Spinning Hurricane Isabel: the ideological significance of fallen trees.

On a beautiful fall morning, not long after I Hurricane Isabel blew through the Washington area, a shuttle bus trundled down a street in suburban Maryland where most residents had been without electricity for several days running. Inside the bus, a man and a woman, seated apart but joined by ideology, complained bitterly about the continued power outages, which they attributed to incompetence and corruption on the part of local Republicans.

If he were governor of Maryland, the man said--instead of the Republican who is, Bob Ehrlich--he'd give Pepco, the local utility, 24 hours to get power restored, or take over and do it himself. The woman agreed, but said President Bush was also to blame, for caring more about spending billions to rebuild Iraq than needs here at home. Bush is more interested in invading countries, she said, and killing people. The Republicans were "incompetent" and "idiots," they loudly agreed.

Thus provoked, a man sitting directly across from the woman joined the debate with an opposing view. "You can find idiots anywhere," he muttered. "Even riding a bus."

This, the woman responded, was precisely the kind of thing she expected to hear from "the right wing."

The second man told her to just shut up. She declined, citing her "First Amendment rights" and inclination to exercise them.

Her interlocutor was not convinced, insisting that she did not have the right to offend a bus filled with people, and that there were better ways to express her opinion.

"How?" she wondered aloud.

"Politely, and quietly," he responded.

Her answer, laced with mildly foul language, was that politeness will get you nowhere.

At this point, the argument took an uglier turn. The man, identifying himself as Irish American, told the woman, who herself spoke with an Irish accent, that he was "ashamed" to share ancestry with her.

She remarked that she did indeed hail from the Emerald Isle, in fact the northern portion thereof, and was proud of it.

He intimated that perhaps she was responsible for some of the violence there.

She'd never set off a bomb there, the woman replied, "but now I wish I had."

The other passengers began looking around for exit doors, as the man continued to needle her with ethnic slurs.

Finally, the man told the woman to express her opinion where it counts, at the ballot box. But he, too, was frustrated by a lack of power. As the bus pulled up to the Metro train station, he issued a parting shot: Until a few months ago, he carried a badge, he told her. If he had one today, "you'd be under arrest."

Getting It Wrong on the Iraq war

Poll shows many Americans have misperceptions
about key facts of the Iraq war

Primary news source for those who believe:

Since the war ended,
the U.S. has found
Iraqi weapons of
mass destruction

Fox           33%
CBS           23%
NBC           20%
CNN           20%
ABC           19%
Print media   11%
PBS/NPR       17%

U.S. has found clear evidence
that Saddam Hussein was
working closely with the
al-Qaeda terrorist group

Fox           67%
CBS           56%
NBC           49%
CNN           48%
ABC           45%
Print         40%
PBS/NPR       16%

Source: PIPA Knowledge Networks Poll of 3,334 adults,
June-Sept 2003,1.7% error margin.
Graphic based on chart from KRT

Sandy Bergo is a freelance writer and former TV investigative producer.