Keeping the Tasers holstered

Whether he wanted to be or not, University of Florida senior Andrew Meyer instantly became a worldwide media sensation - thanks to the UF police who shot him with a Taser, to U.S. Sen. John Kerry whose political stature gave Monday's incident immediate media appeal it might not otherwise have and to the global reach of cable news channels and Internet sites that ensured the video of Meyer's tussle with campus police, featuring his "Don't Tase me, bro" plea that's sure to be a catchphrase, could be viewed and discussed endlessly.

While it's not exactly clear caused the reaction of both sides, Meyer's episode has exposed a troubling aspect of contemporary political discourse.

Undoubtedly, being shot with a stun gun juiced with 50,000 volts of electricity is an unpleasant experience. It hurts, and it's meant to, since the weapon is intended to debilitate people. Student demonstrators have used the Meyer incident to protest the larger issue of Taser use by UF police - 17 times on campus, including on Meyer, since 2001.

The students have a point. Some of them told our Gainesville Sun colleagues that the police purposefully intimidated some speakers at Kerry's appearance. And given the number of police in the room, the Meyer matter should have been handled differently, and without resorting to the Taser. At one point six officers - six - are wrestling to subdue Meyer, who was partially handcuffed at the time. Once he had been gang tackled, the Taser was not necessary.

On the other hand, we can empathize with the police for being wary of Meyer. The killings at Virginia Tech University earlier this year demolished whatever notions we had that our college campuses are islands of peace and security untroubled by the violence outside their well manicured grounds. University authorities cannot be blamed for erring on the side of caution when someone exhibits erratic behavior in public.

To their credit, the UF Police Department is willing to submit to a review by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. It's appropriate for President Bernie Machen to withhold official condemnation, and any sanctions, of police until that investigation is completed.

Meanwhile, Meyer played a part in what happened to him. For one thing, aggressively challenging a U.S. senator would certainly invite instant scrutiny from police at the scene. Secondly, some evidence suggests Meyer, a journalism major described to the Star-Banner by one of his professors as a "goofball," attended Kerry's speech intent on drawing attention to himself and his antics - although perhaps not to the extent that occurred.

However, too often our leaders, or their handlers and security teams, are too quick to avoid answering tough, pointed and pertinent questions about their activities and how our government is managed.

Thomas Jefferson once wrote that "timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty." Andrew Meyer surely made waves at Kerry's appearance on Monday, and as shown by recent reports about the White House's blueprint for handling demonstrators opposed to the president's positions as well as the UF police reaction, some tend to think our pols need to be kept safely on the beach, far from the "boisterous sea" of hostile critics.

Thus, we reach the Catch-22 of political activism.

Ronald Collins, a scholar at the First Amendment Center in Washington, told the Star-Banner the police likely would have reacted differently had Meyer been an accredited journalist. But, he added, "I don't think an accredited journalist would have acted the way he acted."

That's true. Meyer was certainly obnoxious, but he has a right to be, and it seems part of Meyer's reasoning for challenging Kerry so aggressively was because the "accredited" journalists who covered Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign failed to get answers Meyer wanted to know.

The basic lesson from the Meyer incident is that a civil approach, good manners and politeness in such a setting will insure that the Tasers will remain in their holsters. But that's not the political climate we've established in recent years unfortunately, and we likely won't get there until politicians and journalists are more willing, or better able, to tell the public what it wants to know.