As you are so utterly unserious and clearly have nothing to say, please send future ridiculous remarks to me personally so that I may read and delete them at my leisure and we can save valuable bandwidth on the board and thus spare those who actually want to have an intelligent discussion the spectacle of your . . . whatever.

David Bates


the preceding was a private message sent to me today. apparently i don't have anything to say. and i am "unserious".

apparently, the topics that i have raised in this forum,

whether it be billboards and free speech, or the N-R's coverage of the legislature raising taxes with a positive headline, are not to be taken seriously.

I guess ideological rants about stoning homosexuals, or dubya the war criminal are "serious" topics.

Marginalize me all you'd like. I'm just one small voice in this community. but my "unserious" remarks are about topics and comments that don't deserve serious response.

Well thats your opinion right, if you belittle someone elses opinion arent you doing the same as him wanting to eraseyour posts?

Except that others don't feel like they should respond since there opinions might get ridiculed from you?

Now don't get me completely wrong because your comments are harmless and easily overlooked but your post here is the same as his private message to you.

Except he didnt post it for all to view.

And again why give a crap:) If you deem it to be unworthy and you want the thread to know it by all means since you are intellectually superior to us all.

Maybe you are I dont' know you:)

I don't think he was addressing your reasonable offerings. And if you were an adult you would cooperate with his wishes and not throw such a fit over it. Why must you rebel against anything reasonable?

After your comments to me on the Homosexual thread, I'm beginning to think you are getting ready to be chastened from the News Register moderators.

I have seen David Bates put down others for their view on this forum. So what is wrong with myx posting a satirecal remark about Davids view? You have to admit Mr Bates view on the present situation is rather funny. I guess we all just have to agree with him to be taken seriously.

Actually I dont mind it and I dont condone him being at all censored from this or any other group but some of us take ourselves very seriously and a littl Myx is a good thing.

I think some of us including me take some of his comments to be just that an act of a seemingly superior attitude which is hard when you feel more for a topic but someone else has to belittle your point of view to prove they are smarter.

Sometimes it isnt fair but censor anyone from doing that is not right no matter what.

Interesting that the exchange and the post by Myx that led to my private message to him was not referred to or repeated so readers would have the proper context. Interesting, but given the author of this thread, not surprising.

The thread was titled "What is Freedom to you", but it was hijacked ala mohammed atta by mr bates, and steered into the proverbial "bush is a liar, whine whine whine" World Trade Center.

Just for the record, here was the serious, thoughtful, intelligent piece of commentary that provoked the response:


So I guess your answer to the question "What is Freedom to You?"

would be "George Bush is a war criminal.WOOP WOOP WOOP WOOP WOOP! *HOOT* *HOLLER* WOOP WOOP WOOP! *SPINS IN CIRCLES* I'M A JOURNALIST WOOP *HOOT* *HOLLER* MUCKRAKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE! *HOOT*"

My thoughts are misguided and a little naive
I twitch and i salivate like with myxomatosis

does david bates talk about anything besides george w. bush. i think he has a crush. he totally wants to get it on with him.


dubya and davey sittin in a tree.

Perhaps Mr. Bates wouldn't get such responses if he wasn't so intent on hijacking unrelated threads to rant about GW Bush. There was a perfectly valid discussion in that thread, and it had nothing to do with Iraq, WMD, or Bush. Mr. Bates did not participate in that discussion, but instead used it as a cheap segue into another pointless and stupid debate over the war in Iraq, complete with a copy-and-paste of that tired Bush/Hitler comparison.

i think he has a crush. he totally wants to get it on with him. - Another thoughtful, serious remark from Myx. The level of debate and discussion continues to soar . . .

i really liked your roger & me -esque article in the N-R on the front page today (tuesday). i'm sure that corporation bashing sells lots of papers for the corporation that you work for.

Looks to me as though Myx has found the Achillean heel of your objectivity, David. By lampooning and baiting you he is targeting very specifically at your desire to be taken seriously ... whichever level that is upon which you wish to be taken seriously.

Of course you do not need me to remind your of history ... eg pre-mass-media days. In those days (as you well know) "commentators" (including casual iconoclasts; 'serious' social/political pundits; and 'hacks' ranging from Wm Shakespear thru Twain via Swift) earned, the hard way, the right known as -- makes a bimanual guesture using pointing fingers adjacent to ears -- The Freedom Of The Press (a phrase so hallowed that even the indefinite articles demand the lead from the compositor's upper case of type!)

Moving on ... it seems to me that your response to Myx's levity is merely to throw back the same at him. In warfare this is tantamount to trying to throw the enemy's grenades back before they explode. The metaphor fails though because, by definition Myx's verbal mortars detonate on impact. It seems, to me, that the prudent course for a professional journalist to follow in this instance is not to call in your "Daddy" (in the form of Steve Bagwell) but either to respond intelligently to the challenge or else to ignore it completely.

Point of clarification here:

You have made an assumption. As it happens, you have made a wrong one.

No one "called" me into the dispute. I simply read the post, looking up the offending passage myself and decided to offer it in the interest of balance. That way, people could look at the raw material in question and make up their own minds.

We really don't collude nearly as much as a lot of our critics imagine. We work quite independently in a very fast-paced business. We really don't have time for complicated plotting and intrigue.

OK, Steve -- the editor -- Bagwell; it looks as though I have now succeeded in "pulling your chain".

I am not so disingenuous as seriously to have believed that poor, little, hard done by David Bates ran crying to his editor because the naughty rabbit disease was giving him a hard time. (And anyway, isn't David man enough to rebut the charge himself ... or maybe he doesn't have the confidence to tell his boss to butt out of his business ....)

Jeez! Lighten up you guys. Getting a sense of humor would be a good start!