Global

WASHINGTON -- During the first days of spring, cold winds blew through the nation's capital. The weather was an apt metaphor for the chilling effects of a perennial news industry desensitized to its own numbing. Don't worry, we've been told countless times: Media outlets are diverse enough to maintain vigilance.

"I have yet to see a piece of writing, political or non-political, that doesn't have a slant," E.B. White observed in a 1956 essay. To that candid assessment he added a more dubious one: "The beauty of the American free press is that the slants and the twists and the distortions come from so many directions, and the special interests are so numerous, the reader must sift and sort and check and countercheck in order to find out what the score is. This he does."

NEW MEXICO -- Drive across the United States, mostly on Interstate 40, and you'll have plenty of time to listen to the radio. Even more time than usual if, to take my own situation, you're in a 1976 Ford 350 one-ton pickup, ploughing along at 50 mph. By day I listen to FM.

Bunked down at night, there's some choice on the motels' cable systems, all the way from C-SPAN to pay-as-you-snooze filth, though there's much less of that than there used to be, or maybe you have to go to a Marriott or kindred high-end place to get that. By contrast, the choice on daytime radio, FM or AM, is indeed a vast wasteland far more bleak than the high plains of Texas and New Mexico I've been looking at for the past couple of days.

It's awful. Even the religious stuff has gone to the dogs. I remember 20 years ago making the same drive through the Bible Belt and you'd hear crazed preachers raving in tongues. These days, hell has gone to love. Christian radio is so warm and fuzzy you'd think you were listening to Terry Gross.

Before the coal industry told him to quit putting his foot in his mouth, even George W. Bush, born and bred in a Texas oil patch, subscribed to the notion that global warming is largely caused by the so-called "greenhouse gasses," the responsibility of us humans. Bush's Treasury Secretary, Paul O'Neill, hands out to his fellow cabinet members horror scenarios about the earth frying.

But do all those gloomsters about global warming really know what they're talking about? Remember those dud forecasts of a blizzard-of-the-century in the northeast United States earlier this month? If the weather folk can't figure out what's happening for the rest of the week, why do they think they can tell us what the climate will be across the next decade, the next 50 years or the next century?

Many Americans have seen the digital dream of global communications vividly expressed on TV commercials for Cisco Systems. Eager to promote its theme of "empowering the Internet generation," the giant high-tech firm paid for a lot of lovely ads with adorable children from different countries asking: "Are you ready?"

By now, we understand that our response is supposed to be -- must be -- affirmative. But our best answer may be a question: "Ready for what?"

History tells cautionary tales. After the first rudimentary telegraph went into operation 207 years ago in Europe, media analyst Armand Mattelart says, "long-distance communication technology was promoted as a guarantee of the revival of democracy." During the next several decades, a powerful concept took hold -- "the ideology of redemption through networks."

The air now quivers with gloomy assessments of the secrets "compromised" by the FBI's Robert Hanssen, a senior official who stands accused of working for the Russians since 1985.

If you believe the FBI affidavit against him filed in federal court, Hanssen betrayed spies working for the United States, some of whom were then executed. Among many other feats, he allegedly ratted on "an entire technical program of enormous value, expense and importance to the United States," which turns out to have been the construction of a tunnel under the new Soviet Embassy in Washington D.C. He trundled documents by the cartload to "dead drops" in various suburbs around Washington D.C., often within a few minutes walk from his house.

A skeleton is rattling in George Will's closet. But it's difficult to hear above the steady applause from his elite boosters inside the media business.

Widely viewed as one of the nation's most influential journalists, Will churns out syndicated columns that appear in hundreds of daily papers. He also writes for Newsweek. And he's a regular on ABC's "This Week." He is definitely outspoken -- but don't expect him to speak out about the fact that Juanita Yvette Lozano now faces up to 15 years in prison.

"A woman who worked for a media company that produced ads for President George W. Bush's campaign was indicted for secretly mailing a videotape of Bush practicing for a debate to Vice President Al Gore's campaign," an Associated Press story explained the other day. Accompanying the 60-minute video were about 120 pages of the Bush team's confidential material for debate preparation.

Apparently the deserts of Nevada, so similar in terrain to the Pentagon's other main target practice area, the Iraqi outback, simply aren't challenging enough for the Navy's top guns anymore. Now they want to bomb around Big Sur, natural jewel of California's Central Coast, home of the Henry Miller library, the Esalen Institute, FDR's famous tin house, Nepenthe and much more.

A new plan issued by the Navy's Strike Fighter Wing in January calls for nearly 3,000 bombing practice runs a year from Lemoore Naval Air Station in the Central Valley and aircraft carriers in the Pacific to Fort Hunter Liggett in the Santa Lucia Mountains, whose oceanward slope is Big Sur. Lemoore is the home base for the F/A-18 Hornet strike fighter planes. The scheme calls for the jets to drop 25-pound "test" bombs onto a 500- foot in diameter target painted on the grounds of Fort Hunter Liggett. One Navy flack terms the plan "kindergarten for bombers."

Hearken to the delighted squawks of the Republicans about the Rich pardon and about the vindication of their charge that Clinton is morally beyond the pale, the worst of the worst. Who do they think they're kidding? Corruption of the presidential power to pardon? Let's just take another look at those pardons issued by George Bush Sr. at the onset and conclusion of his presidential term.

In 1989, President Bush used his power to pardon a longtime Soviet spy who had been prudent enough to offer $1.3 million to Ronald Reagan's presidential library, plus a $110,000 disbursement to the Republican National Committee (RNC), this latter bribe being made in the week of Bush's inauguration. The pardon duly came a few months later, on Aug. 14, 1989.

Gushy reviews began as soon as George W. Bush stepped away from the podium in the House chamber. On NBC, Tim Russert explained that the performance was especially impressive due to the new president's personal history of being podium-adverse: "I was amazed at how conversational he was tonight, and confident and comfortable." An analyst for ABC News marveled that Bush had established a "commanding presence."

By the next day, the media verdict was in: The nation's leader is learning to make effective use of a TelePrompTer!

Stage presence, cadence, rhythm, choreography -- they can really add up in the professional calculations by journalists. And Bush, known to have a remarkably short attention span, seems to be well-suited to a medium that greatly values style over substance. Like a negative in a developing pan, the current president's TV profile is taking shape. Some political reporters scoff in private, no doubt, but their on-the-job respect is thick as dense smoke.

The vultures are picking his bones. Bob Herbert, Salon, Barney Frank, Joe Biden, Lannie Davis ... they've all finally thrown Bill over the side. In the Wall Street Journal Hamilton Jordan stigmatized Bill and Hillary as "the First Grifters," the term used for scam artists preying on the poor and desperate in the Depression of the 1930s. "The Clintons," Jordan sneered, "are not a couple, but a business partnership, not based on love or even greed, but on shared ambitions. Everywhere they go, they leave a trail of disappointed, disillusioned friends and staff members to clean up after them." Jordan contrasted the elevated moral tone of the Carter White House against the Augean filth of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Clinton time.

If he, Jordan, had recommended something like the Rich pardon, "Carter would have thrown me out of the Oval Office and probably fired me on the spot." As for Clinton's hubris after Lewinsky-gate, "If a president can get caught having sex in the Oval Office with an intern and commit perjury about it to a federal grand jury, and still get away with it, what could possibly stop him?"