You know that scene in “Goodfellas” (one of my all-time favorite films) when Henry Hill’s father whips out his belt and lashes his son for skipping school? Hill, in the voiceover, explains he didn’t mind so much because “sometimes you just have to take a beating.” I love that scene.

I thought of it this week as I got lashed repeatedly with e-mail nasty grams from supporters of Assemblyman Chuck DeVore after we published a “That’s Debatable” feature on our politics page featuring DeVore and his Democratic opponent Mike Glover.

A little background: Chuck’s a pretty good writer and pens his answers to the weekly questions himself. I hate to break this to you but some of the other politicians farm this stuff out to staff and then sign off on it. It’s the way of the political world. You don’t actually think those candidates are reading from speeches they wrote, do you? Anyway, Chuck is pretty particular about editing his work. He studied journalism but never ended up in the field because he felt it was tainted with too much liberal bias. I think he might have had problems with editors even if he tried, but I’m purely speculating. When I was starting out I didn’t mind the editing because I knew I was a lousy writer and I just wanted to learn. I felt ashamed that I couldn’t get it right so I would just bear down and try harder each time. I paid very close attention to the edits so I could learn from them. It took me many years, I think, before I was an adequate writer. Some might say I still have a long way to go!

At any rate, on at least a few other occasions we’ve edited down some of Chuck’s responses to make them fit and he wasn’t happy. I didn’t cut his words, though. I should say our copy editors did. I make the first edits and then the copy editors go over my work to make sure it complies with style and that the work is grammatically correct. But that’s not all they have to do. They have to make sure it fits in a prescribed space on the page.

Chuck’s pretty sensitive about the editing, and I don’t blame him. Especially these days. There are a lot of jerks out there who cherrypick quotes, take them out of context and them demagogically bash an opponent with them.  Chuck wasn’t shy about telling me he didn’t like his stuff getting chopped up like that by our copy desk, so I came up with what I thought was a good solution. I would give him a word count. That seemed to work for a while.

Then this week I decided to send the question to Chuck and Mike Glover. Awhile back a reader zinged me for always having the Republican incumbents in That’s Debatable, leading to, well, not much of a debate since they tended to agree with each other. Good point, I thought. So I started asking some of the Democratic challengers to chime in. I picked Mike this week simply because he was the first one I got ahold of. And I felt sorry for him. Honestly, I don’t think we’ve covered the state lawmaker races as comprehensively as I would like and I thought, what the heck, Chuck’s in the paper all the time, let’s give Glover a shot before the election.

So they both answered the question and gave, what I thought, were fine responses. They appeared to mostly agree with each other even as they both felt that a state lottery’s not a good way to fund public education.

Problem was Chuck’s response got chopped up pretty good and Glover’s response was left largely intact giving the reader a pretty lopsided presentation. It looked like we were favoring the Democrat at the Republican’s expense.

Well, Chuck had enough. Instead of just calling me and hashing it out as we’ve done in the past, he launched an e-mail blast to his constituents telling them the Pilot “censored” him and to e-mail me with their thoughts.

Lovely.

I got creamed. Chuck’s got a lot of friends out there.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not bitter. I don’t blame Chuck at all. OK, I was a little steamed, but, I’m a big boy and I came around to thinking why the heck should Chuck hear another mea culpa from me blaming it on the copy editors? I understood where he was coming from and I could take it.

So I tried answering as many of the e-mails as I could — I just had one strict rule: I wanted to “talk” to people so I either called them or asked them to call me. I hate getting into back-and-forths with people over the e-mail because so much can get lost in the translation and it leads to silly misunderstandings.

Then I huddled up with the copy editors. Turns out there was some misunderstandings — some good, honest ones, in fact. I had asked them to call folks if they had to carve a lot out of a writer’s responses, but they were under the impression that they hadn’t cut enough out of Chuck’s piece to warrant that. That was a mistake. But, like I said, it was an innocent one. I can’t blame them. Our copy editors work damned hard and we’re blessed to have such a great staff. I can’t sing their praises enough. Not only are they professional — they’re all really good decent people too. And, anyway, the buck stops with me. I’ll take the blame.

So I called most of the DeVore devotees personally and explained the situation. Most were very understanding and, as is usually the case, I really enjoyed touching base with them.

Still, it was really unnerving that there was a vocal minority out there who were only interested in bashing me as a “liberal” with an agenda. They refused to talk to me on the phone with one jerk spamming me with a bunch of goofy conspiracy theories about the owners of the New York Times (as if I have any connection with that paper).

I was struck that universally they all had the same initial response: They just assumed that we here at the Daily Pilot are in league with the LA Times folks downtown in some sort of dark crusade to destroy conservatism. Speaking for myself, nothing could be further from the truth. First of all, it’s been my experience over the years that a lot of Times folks have no use for the community newspapers like the Pilot. They wouldn’t be interested in our journalistic opinions if we were the last reporters on earth.

And, for the record, I’m not a liberal. I’m not a conservative either. The term “maverick” gets thrown around a lot these days, but I really am one. I’m an independent voter who doesn’t belong to either party. I have no agenda except giving you as much of the truth as I can suss out so you can make up your own minds.  That’s the God’s honest truth. I think the nuns and brothers and Jesuits who educated me in the Catholic schools I attended from first grade through college taught me better than to lie. I wouldn’t be a reporter if I wasn’t devoted to the truth.

That’s not to say that I’m perfect, of course. I make mistakes. Plenty of them, in fact. We all do. And I want you to zing me when you think I’m in the wrong. I really appreciate any constructive criticism.

But if all you want to do is tee off on me with silly old tropes like “You’re a media elite liberal,” then you’re better off tuning into Keith Olbermann and yelling at the TV set. I’ll be just about as responsive. I don’t have time for crybaby brickbats. I’m only interested in grown-up conversation. To tell you the truth, I didn’t have much patience for petty insults even when I was in grade school, OK?

So I’ve since apologized to Chuck for the goof-up and I think we’ve worked out a way to make sure it doesn’t happen again. He graciously accepted the apology. He’s a nice fella like that. We’ll try to do better next time.

P.S. In case you’re interested, here’s my prediction on the presidential election: Obama will win decisively. Probably in the neighborhood of 330 electoral votes. Feel free to mock me relentlessly next week if I’m wrong — sometimes, well, you just have to take a beating, you know?

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