Year: 1996

So President Clinton is ready to take measures to limit tobacco advertising and to classify nicotine as an addictive drug, eh? Bravo, I say! It may be a politically convenient move for him, but whatever the ulterior motive, the results should such legislation be passed can only be positive.
There are already people railing against Clinton’s proposed anti-tobacco initiative, but these people don’t seem to realize that they are not the targets of Clinton’s proposition. The National Guard isn’t going to be barging into every home to pluck cigarettes out of the mouths of unsuspecting citizens. The beneficiaries of Clinton’s actions will be the future. The initiative would curb advertising for tobacco products, limit or prohibit tobacco sponsorship of sporting events, remove cigarette vending machines from some public places, and stiffen nationwide regulations against the sale of tobacco products to minors.
Is anyone missing this? This legislation is for the next generation, your children. It will make it more difficult and less desirable for your kids to go out and take up an unhealthy, unattractive, costly and destructive habit. Who in their right minds, in all good conscience as a parent, can say, “Yes, I want my child to go get a pack of cigarettes and start smoking”? Who, even if you’re smokers, can even suggest that they want their children to have that option?
It may indeed be a freedom curbed, but medical studies have shown for years that it’s simply a “freedom” to kill yourself gradually. The tobacco industry has tried time and again to manufacture studies to counter those findings, but the tobacco industry has too vested an interest in its own profits and cannot be relied upon to provide truthful results in such a study.
I have an easier time letting Jack Kervorkian off the hook than I do the tobacco industry. At least “Doctor Death” is under the impression that he’s helping someone. I doubt that anyone can sanely entertain that illusion with regards to cigarette manufacturers.
Among the opposition to Clinton’s tobacco regulations are the farmers who harvest the tobacco, some of whom are heirs of a long line of tobacco producers. If these people with all of their experience with their products are concerned about becoming unemployed, perhaps they should turn their talents and knowledge to helping research cures to the addiction from which so many suffer.… Read more

I’m feeling really lousy right now. Really, really lousy. Let me explain.
Since my mother died in 1987, communication in my family hasn’t exactly been at an all-time high. One could easily reach the conclusion that one person had been the glue that held our family together. Some within our own family have reached that conclusion as well.
One person I was in touch with quite a bit after my mother’s death was her own father, who lived in New Jersey. For longer than I can remember, indeed, longer than I’ve even been around to remember, he has been one of the very few members of my family to make a living at any sort of creative endeavour, so ever since my teens when when I finally gained something of a clear idea of where my life, interests and career were headed, he was something of a kindred spirit.
My grandfather won several awards and was one of a very select few to be named official photographer for the Victorian Society of New England, which meant he got to visit numerous stately houses and structures in that part of the country, and his photos of those places were published on many occasions in the Victorian Society’s official journals and elsewhere.
If one were reaching real hard to draw similarities, one could say that I was inspired by his work, but it’s more a case of coincidental similarities. Due to a rift between my mother and her father that started sometime in my infancy and didn’t end until a year before she died, my grandfather was not a big part of my life. I didn’t know much about him until 1986 when I finally got to see him for the first time since my second birthday. By that time, I had taken up writing, drawing and desktop publishing, as well as more than passing interests in music, science, and the idea of making a movie or a TV show someday. He seemed thrilled at the prospect that someone in his family wasn’t headed for an office job or the “transportation industry.” I was happy to find someone who wouldn’t try to steer me in those directions because it would make it easy for me to get a job on name recognition alone. That summer, he carted me around to the New York Museum of Natural History, to Hayden Planetarium, and quite a few other places. He had some pictures he needed to shoot, and while he advised mom and dad that they could go do some shopping, he made it real clear that his grandson was coming with him.
Not that I got the chance to take any pictures myself – it was enough of a treat to see that not all of the men in my family get old, fat and bald, slow down, and come to a quiet end. He was in his early 80s at the time, and he could beat his chubby grandkid across the street on a New Jersey summer day.
