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As I was trying to understand Greensboro City Councilwoman Dianne Bellamy-Small's strange but true recent tantrum over not getting her desired corner office at City Hall, I couldn't help but think of the NBC's superb, dry-witted sitcom "The Office."

Only this was real.

As Inside Scoop reported, Bellamy-Small refused, angrily, to draw lots for council office spaces. She wanted a certain corner office, period, she said, end of story. Even when Tom Phillips surrendered his lot to grant her desired choice, she wasn't happy. She wanted the other corner office.

Bellamy-Small remains an enigma among council members, distant and volatile and hard to talk to.

I have had contact with Bellamy-Small for a number of years and don't remember her always having such a short fuse.

I first met her when she was a community columnist and state youth advisor of the NAACP, more than 25 years ago.

She was smart (apparently still is) and pleasant in those days, as I recall.

Now she has been involved in a string of incidents that raise questions about her temperament and judgment:

The RMA report leak, which she attributes to someone stealing her report.

The refusal to participate in weekly City Council press conferences. (Maybe that shouldn't come as a surprise; she rarely talks to reporters.)

Her tardiness with tax payments.

She is an odd mixture of extrovert and introvert, a singer with a strong voice, a performer, author and storyteller, a conductor of workshops for women and a vigorous promoter of ... herself. But at the same time she is painfully guarded and seems intent on building a thick, high wall around herself.

Seh barely beat challenger Luther Falls in the last District 1 election. Falls appears hell-bent on running again.

Bellamy-Small appears hell-bent on making it easier for him.

As I shopped last weekend at the Belk store in Four Seasons Town Centre, I thought about how pleasant the experience was, not to mention the really good prices on dress shirts.

I also thought about the challenges facing High Point Road (we have an editorial coming on plans to revive High Point Road Sunday) and recent bad publicity surrounding a shooting last month in the mall.

I still consider the mall an extremely safe place to be. And I'll still go there.

In fact, I've considered recent pronouncements that it is dying and dangerous way over the top.

Koury Corp. President Steve Showfety told me this week that it's important for the city to help protect assets such as the coliseum, the Koury Convention Center, the mall and a new Koury shopping complex across the street by helping to remake the surrounding area --which, frankly, has become seedier and dirtier.

Sad to say, Belk was robbed Wednesday by an armed man. The men's department.

Interesting N&O (registration required) piece on the growing influence of blogging in North Carolina politics.

This week's column.

At 6-foot-7, 300-plus pounds, Guilford County Sheriff BJ Barnes cuts an imposing figure.

Pound for pound and inch for inch, he is the biggest elected official in Guilford County, in more ways than one.

He has a big voice, a deep baritone drenched in self-assurance.

He likes big bikes, muscular Harleys that ooze horsepower.
He has a big office ... big enough to run laps in if you take baby steps.

"The governor's office is not this big, I'm afraid," he says apologetically of the huge, oak-paneled room during an interview at the Sheriff's Office on West Washington Street. "But there's nothing else you can do with it."

And he is a big deal in county politics.

Some say Barnes is a kingmaker and kingbreaker among Guilford Republicans. Others say he has a big future. Citing Barnes' popularity, his 12-year incumbency and the inevitability of his re-election every four years, they see a possible run for Congress or the legislature.

Meanwhile, Barnes seems perpetually in the middle of big news stories, especially lately.

There was his bitter campaign against two-time challenger Berkley Blanks, a former Greensboro police officer.
There is the still-simmering debate over his insistence that sheriff's deputies stationed in public schools remain equipped with Tasers.

There is at least an indirect offshoot of that debate that could develop into another big story: the possible removal of law enforcement officers in some Guilford County schools, prompted at least in part by the Taser issue. The school board will consider at its Thursday meeting letting principals decide whether the officers will remain in their schools.

There is Barnes' push for a politically unpopular jail expansion to relieve dangerous overcrowding.

There is the ongoing arson investigation of the fire that destroyed Eastern Guilford High School on Nov. 1.

Where to begin?

First, Barnes won't back off one iota on the Taser issue. His only regret, he says, is that he didn't notify the school board that his school-based officers would be equipped with the stun guns, as are all deputies in the field.

"If I had thought there was going to be such a firestorm over this I would have notified the school board differently," he says. "To me it was just another piece of equipment, like a Crown Victoria."

