way to go. We admit this is definitely not a “legitimate award winning North Carolina Press Associated weekly community newspaper” but we get by. We’ve never taken a survey, but some people have called this “news media” because it’s 2019. Some pejoratively, some as a matter of fact. Depends on how they feel and what they know and admit about the world and its contents. Things change. We try to roll with them and learn from them.

Stringing together words and phrases into logical patterns based on thinking and truthiness is not as hard as some would have you believe. Sometimes you make mistakes, but you don’t have to make the same ones over and over unless you really just enjoy making them. The UCW keeps making the same ones, because they don’t know things that people have shown them, and sometimes it seems as if they just really don’t want to.

After all this time, it would be nice if the writers at Up & Coming Weekly could also bury their personal animosity against Commissioner Larson and anyone they think supports her side.
Maybe they should “retire for their health and the health of community newspapers?”
Maybe it would help if they were not portraying their favorites as angels and the other side as devils?
Maybe it would help if the publisher was not having celebration pictures taken with some candidates. and not others?
Maybe it would help if they were not popping up every month or so repeating the same ol’, same ol’?
Maybe it would help if they could get over being condescending to anyone who dares question their actions and statements?
Maybe it would help if they could stop going back and forth in supporting Commissioner Bellflowers, depending on how he votes?
Maybe it would help if they didn’t refer to the mayor’s husband as “a political shark,” then tell you all the things he’s done as a political shark, then deny that anything a Warner could do in 2019 might have a political angle to it?
Maybe it would help if they didn’t try to bend everything into a criticism? Really? That’s a “glamour shot?” It’s a business suit, outdoors.
Maybe it would help if they hadn’t spent the past year with hit pieces, and then pretend surprise when people don’t want to participate?

Unfortunately, local politics in town has become personal because people make it personal. That’s why they rely on vague insults and innuendo. Most take it personal, even though they only recognize names and some bits of experience they might have had with different people or heard about through others. And even when it’s pointing out wrongdoings, it’s really not personal. It’s about issues that will last longer than all of us. In 2090 not many of us are going to be around and our names will be long forgotten. Same as most of the people who were running things in the 1950s. Government beyond high school should not be about personalities. Personalities have been twisted and fronted and facades have misled us and shoehorned us to where we are. It’s about doing the right things for the town, behind the scenes as well as in public.

You can see it all happen, it’s not hard to spot. Hopefully you can recognize the differences between “personal attack” and “disagreement” and between “difference of opinion” and “evil incarnate.”

**Edited 1:00AM 7/31/2019 Changed the title. The original one was confusing some people for some reason. Maybe because it switched to subjective propositions and didn’t stick with strictly linear facts they already agreed with. Most likely because they wanted to read what they wanted to read, not what was there.