It’s My 2 Cents: Of Heated Exchanges And Things
In the last few weeks, I've gotten into a coupla tussles with HBO regulars, online and off. Many of you know, of course, that DanG, Mary Souza and I engaged in a three-way bout over the weekend into Monday. Some tough words were exchanged re: the Lake City Development Corp. and DanG accused me of sliming him. Mary dropped outtahere Monday after she'd fired some sharp comments/questions at me and I asked her to quit "whining." There've been other scrapes re: things I've posted and an occasional sharp response to a sharp accusation in an e-mail. I usually regret these dust-ups. I thoroughly disagree with DanG and Mary re: the value of the LCDC. But I value them both. Ditto for a coupla others who are cooling their heels offline.
Here's the deal. I am the moderator here. Indeed. But I also have opinions and I plan to express them here. I'm human. Occasionally, I get just as passionate as you do. Sometimes, you write something that stings and causes me to respond in kind. Rather than counting to 10. You bloggers, commenters and blurkers are seeing something in real time here. You're seeing a journalist who has been in the news biz 37 years being propelled into 21st century technology, warts and all. I make mistakes. I tire. I get in bad moods. I'm generally distracted while running this three-ring circus called HBO. Sometimes, I fire off a response on the blog and privately that's too heavy-handed. Given the nature of the beast and the demand to post at the speed of light, I sometimes use loaded words in the heat of the moment.
I don't know how I'm going to proceed with urban renewal district discussion here. Some of you blurkers view it as a growing evil. I view it as a good but currently flawed engine of progress. I view the LCDC as a vital cog in properly directing downtown and waterfront development. Others, good people with opposing views, see it as an unsupervised sugar daddy for developers. But I will proceed. I also will offend again. However, I wanted to pause to say that I'll try harder to keep my discussion aimed at the issue rather than the personalities involved in the issue. It won't be easy b/c I love a good fight.
DFO
