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Lex, Concerning the crack-cocaine comment let us both be kind and give Ms. Coulter a bit of leeway and just assume that she was having a brief ‘flash back?’ to her latest fiction mystery novel, okay? Or who knows, maybe she is suffering from brain plaque too; my excuse is age, I wonder what her's is.

Well, I just thought the crack-cocaine remark was particularly relevant for this community, given the discussions we've been having about crack, rehab and related issues for the past 14 months.

And right after the 2000 elections CBS ran a crawler on a late night entertainment show trying to recruit a sniper to assassinate President Bush. I guess THAT was funny, too, haha.
So what's your point?

The point is I believe that Ann Coulter, a respected commentator would make such a stupid remark that is in no way true nor funny. 'Meth' is making it's way east, already in western NC, but it is being used mainly by the younger crowd and we just may be able to get a handle on it's use by limiting access to the materials it is made from. Crack however is still the most addictive and damaging drug, and still very much with us. The 'crack' about Justice Stevens is just futher proof of calcification.

Wow Lex. You never cease to amaze.

Ann Coulter says one thing JOKINGLY and you jump on it. (The quote was "We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens’ crème brulee," Coulter said. "That’s just a joke, for you in the media.")

Where were you on Harry Belefonte's SERIOUS comments while hanging with socialist Chavez in Venezuela?

Where were you earlier last week when Cindy Sheehan coddled with Chavez and made more serious pronouncements such as saying Bush had committed "war crimes."

Lex, your cherry picking of "incredible" quotes to mention on your blog shows YET AGAIN your incredible bias.

It's just really too much.

You let serious remarks by liberals get a free pass, but one conservative makes a JOKE and it somehow ends up in your blog?

Also, what was she actually talking about when she said the crack-cocaine problem went away? Where is the full quote and the context? (Or does that not seem to matter for things that conservatives say?)

Ann Coulter is on TV every week as an "analyst," sells tons of books, etc., but Harry Belafonte, whose last hit was, what, 30 years ago, is absolutely equal in terms of reach and influence. OK, if you say so. Of course what he said was stupid. But I had to go and look it up because, funny thing, this was the first I'd heard of it.

I *said* that what she said was a joke. What part of that didn't you understand?

I guess your general snarkiness (a common trait among "very smart" newspaper people) lead me to *think* that you didn't really believe it was a joke.

"Also, she joked that Supreme Court justice John Paul Stevens should be poisoned. At least, I presume she was joking."

YOU SAID THAT EVEN THOUGH SHE SAYS SHE WAS JOKING!!!! (You "presume" it...)

I'm very interested in knowing the full quote about the crack problem being over. Any chance you can dig that up in the issue of fairness?

You can say that Ann has more influence than Cindy Sheehan, but any sensible person would disagree. I see Cindy on TV MUCH more often than Ann. Ann appears on TV *about* every two weeks. In fact, she has appeared on CNN only about 25 times in TWO YEARS.

Cindy is on TV just about every week -- in most cases on EVERY network. Some weeks she is on two or three nights a week.

And, so, now she GOES to a foreign country to meet with a socialist dictator who HATES the U.S. and denounces us and.. um.. nothing? Nada?

C'mon. You don't have a leg to stand on. Face it.

I'll throw you a bone with Harry Belefonte... he IS a washed-up has-been, but he seems to still get media traction once in a while (except when HE says something over-the-top...) I mean, the idiot recently spoke at Duke and got a key to the city of Durham (no surprises there, but he was thought highly enough to be paid to speak to "real smart" Dookies.. maybe next week, Davidson!!!)

My mistake..

Ann Coulter was on CNN *TEN* times in the last two years... not 24... let's see.. how many times did Cindy Sheehan appear?

http://www.sweetness-light.com/archive/soros-stooge-tries-to-block-coulter-from-cnn/

Nah, Davidson's more of a Wm. F. Buckley kind of place.

Ah, and look who is in the news AGAIN today.

Cindy will be broadcast on every network all day for the world to see.

Where will be all her crackpot *SERIOUS* statements? Missing.

Admit it. There is a bias. You're part of the problem Lex.

Jim, have you ever read rhetorician Andrew Cline's essay on bias? If not, please read it and then let's continue the conversation.

If Michael Moore had made a crack about Scalito being in need of "poison" he would be under arrest for a felony.

I have read thru this whole list of comments and found it to be just "little boys" smart mouthing each other. Haven't you anything more constructive to do with your time? A prominent person made two stupid remarks that should not have been made period regardless of context or "joking" justifications.

Oh, this is just too much.

You're so elistist on your let's-get-down-with-the-peeps blog that I now have to READ an essay to continue a conversation with you?

Lex, you've just proven my point!

You are an elitist! This whole thing is a sham!

I didn't say you had to read it in order to continue the conversation. I suggested that you read it because I think it makes a number of important and accurate points about journalism more quickly and clearly than I could. Don't want to read it? Then don't.

