Category: Politics

Comments on recent political activities and developments primarily in the U.S. and Canada.

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The Wilder and Crazier Lawyers

New Approach to Gun Control

Since the lawyers have finally taken care of the evil tobacco industry, let’s think about some good things lawyers might do for us.

I have an idea. The lawyers sued the tobacco industry because the tobacco industry markets a product which has been proven to cause serious medical problems for the consumers that use it, and which costs our society billions of dollars to provide medical treatment for these consumers.

That line of reasoning sounds simple and logical enough. But the tobacco industry is just a start. Why not sue the companies like Browning Arms (Utah, makers of the Browning shotgun), or Smith & Wesson that make guns? Here again we have a product which is bad for the consumer, but which the consumer stupidly buys anyway, deluded into thinking the product enhances his manhood or femininity, and which causes death and untold suffering, and which costs us taxpayers billions of dollars every year to provide medical treatment for the casualties.

This is really not much of a stretch, folks. The government routinely analyzes products or activities that are harmful to the public and, if it is proven that the harm they produce exceeds their usefulness or value, they enact legislation to prohibit or restrict it. The government does this for pornography, cigarettes, alcohol, toxic chemicals, radiation, drugs, and so on. The government even assumes that anyone who buys a recordable CD might be thinking about duplicating a copyrighted piece of music. It doesn’t wait to see if you are actually going to do it or not. It ASSUMES you are, and taxes you for it. Gives the money to the recording industry so they can pay their lawyers.

Now, the government looked the tobacco industry and came to a weird conclusion. It said, well, you do a lot of damage to people’s health. You lie to them and deceive them. You probably put additives in that increase the users level of physical addiction. Pay us and we’ll let you continue to do these bad things.

If Mosanto corporation, for example, produced a fertilizer that caused cancer in the people who eat the food grown with it, would we accept a payment from Mosanto in exchange for letting them continue to sell it? Only if we were complete idiots.

Guns are dangerous. Only an idiot would believe they do more good than harm. Think about it. Would we be safer in a world where everybody had a gun, or where nobody had a gun?

Since the government has already made a bargain with the NRA to allow the continued sale of almost any kind of gun you can imagine, we have no alternative but to hire lawyers and sue the gun industry.

Of course, if the end result is an agreement similar to the one reached with the tobacco companies (Clinton had a much better proposal but the tobacco lobby bought off enough Republican Congressmen to get it killed) what we will end up with is this: the gun lobby acquires immunity from further prosecution in exchange for about $250 billion dollars, almost all of which goes to the lawyers anyway. The $250 billion dollars are earned back by the gun lobby mainly by applying surcharges to sales of weapons to the military and police departments. Not only does the taxpayer get to fund the legal challenge, they also get to pay the penalty. And the icing on the cake: we have the same problem as before, except that it’s worst, because the gun manufacturers will have immunity from prosecution.

We could do the same for weapons manufacturers. Sue them for hundreds of billions of dollars for all the suffering and death they contribute to people around the world. Give all the money to the lawyers. We get to continue providing weapons to every 2-bit revolutionary or reactionary government in every sad, pathetic little starving country in the Third World, while, once again, the lawyers make a killing.

Don’t look at me. You elected the fools.

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Those Wild and Crazy Lawyers

Quick– who made more money this year? Microsoft Corporation or a couple of lawyers in Texas?

Right. The lawyers. Well, almost. You see this group of lawyers represented the State of Texas in negotiating a settlement (read “sell-out”) with the tobacco companies. In exchange for lots of bucks, paid to the lawyers— ooops! Paid to the Plaintiffs! That’s you and me! —the tobacco companies get to continue marketing death and disease to American children. What a wonderful country!

So how much did the lawyers bill the State of Texas for their noble services, defending the innocent consumer against evil, ruthless, greedy corporations?

How much you say? Well, these are lawyers, after all. So the amount might be a little excessive. What d’ya think? Take a guess? How much should a lawyer be paid for a couple of years of work, doing research, bribing employees to turn over internal documents, and ordering health studies already paid for by the tax-payer through government funding of Universities and Research Organizations? How much?

$10 million?
$20 million?
$50 million?

