A well-respected national writer who will remain nameless emailed me to complain about something that I wrote. In this piece, which I will not point to, In the Newberg Report's annual book, I ripped another national writer. While I initially didn't wish to point to NMLR and cause Jamey any further problems, I've changed my mind. Here's the sentence in question: "Hacks can even fall back to rote description and most will read it - heck, Phil Rogers still has a job, doesn't he?" The emailer said that while this would be something that would be "okay saying to friends or on your blog, it has no place in print." ( paraphrased )

First, it implies that this blog doesn't have standards, which is something I've struggled a bit with and something that I feel needs to be addressed by the blog community as a whole. Second, it criticizes without all the facts. Indeed, there are only two writers I know who I believe worthy of the criticism I gave. They make themselves worthy not only because of a lack of skill and insight, but their personal commitment to keeping what they believe is a rightful monopoly on information. Those that are both ignorant and obstructionist, to me, give up their privilege of professional courtesy.

This issue, along with other similar issues, is important. In the long run, it does me no good to pick fights with the establishment. On the other hand, there's probably a time where there are certain walls where we need to cease beating our heads against them and begin kicking them down.

Commence commenting ... this one's very important.