Carrie, what you did is an example of why journalists overall get so little respect by readers such as EDBO and me. You wrote on a subject of which you were remarkably ignorant, and then you rendered an opinion on it which was mired in that ignorance. YOUR opinion mattered to you and you presented YOUR opinion as an analysis of the subject, but you couldn’t or wouldn’t spend the five to ten minutes it would have required to actually develop an INFORMED opinion, i.e. to find out whether or not the subject, and the importance thereof, was the nonsense you stated it to be.

To those of us who actually ARE knowledgable of the subect (whatever the subject in question is), such behavior by a journalist constitutes the written equivalent of a slap in the face. It is to say that the opinion of a journalist who is ignorant of the subject matters, but the opinions of those who are not ignorant of the subject, and who are actually affected by the subject, do not matter. This insufferable condescension, this elitism, this “the universe revolves around me” approach to the job, ought not to be part of the job at all. The reader does not deserve such treatment.

You appear to be unaware of this aspect of your profession and of how it appeared in this article of yours, hence my comments. Instead of examining that aspect of my comments, you simply accused me of hate, thus continuing and compounding the error. Shame on you.

No, it is not nonsense.

Exterminating feral hogs is an important issue to those who have no choice but to deal with these vermin, which is what they are, i.e. dangerous, omnivorous, 250 pound rototillers with curly tails which run in herds that turn acres of crops into a bare, plowed-up wasteland overnight, EVERY night.

EDBO makes a quite valid point. You should have INVESTIGATED the issue, perhaps by examining what feral hogs do and imagining it was YOUR crops and land they do it to. Perhaps you should have tried to see WHY people are pushing this bill before deciding it was nonsense and just not important enough for the Legislature to attend to.

Further, EDBO’s anger at you is justified. A “news article” is a reasonable thing, and a “humor article” is often appreciated. Combining the two and labeling this issue “nonsense” is projection on your part, and the universe does not revolve around you.

Passing such a bill is a small item on the agenda, relatively speaking. Not attending to such small items would not enable the Legislature to attend to larger items, because larger items are not attended to as a matter of party policy, not due to a lack of time. Thus, your complaint is akin to saying, “Don’t wash the dishes! We have to cut the grass all summer long!”