DATELINE–District of Columbia Broadcasting System

“I’m practicing what I preach.” – Susan Molinari, Ex-U.S. Representative and brand-new member of the CBS Broadcasting Family on her decision to leave politics and enter the entertainment industry as reported by yesterday’s New York Times.

The quintessential Staten Island preacher’s daughter, Susan Molinari, who first rocketed to national stardom during last summer’s blockbuster Republican National Convention, has left the polluted bogs of her Staten Island district for the bright lights and big city of television newscasting. Of course, Molinari is no stranger to the demands of performing on plausibly live television in front of millions–it was suggested that she had already signed on as a CBS News personality during the 1996 Republican jubilee in San Diego.

Or is it a mere coincidence that Molinari’s climactic keynote address during the Convention was broadcast by CBS, the same network that has snatched the fetching celebrity-to-be from her dead-end job as U.S. Representative?

Industry analysts speculate that the Molinari hire confirms rumors that CBS is rapidly abandoning its moribund prime time lineup to concentrate on managing the future of American politics.

CBS News president, Andrew Heyward, recently told close personal associates that “the network has to expand if it’s going to survive” and reportedly views the current power vacuum in national politics as an easy target for his division. In light of Heyward’s remarks, the decision to install Ms. Molinari as co-anchor of a new Saturday morning news show might clear the way for future mergers between CBS News and the U.S. Government.

Molinari first gained brand-name recognition during her prime time oration at last year’s Republican National Convention, wherein she extolled the virtues of her long-dead immigrant grandfather while rallying the Republican troops to “stand guard” and defend this nation from the “hordes of crazed wetbacks” poised at the border. In sharp contrast to the colorless humor of the new Cosby show, Molinari’s crypto-fascist remarks may be the guaranteed draw CBS has been awaiting.

Unlike other politicians who are regularly paid to appear on television, Molinari–and other demagogues soon to follow in her footsteps–will no longer be restricted to chiming in with political “commentary.” Instead, Molinari’s legion of politicians-turned-anchors will be free to broach such critical issues as “pet grooming tips” and “5-minute dinner solutions.”

Although CBS is the first network to recruit a politician for anti-news programming, the trend is nothing new to broadcasting. Vidiot-savants like ex-Nixon speechwriter Patrick Buchanan have already made a killing in popular television programming. In fact, as the business of politics becomes increasingly indentured to multinational media conglomerates, it is highly likely that the line between paid spokesperson and elected representative will be obliterated beyond recognition.

One need only recall the Congressionally mandated “broadcast bandwidth bonanza” which took place earlier this year to confirm what few Americans already suspect: the broadcast industry can now dictate the terms of U.S. legislation. This anti-democratic leverage need not surprise the observant citizen. Our nation’s politicians are but a gaggle of moral pygmies who must stand on the shoulders of media giants in order to rise to the top of their deodorized dung heap.

Just recently, a highly publicized San Jose Mercury News investigative series suggested that the Central Intelligence Agency was indirectly involved in the distribution of Crack Cocaine to inner-city neighborhoods in Los Angeles during President Reagan’s “voodoo economics” offensive. While the Mercury News’ investigative journalist stopped just short of accusing the U.S. Government of employing chemical warfare against African-American citizens, congressional hearings were called to investigate the matter.

Drawing upon the seemingly inexhaustible resources of the U.S. Government, such a high-level Congressional investigation would no doubt have turned up some results–or, at the very least, a report on the effects of Crack consumption in the African-American community and the dubious role of several government agencies in that particular “drug war.”

But on the eve of said hearings, the Mercury News publicly repudiated its articles on the so-called L.A./CIA/Crack connection. In one bold stroke of the editorial pen, the Knight-Ridder Corporation, owners of the Mercury News, struck the controversy from the public record. The Congressional hearings will no doubt be canceled like any other doomed sitcom.

Consummatum est.

