It wasn't one of those days when there are four people ahead you. There was one, thirty-something-professional-looking, man in the barber chair. He looked to me like the kind of new-age husband who usually gets a haircut in a "beauty shop." I didn't know him nor, it seemed, did the barber. But that didn't keep the three of us from sharing some jokes, and having a good old regular barbershop conversation. By and by, the man's haircut was over, he got out of the chair, took an admiring self-satisfied look at his hair, and said, "You're definitely going to be my barber … that's a good haircut." I don't know what made me say it, but I heard myself wisecrack, as I was climbing into the chair, "Yeah, that's a really good haircut, but stick around a few minutes, if you want to see a bad one." The barber beamed excitedly, like a man with a clear shot at a wild boar. The poor newcomer, not yet initiated into the ways of a real neighborhood barbershop, let go a little nervous chuckle, and started to leave, but not before the master barber barked back at me, "You 'cain't' make a silk purse out of a sow's ear!" With that, I was convinced I was to pay, yet again, for another puny little involuntary (spastic?) attempt at humor.

I didn't have a clue what form my punishment would take, but I soon learned. It was just the two of us now. I'm in the "chair," and he's adjusting the drape (or whatever you call that oops cloth) around my neck, I thought a little too snugly? Then it happened. "What makes you journalists think you're better than the rest of us?" "Why shouldn't that old gal, Judy Miller of the New York Times, go to jail for violating the law?" "Do you really think the constitution says people like her and that Matt Cooper guy from Time magazine are above the law?" "You remember how many New York Times and Washington Post reporters have been caught lying in print?" "They wouldn't even fire that Jason Blair guy till the whole world started asking why not?" "And what about old Dan Rather, and . . . " The questions were bouncing around that barbershop from tile to tile and from mirror to mirror, and my tormentor hadn't even picked up a full head of steam, to say nothing of the scissors. Must have been about 40 questions at least. And I didn't get to answer a one of them. I'd open my mouth to … and he'd pop me with another one! The man was having a fluent flamboyant full-voiced verbal fit. The man was in some kind of revengeful rhetorical rhapsody!

But, I knew it was all an act. He was having his fun, even though he would have done a heckuvalot better if he'd been performing for his confederates, many of whom spend their leisure hours playing, and, one assumes, running with sharp objects. I never did get to answer his 40 sledge-hammered questions.

Anyway, I'm not a journalist, as my inquisitor charged. I'm just an opinionated old crank who occasionally writes a column. I do try to follow one admirable journalistic tradition. One tries, as they say, to afflict the comfortable, and comfort the afflicted. By the way, the first school of journalism was founded after the War Between the States (called the Civil War, if you didn't go to Ole Miss), by General Robert E. Lee, at then Washington College (now named Washington and Lee University), in 1869. And in 1908 the Missouri University school of journalism was founded. It was from its beginning, and remains today, one of the world's most prestigious schools of journalism. I was at the University of Missouri for one semester as a music major. I spent my time pounding on a piano for four hours a day, and popping Budweiser caps, behind the "Green Door," before I transferred to Ole Miss, where I majored in the study of human behavior, including my own. But I regress and digress.

To return to our subject, and the jailed Judith Miller of the New York Times, I think when anyone refuses a court order in a civil matter they should be prepared to take the consequences. Further, it's dangerous for both the concept and the administration of equal justice for reporters to get away with using "an unnamed source." Nothing in the history of journalism makes me comfortable with the idea that journalists are special. Also, one must remember that a person has a sixth amendment right (to a fair trial) to face his accuser, and an "unnamed source" is just that, an accuser. Using an "unnamed source" as the basis for a news story makes that story gossip. Sure, a reporter can use unnamed sources to gather clues about how to go after the facts, but it's the reporter's responsibility to get those facts, FIRST HAND, before accusing a person of wrong doing. Otherwise, he's dealing in idle chatter. Hearsay, especially if the reporter has an axe to grind in quoting an "unnamed source," might rise to the apparent "journalistic" standards of CBS or CNN or the New York Times, but it's still gossip. Let me make a guess about the New York Times' Judith Miller's involvement in the outing of the CIA "operative." I'm guessing that Judith Miller, herself, might be among those who "outed" the CIA functionary. But that's another column.

Finally, I love the free, non-politically correct, speech in a real barbershop. The most compelling thing about free speech is that we learn something from a person speaking his mind. People speaking freely teach us. They might make us mad or offend us, but it's what we learn from each other's free speech that should make us unafraid of "offending" speech. There's a place for polite speech, but it's so-called "offending speech" that teaches us about the speaker. Heck, "don't bother me none" that my barber says I'm overeducated, overfed, and overly loquacious. Often, I do learn from his verbal volleys, but, somehow, I still don't feel right about paying ten-dollars, and have him win all the time.

Kenneth Kinchen is an independent writer with a background in international business and foreign service contracting.