Oh, come on now. These are REALLY SMART TALENTED LAWYERS. After all, the average lawyer would have tried to get tobacco companies out of the business altogether. But that would have made the tobacco companies very unhappy. So these superior lawyers actually found a way to make everybody happy. The government gets money. The tobacco companies get to stay in business. The taxpayer gets to continue smoking away.

$100 million?
$200 million?
$500 million?

Come on– don’t be shy! These the same intelligent, compassionate, competent professionals you see every day in the movies and on television, except that you never see the scene where they present their bills and take almost all of the settlement money they weaseled out of the greedy, amoral, unfeeling corporation. How can a lawyer live off of a measly $500 million dollars nowadays? Be reasonable! There are SO MANY expenses. Postage. Clerical work. Filing. Thinking. Reading. Subscriptions. Donuts. Get SERIOUS!

$1 billion?

A mere BILLION? When Michael Jackson makes almost a tenth of that? When Bill Gates makes ten times that much! And how much more important is a Texas lawyer than the owner of the greediest corporation on the face of the earth? Give me a break.

$5 billion?
$10 billion?

Now you’re getting reasonable! But not too reasonable.

$25 billion?

Right on! Yes, these Texas Lawyers are asking for $25 billion dollars for negotiating— GET THIS– a $17 billion dollar settlement. In other words, for recovering $17 billion dollars from the tobacco companies for the lucky tax payers of Texas, they ….. well, they want to keep all the money. Yes ALL of the money. YES, ALL OF THE MONEY. But that’s not all folks! The taxpayers of Texas, in compensation for all the medical costs of taking care of all of the victims of smoking addictions, get to PAY these Texas Lawyers an additional $8 BILLION! You lucky Texans! Not only do you get to have tail-gate parties at Huntsville State Prison where they execute completely worthless, disgusting, evil, unredeemable human beings almost every night— you also get to pay a bunch of lawyers $8 billion dollars for……. well….. for…..

Well, fortunately, the lawyers and the tobacco companies got together and decided that it wouldn’t be fair to hit the citizens of Texas with such a large bill. They said, “What? Are you crazy?” Well… And they decided that those Texas Lawyers should ONLY receive $3.3 billion.

Whew! Here I was all upset over nothing! A mere $3.3 billion! How many lawyers were involved? The New York Times doesn’t say, but several other states had teams of three or four leading lawyers and their staffs. But– get this– some lawyers represented as many as 30 states. Do they get paid once? Are you an idiot? Does Michael Jordan get paid once even though he plays in 30 different stadiums?

Well, yes he does. But that’s Michael Jordan. He’s not a lawyer.

One of the lawyers for Florida, Steven Yerid, said the costs are justified. Why? Because that’s how much lawyers should make? Because their work is so terrible, so risky, so dangerous, that even a $14.95 an hour coal miner wouldn’t take it on? Because they are so smart that they scare Stephen Hawkings?

No. He said the fees were justified because “the costs come from the industry”. In other words, we’re justified in taking any money we can lay our grubby hands on because we are lawyers. We just ARE.

Furthermore, he says, the lawyers might have ended up with nothing if they had lost the case. So, because these lawyers might not have won the case, they are entitled to demand as much money as they please.

Remember, this line of reasoning is coming from a lawyer, someone you might need to depend on for your life if you’re ever charged with a serious crime in Texas.

Pity me. I thought this case was about public health and liability. Instead, it is clearly some new kind of industry, in which clever entrepreneur can sue somebody out of the blue on the off chance they might collect a few billions. Who do they sue next?

What does the public have to do with it? Go suck a camel.

The industry will pay it? Ha ha ha. The industry?!!! Where does this idiot think the “industry” gets its money? From the smokers! So, not only will very little of this money from the tobacco companies actually find it’s way into the medical facilities of Texas (aren’t most of their medical facilities used to gas convicts anyway?), but the smokers will pay more for cigarettes in order to pay the lawyers who negotiated a deal in which tobacco companies can now market their disease- causing product with impunity.

Now, who was this lawsuit supposed to benefit?  Who were the victims of the corporation’s malfeasance?  Who was harmed by the evil practices of these public entities who profited from their misery?  That’s right: the smokers.  The same people who are paying for the settlement!

