Peace rally portrayals miss the mark.

Byline: Bob Welch / The Register-Guard

In last Thursday's column, I wrote about the danger of letting our emotions about the war bring out the worst in us.

In Sunday's column, I did it myself.

I'm reminded of the raspy-throated woman at Yachats State Park I saw recently. Cigarette in hand, she was chastising kids on the rocks who were teasing the storm-whipped waves.

"They're going to kill themselves," she said between drags on her cancer-inducing cigarette.

I like to believe I walk my journalistic talk, but in Sunday's column, I stumbled.

I took a small, venomous element from Saturday's rally - people brandishing what I found to be low-blow anti-Bush-America signs - and played it off similarly vicious anti-left broadcasters on conservative talk radio.

If these are our only options of discourse, I lamented, where's the hope?

The column needed more context. I said that the "vast majority" of people tarry in the obscurity between far-right talk-show hosts who joke about running over protesters and far-left protesters who hoist "Bush-is-the-anti-Christ" signs.

But I could have included some qualifying sentences to suggest that folks in the latter camp were only a fringe element of Saturday's much larger peace rally.

In the eyes of some, the column was like writing about Autzen Stadium boozers and insinuating that all football fans are drunks.

"Get real," wrote one reader. "Your Sunday column is way off. I was at the peace rally for an hour. I saw the extreme signs you described in the column. The most frequent signs I saw, however, said simply 'Peace' or variations on the theme of 'No war.' If you decry stereotypic extremes in people's war views, why did your column highlight, and thus help perpetuate, them?"

Wrote another reader: "You provide a flash-in-the-pan look at the rally that offers no depth, yet criticizes the demonstrators for doing the same."

Yes, in my zest to chastise those on the poles, I overlooked the broad middle.

Why, asked one man, was there no mention of the "heartfelt emotion" expressed by the speakers?

"You make it sound like everybody out there is an extreme person," a woman said on the phone. "I've been amazed at the diversity of those at the rally. There are many more `mainstream people' than I've seen before.' '

Mainstream people, of course, don't stand out like people holding signs with biting messages that are designed to draw attention. Such signs obviously drew mine.

I arrived at the rally, like a lot of people, tangled in emotions whipped up by war. In some ways, I suppose, I'm envious of people on both ends of the spectrum who seem so smug in the certainty of their rightness.

Amid this swirl of uncertainty, I bristle at people who want to demonize and degrade those with whom they disagree - radio hosts talking about "idiot" protesters and protesters hoisting signs that degrade a country that, for better or worse, I love.

To me, that's war, too - just a more subtle version. And some of my frustration with that came out in the column.

"The vast majority of pro- and anti-war protesters are not the extremes you deride," wrote one woman. "They are people who are willing to make the effort to speak out for what they believe."

I agree.

"Surely, you cannot be saying that the few who are a little different in a demonstration deny the statement made by all," wrote a man.

Not at all. But in my zeal to chastise the polar fringes, I failed to delineate the honorable from the dishonorable, leaving the two, in the mind of many readers, lumped together.

That doesn't help us heal, it only deepens the wounds. And for that I apologize.

Bob Welch can be reached at 338-2354 or at [e-mail].