Upon further review...

This is not the way I wanted to kick off the fourth season of The T Dog Media Blog.

Okay, it seems yours truly generated a lot of heat from TV Week readers on my bashing of Adam Buckman over whether or not Ellen DeGeneres was qualified to be a judge on "American Idol". Yes, yours truly had a Kanye West moment of his own.

Well, I stand by my opinion.

But the way the statement was worded - that's another story. Yours truly went overboard in his critisism of Buckman and it crossed the line to become a personal attack. I apologize to anyone who was offended.

Even worse, I played the Jay Mariotti card - which I use quite often against columnists I don't like. I'm still seething from Buckman giving way plot points to a Family Guy episode in a New York Post article in November 2007 before the episode aired.

I also used inappropriate language toward another poster in the same thread.

While I call it as I see it - and often criticize those who have a different point of view on media issues than I do, the way I ripped Buckman was unprofessional, juvenile, and outright mean. In fact, it makes yours truly no better than Mariotti - engaging in the same type of mean-spiritness and slimeball tactics I have rallied against in the past.

And the fact I still mention Mariotti here - a year after he left the Chicago Sun-Times - indicates the shtick is getting old.

As you can tell, I'm not a fan of Idol - or Ellen DeGeneres and her show. And I will not be watching either one. But I have the right to say what I think on any television or radio program - whether I watch them or not, and any media issue - regardless of what a few humanoids think.

If you've read this blog for the past three years, you know where I stand on many media issues, from the lack of diversity of voices in the media to media consolidation and vertical integration. When a radio company fires employees on Inauguration Day - even denying you a chance to watch the President being sworn in- and having a low-level employee escort you out the door and having your stuff thrown out after you - how can you NOT have an opinion? When your local morning host is fired only to be replaced by a voice-tracked humanoid from Beaver Bay, Oregon so the el cheapos can save some bucks, how can you NOT have an opinion? Big, greedy media companies (and record labels) continue to dominate the entertainment landscape and stifle creativity in the process - how else can you explain why Britney Spears and Kanye West still have jobs? My frustration level only rises when all people want to talk about is those two and Idol, while no one talks about a court decision throwing out cable ownership caps so companies like Comcast can only get bigger and charge consumers even more money.

I'm passionate about these issues, but sometimes yours truly gets carried away here and on numerous message boards, and the message gets lost. And it's hard to rally people to your cause when you lob harsh insults at the very ones you rally against. Worse, you could put your credibility at risk.

If people care about the evils of media consolidation, that's great. If they don't care, that's a problem. And laying into the people who don't care hurts your cause more than helps it - you want to educate people, not berate them.While yours truly will continue to lay into those who deserve it, I'll be more respectful to those individuals and the companies they work for.