I'd rather be a doofus

I don't like writing straightforward opinion columns. I never really have.\nPart of my hesitation springs from plain ol' paranoia. I worry about getting my facts wrong and looking like a doofus, and I'm too much of a doofus as it is. I worry about Cliff Clavin's pointing out tiny miscues in my column and needling me about it. I guess maybe I'm too sensitive, and I'll freely admit that: not only am I a doofus, but I'm also a wuss.\nBut the biggest reason I shy away from writing opinion columns is, well, that I hate opinions. \nWe all know the old adage about opinions and certain bodily orifices. And if everyone's got an opinion, then what's so special about mine -- or anyone else's? We can all blab and blab and blab about what we believe, but most of the time it just ends all jumbled up, an excruciating cacophony of personal peeves and perturbations that, in the end, goes nowhere. Kind of like Congress. Or the United Nations. Or the Dallas Cowboys.\nThe fact is, most people's minds have long been made up, and whatever I write in 550 words or less won't change their minds. People who disagree with me will either ignore my column or read it and call me a jerkwad while they drink their coffee. So I end up just preaching to the converted, and what's the point of that?\nBut there's even more to it than that. Much too often, opinions get out of hand. Discussions about abortion or Afghanistan or campaign-finance reform or who deserves the Oscar for Best Actor or the best shortstop in history start to heat up and spin out of control because people take offense with the other person's opinion, even though that opinion most likely has no effect on the person being offended.\nAnd I'm one of the worst examples of people who get all worked up over nothing. I start tossing my opinions around and in a matter of no time I'm more ornery and irrational than a basketball coach at Texas Tech.\nJust this week I was talking with my classmates about whether the government should play a role in ensuring freedom of speech. We started to discuss the idea that the government, in the interest of fairness, should get involved in what a newspaper publishes.\nBeing a typical, hard-core journalist -- a territorial and possessive jerk who distrusts and resents anyone telling me what the hell I should print -- I adamantly opposed such an idea and got worked up in the process. By the end, I was saying stuff that was borderline insulting and offensive.\nAnd that ain't right. To become angry and hotheaded over something as nebulous and unsolvable as the freedom of the press is silly, and it probably takes years off my life.\nAnd people get upset over opinions that are much more volatile and dangerous. Opinions are what cause racism and hatred. Opinions caused the Holocaust, caused lynchings, caused Wounded Knee, caused the rule of Pol Pot and Idi Amin. Opinions led to every war that has ever cursed humankind. Opinions are what keep women in a subservient status and the environment on the brink of destruction.\nOpinions, in essence, have threatened to destroy the world and everything on it. \nAnd I'd rather not add to that. It's not worth it. I've got better things to do.\nLike being a doofus.