Wally Edge responds to Chris Philbin responding to Wally Edge

Earlier this evening, U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern Chief of Staff Chris Philbin took me, PolitickerMA.com columnist Wally Edge, to task for an opinion piece I did about his boss and the Progressive Democrats of America, an organization that has endorsed John Kerry's primary challenger Ed O'Reilly.

Here is Wally's response:

Chris,

Thanks for your letter. Nice to hear from you.

I disagree when you say that I was suggesting McGovern was opposing Kerry ("Your blog post would suggest that every participant in these PDA panel discussions is supporting Senator Kerry's opponent"). I said that he was attending an event with an organization who endorsed Kerry's opponent, which is true.

You're right, I missed the Herald News story. My bad. And I should have e-mailed you, called Tim Carpenter and done research into how McGovern tried to swing PDA toward Kerry. Again, my bad.

Truth is, the reason I didn't get all Edward R. Murrow is because it was a seven-sentence throw-away opinion piece. The most provocative part was the title -- if you read it a certain way -- but since you're giving free lectures on the news biz, I'll let you in on a secret: that's an old trick to get people to actually want to read what you're writing.

And please, if you have a problem with something I write, feel free to e-mail me. Most would agree I'm a pretty reasonable person.

Wally