‘Mike Jackson dead’ was the text message I got from my wife at about 5 p.m. this past Thursday.

I hoped it was an error. CNN merely reported ‘Michael Jackson hospitalized’ for the next half hour or so before Jackson’s passing was confirmed.

I’m not here to worship “St. Michael.” Let’s remember he wasn’t a saint, but let’s also remember her was the absolute best at what he did in the 1980s.

Jackson was reared in Indiana (Gary, to be precise), so we Hoosiers always kinda claimed him as one of our own

A few memories:

• A popular joke in the area where I grew up in the mid-1980s was “What do (stone-handed Cincinnati Reds left fielder) Dave Parker and Michael Jackson have in common? They both wear one glove for no apparent reason.”

• Jackson still having enough star power in the early 1990s that our whole basketball team bus would go silent when his “Black or White” came on the radio

• Me never being able to hear the song, “Bad,” from Jackson’s late-1980s album of the same name. Never could find it when it was released (FM radio was a rarity in the Wright household at the time). Missed it twice during a Jackson video retrospective Saturday on VH1.

A common misconception about newspapers in general and the Crestview News Bulletin in particular is that if we publish an opinion on our opinion page, it means the paper endorses that opinion.

That’s rarely the case, even if the opinion is from a CNB staff member. The goal of the opinion page is to present as wide an array of views as possible. Pretty much the only restrictions are that you can’t advocate a crime, you can’t advertise and you can’t lie.

For a while we stuck a “this opinion is the opinion of the writer and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Crestview News Bulletin” disclaimer in front of every column. I stopped doing so, not because the columns now do represent the opinion of the Crestview News Bulletin, but because I felt stupid putting the same disclaimer in front of every column.

What would be a better way to get that point across? Post the disclaimer in the middle of the page each week? Post it on every story? Don’t post it at all?

Let’s hear your thoughts.

Rather frequently we get a call from someone reporting the poor condition of their road.

We did recently post a photo of Okaloosa Lane, as people almost certainly will make added use of the road when Shoal River Middle School and Riverside Elementary open next fall.

Suffice it to say, there are more than 200 miles of dirt roads in Okaloosa County, and many of them are problematic.

What are the worst roads in the county? Why is yours the worst road? We’ll consider your input on future stories.

Can it all be fixed? Not in the short term. The price tag would be staggering and people would have to be willing to accept either a complete restructuring of the typical county budget or a massive tax increase.

In the meantime, we can point out the trouble spots.

Just wanted to take a moment to apologize to readers for a couple of typos on the front page of the May 30 edition of the Crestview News Bulletin.

No factual errors. Just bad spelling that should have been caught.

The irony: The night before the proofreading of that newspaper was spent watching the national spelling bee.

Too bad “Laodicean” (the winning word at the spelling bee) wasn’t used in the May 30 paper. Wouldn’t have missed that one.

Among the many interesting reader comments posted on the www.crestviewbulletin.com Web site in response to a brief article on the May 26 Crestview city council meeting was this leadoff hit:

“Funny how the meeting ended after 7 and this is already posted.”

If you read the whole comment, you’ll see it wasn’t intended as a compliment.

The story was posted at 8:59 p.m. (If any of you check the story on our Web site it will say 9:59 p.m.; our site is on Eastern time).

All I have to say is, I’m sorry it took so long.

In today’s high-tech age, the sooner a big story goes up, the better.

I think the commenter was implying the story got special treatment to get posted so quickly.

If that’s the case, we also gave special treatment to a house fire Wednesday in Crestview (fire was reported at about 2 p.m.; story was posted by 4 p.m.) and to the May Day and Military Appreciation activities Saturday (photo galleries posted by 4 p.m. on Saturday immediately after the morning and early-afternoon activities), among others

No, we don’t always post government meeting articles immediately after the fact. If the biggest news from a council meeting is, say, passing of a resolution in support of the F-35 (as was the case earlier this spring), then I feel comfortable eating supper and sleeping first and posting the news first thing in the morning.

But if it’s big story, we’re going to post the information as soon as we can.

Don’t ask why, but I wound up watching three hours of biographies of Triple Crown-winning horses on ESPN this past weekend.

What stands out the most from the shows? The range of emotion these horses apparently have, particularly the fact that 1977 Triple Crown winner Seattle Slew was apparently a real jerk.

“A typical schoolyard bully” was the general assessment of poor Slew, who was not given an opportunity to respond, though he has been dead since 2002.