Jim, you seem to have made it your mission in life to berate me personally. I mean, whatever trips your trigger, but isn't that just a waste of your time? If I thought you had my best interests, and/or those of the paper, at heart and you were offering constructive criticism (as, to be fair, you occasionally have), that'd be one thing. But at least in the context of this post, you clearly don't. It's as if the entire existence of someone who doesn't see eye to eye with you on some issues just enrages you.

Seriously, what's that about?

Lex, what it's about is simple.

You're a fine person when it comes to certain points.

But, clearly, you go out of your way (or have blinders on) when it comes to certain issues.

I can't think of a time that you have ever criticized or pointed out a mis-step from a Democrat or liberal. I'm sure it has happened once or twice.

But, the vast, vast majority of your posts that involve politics take swipes at conservatives and Republicans. I know your arugment about "them being in charge," but I don't believe that's really the reason. There are plenty of others in the world to take pot-shots at.

I really actually like your sense of humor and your style (and usually your logic), but it irks me that it seems only directed at one party or view -- and that you somehow don't even see it that way.

I'm trying (albeit not very nicely, I'll admit) to get you (and others) to see that you're not exactly an equal opportunity critic when it comes to the world of politics.

Am I nice about it? I try to be, but I'll admit I get easly annoyed at the arrogance.

This whole blog thing is supposed to be a dialogue, but I see you and JR frequently take the tact of shutting down or just not responding to various posts, which makes me (and I sense others) more annoyed. It's so.... well... hypocritical.

OK, these are things we can address.

First, the only reason I've ever talked about my political affiliation in public is because a competitor once reported it inaccurately. (And that was long enough ago that I should probably get over it, huh?) My political activity is limited to voting. I don't do my job with an eye toward engendering a particular political outcome, but neither do I subscribe to a false notion of "balance" in news reporting: Sometimes the facts simply favor one side or the other. Lots of people don't believe that I try to be fair (more on the Right than the Left, but some there, too), and after 22 years in this line of work I think that if I could figure out a way to convince people of that, I'd have done it by now. But all my work since 1/1/1990 is on Nexis for anyone to look at. That body of work, rather than the odd blog post, is what I'd prefer to be judged on, although I know I don't necessarily get to choose how I'll be judged.

Yeah, at the national level, journalists are predominantly liberal and probably vote accordingly. That doesn't mean their politics *inevitably* slant their work (although sometimes they do). But in a list of things that directly affect what you read, hear and see in your daily diet of national and local news, the political leanings of the reporters probably wouldn't make the Top 5. The essay I linked to in an earlier comment above describes factors that, from my point of view inside the business, look more like what I see affecting how I have done my reporting and editing day to day over the years. (The essay also discusses political bias, but in what I think is a better context than that usually wielded by media critics of any political stripe.)

This blog isn't a valid statistical sampling of what's going on in my head. Some things I can't blog about (or can't *yet*), others I simply won't, some things strike me as funnier than others, some I just can't think of anything to say about that someone else hasn't already said, and so on and so on. So I get a bit annoyed sometimes when people read this blog and presume that they know more about what I think than I do.

I suspect that that annoyance contributes to the arrogant tone of some of my posts and comments. The rules of engagement here, for better or worse, are that pretty much everyone who posts on this blog *except me* is allowed to be snarky (or worse), and I'm supposed to stay above it all because I represent the company whether I like it or not. I knew this going in and accept it on an intellectual level. And I generally retain my perspective during even the harshest criticism of the N&R. But on an emotional level, in the heat of the moment, when I *personally* am being criticized, sometimes I slip. I shouldn't. I'm trying to do better.

As for closing off comments, as I've said before, I've done that on a very few posts where I was being personally attacked, the attacks had nothing to do with the original post and I didn't think the "dialogue," if you want to call it that, was going anywhere. (I can't say whether JR has ever done the same.) I've banned a couple of individuals who continued to post such attacks, but I left them free to comment on any of our other blogs or elsewhere on the Web site. I don't think I've ever intentionally deleted any comments that weren't spam. Certainly, you can go back through the archives and find all manner of uncomplimentary comments still there for the world to see. If I were trying to suppress criticism, it would have been very easy for me to do a more thorough job.

As for simply not responding to some comments, I won't speak for JR. As for me, well, Brenda Bowers suggested above that maybe we'd be better served if I didn't respond to *more* comments, and she might have a point. At any rate, my blogging time isn't unlimited, and it tends to come in irregular bits and pieces. Sometimes I intend to come back and say something and then forget; sometimes, as with some personal attacks, I figure it's just not worth the effort, compared with other stuff on which I could be spending my time. That's a judgment call, and I admit it's subjective.

But if you think I'm ignoring or have overlooked a legitimate question or issue, particularly an issue regarding the N&R or the site rather than me personally, by all means, comment again. I'll be notified automatically by e-mail (at least, when the rassafrassin' e-mail server is working) and I will respond as soon as I can.

I want the paper and the Web site to get better. Some of your previous comments suggest strongly that you do, too, and I appreciate that. Let's go from there.