Oh for heaven's sake. CRZ gets letters. It took me, and I'm serious here, nearly an entire hour to read all the missives sent to our esteemed leader. My guess is most of the mail came from Wrestleline readers. I hope so because one them said his website sucks ( or some variation thereof ). That would reflect badly on we columnists. The hell of it is, now I am about to write an entire column dedicated to someone elses mailbag...sort of.

I only wish I could get some of CRZ's "penpals" to read this. Because while I will name no names, I feel a diatribe coming on myself. I'll try not to spew obscenities, but I make no promises.

If I were going to do a thesis on internet wrestling fans, all I would need is that particular letters column to prove every point that needs to be made on the subject. There's plenty of examples of intelligent, fair minded fans of course. There is also an alarming but not so surprising number of expletive, cap locked attacks on CRZ's person, intellect and credibilty. ( Whatever the hell that means ). Many of these " people " referred to the term "mark". Hmmmmm.....

As far as I can tell "mark" means fan. Maybe a biased fan is a more accurate definition. So let's see. If I were a biased fan and someone expressed a valid opinion other than my own, and I consequently sent hate mail to that person, I think that would make *me* the mark. Thus making me a hypocrite.

Another group of letters expressed the opinion that if CRZ hated WCW so much why should he continue to watch the show. Well there are a couple obvious reasons there.

One is that CRZ's recaps are in at least some small way critiques. I don't believe Roger Ebert liked every movie he ever saw. Nor should he. That's not the point. The critic formulates an opinion. Sometimes a critic's contempt for the subject he/she is reviewing is so strong that they just...go off ! If I wrote a review for Porky's Revenge I wouldn't be able to stop ranting . How bad was Porky's Revenge ? The movie clocked in at 96 minutes or so. Give me four hours and I'll tell you how bad it sucked. Who wants to read a review with no passion? Nothing is worse than boring. So I guess WCW isn't doing everything wrong, at least this weeks Nitro wasn't boring. The volume of mail alone would indicate that Mr Zimmerman's most recent Nitro report was anything but boring either. Nor was it the reaction of someone who was bored. Nor were the subsequent reactions to Chris's reaction. The other point, in reference to the "If-You-Hate-It-So-Much..." argument is easier still to defend. If people hate CRZ's alleged bias so much why do they keep sending him letters with liberal use of a word that begins with an "f" and ends with a "uck" ? ( A little hint here: The word isn't "firetruck" ) . Well, they do it because they are filled with overwhelmingly rage and contempt for being subjected to what they consider offensive attacks on their own personal opinions, likes and dislikes. Probably the same reason CRZ went off on Nitro. It insulted his intelligence more than likely. That in turn pissed him off. You know, like his Report pissed all those letter writers off. The difference of course being that the target of CRZ's irritation was more of a reaction to an insulting product. The mail was directed at CRZ personally. It's perfectly alright to say publicly that you find the Clinton Administration deplorable. It's quite another to write the White House and say " Bill is a Fucking Idiot !!!!". Plus it doesn't make the writer of the letter look very bright either.

Here's how to handle this, people. I totally disagree with virtually every opinion held by Mark Madden. I don't send him mail saying he's an obese biased egotistical shill. I just don't read him anymore. See how easy that is ?

Of course that's assuming you're still reading this.

Kettle: ( to Pot ) You're Black !

Thanks to my editor and lovely wife Melanie for telling me my grammar and sentence structure could use improvement. See kids, that * constructive* criticism.

Until next time, I'm Shawn Colton and I am my inner child.