I’m good with the concept that horses have personalities. I’m not sure I’m convinced they have unpleasant ones — unless humans get in the way.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the other horses (1948 Triple Crown winner Citation and 1973 Triple Crown winner Secretariat) featured on those shows had regal owners and therefore were regal horses, and that Slew’s owners weren’t so regal, and their horse was described as not-so-regal by the experts interviewed for the show.

Am I right? Am I wrong? Horse owners and/or racing fans, feel free to chime in.

It’s a nice problem to have, really.

In some ways, there is too much going on in the Crestview area over the next few weeks.

The Crestview Relay For Life is this weekend at Old Spanish Trail Park.

And then on May 23, the May Day (ceremony at Allen Park) and Military Appreciation (ceremony at Old Spanish Trail Park) formal ceremonies are scheduled for within the same hour.

The Military Appreciation folks would like to move their event back to the third weekend of May to coincide with Armed Forces Day. I’m sure the Relay For Life folks and the May Day folks have equally good reasons for picking the dates they do.

What would be the best way to arrange these events on the community calendar in 2010? I’d be interested in hearing from organizers for all three events.

Richbourg Middle School will host a “farewell celebration” on May 7 starting at 5 p.m.

Many people in Crestview have some connection to the school, either as a former student, a teacher, or as the parent of a student.

My favorite Richbourg memory actually happened at Jack Foster Stadium, but involved Richbourg kids.

This was fall of 2006. The Roadrunners were beating someone by about 30 points in middle school football action. I was on the RMS sidelines covering the game. One of the Roadrunner starters was wondering why coach Chris Sweatt wasn’t going for more points. A teammate — one of the team’s best players — calmly explained to the player that the game was safely in hand and it was time to give the younger players a chance to play.

The reaction by that young man — a sincere desire to want to give teammates a chance to participate — was more impressive than the 30-point win.

What are your favorite Richbourg memories? Share your thoughts below.

The panhandle’s rural public schools recently held a meeting in Graceville with the FHSAA executive director to voice their concerns about the difficulty they have competing at the state level in FHSAA-sponsored sports.

Our sports editor, Randy Dickson, has thorough coverage of the meeting in the April 29 edition of the Crestview News Bulletin.

Randy also wrote a column concluding, “In the long run Baker, Laurel Hill and their small school partners across the panhandle need to feel they have a real opportunity to compete” and “It’s past time to make it happen.”

Randy writes that the rural public schools are not on a level playing field with small private schools, that the private schools have all kinds of advantages, maybe even unfair advantages.

Randy is absolutely correct.

Here’s my response: So what?

Life is not a level playing field. Life is not always fair.

What better place to learn those realities — and more importantly, how to respond to those realities — than through athletics?

For those thinking, ‘Oh, you must have graduated from a private high school’ … think again. My high school was very public and very rural. About the size of Baker, actually. The only difference is my school was surrounded by the corn and soybean fields of Indiana instead of the strawberry and cotton fields of northwest Florida. Also, when I played high school sports, Indiana had just one enrollment class. Our Baker-size school had to play Crestview-sized schools to win postseason championships at any level.

So I understand what it is like to have the odds seemingly stacked against you in an athletic competition.

A big reason this country has gone off track is we have created a generation of Americans who think the proper response to adversity is to fight — not to get better, but to get the rules changed.

Call me crazy, but I believe when you get your tail kicked in a sport, the proper response is not to complain that playing field isn’t level, but to work that much harder to get that much better.

Does that mean you’ll catch up? Maybe not. In fact, probably not. There’s a reason state championships are called “once in a lifetime” experiences.

The real lesson is in learning to compete when the odds seem stacked against you. That lesson is more infinitely more valuable than a state championship medal.

A few facts about the News Bulletin’s stance on local pageants:

1) Yes, we are happy to run photos from the pageants in the newspaper. We also post them as quickly as we can on our Web site, www.crestviewbulletin.com. The participants seem to enjoy seeing their photos, and we seem to sell more papers. It’s a win-win for everyone.

2) Yes, the local pageant organizers are helpful and pleasant to work with

3) Yes, we run the photos in the paper as soon as we can. If there seems to be a delay, it’s either because we’re missing some key information or we’re waiting for a better space in the paper. For example, there have been times we’ve delayed publishing pageant photos by a few days so we could print them in color instead of black and white.

4) Yes, we make an active effort to help put together the information that is needed.

5) No, our receptionists don’t have control of how quickly we get all the information we need, nor do they have control of when we are able to publish the photos in the paper. If you are one of the people who called in the last few days to berate our receptionists for not having control of those things, I urge you to call back to apologize.