Idiots v. idiotic opinions

Just because your opinions are idiotic, doesn't mean you are an idiot.

I should have remembered that early Monday morning when I was a guest on "Rise 'n' Shine," a TV show that's on the air before chickens have gotten their wakeup call. Calvin Floyd is the host and he's a favorite of mine. When you're on with Calvin, you just sit at a kitchen table and talk. When the phone rings, he takes callers. Pretty soon, you forget you're on TV, except when there's a pause for a commercial for Bill Jordan's RealTree or one for Duke & the Doctor.

A caller on the telephone Monday asked my opinion about "Sound Off," a daily feature in the Ledger-Enquirer. I don't like it, I said, since it gives people writing in a chance to rip other people without sharing their own name. But, I said quickly, it is the usuallyt first thing I read in the paper every morning.

This is where I stepped in it.

I added that some of the idiots that write "Sound Off" are the same idiots that call WRCG's TalkLine, the same idiots that call Calvin and the same idiots that write letters to the editor.

Was I an idiot or what?

As a newspaper columnist (or a blogger) you can take back your words before the ink is dried. You hit the delete key and your blunder is erased. You're safe. On TV or radio, the damage is done. You can make a joke about what you said or you can try and explain yourself but by then you are sinking deep in sin.

Anyone who has read "Sound Off" or the letters to the editor's columns in any newspaper knows that people have some strange opinions. Idiotic opinions, when you get down to it. But are they necessarily idiots?

Maybe yes. Maybe no. But if I lump them all together in a neat little package, then I'm the idiot.