There are some scandals that shock you. There are scandals that boggle the mind. There are scandals that baffle you, because the scale of the moral atrocity is so far beyond normal human experience that you can’t even begin to comprehend it. The Savings and Loan Scandal. The loans to 3rd World Dictatorships at usurious interest rates. Windows 95.

And then there is the king of all scandals, the mind-blowing, baffling, stunning, incomprehensible, MOTHER of all scandals. And this is it.

So while you’re sitting there eating your chips and watching the sanctimonious republicans try to impeach the president for consensual groping in the Oval Office— consider where your hard-earned tax dollars are really going.

And weep, wail, gnash your teeth, bash your head against the wall….. what else are you going to do?

Get yourself a lawyer?

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Liars

You ever tell a lie? Me neither.

According to some theologians, the Bible itself does not condemn lying. The Good Lord knows that in some situations, lying is the correct thing to do.

“Does this dress make me look fat?”
“Are there any Jews in this house?”
“I’m slow and stupid and nobody will ever love me.”
“This won’t hurt a bit.”
“I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”

With all the talk about impeachment, an astonishingly absurd myth is being foisted upon all of us: that there is an established standard of moral decency to which almost all politicians adhere and that whenever anyone departs from this standard, they must be impeached.

The discussion is so absurd, it is mind-boggling. We have those Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee with a collective straight-face, proclaiming that they are going to punish the politician who lied.

They will tell you, of course, that Mr. Clinton lied under oath. In other words, it’s one thing to lie in the course of your normal day-to-day activities as a congressional representative, but to lie under oath!

Egads!

Shriek!

Sob!

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The Feminist Critique of Pure Immanuel Kant

There is an ad in the latest New York Times Review of Books (November 20, 1997) that really shook me up. It is for a book called “The Feminist Interpretation of Immanuel Kant”. It is edited by Robin May Schott, in case you want to order it.

Now, hey, I’d be the first person to say that it’s about time someone over-hauled the old transcendental critique of pure reason, I mean, after all, it’s only been out of date since about fifteen minutes after it was printed, but even I would never have guessed that the feminists would be the ones to put the last nail in the coffin. I’m not sure Immanuel would be pleased. I think he said something like “feminism is destroying our society” or something like that at one point in his career, probably just after his wife left him.

But you know, the next time some dark-minded pundit goes on and on about how our society is just falling apart and things have never been so bad and our youth have really lousy manners, and Hollywood sucks, and so on, I’m going to think about those feminists out there reinterpreting Immanuel Kant and breathe a quiet little sigh of relief. If there is one thing more amazing than any other about our society, its our ability to chew up and regurgitate almost any idea, any image, any concept, and spit it out again as lively and ripe as if it were new.

Like Immanuel Kant. It would have been audacious enough if the feminists had taken on Wittgenstein or Popper, but Kant? So what do the feminists have to say? I don’t know. I haven’t read the book yet. But I’ll bet they accuse Kant of building his entire rigid, rational system of thought on some misdirected patriarchal impulse to rule reality with an iron fist. And I’ll bet the feminists believe that a view of reality more harmonious with natural, empathetic impulses would have worked better. If I remember my college philosophy correctly, Kant was trying to rescue Reason with a capital “R” from Descartes’ radical critique, which consisted of declaring that the only thing you could know for sure was that you existed. Both of them sound a little anal retentive to me. The women probably point out that doing the laundry, cooking, and cleaning, require some pretty fundamental ontological conclusions about cause and effect that can’t be justified by going for a walk every day trying to think up new categories of existence.

Then along comes Sartre who believed we don’t exist in a static sense at all. We are constantly in the state of becoming, and that’s why we are free, unless, of course, your wife expects you home for supper. I’ll bet Simone De Beauvoir had a few precious thoughts about this herself.

