Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Colin McNickle and Tom Balya

The Tribune-Review is a major newspaper. Currently, the world economy is in decline. The economy in the US looks bad. We have a new president. We have many new elected represenatives. A new county commissioner. Lots of stuff to write about. So, what does McNickle write about: Tom Balya called someone a dipshit. Shocking. I may never be the same after hearing dipshit. WTF!

Some background. If you e-mail Tom Balya with a question or you want to start a debate, he will reply and engage you in a discussion. From personal experience, Tom Balya considers e-mail between two people to be private. It should be, but it is not. I know all this very well. When Kim and George were running against Tom and Tom, my self-appointed duty was to taunt Balya through my blog and e-mail. I tried very hard to get a good quote to use in the campaign, but he did not bite. I did blind CC: an e-mail I sent Tom to a Trib writer. He did go ballistic over that to me, but he held his tongue until after the election. To my recollection, he did not use profanity. However, I would have not been even slightly annoyed by dipshit. I am not in the third grade.

So, a guy named Bill Eger routinely e-mailed Balya for debate. Balya seemed to engage Eger. It is actually a positive trait if an elected official is so willing to engage in debate. The problem is Balya wrote dipshit in his response. Oh heavens. What should we do? Will the world ever be the same? And Eger forwarded that e-mail to the Trib's McKickle who wasted newspaper space on a column.

I personally think it is great that you can engage your elected officials in policy debate. Without having the complete exchange of e-mails, you can't criticize him for using the word dipshit. Without the tone of Eger and Balya's relationship, the exchange is taken out of context. I should know because I tried to bait Balya into the same thing in the past.

I have since changed. I think others should to. If a column was to be written criticizing anyone, it should have been written about Eger forwarding the e-mail to the Trib.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh Perry, you are so correct. How petty is McNickle & the Trib to write a whole column on this subject? McNickle tries to imply that this funny term is a vulgar "expletive". What a totally juvenile person masquerading as a "journalist"! He has the power of the press but everyone I've heard comment on this thinks he's petty. Eger is obviously a snake who deserves debate with no one.

Anonymous said...

Perry, Be careful for criticizing the Trib reporter. Their raises are determined by the Scaife family and they very much like criticism of all democratic elected officials. I wonder why the trib never took pictures of the crazy things that go on at a bar on thursday evenings on Route 119 near crabtree with one of our former commissioners. Because those events don't affect a person's ability to be an elected official. I don't like Tom Bayla but I like the trib even less for their political hack reporting.

Anonymous said...

with all of things going on in this world, what is the trib thinking?

Perry Christopher said...

I am sure Eger is not a snake, but he may have been trying to bait Balya a bit.

McNickle is a good columnist/journalist. I have found much of his writing to be quality. This one column struck me as strange. After all, a lot of people I have run across in politics use stronger language than dipshit.

Anonymous said...

Everyone read the Trib tomorrow and see if they talk about this post.