You can't tell a strike by its coverage. Too much goes on in secrecy for anyone to be able to find objective truth in the whirlwind of pickets and shouts in the streets.

Management, if it talks at all, spins its responses to make it appear to be the innocent and practically broke victim of rapacious unions.

Unions, if they talk at all, portray management as unfeeling, unthinking and disgustingly rich.

'Twas always thus, and it certainly was that way in the 2003 lockout, which management called a strike, of employees at the large supermarkets in North County.

That strike got fairly ugly as public-relations practitioners on both sides each hurled charges and epithets at the other, even as cucumbers spoiled in the coolers.

At a distance, flak pitched by flacks seems relatively harmless, even amusing, but up close, where the sneakers meet the bricks, it's neither.

Many old-line customers would not cross picket lines in 2003; the numbers and percentages of such refusals depended upon which side was issuing them. As did the reasons.

"The shoppers are with us," the unions cried, as if each customer had carefully weighed the "issues" against such imperatives as eating and drinking, and found the moral high ground better sustenance than groceries. No doubt some did take the high road.

"The shoppers are intimidated," management often responded, citing example after example of such union intimidation at supermarket doors, where, management intoned, tough guys lingered. At supermarket doors watched by North County Times reporters in 2003, some pickets looked raffish and some looked like wimps, so it seemed to be a wash.

But in at least one instance, at one door to an Albertsons (Woodland and Mission in San Marcos), there was a tough guy, large, swarthy, who seemed to think it his job to frighten customers away.

He talked loudly and gruffly, and put his head in too close.

In one case, this thug was manning the door when a 60-ish woman tried to enter. He blocked her way, asked a few sneering questions -- the answers to which were none of his business -- and appeared threatening.

In fear, she did not cross the line. She looked around. And found no help and little sympathy. Even the cops parked in their cruiser nearby seemed altogether disinterested.

Maybe it was a throwback moment. Maybe the lady came from other times in different streets. Maybe the thug had heard of the old days.

It was an odd cameo, somehow seeming out of place in the 21st century. Taking a stand seems somehow quaint. Blocking the way was a bad B movie.

It is a fact that swaggering bullies on picket lines have gone out of style.

For many years in the United States, as we know, strikes were serious and strenuous matters. They contained definite intellectual components, such as sharply debated views on the merits of capitalism itself. They frequently turned violent. Neither side was reluctant to punch somebody in the mouth to emphasize the correctness of his position and the foolishness of the other's.

In those days, the elderly and everybody else not directly involved wisely steered clear. Too many big shots were involved, too much raw power to get exposed to.

There were grand poobahs in those struggles: Reuther, Lewis, Hoffa, to name a few.

Here's a small example of the intense theater of labor strife back then: James R. Hoffa, the head of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, once said to A.H. Raskin, who for 40 years covered labor brilliantly for The New York Times: "Abe, you're going to scratch yourself on your typewriter one day and die of blood poisoning."

Such days are gone, probably forever. Unions have been reduced to a sort of simper on the American scene, with all due respect to those still carrying on, less exuberantly, in the name of the downtrodden worker.

In some ways, a key part of what it once meant to be an American -- sympathy for the working people, honor to their unions -- has disappeared. The great theater of "labor strife" threatens to disappear.

Corporations have long since won the day, or have come very close.

Contact columnist John Van Doorn at (760) 739-6647 or jvandoorn@nctimes.com.