Last month, I first wrote about two former first ladies' call to restore their preferred programming lineup to Arkansas TV after raising a large donation ("The Odd Couple"). Thereafter, I answered a guest columnist's rebuttal ("Wind your neck in") and responded to reader mail ("Shut your mouth"), including a letter from John Pagan. And now I reply to correspondence from Eugene Aloysius Lyons.

Before I do, however, let me address John Pagan's second letter from Sunday, in which he doubles down on his insistence that Arkansas TV Executive Director Carlton Wing owes donors a "fiduciary obligation" to consult them before changing the schedule, calling my contrary view "argle-bargle." Pagan remains wrong, sophisticated argumentation notwithstanding. One progressive reader captured precisely the problem: "[M]y hunch is that Pagan is conflating legal and moral dimensions of 'fiduciary.'" Indeed.

Now, Lyons. He says I expressed "disdain for Arkansans who prefer PBS to locally produced programming--largely fishing and cooking shows." Huh? I don't disdain Arkansans for any of their programming wishes. I just reject the effete elite attempting to impose those preferences on everyone else while simultaneously seeking to have all of us pay for them.

Moreover, the most salient programming change that I covered is the station's considered expansion of its local newscast from a half-hour to a full hour, resulting in "PBS NewsHour" moving from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. The objectors' subsequent ululation echoed a requiem for a fallen hero--all over a time shift that accessing the PBS app avoids entirely.

Then the writing critique. Lyons says my sentence--the really funny one about latte-laden Hillcrest glitterati and their Baroque-framed flat screens--"would draw a failing grade" in his freshman journalism course. A long time........

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