Wittgenstein thought we basically constructed a reality in our language, and so our society is really nothing more than a construct of the words we imagine to describe it with. I think the feminists might find a home there. You know how they love to get together and talk. Then there was Martin Heidegger. He believed that mankind had forgotten something very, very important about existence, but what it was we had forgotten he couldn’t seem to remember either, so he joined the Nazi party and continued to teach at a university in Germany throughout World War II. Nothing like a philosophy that stimulates you into positive action! I think the feminists wouldn’t like him. They would think that it’s not that hard to remember the important things, as long as you care about people.

Microsoft Philosophy 1.01

You can tell what philosophy Bill Gates believes in by running a spell check on little known recent philosophers in Microsoft Word and then analyzing the results. Watch:

Philosopher Result Meaning
(Martin) Heidegger headgear groovy
(Imre) Lakatos lactose milk for the mind
(Paul) Feyerabend no suggestions vacant
(Albert) Camus cameos we only see reality in hazy profile
(Dan) Quayle quarrel don’t go into politics
(Hannah) Arendt aren’t we don’t exist, unless we’re banal and evil

Hannah Arendt is the only woman on the list, and I don’t think most philosophers would place her next to Heidegger or even Imre Lakatos in terms of importance, but she did come up with one great idea. While in Jerusalem covering the Eichmann trial (Jewish agents had kidnapped Eichmann, a Nazi war criminal, from Argentina and spirited him away to Jerusalem for a show trial), she found herself at a loss for words to describe the utter mediocrity of this minor functionary who was partly responsible for the deaths of six million Jews, so she coined the phrase “banality of evil”*. Later on, she was sorry that she became so well known for that phrase alone. I have to admit, that’s about the only thing I know about Hannah Arendt myself, but I like the phrase, because it captures the idea that incredibly evil things can result from the actions or inactions of people who perceive themselves as being only minor cogs in a big machine. Raul Wallenberg was a minor functionary, but he saved hundreds of lives. Eichmann claimed that he was only following orders. The crew of the Enola Gay were only following orders when they dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima (victors get to write history so we don’t seem to regard them as villains the way we regard the Germans, Italians, or Japanese). The crew of the Titanic sent lifeboats away half-filled because their orders were “women and children first” and the third-class women and children were still below decks, and the only other people present were men.

That’s the way most people behave– just following orders–and that may be the tragedy of the human race.

So if the feminists find a new way of thinking about reality that can convince most people that they should always do the right thing, even when it goes against orders or policy or whatever, then, hey, I’m all in favour of it.

* It appears that Hannah Arendt was wrong.  The discover of more information about Adolf Eichmann revealed that he was, in fact, virulently anti-Semitic, and fully on board with the plans to exterminate the Jews.

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Newt Gangrene and the Pacs

Newt Gangrene and PACS

This reminds me– during the height of the cold war, the evil Soviet Union, of course, had a TOTALITARIAN government. The United States, on the other hand, was a DEMOCRACY.

In a DEMOCRACY, the people are free to elect the leaders they choose. In a TOTALITARIAN country, the people have no choice: you have to elect whoever the party tells you to elect.

Of course, in a DEMOCRACY, special interests are free to give as much money to politicians as they want to in exchange for special favours, like laws extending copyright protection…. oops! Forget that. That wouldn’t be right! That would mean that we really don’t have a DEMOCRACY at all, that America is actually ruled by wealthy, special interests! Not true. They are free to give as much money to the politicians PAC as they want to. There. That’s better. Then the PAC gives the money to the politician.

Senator John McCain wanted to change that. He wanted new rules to enforce what the old rules were supposed to enforce: limitations on how much “soft” money a politician can receive.

John McCain doesn’t have many friends these days.

I watched Newt Gangrene speak to his PAC tonight, thanking them for helping preserve freedom and DEMOCRACY.

But, hey, this is a DEMOCRACY. So we go to the polls and exercise our choice. Those poor Russians! In our country, we regularly elect the people we choose.

Of course… it is a little strange… during all the years of the cold war, which country, do you think, most often re-elected the same guy who’s been in there for ten, twenty, thirty years already, who is fat and corrupt and tired and bloated and isolated from the the people he represents?

That’s right: the good old U.S. of A.

