ARTS & FARCES internet

After a travel day from hell (I left my house in Saint Paul at 5:00AM, got routed through a connection in Dallas where I spent two hours on a broken plane that was finally pronounced unfixable) I finally made it to San Francisco for The Media Center‘s “Monetize the Web” seminar.

This is going to be interesting because of the speakers discussion leaders and the quality of the other participants. I suspect it would be even more interesting if they didn’t have a “no publication” statement in the information packet I received last night:

“A note about our seminar ground rules: Media center seminars and discussions are considered off the record. What’s said in the seminar should stay among the people in the room. That means the members agree they won’t publish anything based on what they hear in the seminar. But they will be taking copious notes for internal presentations in their companies and they’ll want to apply as much as they possibly can. The Media Center may publish summaries or accounts of presentations in our seminars, but if we do so we will always follow up and request permission from discussion leaders to make sure we aren’t publishing proprietary or other information they woudl rather keep private.”

Disappointing, of course—and I guess I expected better from a unit of the American Press Institute—but since I’m here on a fellowship I’ll play by the rules. Besides, that way you can’t hear about my LSD crack last night during the introductions.

Project Censored has released its “Top 25 Censored Media Stories of 2003-2004.” Each year I use this list as a sort of score card to see how well the non-corporate press is doing. While there are one or two gaping holes, for the most part I’d say it’s been a pretty good year for the independent press staying on top of the stories missed by the mainstream media.

The one story that seems to have evaded the independents is coverage of the International Studies in Higher Education Act of 2003 (although it was covered by the Yale Daily News and the Christian Science Monitor).

Most everyone knows that corporate media sees the world through a different lens than independent media and the rest of us. Nowhere is this more evident than in the coverage of the largest political demonstration in U.S. history. Last Sunday, on the eve of the Republican National Convention, a half-million people (according to one police estimate reported by the New York Times) protested the war on Iraq and George Bush’s presidency in the streets of Manhattan. That much is undisputed; but only that much.

According to Todd Purdam’s analysis in the New York Times, the street protests were “elaborately planned and heavily Democratic.” Meanwhile, Kristin Jones’s account for The Nation ended with the observation, “The Bush team has tried to portray the protests as the work of the Democratic Party. But while Kerry may wish he had the power to draw hundreds of thousands of passionate supporters to the streets, today’s young protestors are nobody’s baby.”

Two accounts of the same event seen through different lenses provide strong evidence that objectivity is little more than a myth. But that’s old news. What’s interesting in contrasting these two accounts is that one—the New York Times analysis—was dishonest and unfair. You’d think that it would be hard to decipher the truth in this matter, but thanks to CSPAN, it’s not. Thanks to the live, unblinking-eye coverage provided by CSPAN, it’s fairly easy to expose not-so-well-hidden agendas in this coverage. CSPAN relied heavily on fixed camera locations that just sat there, unblinkingly transmitting what transpired with verité-like precision.

Having been out of the psychedelic drug scene for an embarrassingly long time, I have no idea if this is happening elsewhere in the U.S., but Barlow writes that powder cocaine has become peculiarly abundant and cheap in New York and that pot and the psychedelics are scarce and expensive.

Once again, one can see clearly what the War on Some Drugs is really about. It’s the culture, stupid. It certainly isn’t about public safety, since coke and booze are the perfect combination for social depravity of all sorts. Instead, it provides a beautiful opportunity to jail the blacks and hippies who prefer the non-Republican drugs. It makes huge bank for one’s wing-tipped colleagues.

Barlow draws parallels to the last time this drug inversion happened in New York; during Bush the Elder’s administration, and is concerned about the volatile combination of cocaine, alcohol, money and power.

I’m concerned too. I have four young reporters on the ground in Manhattan filing stories for Utne Online. I didn’t have this sense of foreboding on the eve of the Democrat convention in Boston.

I thought it would be more difficult, or maybe more complicated, but it was neither. A transplant surgeon called from the University of Minnesota this morning to tell me they had a cadaver kidney for me (I’ve been on the transplant list for four-and-a-half years). “I’ll pass,” I said in a quiet but steady voice. “Call the next person on the list.” The physician wanted a reason. “I’m still working out some ethical issues with the whole transplant business.” There. It was out before I had a chance to even think about censoring myself.

That was pretty much a lie. I mostly worked out transplant ethics for myself within six months of my diagnosis. But it’s easier than telling the whole story. Or maybe more convenient. The short version of the whole story is that I feel very strongly that corporations should not profit from the misfortune of the chronically ill. It would be hypocritical for me to hold that position and then turn around and benefit from someone else’s misfortune. In order for me to receive a cadaveric kidney transplant, there has to be a cadaver. Get it?

I’ll be 50 next month, God willing, and I have a vague gnawing in my gut—nothing clear enough or strong enough to call a belief—that everything happens for a reason, my kidney failure included. We’re supposed to learn from things that happen to us; that much I know for dead certain. Where I am is partly a result of some things I haven’t learned yet. And here’s the really difficult part: I may never learn them.