We Must Find a Way to Return Politics to Civility (Opinion)

Friday, local resident Shaun Porter was successful in his efforts to get three peace orders filed against him thrown out for lack of evidence. Porter represented himself in the matter, and after Porter’s questioning the county employees who filed the orders on the stand, the judge ruled in his favor. And while justice was absolutely upheld in this matter as Porter had not done anything not protected by the first amendment, just because his behavior is legal doesn’t mean it’s right.

No-one will support the first amendment more than myself, but the only reason Porter’s behavior has to be tolerated is because it is involving a government entity. Should Porter attempt the same with a private organization, such as a local retail store, he will quickly find himself served paperwork demanding he never return or be charged with trespassing, much like he found himself kicked off YouTube.

I have directly expressed concern to Porter that he takes things too far, and would do much better to focus his efforts on policies instead of people. However, I understand that when efforts to change policy fail, sometimes the most effective way of gaining attention to an issue is by attacking politicians directly. We’re seeing this on a national level right now, with Democrats organizing protests against Trump and Elon Musk. And while these protests are not productive in getting policies modified, they are quite effective at building momentum and bringing voters to polls, as we saw with the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.

The county took quite a gamble with their peace orders against Porter, and fortunately for the first amendment their efforts were unsuccessful. That doesn’t mean I have to like Porter attending county meetings, literally making an ass of himself, and generally making county government employees feel uncomfortable. But it’s important to look at how we got here. Porter has been attending county meetings for quite some time now, conducting personal attacks against the County Commissioners. I don’t think anyone is even sure what actions the Commissioners did in the first place to warrant Porter’s attention, but after the attempt by the county to prevent him from speaking at meetings through peace orders, that’s irrelevant now. The peace orders against Porter elevated the stakes from an angry resident conducting personal attacks (which most people ignored) to a person of local “fame” for beating highly compensated attorneys in what he views as attempting to infringe on his first amendment. This changes the entire game, and Porter will undoubtedly leverage this victory to its fullest.

In our several years here at Radio Free Hub City, we’ve dealt with people similar to Porter, who disagreed with our news coverage. Those people have resorted to personal attacks against us, and attacks against RFHC, claiming we’re biased and generally throwing insults at us. While there are a couple I’ve simply blocked because I don’t have the patience for their regurgitated drivel which shows a complete lack of creativity beyond copy and pasting from another website, typically we’ll take most of the insults and actually turn them into t-shirts. We won’t retaliate, we won’t insult back or argue, we just take those insults, slap them on t-shirts, and thank the person for our new merchandise line. It’s like tug-of-war with a dog – the harder you tug, the more the dog tugs back. But if you let go of the rope, the dog gets bored, and he comes up and licks your face. And maybe, just maybe, that’s the solution to returning civility to County meetings, hopefully without the face licking. No, please, no face licking.

Now I’m not saying the county should start selling t-shirts with Porter’s insults, but if I were a County Commissioner (Lord help us if THAT ever happens), I would have taken an opportunity to respond to Porter’s mooning by criticizing imperfections in his buttox, and poke fun at the color of his thong. I’d also probably even bring a bar of soap to one of the meetings, and offer it to Porter to help him clean his potty mouth. And I would do all of this while laughing incessantly, and conclude with a statement that I’ll never be able to unsee what has been seen. I might even make a motion that the county look into contracts for technology to help erase that 3 minutes of my memory forever. I’d even have an entire segment of an upcoming County Commissioner meeting presenting County Attorney Kieffer a “second place” trophy in honor of Friday’s peace order hearings. And Mr. Porter, he’d get a trophy too.

Humor you see, can be a powerful tool in not only improving spirits, but disarming stressful situations. That is of course why I created the local “Hagerstown Report” satire site, as well as a few others, because we all need to laugh more. I have expressed to multiple parties that Porter is not a legal problem, as he is intimately familiar with the law. Porter is a PR problem, and needs to be treated as such. Once the county responds in kind with Porter as a PR problem, that problem will quickly resolve.

Opinion article by Ken Buckler, President of Radio Free Hub City. All opinions are his own, and do not reflect those of our sponsors or clients.

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