But he makes it clear, this would have been informing the board, not asking its permission. As for the fact that High Point and Greensboro police officers don't carry Tasers in schools, Barnes says the Sheriff's Office doesn't necessarily do something because other agencies do it. Then, referring specifically to the current turmoil in Greensboro's police department, he adds: "GPD has got a firestorm of their own. We don't do that either."

Aggis Pride has seen better days.

First came word that a former A&T vice chancellor for information technology been charged with embezzlement and obtaining property by false pretense.

Now this.

As Lanita Williams has reported, a team of high-level administrators and auditors from UNC General Administration is investigating problems in fiscal management and oversight at A&T.

UNC System President Erskine Bowles describes the problems as a "lack of internal control,lack of proper systems, lack of IT functionality, financial irregularities and the lack of control at its foundation."

Serious stuff.

Interim Chancellor Lloyd V. Hackley asked for help in late December, he said, because he had been "smelling some smoke."

Both Hackley and the chairwoman of A&T’s Board of Trustees, Velma Speight-Buford, say these problems began on the watch of the school's previous chancellor, James Renick.

Renick, who is a senior vice president at the American Council on Education in Washington, has not talked to the News & Record but did release a written statement today:

"I am extremely proud of the accomplishments of the faculty, staff and students at North Carolina A&T State University while I was chancellor. During that time, state officials annually conducted a rigorous series of financial audits of the institution. Those audits, which remain part of the public record, found no serious financial irregularities."

Still, this does not look good and threatens to tarnish what had been a blemish-free legacy.

Renick was engaging, energetic and charismatic as A&T chancellor. Students loved him. The community embraced him. He's pulled stunts such as bunking in a dorm room, helping students move onto campus and sprinting on the A&T track.

He probably got too much credit for the building boom on campus,which by and large was not his doing ... the voters passed bonds to build most of the projects regardless of who was sitting in the chancellor's chair. But the projects were managed efficiently on his watch (so far as we could tell).

He rebuillt tattered relations with alumni.

And Renick brought new excitement to A&T.

But in a conversation late last year with the News & Record editorial board, Bowles chose his words carefully in his assessment of Renick's tenure and expressed concern that some programs at A&T, such as engineering, were not as strong as they could be.

Meanwhile, Hackley, whose military background probably fuels his methodical campaign to fix things at A&T, has been far from a figurehead. He is kicking hinies and taking names, so to speak.

Call it irony or great timing, but one of the honorees ar Tuesday's Bryan Foundation annual luncheon was Hackley.

He won an "Unsung Hero" award.

What runaway bride? John Bobbitt who?

The NASA love triangle story is so weird and salacious it puts previous tabloid classics to shame.

You've got astronauts, pellet guns, mallets and diapers.

Desperate Housewives, eat your hearts out.

Who needs fiction when real news is this wacky?

Lifetime probably already has a movie in production.

Despite the recent lessons of the Duke lacrosse case, the mad rush to judgment over alleged attacks of Palestinian students by football players still at times resembles the Running of the Bulls at Pamplona.

Some people still are making dangerous assumptions based only on the barest threads of contradictory information. Others don't want to wait for the investigation to run its course.

We have been conditioned to believe justice moves at the pace of a "Law & Order" episode, where the legal system leaps at warp speed between commercial breaks.

Meanwhile, I'm still puzzling over the forum I attended two weeks ago at Guilford College.

Don't get me wrong; it was as constructive and open a dialogue on a sensitive issue as I've seen in a long time.

But time and again people broached the issues of race, religion and ethnicity. And time and again some of them raised what could be legitimate concerns (or not; I don't know at this point) about Guilford's effectiveness over the years in addressing those issues.

But not once did anyone mention the irony that some of the alleged assailants (the count now has grown to three) are African American players.

This is not to say that this negates those other concerns. But this fact does suggest that, should the allegations be true, intolerance can be practiced by any of us.

Shouldn't a full, honest discussion about this incident acknowledge that?

This week's column.
Even if you're a purist who prefers your sports venues 100 percent free of the taint of corporate marketing, you have to admit, the words "First Horizon Park" do have a certain poetry to them.

They're also bringing in an estimated $275,000 in annual naming-rights fees.

Yeah, but the ballpark just as easily could have wound up as Piggly Wiggly Pavilion.

That's worth bearing in mind as a new discussion on naming rights for the Greensboro Coliseum appears imminent.

Greensboro City Councilman Mike Barber floated the idea last week as a way to help fix the increasingly cheesy main drag from Interstate 40 to the heart of the city, High Point Road and Lee Street.

