News-Record.com

Some recent comments and questions from readers:

Bill Burckley has taken umbrage with my column's reference to him last week. Burckley, an outspoken opponent of the downtown ballpark, called the reference to him "gratuitous."

I had written that if Melvin had decided to build a ballpark on the moon, Burckley would find a reason to oppose it. When informed the mention was a tongue-in-cheek illustration of how he rarely agrees with Melvin, Burckley disagreed with that, too.

"I agree with Jim Melvin on this Truth and Reconciliation thing," he said, referring to the panel that will revisit the Nov. 3, 1979 Klan/Nazi shootings.

"What a bunch of communists. What a bunch of losers. He and I see completely eye-to-eye."

Um, OK, Bill. ...

Another reader took issue with our word choice in an editorial on the Michael Jackson trial. Noting that we described the child molestation charges against Jackson as a controversy that is "juicy," Bill Brown called to protest.

"It seems to me that your choice of the word 'juicy' is despicable," Brown said. "Apparently you're not that familiar with child molestation and how troubling that is. You should pick your words better."

Mr. Brown is right. We should have been more sensitive.

Two readers complained of our choice of a syndicated editorial cartoon that depicted Pope John Paul at the bedside of Terri Shiavo, the brain-damaged Florida woman who is being kept alive with a feeding tube. "Suffering can be of value, my dear," he tells her.

They said the cartoon it was insensitive and pointless.

The theme of the cartoon, as I interpreted it, was its opposition to keeping Schiavo alive when she is arguably in an irreversible vegetative state. These two readers didn't share that interpretation, saying they didn't know what the cartoonist was trying to say but that whatever it was, it lacked judgment and taste.

Editorial cartoons by nature tend to push the envelope. One of the worst things an editorial cartoon can be is too safe. Yet we also try not to go so far as to be tasteless or offensive. We went too far in this case.

We try to choose cartoons carefully, treading the line between being provocative and not being boring or too predictable. Sometimes we succeed.

Finally, a reader questioned letters to the editor that criticized County Commissioner Skip Alston for charging that some city staff members were racist.

Citing the grisly killing by whites of a black man in Jasper, Texas, and the beatings of black men by police, the caller said he was disturbed at how the letter writers dismissed Alston so quickly and so unequivocally. "I can't believe you guys printed those letters," he said.

"Sometimes it is racism," he said