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OLEAN -- This little paper, the Niagara Falls Reporter, attracts a bunch of attention on the Internet. Responses to some of my columns are more intense than reaction to national affairs stories I wrote that appeared through the years in several much larger Gannett papers.
Notice I used the word "intense," not the word "favorable."
Ample numbers of you readers apparently think I'm a certified idiot.
One fellow -- when I wrote that Adelphia was just the tip of the corporate greed iceberg, and that the Bush administration might be dragging its feet in delaying indictment of officers from bigger crooked companies -- interpreted this as political bias in favor of the Democrats.
"Which first lady, with no experience whatsoever, made a $100,000 profit on a $1,000 investment over a 10-month period in the cattle future markets?" asked this reader.
He also mentioned, accurately, that Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe got rich (to the tune of about $18 million) on Global Crossing stock before that company tanked and filed for bankruptcy.
Some conservatives suspect the financial coup was a reward for services like McAuliffe's lining up Global Crossing chief Gary Winnick with President Clinton for a golf outing. When Global Crossing received a $400 million Pentagon contract and Winnick donated $1 million to Clinton's presidential library, eyebrows were raised. Quid pro quo? McAuliffe denies that, insisting he was just a good investor.
"You should use a little common sense when you write articles for papers," scolded my critic. "I just shake my head and wonder what you are smoking."
All this needling threw me into a spasm of self-examination.
The first conclusion I came to is that Americans are all too willing to assess any oversight, conflicting viewpoint, or innocent omission -- everything and anything they disagree with -- to pure political bias. This is a reflection of what's going on in Washington. Never mind doing what's right for the citizenry. If a train wreck is in the offing, slap a sign of the opposing political party on it and start pointing fingers. This behavior has reached the point of mental disease in the nation's capital.
The second conclusion: I am pretty much a centrist and am still capable of objective inquiry. In fact, a diligent reader would realize I wrote about the Global Crossing scandal last spring in one of the first columns I did for this paper. I take a back seat to few people in criticizing the Clinton administration.
When I was serving close to 5 million readers, I was the first USA Today writer to cogently explain the Whitewater scandal, and to predict it would harm Hillary as much as Bill. You can look it up. I did it a decade ago, shortly after returning from Arkansas, where I knew Clinton as governor, and it so hacked off the White House that Clinton's closest counselor, Bruce Lindsey, called personally to complain of my treachery. I continued to write about Whitewater.
The third conclusion is that Reader Critic is correct: Global Crossing has been weakly covered by the mainstream press. It is the fourth-largest bankruptcy in American history, and it gets little attention, especially from the television talking heads. I tend to think this is more from lethargy and copycat journalism than skullduggery and political plotting by financial writers. If one influential writer concentrates on Enron, 25 editors tell 25 other influential writers to do the same. It's highly competitive out there.
The fourth conclusion: Despite what Republicans fervently wish, no matter whether it's fair or not, the current economic mess will end up plopping in the lap of the GOP when voters go to the polls this November. Ever since the Great Depression and Franklin Roosevelt's long march out of it, image-makers and political consultants have found it much easier to place financial scandal on the Republican doorstep in the American voter's perception. It may have little to do with reality -- it speaks more to the importance of historical imagery in American culture.
Pinstripe greed: Must be the Republicans.
Labor corruption: Must be the Democrats.
Besides this, President George W. Bush is dangerously cultivating a perception that he is blithely fiddling while his fiscal Rome burns. Sure, August is the traditional time for White House vacations, and everyone hopes the markets rebound. But Americans everywhere are bitching over coffee and doughnuts about the entire economic system we have come to know -- and distrust as hopelessly twisted, vulnerable to greed and thievery.
Even Reader Critic sees this: "The problem today is the elected officials look to fill their pockets instead of trying to make this country greater."
Couldn't agree more. And elected officials, by and large, don't even seem to recognize Americans think this way.
Reader Critic is right about one thing. The mainstream press picks and chooses subjects upon which it will focus. When stories that should be juicy get left out -- for whatever reason -- partisans howl. If he wants a smack at a Democrat, here's one.
Arthur Levitt, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission in the Clinton years, arduously tried to reform the system by proposing accounting firms could not be fiscal consultants to big companies at the same time they were doing detailed audits. (This is what got Arthur Andersen in trouble with Enron and several other now-failing firms.) The idea was this: If your audit found a company cheating, it was an obvious conflict of interest to place your accounting firm in a position to be bought off with a lucrative "consulting" contract just so you'd turn a blind eye to the fraud.
Levitt got very close to achieving this important reform -- which would have forestalled much of the current stock market disaster -- but he failed when major accounting firms coughed up $24 million over two years in campaign contributions and persuaded Congress to threaten the SEC budget.
Foremost among those who led this chicanery?
Sen. Joseph Lieberman, the morality-spouting Connecticut Democrat who two years ago ran for vice president -- a man sometimes described as the "conscience of the Senate."
So, I'm not lighting either party's candle. I calls 'em as I sees 'em.
I tend to take a pox-on-both-your-houses stance. If you want the truth, I don't really think that much of either presidency -- Clinton's or Dubya's. That, of course, is unfair to the current White House occupant because he hasn't been in office a full term yet, and he's had dire crises to face. But he seems to be dithering a bit these days.
The reaction to Clinton's two terms is probably one of disappointment. The man was brilliant, charming, wise, driven and compassionate. He could sell poison ivy to a man with the itch. He did many great and good things, but he wasted most of these gifts. A C-plus when he could have been presidential valedictorian.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | August 13 2002 |