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Karacter and Politics

Karacter

What is character? The Republican’s keep trotting out the word “character” because they think it’s something they have and Clinton doesn’t. Someone with “character” doesn’t cheat on his wife. Oops. Bob Dole left his first wife to shack up with Elizabeth at the Watergate hotel. Where’s your first wife, Newt? The one that had cancer?

How about that fling of yours, Henry Hyde? Well, a “character” has principles. Oops. Gingrich has been charged with more than 60 violations of various ethics rules for House members. George Bush refused to intervene to prevent slaughter in Bosnia because he was afraid he would lose the next election.

Well, a “character” doesn’t give in to cheap temptations. Oops. The Republicans, eager for campaign money, keep granting all the wishes of corporate America so the money keeps pouring into those PACS. Oops, oops, oops.

Well, a “character” doesn’t sneak around recording conversations illegally, doesn’t cheat in order to get his way, doesn’t blow things out of proportion or sensationalize, and knows the value of discretion and honor. Kenneth Starr, anyone? Linda Tripp? A “character” doesn’t preach one thing and practice another. Henry Hyde, are you there?

It’s weird how this group of self-serving, conniving, dishonest hypocrites seems to have succeeded in hi-jacking the term “character”. Most people know pretty well what is meant by “character”. Honesty and integrity. Above all else, a willingness to put principles ahead of expediency. Clinton failed in regard to Monica Lewinsky, but he hasn’t done all that badly in almost every other area of government. Henry Hyde and his fellow leaders of the holy jihad, currently conducting show-trials in Congress, have demonstrated over and over again a willingness to sell their votes to whichever corporate lobbyist carries the fattest check.

This isn’t mere hypocrisy. You have to understand that while this show trial continues, Congress has been writing laws that take money away from middle-class and poor voters and hands it over to the rich as quickly as possible. Disney and Citibank are only two of the beneficiaries. Archer Daniels Midland. Microsoft. RCA. Boeing. Line up boys: the pork barrel’s full and nobody’s looking!

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Pinochet Ricochet

Baltasar Garzon is my hero. If I get a picture, I’m going to put it up on my web page.

Baltasar Garzon is a Spanish judge. He found out that some Spanish citizens had been kidnapped, tortured, and murdered in Chile in the 1970’s. He found out that the murderers were never apprehended. He was outraged. Then he found out that the leader of this gang of criminals was in England getting some heart surgery. Like any conscientious magistrate, he immediately issued a warrant for this man’s arrest.

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The man is Augusto Pinochet.

In 1973, Chile held a democratic election. The people chose a socialist, Salvador Allende, as their new President. The Americans didn’t like that. Mr. Kissinger was heard to remark something like, “Why should we stand back and let an irresponsible people elect the wrong party?” So first, with the aid of reactionary forces within Chile, a crisis was created. Then, fig leaf in place, with the help from the CIA, General Pinochet led a bloody coup d’etat, during which Salvador Allende was cold-bloodedly murdered (Pinochet’s cronies claim he committed suicide). (There is a good film, Missing, on this story). Pinochet’s army then rounded up as many dissidents and potential dissidents as it could find, held them in the Santiago soccer stadium, tortured as many as he could to get more names to arrest, then murdered thousands of them.

A few years ago, Pinochet did what all ugly, maggoty, disgusting despots do when faced with a powerful reform movement: he agreed to step down only in exchange for a full amnesty. I don’t understand how any government can even pretend to be part of this farce. A man walks into a bank . He shoots five people and locks another twenty in the vault. He takes all the money. He runs off with five hostages. He kills four of them. Then he says, “I didn’t do anything wrong, but I will turn over this last hostage to you unharmed if you agree to not prosecute me for anything I might or might not have done before this.” The people say, “if you didn’t do anything wrong, then what do you have to worry about?” Maybe the police are smart. Maybe they say yes. He turns over the hostage. Then he is arrested and tried and convicted and executed.

Except that here, no one arrested or tried or convicted Pinochet, because they were afraid of the army. The army supports Pinochet because, after all, they are the bloody arms and hands of this evil man. They are complicit.

But Garzon had the guts to say, this man is a murderer and a torturer plain and simple. And he had the audacity to serve the warrant. (The French and Swiss governments have since done likewise.) And Blair’s government seized Pinochet and are holding him pending the outcome of the legal wrangling.