When my mother died, he didn’t come to Arkansas for the funeral, preferring instead to leave things as they were – they had finally broken their silence after twelve or so years, and I don’t think he wanted to deal with the cruel reality that he had just barely gotten the one final opportunity he’d have to see her alive and well. In fact, she collapsed at home the very night we returned to Fort Smith from New Jersey, the first sign of the cancer that wound up claiming her life the following spring.
I flew up, alone, to see him again in 1988, and somehow it seemed like there was a distance between my grandfather and I. I had become much more of a bookworm in the wake of events, and less of a teenager who’d get out and go do things. I got the impression he was slightly disappointed.
We were in touch on and off through the years, but when I dropped out of college in 1992 for various reasons, not all of them necessarily good, he seemed especially displeased. Anytime I talked to him for the next couple of years, the first thing on the agenda, just barely lagging behind “hello,” was how soon I was going back to school. Not much else seemed to matter.
I hadn’t heard from him since around 1994. My brother called me about a week ago and told me that all was not well; he flew up to New Jersey to see our grandfather, stayed for a few days, and came back late last week with the news that the doctors had determined that the illness was prostate cancer, and that there wasn’t a lot of time left. My brother had told him about my preparations to go back to school, about some of the word I’ve been doing and some of the recognition I’ve received for it. I was urged to call, to say something. I tried to call my grandfather last night a little before 7:00, and got no answer. The call from my brother a few hours later confirmed my gut fear – I had just missed my chance. Edward Harvey died on August 6th at the age of 93.
Second-guessing life doesn’t do anybody much good, but it’s still eating away at me. Just as I didn’t spend a lot of time with my mother right before she died, I didn’t give myself the time to spend with her father. Here was the one person in the family who was the most like me, and you’d think I would have spent a lot of time in his company, but circumstances prevented that from happening. I wanted to show him some of what I had done, and to see and hear more about what he had done.
Such treatment for a kindred spirit. Some grandson, I.
… Read more

I’m starting to wonder if the world has perhaps gone mad.
I’ve been following the TWA air crash story pretty close, since I saw the first “this just in” report and kinda got caught up in it. But some of the things I’ve heard emerge from the media have been extraordinary.
I’ve mainly been perusing CNN, ABC News, and CNBC in roughly equal measures. At this point I have to favor ABC News’ coverage of the event because they seem to be trying to stick to doing news more than the other two.
Within 24 hours, CNN has a big graphics package and soft piano music beds under what seems like every other report on the subject. One of their guest commentators mentioned something about Clinton turning the event into an election issue. This seems like the height of hypocrisy when the forum through which that view is aired is already concentrating so hard on ratings – a Nielsen election issue, if you will.
CNBC’s coverage has been fairly decent, though I was unlucky enough to happen across “Rivera: Live!” – Geraldo Rivera’s new excuse for a current issues show – and heard Geraldo himself say “We know this was not an accident. Why don’t they tell us what’s going on?” Granted, this is Geraldo, and 99% of the time if not more, he’s full of shit. But people do listen to the little bugger, and I seriously question CNBC’s editorial policy for letting him go off half-cocked like that.
The Governor and Mayor of New York both unleash verbal attacks on TWA, but you know full well that if TWA had released a premature passenger manifest and it turned out to be wrong in even one instance, they could be in serious trouble, and no one would let them off the hook for that either. I wouldn’t want to be in TWA’s shoes right now.
At a press conference held by the National Transporation Safety Board questions were put to the representatives of the investigative team: “Have you found the bomb?” “Is there any evidence of a ground-to-air missile?”
What…??!? A missile? Fired by whom? I wasn’t aware that the State of New York had declared war on commercial air travel, at least not until after the crash had already occurred (see above).