Barber rightly sees the coliseum and the Koury Center/Four Seasons complex as cornerstones to a revival that the well-traveled — and now well-worn — area desperately needs and deserves. One of Barber's solutions: Sell the naming rights to the Greensboro Coliseum and rechristen the High Point Road/Lee Street corridor to honor the area's veterans.

Barber then would funnel the proceeds from the naming rights back to the efforts to revitalize the High Point/Lee area. "If you can get a First Horizon to name a single-A baseball field," Barber says, "don't you know you could get a major corporation to name the home of the Atlantic Coast Conference?"

I don't know the protocol on these kinds of things, but I would be interested in hosting an informal meet-up with some of our regular blog commenters.

The idea came up before when some of us broached the idea of seeing a movie as a group ("V for Vendetta," I think) but I dropped the ball and didn't follow up.

I know bloggers hold in-person conferences, but is this kind of thing also done among blog commenters?

Would anyone show anyway?

In an editorial, The Charlotte Observer applauds the vindication of the Dixie Chicks, with five Grammys at Sunday night's ceremonies.

In a news story in the same issue, the Observer reports that it won't mean much, at least around there.

Local country radio stations still won't play 'em.

Today's burning question (other than who's the father of Anna Nicole's baby?:

Is Hillary's hair fair game?

After a slow start I think we actually may be able to get this party started.

How about Wednesday, March 13, at 5 p.m. at The Press in Southside?
Backup date: Thursday, March 14, 5 p.m.

We can meet, get acquainted and save the world over a glass of wine.

RSVP ASAP. Thanks.

Former NBA star Tim Hardaway heaved an air ball in horrible judgment when making the following comments about the recent revelation that retired NBA center John Amaechi is gay:

"First of all, I wouldn't want him on my team," Hardaway said in a talk radio interview. "And second of all, if he was on my team, I would, you know, really distance myself from him, because, uh, I don't think that is right. I don't think he should be in the locker room while we are in the locker room."

It got (much) worse. When the interviewer asked if those comments weren't homophobic, Hardaway said:

"You know, I hate gay people, so I let it be known. I don't like gay people and I don't like to be around gay people. I'm homophobic. I don't like it. It shouldn't be in the world and it shouldn't be in the United States."

Hardaway later apologized, saying the comments were a mistake -- but not saying his sentiments were a mistake.

Another former NBA star, Charles Barkley, when asked about Amaechi, had a much different take:

"Hey, nobody cares John Amaechi is gay. I just find it humorous and amazing people think we care if someone is gay or not. It is always fun to hear these reporters say how we'd treat them in the locker room. Trust me, we'd treat reporters a lot worse than we treat a gay guy."

Recommended reading in Sunday's Ideas section:

An editorial on the Guilford County Schools' Very Strong Needs Program, which surfaced last December in controversial comments by school board member Deena Hayes.

Hayes questioned the level of interaction between VSN students and the general school population. She used the words "slaves" and "slave masters" to characterize the level of that interaction.

Although the editorial reflects the views of the editorial board, editorial writer Tracie Fellers reported and wrote it. She conducted considerable research on the topic. She also spent half a day with students and teachers in the VSN program at Lincoln Middle School.

That one interjection perfectly sums up a Greensboro police officer's mortified reaction to having pulled over a City Council member for driving 50 mph in a 35 mph zone.

Margaret Banks' story on the e-mail dialogue between the rookie officer and fellow police gives an instructive picture of the traffic stop that should have netted Councilwoman Dianne Bellamy-Small a speeding ticket.

No. 1: It showed the abject fear of an officer who was only doing his job but was terrified that he happened to stop a councilwoman.

No. 2: It suggests strongly that Bellamy-Small tried to rub her status as a council member in the officer's face.

Bellamy-Small contended in an e-mail of her own that "every aspect of my private life is not up for scrutiny unless it is somehow related to my public service."

With all due respect, who is she trying to fool?

Using her office not so subtly to intimidate the young officer is about related to her "public service" as any incident can be.

More on Bellamy-Small Sunday.

This week's column.
City Councilwoman Dianne Bellamy-Small will shake your hand with a grip so firm that you're tempted to check for broken bones.

Sad to say, the second-term representative of District 1 in southeast Greensboro has displayed a much less certain grip on the duties and obligations of an elected official. She is an enigma ... an introverted extrovert, well-spoken but tight-lipped, book-smart but politically naive. She touts her accessibility and her responsiveness but typically does not speak to reporters.

