The ever busy and erudite Bob Powers forwarded an e-mail from the Society of Professional Journalists list which says a lot about the state of journalism, and the ability of spin to overcome news. Let me share the opening with you:

Date: Monday, September 14, 1998
2:06 PM
Subject: Whoops! Missed a Big Story

While virtually every newspaper in the country is burning up truckloads of paper and broadcast networks are spending every on-air second sniffing through the Monica/Starr/Bill/Impeachment Neverending Pageant, the Republicans have quietly killed campaign finance reform.

(the following is shamelessly plagiarized from Tod Landis where it was published as an IRE posting)

"Look at the front page of ... the New York Times and you will see a four column headline on the release of the Starr report. House Republicans released the report in a dramatic, if uncivilized, way, calculated to attract maximum media attention.

"Now look for a very small item down at the bottom of the front page. It says 'Campaign Measure Dies'. The story is about the REPUBLICAN SENATE FILIBUSTER that just KILLED CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM for this session of Congress."

Frequent readers of this magazine, and our on-going critique of the Mouthpiece Media, know what the G21 feels about all this. The fact is, this Do-Nothing Congress has managed to pass only one appropriations bill this session(that's right! ONE.) Ask your campaigning Congressperson about that this November.

But, while you were reading the single biggest example of PORNOGRAPHY on the web publicly perpetrated in history, the "Starr Report," force-fed to you by the House of Representatives and --- most-specifically --- the Repubican party, that same party killed a bill to change the way they manipulate you into electing them. Think about it.

Along these same lines, I received this today from my friend, Peg Thomas of Minneapolis's Grotto Foundation:

This is exactly my issue with the Starr Report: That the same House of Representatives which has stalled all summer on the e-rate bill which could provide Internet access to schools and libraries, because House Members wanted censoring software mandated to these entities, had the unmittigated gaul to publish the most graphic public document release to date and make it accessible to anyone large or small. Let's hope that they don't try to mandate censorship software (which doesn't work anyway). Peg

================
INTERNET CONTENT
================

HOUSE TELECOM SUBCOMMITTEE TO MARK UP INTERNET PORN LAW Issue:
Internet Regulation
On September 17, the House Telecom Subcommittee will mark up HR-3783, a bill sponsored by Reps. Michael Oxley (R-OH) and James Greenwood (R-PA) that is a duplicate of the Senate version sponsored by Sen. Dan Coats (R-IN) that passed as part of the Commerce appropriations bill. The Subcommittee may also consider a alternative bill that would require schools and libraries to install filtering software. The full House Commerce Committee has scheduled a mark up session on the bill for Sept 24, so it is possible the bill could be passed in this session.
[SOURCE: Telecom AM]

BY USING INTERNET, HOUSE OPENED DOOR TO CHARGE OF PUBLISHING SMUT
Issue: Internet Content
(Maybe now they will grasp the concept) By releasing the unedited Starr report on the Internet, the House is guilty of making sexual material accessible for minors via the global computer network. "I was incensed that the House of Representatives published an unsanitized version of this on the Internet," said former Nebraska Senator James Exon, author of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. "The House...should be reprimanded or censured for" doing it. "This is raunchy pornography that I don't think should be freely accessible to our kids. I worry as much about this kind of activity by the House...as I do...about what the president has done to the nation with his activity." Barry Steinhardt, director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation said:" It's more than hypocritical. There's a total disconnect here with many members of Congress. In their haste to get out this report, they do not see the irony in their equal haste to control speech on the Internet. It's predictable and sad...that Congress...would go ahead and publish the most popular piece of sexually explicit material ever published on the Internet...They themselves have become, in their terms, the most successful pornographers on the Internet." [SOURCE: Chicago Tribune (Sec 1, p.15), AUTHOR: Frank James]

No additional commentary is needed here.


THE ROAD HOME: As I mentioned, this is my last Day One for you from California. As I look forward to my hejira, I think about comments which have come in. One friend of mine insists that I am making this move to New York because I need to have one last great adventure. (OHmigod! That's a sad assessment, isn't it? I plan to have many great adventures before I stop.) Another friend's assessment is that I'm swimming back upstream, like a salmon, taking the road home.

That could well be.

I was reminded in a telephone conversation with my pal, Mardi Hanson-d'Alessandro, with whose family I'll be staying in Connecticut while seeking new digs in Brooklyn, that it was 25 years ago this Halloween that I threw the party where she met her husband, my friend, Sal.(ATTENTION NEW YORK READERS: Have a fun web publisher as a neighbor! E-mail in any apartments in Williamsburg, including shares, you may know of today!) Yes, another of my notorious parties.

This time, Sal's band was providing the entertainment. I was a member of the Social Committee at Wesleyan University, and decided to throw a pre-concert Halloween party before Room Full of Blues appeared on campus. In typical Rod style, I decided to festoon cauldrons of Tequila Sunrises, frothing a dry-ice fog, in what was normally the student coffee shop. A great time was had by all. Mardi and Sal met for the first time and have been together since. Only months later, they would be my housemates at what we jocularly dubbed the Burr Avenue Commune. Some commune: among the many parties we threw there was one where Roy and Jean Thomas of Marvel Comics and the Nikolai Dancers were guests.

I would leave Connecticut for Egypt less than two years later. In some future Day One, I'll probably share reminiscences of Cairo and Alexandria with you here...

The truth is, among all these assumptions and speculations about my motives, I have always wanted to live in New York City. The events of this year have convinced me that now is the time, my time. I hope, as you see this magazine as an East Coast publication, rather than a West Coast, you will agree with my assessment. I don't think we shall be any less in-your-face and reliable. If anything, we shall be more so!

Come back on Monday when Nathan Black appears in this space again to talk about the Third Party alternative.