There are no answers at this point because it’s roughly twenty-one hours since this thing happened; search efforts have concentrated mainly on passengers. With no survivors and no realistic prospect of any survivors, the media and the public seem to be trying to find someone, anyone to blame now. Was it terrorism? No one knows yet. Has TWA been negligent before the crash, sloppy after the crash? It’s possible, but this is no easier for them than it is for anyone else. It’ll all have to come out in the wash, so to speak.
The reporters were carping last night about how these things also bring people together. Well, yeah, but I’ll also say what I said about that observation after the tornado and the fire here: it also brings the nuts out of the woodwork. A mere day after the crash of TWA 800 “brought everyone together,” people are now using it to tear each other apart.
Thank goodness I work on commercials and promotional items instead of news in the television industry. I think I’d have some serious ethical dilemmas and arguments in such a case.… Read more

At the moment, it’s a moot issue. But I wrote – and then proceeded to lose – an earlier tract on the subject of the failed Communications Decency Act that was overturned this year, and thought I’d go back and remember as much of it as I could. Plus I’ll add some insights that have arrived on my mental doorstep since then. Be warned, this is intentionally one of my more incendiary pieces, deliberately written to evoke responses by shocking you. Shocking you into thinking about it real hard.
Simply put – who the hell thought of the CDA? And were they just nuts, or actually making some pretense at being serious?
The CDA started with, so its creators tell us, impressionable youth accessing such things as adult web sites, adult phone services and so on. (This is not actually where it all started. But you’ll have to read on to find the real reason.) Now, I’ve always felt that the finger of blame can often more accurately be pointed inward, to the home itself. Hormonal adolescents get into this trouble anyway, whether it’s a triple-X web site or stepdad’s stack of old Penthouse magazines. But, oh my! Little Billy’s been surfing the web with one hand on the keyboard and one hand below the keyboard, and he’s been going to very bad places. Very, very bad places! Poor little Billy! Our innocent little boy! Boo hoo!
I have this to say to these people. It also applies to the parents who try to blame their kids’ behavior on violent television. If you’d been doing your duty to your children and supervising them in the first place, not to mention opening the occasional frank dialogue on such subjects as sex, violence, dating and so forth, then maybe the kids wouldn’t have felt a need to look elsewhere for the answers. But I’m straying far and wide of the path. Before I leave this point, however, I want you to savor it for a moment and think. Teach your children well. It’s a line from one of the very few songs that really has something important to say. Values and morals should begin in the home. The frightening thing is that for the longest time, no one really worried about value lessons and moral teachings until the 1992 campaign.
And now little Billy’s folks want that terrible Internet fiercely regulated! And suddenly, so does Congress! (Little Billy’s folks are their constituents, you see.) And the next thing you know, that darn smut is under heavy fire. But so are a lot of other things. The groundwork is being laid, like little Billy wishes to be as he accesses all of these evil web sites. The groundwork will allow further subjects to be declared taboo on a legislative whim. At first, sex was the target of the embryonic CDA, but then certain articles of profanity and other subject matter were forbidden as well. Your local librarian could, in theory, be jailed under the Communications Decency Act for making available online any “questionable” passages of a book that is available on the library shelves.
Okay, time out. Let me get something out of the way. I really had to avail myself of the “laid” pun, it was too good to pass up. And I’m not advocating letting your children loose with a truckload of adult material. But as puberty sets in and increases young people’s awareness and curiosity about their emerging sexuality, it seems like more and more parents are afraid to have The Talk with their kids. I know my parents never had The Talk with me, and I just had to find these things out for myself. The aforementioned adult material usually does cater to the basest possible denominators, and really offers no information of any value whatsoever on the subject of sexuality, especially to those who have no experience with the topic in question. But American society pushes sex so far into the closet that it’s almost funny. Outmoded Puritanical views make it easier for us to depict brutal violence on television than to delve very far into sexual matters. Given the option of getting my groin kicked or kissed, I know which I would choose. I think the solution here is for we Americans to practice what we preach. That’s right! Make that repression of all sexual thoughts and deeds a day-to-day reality. If we can’t talk about sex, we shouldn’t have sex, for it’s obvious that such a hypocritical society is far too stupid to be allowed to reproduce. Parents shudder at the secrets in their children’s lives. Perhaps if those very parents hadn’t shuddered at their own secrets, their kids would’ve turned out more to their satisfaction. Just as abusive homes turn out abusive children, I’m convinced that parents embarassed about their own previous lack of education regarding sex tend to unleash dangerously uneducated young people onto the world. These days that could mean signing your child’s death sentence.
