I drive by the middle finger several times a week, and always it jumps out at me. It’s hard not to see the giant digit, stretched out across a banner that’s several feet wide and hanging at a local home. 

It’s accompanied by a certain four-letter word beginning with F that we don’t print in family newspapers, and the last name of the current president. 

Let me clear up any misconceptions right away. 

This banner would bother me no matter who it was directed toward — Democrat or Republican, politician or celebrity, national figure or local one. 

But the fact that it bears a message for our current president bears noting here for one very simple reason: the chances that President Joe Biden will ever see this giant middle finger (or the accompanying f-word) is slim to none. 

Presidents of any party have very rarely made their way to Sullivan County in our country’s history, and there’s no expectation that this one (or any who may be elected after him) should have reason to do so in the near future. 

Which presents what feels like a rather obvious question: If President Biden won’t see it, then who is this message for?

Is it for the buses of school kids who will soon be passing by this banner twice a day on their way to and from school?

Is it for the visitors to our county, to give them an eyeful of a very different kind of Sullivan County hospitality?

Is it for entrepreneurs who might be touring the community to determine if it’s the right place to bring their business?

Is it for the potential homeowners visiting local properties trying to find their forever homes?

Or perhaps it’s for the rest of us who live here, who work here, who pay taxes here and raise our kids here. After all, we’re the ones who have to look at that giant middle finger day after day after day.