Don't take this the wrong way, Rep. Barrow...

If you read this week's "Jake's Take," you may have noticed that I came down a little hard on John Barrow, Statesboro's congressman.

Apologies for the crappy formatting on the column, by the way. We had Web problems this week.

Don't take "Jake's Take" the wrong way. Even if he made what's either a boneheaded or blatantly campaign-oriented, vote-whoring vote, Barrow's still my man for Congress.

I'm not going to say that his opponent in November's Congressional race, Max Burns is out of touch with young people. Burns is a former professor at GSU, so he's at least nominally in touch with that most apathetic of demographics, the 18-34 set.

Barrow beat out Burns for the District seat two years ago, incidentally, and now Burns is looking to return the favor (nobody likes being a one-term congressman).

I've met both guys, and they're both perfectly likeable. Barrow's politics run much closer to mine, however, so he's most likely going to get my vote. Barrow impressed me mightily by turning to me in an interview and asking, point-blank, "Jake, what do you think is the most important issue in the election?"

I told him it was that I didn't have health insurance (and, except for a brief period intervening, I still don't). He listened, though there hasn't been much motion on that front in Congress. My estimation of Barrow would improve even more if he introduced some legislation along those lines, but as a freshman representative, I can see that it'd be difficult to get that particular national ball rolling.

His measures to help area farmers have been admirable, though. If you work the land, you'd have to have your head screwed on backwards to not vote for Barrow - the super-conservative farm folks around here may not agree with all of his social positions, but Barrow's there for their pocketbooks ad livelihoods, and that's the most important thing, right?

And the rest of "Jake's Take?" Any of you who've followed my career in journalism know that I'm an editorial guy (that's the non-advertising part of a newspaper) through-and-through. There are some "coin-operated" papers out there that offer sweet deals - you know, the "you buy a full-page ad, and we'll give you the cover story" kind of thing.

Connect Statesboro will never do anything like that so long as I'm around. I have a great working relationship with our ads manager, Kimberly Babock, but she doesn't dictate what stories Connect covers (aside from the ads, that is). I gave her a heads-up that I would be going after Carmike Cinemas again, and she understandably expressed some concern.

They're an advertiser, and the money they pay to put a movie listing in every issue helps pay both her and my salaries.

I don't shy away from telling the truth, though, and the truth is that their service... well, it's been pretty bad at a lot of the movies I've gone to see there.

So why didn't I call them out directly by name in the column? In deference to Kimberly, plain and simple. I figured it wouldn't make a difference, since there's only one theater in town. If there was another one, I'd definitely have to have mentioned them by name. In the end, I feel it didn't make a difference. One thing I won't do is compromise my coverage for the readers.