Sex education should also be treated much more seriously in schools. I’ve also read in the news about parents railing against the thought of public school sex ed. Well, what the hell would they suggest? They’re not doing the job, so somebody has to! It should be a required subject with written tests and the whole works. And it should be a prerequisite for graduation. No joke! Kids are graduating who can read and understand English, perform routine mathematical equations, and they comprehend basic science. And then they’re going and catching AIDS and getting themselves killed. Make the successful completion of sex education a requirement for getting that diploma, and you’ll be doing kids a favor. Drum some basic common sense into their heads – abstinence at best, if not that then monogamy, and always use a condom – and they’ll actually learn something that could literally contribute to their survival. The distribution of birth control in schools has also raised people’s eyebrows, though I don’t think distribution is the problem. I think the distribution of these items was actually a really keen idea. Again getting back to the repression of all matters sexual in our country, the fear of being seen taking the school up on its free birth control, and the subsequent fear of peer harrassment or ridicule, probably prevented a lot of teens from obtaining the necessary birth control. And I would charge that these byproducts of society’s sexual repression contributed significantly to the rising statistic of school-age mothers. What examples are we setting for our kids? That we’d rather risk teen pregnancy than risk being branded “slutty” or somesuch?
Anyway, we’re back to little Billy cruising a web just full of porn, as the parties responsible for drafting the CDA would have us believe. Soon, they tell us, the Internet will be policed more vigorously and this will end the problem.
BZZZZZZZT! Thank you for playing, Senator! Guess what? You’re full of it. That won’t take care of the problem, and you know it. A little earlier, I mentioned that even though I defend its protection under the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, I consider “adult” material to be of very little actual value. I still stand by this. Pornography is no substitute for comprehensive and honest sex education. My dismissal of adult material does not include books on sex technique or therapy, since those actually attempt to impart some kind of information. But one thing that you may have noticed about pornography of all kinds is that there’s just so much of it. And that alone makes the goals of the Communications Indecency Act ridiculously impossible. It’s like the old staple sci-fi storyline that one man is going to take over the world. How? He can only be in one place, and wherever he isn’t, things are pretty much left to their own devices.
Pornography shares something in common with alcohol and tobacco. Not only do all three fit some people’s definitions of vice, but they all began as cottage industries and quickly entered the world of mass production. And that is probably why we’ll never be rid of any of the three. People still roll their own cigarettes and brew their own beer, and in much the same way, there are still guys who take naughty pictures of their girlfriends. As long as people remember how to produce these items on their own, as long as the necessary information is there to learn how to produce them, it’s truly a pointless exercise to even conceive of completely eliminating such habits from society. I’ve got a brighter idea. Why don’t we just educate people on the dangers and/or benefits (if any) of the aforementioned vices, and hope that some will take the hint?
If every adult publisher, every adult moviemaker, and every adult web site were brought to a halt tomorrow, someone somewhere would still have the means to resurrect those activities the following day, and before long, they would be mass-produced once more. So what was the point in hunting them all down in the first place? Mass production doesn’t succeed without mass demand. They’re attempting to wipe out the symptoms and not the actual problem.
More disturbing is the possibility that other items could be added to the list. When judges in Philadelphia overturned the CDA, news reports appeared nationally that the Pentagon had been the target of numerous attempts to “hack into” classified information, and that the best solution anyone could think of would be to – hang on tight for the drum roll here – increase security on the Internet!
