1998-10-06
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.
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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".
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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.
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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.
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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?