And when she does answer questions, she requires that they be faxed to her. She in turn faxes the answers back to reporters. Or not.
She even appears aloof and estranged from fellow council members, some of whom have privately expressed frustration with her words and actions.

And she continues to confound and befuddle us all with a series of odd behaviors.

In the latest incident, Bellamy-Small allegedly told a police officer, who stopped her for speeding on Feb. 7, that she intended to discuss the matter with Police Chief Tim Bellamy. She asked for the officer's card and "made a point" to tell him "that she was coming from a council meeting," wrote his supervisor in an e-mail to his superiors.

The supervisor also wrote in the e-mail that "I am hoping she did not attempt to intimidate a young officer from doing his duty and that she would not attempt to use her political position to try and adversely affect a young and impressionable officer's career."
The officer, M.J. Calvert, 24, has been on the force for slightly more than a year. He gave Bellamy-Small only a verbal warning when he might very well have issued a ticket.

Last week, in an e-mailed nonanswer to several faxed questions from the News & Record, Bellamy-Small was as cryptic as ever, saying "I am proud of the fact that our Greensboro Police Dept. is out there executing their duty" and that "the officer and I concluded our conversation and there was not (sic) problem to report."

Beyonce graces the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. Some decry the annual issue as exploiting or objectifying women, even as it annually makes a ton o' money.

But it has taken so long for the magazine finally to recognize the beauty in black women, I ain't mad at 'em.

The city of Winston-Salem has announced a $1.65 million settlement with Darryl Hunt for its part in convicting him for a murder he did not commit.

I helped cover the Hunt case back in 1984 and remember the questions and the shoddy police work surrounding the grisly early murder of newspaper copy editor Deborah Sykes.

I also remember the city itself questioning the quality of the investigation in a scathing report back then. The city manager's office pointed out willful neglect in that report and the lead investigator was demoted.

Still, Hunt languished in prison for 18 years.

He received a reasonable settlement although it's arguable he deserved even more.

What price tag do you put on half of your adult life?

Hunt also received an official apology from the city.

So far as I can tell, this matter was handled gracefully and without a lot of political posturing.

Mayor Allen Joines say the city "expresses its sincere regret, extending its profound and sincere apology to Darryl Hunt for all that he has endured and suffered in this matter."

Wonder how Greensboro might have handled a similar case.

My continuing frustration with the Chief Wray saga is the lack of context and the gaping holes in the narrative, which is more cryptic than an episode of "Lost."

Scraps of information make it hard to solve the puzzles of the deposed chief's downfall and the ex-chief's insistence that his department contained dirty cops who needed removing.

That said, the latest taped revelations are unflattering to Wray and paint a disturbing picture. That Wray was a flawed manager seems clearer than ever. That he appears to have misled the city manager about his knowledge of a "black book" containing black officers' photos is troubling.

Meanwhile, some defend the taped episode in which ex-Deputy Chief Randall Brady discusses with Detective Scott Sanders the need to deal with a woman who was stalking Wray, "even if we have to do something to make it look like she's done something."

Puh-lease.

The woman may well have been disturbed and even deluded. But the manner in which this was discussed by Brady and was being handled was ethically wrong and arguably an abuse of Wray's power and position.

Is there a pattern in the Wray administration of addressing potentially legitimate problems and issues clumsily and heavyhandedly?

Sure seems so.

Is the object of Wray's obsession, Lt. James Hinson, a bad cop?

I don't know.

Is Wray a racist?

I don't know that either.

Did Wray alienate many of his officers and erode the trust of a city manager who had played a key role in hiring him? Absolutely.

Too many pieces of this puzzle are still missing. It would be helpful if the city released more information, not as a PR ploy but to aid the community's understanding of what is going on.

From the N&O this week: A guest speaker in a Raleigh high school class passes out pamphlets denouncing Islam, one of which warns girls not to marry a Muslim man.

"You may be excited that you found the 'tall, dark, and handsome man' you have been looking for," one pamphlet says, "but do not be fooled and become a victim of his religion, Islam, which has very oppressive rules regarding women' status and rights. Such marriages will never be out of trouble."

"Who knows who Lee Street is named for anyway?" Mike Barber says of his suggestion to rechristen that street and High Point Road in honor of World War II veterans.

Barber, a city councilman, sees the new name as part of a grand plan to sell the naming rights to the coliseum, which was built in honor of veterans.