(Funny. I’d just increase security on the Pentagon computer systems. What in the hell is the Pentagon doing on the Internet anyway? Shouldn’t that kind of secure information be…well…secure?!?)
So now you’re asking me, “If Congress is trying so hard to abolish the Internet, what’s it all about? Are they trying to rob us of our First Amendment rights? Are we looking at the first generation of Thought Police?”
Nope. We’re seeing something we’ve seen time and again in the past, only the issue is clouded by the First Amendment angle. Not that the First Amendment rights that we stand to lose are unimportant – far from it. But the simple fact is, the pressure that is being exerted by Capitol Hill to cripple the Internet is more likely a result of lobbyists and corporate special interests than any attempts to control the public’s minds. It’s very simple. The Internet allows a user who’s already paid a flat rate for a subscription the ability to access real-time video, real-time audio, and a wealth of information (buried beneath a sea of useless crap). And now it’s been discovered that a live telephone conversation can be conducted via the net. Don’t think for a moment that the phone company wouldn’t like to quash that ability in favor of expensive international phone calls. Don’t think for a moment that television broadcast, cable and commercial video interests wouldn’t like to see Quicktime movies wiped from the face of the Earth. In some small ways, their fears are justified. Someone could be pirating movies or music or software via the Internet. But the majority are most likely not doing anything quite so underhanded. These large corporate entities lobby with their friends in Congress. And their friends in Congress have a go at the Internet.
It’s not some huge, dark conspiracy to silence the voice of the people. It’s a huge but obvious conspiracy to make sure money keeps flowing to the “proper” channels – the established industries want to keep getting richer off of their existing infrastructures. Naturally they’re opposed to innovative experimenters who are finding ways to do the same things cheaper and more efficiently. And along come the issues of impressionable kids accessing porn and irrepressible hackers accessing the Pengtagon. It’s love at first sight. Our self-centered lawmakers couldn’t have arranged for better smokescreens if they’d tried – they cloak their lobbying interests in the self-explanatory, surefire crusades of protecting innocent minds and preserving national security. Surely no one would argue with those aims?
Only a lot of intelligent people who know an encroachment on their rights when they see one. Big business and bloated legislators are trying to line their own pockets and avoid the perils of dealing with honest competition. And if they should happen to eliminate a few liberties along the way, who’ll notice?
I will. And, with any luck, you will too. Now go get little Billy away from that evil, terrible computer!… Read more

It’s Independence Day. I sit in my dungeonlike turn-of-the-century-brick chambers high atop Old Town Grain & Feed, a local bar/club/all-around-dive, thinking about the fireworks I was hearing over by the river about an hour ago. Now I hear a band playing downstairs and people screaming in that odd way they do when they’re getting really drunk.
My general indignation this evening began with my curiosity about whatever happened to Independence Day as a revered national holiday. Then it grew into a general irritation with alcohol and the damage it wreaks on our species as a whole. It seemed so appropriate – on this day when, two hundred and twenty years ago, our forefathers put pen to paper to solidify the basis of a new nation, I slam my fingers repeatedly into little molded plastic shapes with letters and other characters printed on them. No connection, really, just the staggering coincidence of people expressing themselves and jotting it down for posterity to contemplate. If I was feeling really cocky, I’d make some comparison about great minds at work centuries and decades apart. But that judgment is not for me to make.
No doubt, this being the Fourth of July, someone will at this point remind me most sternly that the freedom to drink oneself silly and evacuate innumerous brain cells through the medium of projectile-vomiting over the toilet is protected by the Constitution of the United States, just like the freedom I have to be saying these words. Fine. Sit back and have a drink and I’ll sit here and type. Maybe one of us will experience a revelation sometime this evening.
