Free speech or in-your-face harrassment? That’s the issue swirling around the saga of Steve and Virginia Pearcy, a Berkeley couple who hung a soldier in effigy from their second home in Sacramento sparking a firestorm of protest. But the couple Pearcy has a long history of doing politically provocative things.
Digger’s Realm has the latest in its detailed series on this case. This entry focuses on the renters who put up a pro-Bush campaign sign, only to find the landlord placed written signs on the lawn…then threatened them with legal action when they took pictures of them. Read it all because the whole affair transcends partisan politics to some bigger issues. One isn’t legal: isn’t there a difference between showing your political preference and rubbing something in people’s faces to show you can? There’s a long history here in this fascinating case, which Diggers has archived in great detail.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.