Think what a bizarre, crazy, mixed up message this is going to send to the world. That we are all equal before the law? That torture and murder are criminal acts? That justice awaits even the most powerful? Idi Amin, the happy guest of the Saudi Arabian government for twenty-years, since, presumably, his last meal of fresh humans, must be quaking in his boots!

* * *

Someone says to me, in defense of Pinochet, how would you feel if Castro, on his way to the United Nations, was arrested by the FBI and held for murder and torture? You see? We must have separate rules for dictators.

Well, first of all, if seeing Castro arrested was the price to pay for having assholes like Pinochet and Amin and Hussein, and Karadzic arrested, I think I’d go along with it. Let’s arrest him and have a fair trial and see what we come up with. I doubt you’d find nearly as many serious offenses for Castro as you find for Pinochet, or the others, but if you do, then, yeah, he should be charged. The witnesses should be brought forward, and let’s try him. Yes, it would be worth it, even though I like Castro, and his beard.

There is one other complicating factor. Pinochet was not an invited guest of the British government. He came as a private citizen seeking medical treatment (using the money, undoubtedly, that he pilfered from the state treasury).

If he had been an invited guest of the British Government, they would not have had a legitimate right to arrest him. If they did, the whole system of international diplomacy and the conditions under which negotiations can take place would begin to break down. Fair enough.

When Castro speaks at the U.N., as an invited guest, he has the same protection.

But hey, if goes for a walk in Central Park: arrest him! He and Pinochet can share a cell.

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Mickey Rat

We were about to see the “Mickey’s Day Care Centre”. With a big picture of Mickey Mouse on the sign in the front yard. Yes, the day was coming.

But not yet. Right now, if you own a daycare, you can’t call it the Mickey Mouse Day Care, and you can’t put a picture of Pluto or Goofy on the sign. Mickey and his friends were copyrighted by Walt Disney way back when, and the copyright stays in force for fifty years. And The Disney Corporation has generally been quite ruthless about enforcing it’s copyright, taking day cares, schools, and other institutions to court to force them to remove Donald and Mickey and Goofy from their advertisements or classroom walls and pay up.  That’s because Disney loves children.  That’s Disney’s “family values”.

Well, in 2003, Mickey is “Public Domain”, which means anyone can use him.

Unless….

Let’s say for a moment you’re the Disney Corporation. The law says your copyright is going to expire because the first legislatures who created copyright law decided that you should not be able to cash in forever on your creative work, to sit on your assets, indolent, dependent on a legislative teat. After a reasonable period of time, you should have to do more work to continue to make money.

But you make a lot of money off this copyright.  It’s had work coming up with new ideas and new products.  So you go to the government, like any other citizen in this great country of ours, and say, “Please, can I keep my copyright?” The government says, “No, of course not. Ideas belong to everyone. Copyright, you see, is not about protecting your rights as an owner. It is merely designed to encourage innovation and creativity by giving a temporary period of protection. Your Mickey Mouse did not come from nowhere. Mr. Disney benefited from all the artists and innovators and creative persons who all contributed techniques and language and styles to our culture before him. Now, Mr. Mouse goes back where he belongs: to the greater body of culture.”  (And, of course, we discover that Mr. Disney did not, as it were, actually invent Mickey.  Someone else did and Mr. Disney took credit.)

“Well,” says Disney, “would you change the law if I pay you some money?” And Congress says, “Money! You have Money! Why didn’t you say so! Of course we can. We are a group of utterly corrupt and gutless wimps who always pass laws that favour the people who keep us in office by providing us with an endless supply of money to spend on election campaigns. Ask Archer, Daniels, Midland! Ask Jack Valenti! Ask anybody with money! It’s true! And since you have a lot more money than all of the day care owners in the world, you win!”

And so it was.

Disney’s Political Action Committee (PAC’s are created to bypass election laws that restrict the amount of money corporations can give a candidate, just so this sort of thing can’t happen, ha ha) gave election money to 10 of the 13 sponsors of the new copyright bill.

Now you might naively think, “that’s bribery!  That’s corruption!”  Well yes, but those same congressman wear flag pins in their lapels and promise to stop protestors from burning the U.S. flag and illegal immigrants from taking your job.