Every day, in just about every city in every state of the union, a local police dispatcher receives a call that someone is drunk and dangerously out of control. Maybe this person is beating a spouse or child, or threatening bodily harm. Maybe this person is walking through the neighborhood shouting obscenities. Maybe this person is just going to kill someone else, either by pulling the trigger of a gun or getting behind the wheel of a car. It’s no secret, it’s no rumor – alcohol relieves its users of their motor coordination and usually their common sense and better judgment as well. Seemingly placid individuals under the influence of alcohol have the potential to release their inner demons on the world at large.
You know, maybe Prohibition wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
Maybe that’s a bit extreme. Maybe we need to begin teaching our children, at an early age, the dangers of alcohol use and abuse. Maybe we need to limit the advertisement of alcohol the way we limit the advertisement of tobacco products. Maybe we need to remember that alcohol has been legally classified as a drug – and maybe we need to consider the possibility that as such, alcohol may deserve to be ranked up there with marijuana and cocaine and other deadly substances. It has certainly resulted in the death of a lot of people.
When I was in grade school, we had an entire week devoted to learning the dangers of tobacco products. I was already terrified of cigarettes as it was. My mother and father both smoked, despite my allergic reaction to the second-hand smoke, and I hated the stench. I hated the sickening feeling I’d get from being anywhere near smoke. I hated the smell of my parents kissing me good night. The teacher didn’t have to tell me twice – I hated it. I would come to hate it even more vehemently just a few years later when my mother died of cancer. But that’s another story to be told. I don’t ever remember being lectured on the risks of alcohol in school…ever. Not even in junior or senior high. The topic just wasn’t brought up, outside of the fact that kids were suspended from school with increasing regularity for showing up on campus under the influence.
Why is alcohol such a taboo topic when we can lecture our children on the hazards of tobacco? Where is the distinction? Both are substances that are sold on the mass market. Both are products that are advertised in such a way that the potential user is told to expect glamour, popularity, and attraction to the opposite sex as a result. Both are drug-based substances that kill people, one way or another. And the ridiculous contrast here is that smoking, to some degree, kills the user passively. Drinking can get the job done actively, whether it’s the user’s life or others around him.
I don’t wish to downplay the danger of tobacco use, but since I don’t recall hearing about someone losing their inhibitions and committing crimes under the influence of nicotine, I’m inclined to believe that alcohol is the greater of these two evils. Yet of the two substances I am comparing, alcohol is the most prevalent in our society. It is advertised freely on television and radio. It has entrenched itself in popular culture by sponsoring professional sporting events, by gaining the endorsement of popular performers, and by being depicted regularly in the media. It’s ever-increasingly unhip to show a TV character smoking, but drinking? Not a problem.
It’s this pop culture foothold that the alcoholic beverage industry has that would make it impossible to revise the regulations regarding advertising. Even if TV and radio advertising of alcoholic products were outlawed, what about the sponsorships? The endorsements? Where would that line be drawn before it exits the world of regulated commercial matter and encroaches on free speech? Trying to find that distinction would be a messy business, and would most likely be overturned in court on First Amendment grounds, and quite rightly in some cases.
The key here is education, and uncompromising education. As I’ve said before on the subject of history and probably on other subjects as well, teach children – especially ever-impressionable teens – what alcohol is. It’s a drug. It’s a very dangerous drug with very dangerous side-effects. It has the potential to release one’s inhibitions, stripping higher reasoning skills and leaving a core that is capable of violence. (Of course, conversely, it also has the potential to more or less harmlessly leave you under the table, but that’s not much more desirable in my estimation!) People die because of it. Families are destroyed by it. There’s a hell of a lot more to this picture than “It’s Miller time!” And this education must be backed up in the home – parents should exercise good judgment and exhibit responsible behavior where this delicate subject is concerned.
In a world where it seems like so many people are already out of control and everything’s already going to hell, why do we need substances like this made available to the general populace when they can only make things worse?… Read more