There are times you can’t help but be embarrassed for being part of the media.

The public trusts us less than ever, the people we cover don’t always want to deal with us, and the pay isn’t always great.

And then sometimes, it’s because of your own colleagues passing off personal opinions they should just keep to themselves.

I’m tired of people attacking MMA and its fighters. I love the sport. I see it as a human chess match, sometimes with blood but always with guts. Those of us who sit at a keyboard or behind a monitor will never have any clue how much courage it takes to step into a cage or ring and depend on no one but yourself.

Just like any other sport, it has its good days and bad days.

Last weekend, we saw the emphatic victory of Urijah Faber in Sacramento, almost three rounds of a wonderful fight between Robbie Lawler and Scott Smith, and the continued dominance of Miguel Torres. On the other hand, we saw an uneven first outing for the sport on primetime network TV, a few questionable stoppages in EliteXC and the return of the national debate about MMA’s place in society.

Follow along here: boxing is an Olympic sport. So is judo and wrestling. Karate, jiu-jitsu and other martial arts forms are studied and respected by millions around the nation, and countless more around the world.

Put them all together, though, and critics say it’s part of the decline of civilization.

Read that again: separately, they are all honorable disciplines, but as one, it’s suddenly “street-brawling” or “barbarism,” and too violent to be seen.

Keep in mind, this argument often comes from mainstream sports writers who cover sports like pro football and boxing, writers like Brian Burwell of The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, who writes that MMA is “where the absolute worst elements of human nature are sanctioned and celebrated.”

Talk about needing perspective. I guess he missed seeing Scott Smith and Robbie Lawler hug after their fight, Jens Pulver hold up Urijah Faber’s arm immediately after the final bell and say he lost to a better man, and the fearsome Kimbo walk over and kiss Thompson on the head at the end of their fight. He didn't see athleticism and sportsmanship on display?

All those critics see is violence. Worse yet, they say that the violence between MMA and other sports like football is different. They say in football, it is not the “object” of the game to hurt a man. In essence, they are saying, manufactured, man-made goals of scoring a touchdown and defending the end zone make the violence acceptable.

In football, it is legal:

It is perfectly legal to hit unsuspecting, even defenseless players, as we often see in the kick return game when a would-be tackler is focused on the ballcarrier and gets hammered by a blocker. This is all OK, critics say, because violence isn’t the “object,” so apparently their injuries mean less.

And boxing is the “sweet science,” so giving a fighter a standing eight-count after a knockdown so he can get up and take more punishment is apparently humane.

If you are going to lambaste MMA for its violence — and that is essentially what Burwell is doing — you don’t get to give football and boxing a free pass.

Burwell goes on to call MMA “street brawling.” Really? You’ve seen someone use a gogoplata in a street fight? A kimura? You’ve seen someone use a sweep into a guillotine?

There is a visceral reaction to the violence in MMA, and sometimes that is enough to turn someone off. It’s certainly not for everyone.

There is the visceral reaction, and then there is the truth of what is actually occurring. There is just as much technique that goes into B.J. Penn’s ground game as there is in the Denver Broncos’ blocking schemes. It’s easy to discount the technique on display when you don’t know what you’re watching.

We fear what we do not understand.

Burwell calls MMA part of the "American Apocalypse," failing to understand that the same young demographic that is tuning into MMA is also the group that is largely responsible for making Barack Obama the first African-American presidential nominee, for countless innovations on the internet, for trying to save the planet. They are young, they are educated, and they are forward-thinking.

Then, there is the disrespect that goes the fighters’ way.

This weekend, both Kevin Iole and Dan Wetzel of Yahoo.com described Kimbo Slice’s opponent, James Thompson, as a “tomato can” in published columns.

Iole wrote, “Had Slice faced ex-WWE champion Brock Lesnar, the current UFC rookie hopeful, he’d have been beaten in less than two minutes. As it was, Slice struggled his way to a sloppy third-round knockout of a complete tomato can.”

And Wetzel wrote, “Any promotion that was going to use Kimbo Slice as its main event clearly cared nothing about the quality or growth of the sport. It was just grabbing cheap viewers. If that meant sending a mostly unskilled street fighting sensation against a guy who was such a tomato can he should have dressed in red, then so be it.”

Both men had a larger and more valid point to make, but what was the point of essentially demeaning Thompson?

While it’s true that Thompson has struggled lately and had lost six of his last eight fights prior to Saturday, he still had a winning 14-8 mark in his career. In addition, the six losses were to fighters with a combined record of 50-17-1. He wasn’t losing to low-level fighters; he was losing to guys like Kazuyuki Fujita, who has been in the ring with Mirko Cro Cop and Fedor Emelianenko; to Brett Rogers, who is unbeaten; and to Jon Olav Einemo, whose only loss is a decision to Fabricio Werdum, one of UFC’s top heavyweight contenders.

Mainstream media members often rail at blogs not having to be accountable for what they write, but the characterization of Thompson as a “tomato can” sounds like a shot they knew they’d never have to answer for. Why was there a need to resort to insulting a guy who has always tried hard but struggled at times? I don’t see baseball beat writers describing backups as “scrubs.”

Athletes with the courage it takes to perform should not be subjected to this kind of treatment. Whether they are knocking a sport or an individual, writers should think about what they are telling the world.

Like the fighters and the sport you have no problem bashing, you owe the public an honest effort.