War Memorial Auditorium would retain its name, as Barber sees it, and the new corridor would provide a way to expand recognition of veterans while targeting the area for revitalization.

But would anyone care if the name Lee Street suddenly disappeared.

It depends on which Lee you're talking about.

No one seems to know for sure, but there are two theories: Robert E. Lee, the Confederate hero, or Col. Lighthorse Harry Lee, Robert's father and a hero in the Battle of Guilford Courthouse.

Bill Moore, retired former director of the Greensboro Historical Museum, warns that it's just speculation, but the evidence points to Robert E.

Moore's research reveals the name Lee Street dates back to 1879 but no earlier. Coincidentally, Silas Dodson, a Confederate veteran, was mayor from 1877 to 1881.

Moore postulates that Dodson may have come up wuth the street name during his tenure in office.

This is pure conjecture, of course. And it probably won't become an issue anyway. Barber will be the first to tell he's coming up with wild and crazy ideas every day. Who's to say this one sticks?

But if it does, be warned. We published a letter honoring Robert E. Lee back in January. We are still receiving reaction letters, pro and con -- so many that I had to stop publishing them.

You know how people are about the Civil War around here. It never ended.

This week's column.
The city of Winston-Salem announced a $1.65 million settlement last week with Darryl Hunt for its role in convicting him for a 1984 murder he did not commit.

Another man eventually confessed to the rape and murder of newspaper copy editor Deborah Sykes and DNA evidence confirms it. But not until Hunt had spent 18 years in prison.

Hunt probably could have successfully sued the city for a considerably greater amount — as much as $1 million more — had he chosen to take the matter to court.

But true to his graceful demeanor throughout this ordeal, Hunt decided not to. And an ugly chapter in Winston-Salem’s history has ended on a hopeful and constructive note.

As significant as the money was in the case was the city’s formal, written apology. Mayor Allen Joines and the Winston-Salem City Council last week acknowledged "actions of city officers and employees, and of others, which fall far short of the standards this city holds and espouses.

"For such actions ... the city expresses its sincere regret, extending its profound and sincere apology to Darryl Hunt for all that he has endured and suffered in this matter."

The Hunt episode again brings up the question of the value and appropriateness of apologies, especially as they apply to governments and institutions. And especially as they apply to events that happened in the past.

The issue has come up frequently in recent months, and has involved a wide range of events, people and organizations. For instance, two fellow daily newspapers, The News & Observer of Raleigh and The Charlotte Observer, apologized last November for their roles in helping to foment the 1898 Wilmington race riots that effectively overturned a city government and disenfranchised black citizens there for decades.

Some say we should not be held culpable for the sins of our fathers, and that current administrations should not be held accountable for the mistakes of past administrations. After all, Allen Joines wasn’t mayor when Darryl Hunt was convicted, nor was the current chief of police, Pat Norris, in her job at the time.

It's too easy to question the priorities of some news organizations these days. It's too hard not to.

The network morning shows remain among the most egregious offenders.

First came the runaway astronaut in the diaper. Then came Anna Nicole. Then came the hard-hitting "Today" report on the teenager who has had the hiccups for two weeks.

Describing her as a "rogue council member," City Councilwoman Florence Gatten has called for a fellow member, Dianne Bellamy-Small, to resign.

Gatten made her case Monday at City Hall.

Not mincing her words, Gatten said, "Why do we have someone that is obviously spinning out of control?"

In an uncharacteristically direct (though written) response to a question, Bellamy-Small said she isn't going anywhere. But it's not her decision alone.

As Mark Binker notes over at Inside Scoop, there's already a mechanism for Bellamy-Small's constituents to show her the door.

They could petition to recall her.

As we all know, there is a strong case for Bellamy-Small to pack it in. Her latest odd behavior is her evolving story about her encounter with a police officer who pulled her for speeding. First, there was no problem, she contended several days ago. Now she has filed a complaint against the officer.

But she is up for re-election in a district she barely won anyway.

The voters will have the chance to bid her farewell soon enough.

Meanwhile, Gatten sounds suspiciously like a mayoral candidate.

When I first got wind of it, a column titled "Why I Hate Blacks," posted at asianweek.com on Feb. 23 by Kenneth Eng, had to be some kind of a sick put-on, I assumed.

Apparently it was not, writes Richard Prince. Here's what it said.

The column eventually was pulled and was denounced by a number of Asian Americans. And the writer was suspended.

But how could it be published in the first place? What could this man's editors have possibly been thinking?