The new copyright bill extends legal protection for an additional 20 years, from 50 (after the death of the creator) to 70.

Now in 2023, do you think, by any chance, we will see another extension of the copyright law? Why don’t they just go for the gold: “in perpetuity”?

Maybe that would be too expensive for them.

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Clinton Clinton Clinton!

Two events signaled a decisive change in the course of the Clinton Scandal and the impeachment proceedings. Firstly, CNN ran a little piece by a reporter who is actually OUT THERE covering congressional elections. He gently chided people who think that the Clinton scandal matters. He reported that the people are interested in Education, Health Care, and the minimum wage. Nobody is asking candidates where they stand on the impeachment, and Republican candidates are not advertising the fact that they are in favour of it. Could it be they have SOME shame? That CNN aired this report indicates the passing of a fantasy. CNN is not exactly known for their bold, independent analysis of facts. They tried to play up the scandal big time and now appear to have accepted the fact that most Americans just don’t see it as that big a deal, and regard the entire impeachment stuff as nothing more than partisan politics. In the latest poll, less than 11% think Congress should proceed with impeachment. That’s less than the percentage of people who think the Earth is flat.

Newsweek ran an article on the scandal this week that compared it to Watergate. It was a light, irreverent piece, that made it clear that there was no comparison. Watergate was about a lot of very serious criminal acts by the President and his top advisors.

Both magazines are playing to a very subtle thing: the winds of perception. What they are saying is that there is now a widespread consensus that the Lewinsky scandal won’t wash as justification for impeachment.

Something I’ve been saying since January.

* * *

Conservatives like to rant and rave about the Presidency sinking to a new “low”, as if letting tens of thousands of people die in Rwanda or Bosnia wasn’t a “low”.

* * *

Have you bought a magazine lately? Have you ever gone to a really good magazine store, where they stock everything? I walk down the display case, boggled. There are magazines on every conceivable interest, including “Feminist Lesbian Natural Healing Cyber Music Guide” and “Mollusk Interpretations for Franciscan Feminist Social Worker Anthropoid Researchers”. Is there too much information in the world? Is there such a thing as too much information? There is probably a magazine on “Information Overload”. I think there is: “Adbusters”.

You can’t keep up with everything anymore. You just hope that Time or Newsweek picks up the important stuff, and that TV movies give you the basic issue information that you need to make intelligent conversation at parties.

The Internet is like one of these magazine stores, except a hundred times bigger. A million times bigger. I think what will happen is that, after spending hundreds of years making new information, we will spend the next hundred years sorting information into useful categories and subsets.

***

They are everywhere now: cameras. Web-cams. Video-conferencing.

Some day-cares are now installing T-1 connections and “KinderCams”. Parents can check on their little ones through the internet, at any time during the day. Some people find this scary. They’re right. It is scary. We’ll deal with the scary aspects of it. It’s also great. As long as the workers know they’re being watched, I think it’s great. On the one hand, yes, we are being suspicious and cynical about people. On the other hand, we will know more. It is always better to know more than to know less. We may learn that we have been hysterically paranoid for all of our lives for no reason. Or we may learn that life is full of little complexities that are best left alone. Or we may learn that generally day-care workers do a good job. Who knows? We just learn. We have this voracious appetite to know and see and hear everything.

***

Shift Magazine printed a Q&A between some hackers and Senator Fred Thompson. It was pointed out that when the Volkswagen Company found a defect that would affect only three cars out of 8,500, they sent letters to every owner and recalled all of the cars in order to fix it.

Are you still waiting for your letter from Microsoft? Me too. Did you realize that the entire Internet can be brought down by hackers breaking into Windows NT computers? Is that a defect?

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She’s a Femme Fatale: Raging Hypocrites

It was sort of inevitable, don’t you think?

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Henry Hyde’s “indiscretion”.

