Nope, sorry. I still think Kyle Busch is a d-bag.

There was a moment in last Sunday's race at Dover when someone - I can't remember now who - passed Kyle Busch for the lead, and the crowd starting cheering loud enough that the TV audio picked up the sound. Color commentator Darrel Waltrip, who usually causes me to scream at my TV at least once per race, did not disappoint. He said he didn't understand why the cheer went up, because "nothing happened out on the track." At which point I screamed at my TV, "It's because they hate Kyle Busch! Everybody hates Kyle Busch except for you!"

And apparently ESPN.com's Ed Hinton, too. It was Hinton who asked Busch about Dale Earnhardt Jr's crew chief switch at the pre-race press conference last week, which Busch took as an opportunity to take a swipe at the driver who replaced him at Hendrick. "It's never Junior; it's always the crew chief," Busch said.

I'm not going to get into arguing with Busch about this - I'm an Earnhardt fan, so you can guess where I stand. But I thought Hinton's column on the subject was self-serving horsehit. First we get a dozen paragraphs about Busch's noble post-race routine: sulking and "taking a hike" if he wasn't happy with his finish. Then we get Hinton's take on the Dover press conference, and his lament that "honesty is boring." Then there's this bizarre little paragraph:

Busch spoke the truth as he saw it, and we all wrote it and/or aired sound bites of it, because the media knew that would be much more interesting to you, the public, than a lot of "I couldn't tell you" or "I don't know" from NASCAR's best and most controversial young driver about NASCAR's most popular driver.

Um, Ed? I like you and all, but it's bullshit for you to complain about the media excerpting the most sensational soundbites because YOU ARE THE MEDIA. If you want me, the reader, to get the full picture on Kyle Busch, then stop trying to manipulate him at a press conference. Let him do his thing, report on it, allow me to draw my own conclusions and then leave me the hell alone. You do not get to dictate how I interpret Kyle Busch. You also don't get to create a story where there isn't one.

I'm sure that reporting on sports - as opposed to, say, Congress - involves a constant balance between "informative" and "entertaining," and that can't be easy. But that's why Hinton gets paid the big bucks.

On that note... I truly pity whoever does my job for Busch's team. He's a gifted driver, but still way too immature in his dealings with the press - Exhibit A being how easily he was maneuvered into making a controversial soundbite at Dover, as Hinton outlined in his column. Busch shouldn't be congratulated for speaking his mind; he should be subjected to another 12 hours of media training. There was absolutely no reason for him to go where he did, other than to be a dick.

For an example of how Busch should've responded, watch how Earnhardt handled it when Hinton told him what Busch had said. He, too, was honest, but successfully turned the conversation back to the message he needed to get out. I'm sure that Earnhardt has plenty of choice words for Busch, but he knows better than to share them with the press. It's called being a professional.

Of course the press love it when one driver picks a fight with another. It's instant conflict, which is automatically interesting. I don't know... Has our sport gotten so boring that reporting on the actual competition isn't good enough? It seems like that's a much bigger issue than what that child Kyle Busch thinks of personnel decisions on someone else's team.