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From: The Progressive Review <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Monday, December 14, 1998 4:47 PM
Subject: UNDERNEWS Dec 14
UNDERNEWS
The Progressive Review On-Line Report
>From Washington's Most Unofficial Source
Dec 14, 1998
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QUESTION OF THE DAY
Do you really want a president who is so narcissistic that the thought of
resigning has, by his own account, never crossed his mind?
FIRST, BAN ALL THE LAWYERS
The Clinton impeachment story raises all sorts of deep questions such as:
What
is a president? Is this post-modernism's Waterloo or its biggest victory?
What
is a lie? How do we get our politicians to level with us?
Deep enough that you might expect the media to find some non-partisan
historians, philosophers, theologians, and so forth to discuss these
matters.
Instead the airwaves have been clogged with lawyers pretending to be
historians, historians pretending to be lawyers, politicians pretending to
be
law professors, journalists pretending to be philosophers, passionate law
professors pretending to be dispassionate scholars, and, most of all,
lawyers
just being lawyers.
Of course, a major cause of Clinton's present problems has been his faith in
the perverse logic of the attorney class. So how does the media react? By
turning over this major philosophical, political, and theological issue to
the
same cynical, amoral, sophistic profession that caused the problem in the
first
place. A moratorium on all appearances by attorneys on TV between now and
when
the House votes would probably be the most useful way the networks could
spend
the next few days.
THE WORD FOR TODAY IS 'SUICIDE'
The White House just can't seem to break its bad habits. We learn, for
example,
from GOP Representative Ray Dickey of Arkansas that "I've received a threat
from the White House," which he quotes as "If Jay Dickey votes to impeach
the
president, it's probably an indication he will not run for re-election in
2000.
It's suicide. We'll make sure it is." . . . Meanwhile, with exquisite
timing
and right on message, several Clintonista media types have thoughtfully
ruminated in their columns about the possibility of GOP suicide as a result
of
supporting impeachment.
Which raises the point: given the prevalence of Arkansas Sudden Death
Syndrome,
isn't talking about suicide at times like these a little like chatting about
bombs in an airport?
CHEAP SHOT STATS
One of the Democrats' cheap shots was implying that Starr's use of phrases
like
"I don't recall" during his 12-hour testimony was the equivalent of Clinton
using the phrase before the grand jury.
First all, Starr was being asked to remember details of a massive
investigation
involving thousands of witnesses and hundreds of thousands of pages of
documents. Clinton only had to remember what he himself had done or said.
Secondly, Starr during his 12-hour testimony, used the phrase "I don't
recall"
or its equivalent an average of 2.5 times an hour; Clinton said it 30 times
an
hour.
THE MEDIACRACY
BAD TIMES: The New York Times couldn't resist its chronic arrogance in a
headline about German Greens: "German Greens, With Grown-Up Tasks Ahead,
Call
the Class to Order." We wouldn't have felt so bad about it if the NYT had
earlier also run the headline: "Senile Kohl Government Sent to Nursing
Home."
GOOD TIMES: The Times still does some of most readable local coverage you'll
find anywhere. Case in point, a wonderful story by Kit Roane about illegal
Santas:
"Perhaps taking a page out of the Grinch's play book, one fake Santa working
Rockefeller Center had earlier assaulted a properly trademarked Santa doing
good works for the Volunteers of America Greater New York, pushing him off
his
corner and stealing his bell in an apparent attempt to muscle in on his
business. . . 'It may or may not have been one of the Santas we arrested
because all Santas kind of look alike,' said Deputy Inspector Robert A.
Martin
. . .He was particularly disturbed by reports that children had witnessed
'two
Santas rolling around' in the assault on Wednesday afternoon."
MASS MEDIA IN DEEP TROUBLE
Big drops in the audience for network TV in the latest ratings underscore
the
disintegration of mass media . . . And in an amazing story for a medium that
usually likes to conceal its business problems, the Boston Globe admitted
that
its circulation is down about ten percent in the 90s, while its competitor,
the Boston Herald has had a 25% loss in readership. Similar figures were
cited
for the small town Quincy Patriot Ledger and the eleven o'clock news at top
stations.
Meanwhile, reports the Globe, Internet traffic doubles every 100 days, with
an
estimated 5 million to 7 million more households going on line each year.
"Over the past two years, there's been a sea change in how people get their
information," said WCVB-Ch. 5 news director Candy Altman. "Now, if you're at
work and you want to know something, you log on to any one of a number of
sites. News is now a 24-hour-a-day, seven-days-a-week
available resource for people." Adds media consultant Marty Sender, "By 11
o'clock, what is there left to say?"
Writes the Globe: "The Cambridge-based Forrester Research Inc. has concluded
that 'consumers' dependence on TV, newspapers, and radio wanes as time on
line
increases.' As an example, one survey found that after spending several
years
on line, consumers tend to choose the Internet over newspapers as a source
for
stock quotes."
SPIN THIS
The frequency of extremely hot and humid days increased significantly from
1949
to 1995 says a NASA report. The increase at night was greater than during
the
day.
HOW TO TELL THE TACKIEST CONGRESSMEMBERS
Those who vote for an article of impeachment that is sure to fail, but vote
against one that stands a chance.
DRUG BUSTS
The percent of US college students who have smoked cigarettes in the past
year
has climbed 25% since 1993. Now 40% of all students have smoked in the past
year, 29% in the past 30 days.
Thus one of the effects of aggressive enforcement against less dangerous
drugs
such as marijuana may have increased use of a legal alternative, cigarettes.
The result: more students will eventually die from their drug use.
EDITOR'S DESK
While working on my memoirs, I stumbled across something I wrote as a
mid-1950s
high school student in Philadelphia for an appearance on KYW's Junior Town
Meeting of the Air, which demonstrates well how dramatically attitudes
towards
"acceptable" unemployment have changed. Mind you, I am spewing the standard
Democratic Party line here:
"The Republicans in Congress have a record of inaction on the pressing
domestic
problems of today. Based on the President's own figures, one out of every 22
persons in the labor force are out of work. The GOP continues to talk of a
"rolling readjustment" [Eisenhower's euphemism for the recession then in
effect] but ignores the fact that the working man just can not keep rolling
until the readjustment comes. He stops when his paycheck stops."
One out of 22 persons in the labor force amounts to an unemployment rate of
4.5% -- or what we have under the wondrous economy of Bill Clinton. In other
words, Bill Clinton at his best is doing about as well as Ike during a
recession. -- sam
NOTES
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