It has just been revealed that the Republican Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Henry Hyde, had an affair with a woman named Cherie Snodgrass, about thirty years ago. She was married, and so was he. We have also been informed that Dan Burton, one of Clinton’s harshest critics, fessed up that he has fathered a child in an extramarital affair. And Representative Helen Chenoweth of Idaho has also confessed to an illicit liaison. Well, let’s not be disingenuous here: they didn’t voluntarily fess up– they were caught. Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole, of course, are not with their first spouses anymore. Any details, Newt? Come one, Bob, let’s get this out into the open.

Ah, you say. But isn’t the issue perjury?

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The trouble is, for the Republicans, that they have had to justify Kenneth Starr’s report on the basis of the argument that Clinton’s personal sexual behaviour is relevant. And whenever these clowns appear on TV to argue for impeachment, they don’t talk much about legalities: they talk about trust and morality and values and leadership. Besides, Clinton’s perjury occurred during testimony which was eventually ruled “immaterial” by a judge in the Paula Jones case. That’s a pretty thin case for impeachment. But you understand the two-track strategy of the Republicans. They know that the public will not be outraged by the perjury which gives them the legal pretense to impeach, but they think the public might be outraged by the sexual relationship, which, however, cannot be the basis for an impeachment. So they are trying to blur the distinction. You are supposed to be so outraged at Clinton’s personal conduct, that you will consent to impeach him on a trivial legal issue Well, that’s how they got Al Capone. The well-known gang-meister was finally indicted for…. yes, tax evasion!

There is only one solution: Henry Hyde, Dan Burton, Helen Chenoweth, Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole, and whoever else comes out of hiding soon enough, should all be impeached.

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If I were Henry Hyde, who is in charge of the committee for impeaching adulterers, I’d do the honorable thing and impeach myself first, just to show the American Public that the judicial system doesn’t play politics, and that the Clinton thing is not just a partisan Republican pogrom against a Democratic President, but a reflection of the Republican Party’s earnest devotion to purity and decency in government. So long Henry. Nice knowing you Dan. May you find healing and fulfillment Helen. I hope something comes along for you Newt.

The Republicans, by the way, have demanded that the FBI investigate whether the White House had a hand in getting these stories to the public. Think about this. The Republicans, who have just insisted on publishing extremely intimate details about the President’s sexual liaison with a 21-year-old intern, are outraged, I say, outraged, that someone should expose, with no detail whatsoever, the adulteries of some of their own. Who do they think is buying this? It’s too much! It’s insane! It’s a crazy world!

One last piece of craziness: the Republicans are arguing that the public needs to know these details, and that the impeachment proceedings should hear the evidence in public, and that all the information Kenneth Starr has gathered should be released, because it is important that justice been seen to be done publicly.

All of these decisions were made in a closed session of the Judiciary Committee Meeting.

* * *

While the Republicans were busy rationalizing themselves, Lou Reed, former leader of the Velvet Underground, was putting on a performance of his own. Lou Reed’s Velvet Underground was quite possibly the most aesthetically progressive rock band of the 1960’s. Listen to their stuff: you can’t believe it was recorded thirty years ago. It has a visceral rawness to it, the kind of edgy authenticity so-called alternative bands would die for. Nico, the lead singer on some of their most haunting ballads, is now dead, destroyed by years of drug abuse… not. She died in a bicycle accident. Lou Reed has found a second career walking the border between revision and nostalgia.

So where do you think they performed? At some dark night-club in New York? No, in the White House. President Vaclav Havel of Czechoslovakia was Bill Clinton’s guest this weekend. I wonder if Reed performed one of his better tunes, “Femme Fatale”:

Cause everybody knows (she’s a femme fatale)
The things she does to please (she’s a femme fatale)
She’s just a little tease (she’s a femme fatale)

If you would have told me, thirty years ago, that some day the Velvet Underground would be playing the White House!

Well, … actually, that is kind of what I thought thirty years ago. After all, we knew that we were all going to be fifty some day, and none of us really believed we were going to start listening to Frank Sinatra or Perry Como after we turned 40.

Now if you would have told me that Congress, in solemn session, would be listening in rapt devotion to intimate details about the President’s affair with a young intern– I would have thought you were mad.

Anyway, it’s happened. The most anti-establishment rock artist of the 60’s has played the White House. This has cosmic significance. As soon as I can think of what that is, I’ll try to write about it.