In the future, as the riots illuminate the night sky with an orange glow, we may forget that media empires chose to ignore and even ostracize the millions of Americans who live in poverty, but we will not forgive the U.S. Government for selling out to the entertainment industry. On the contrary, using our government-financed High Definition Television set, we will zoom in on the image of our capital cities aflame in class war and draw into focus the torched bodies of the (political) spokespersons who were dispatched to “cover” the story.

DATELINE–The Research Triangle, N.C.

The Journal for Applied Medicine & Technology released a report earlier this week which suggests that a recent increase in computer use has led to a dramatic decline in literacy among adult Americans.

Entitled “A Qualitative Analysis of Computer Use and User Literacy,” the already controversial study was a collaboration among several universities and anonymous test subjects drawn from America’s best-known corporations. Over the course of three years, researchers in eight different cities tracked the reading habits and literacy skills of over 5,000 professionals who use computers in the workplace or at home.

The researchers claim to have found what they call “unambiguous” and “compelling” evidence that a decrease in reading comprehension and related cognitive skills closely followed any increase, no matter how slight, in the use of personal computers.

Wisconsin State University professor Dr. Ruhig Hurmes is one of the study’s lead researchers. Hurmes believes that the main factor behind this negative correlation can be found in the “nature of the computer, itself” which, he believes, “discourages readers from spending any serious length of time with a difficult task…especially if a solution or a simpler problem can be reached by merely clicking on a graphic.” Dr. Hurmes also points to the rising popularity of celebrity news programs, infomercials, computer magazines, and the Nick at Nite cable network as major factors contributing to the decline in America’s reading skills.

“Let’s face it, if the choice is between spending 5 seconds with a info-bite or 30 minutes with a thought-provoking essay, what would the average American choose?”

Professor Hurmes went on to answer his question with an exhaustive series of charts outlining the choices of his real-life test subjects. According to the results of the Computer Use & User Literacy study, nearly 92% of professionals working within a computer environment repeatedly opted for the 5 second info-bite while only 5% of those polled chose to spend time with the headier essay. An additional 3% failed to distinguish the one from the other and asked shortly thereafter to be excused from the test.

The study goes on to state that among the 92% of Americans who chose the info-bite, almost 78% of them preferred their information exclusively in the form of images, while another 15% percent expressed a preference for some combination of image and text. Only 7% of the info-bite crowd chose a strictly textual format for their 5 second data feeds.

The facilities used to conduct the Computer Use & User Literacy study were set up to mimic real world scenarios. Subjects spent half of the test in an artificial living room with a couch and the other half in an office cubicle with a captain’s chair. In addition to the simulated decor, scientists provided the test subjects with a television monitor in the first scenario and a computer terminal in the second. Finally, the study’s participants were offered printed matter at regular intervals during the testing procedure. The printed matter ranged from magazines without color illustrations or color photographs to independently produced news, commentary and historical analysis periodicals.

In only a handful of cases did test subjects actually let go of the computer’s mouse or the television remote control long enough to pick up one of the readily available printed materials. In fact, many subjects could not even recognize what the printed materials were due to the fast-paced and psychologically-intensive nature of their computer use.

“Some of our participants actually refused to go home after several hours of Internet access and/or spending time with a high-definition TV,” writes one of the study’s technicians, “we were even forced to physically restrain one participant, a young man, after he stumbled across both a pornographic satellite TV channel and a Web site dedicated to instant sports scores within the same testing session.”

Critics of the study have a very different take on the published results. Just hours after the Journal for Applied Medicine & Technology hit the newsstands, computer industry representatives charged that the researchers had “stacked the deck” against their products by providing “cutting-edge Internet services” and “unavailable television technology” to unsuspecting test subjects. The study’s detractors also claim that if the test participants had been primed for the enhanced information they received during the course of the study, no significant behavioral changes would have come to the researchers’ attention.

Dr. Hurmes dismisses such criticisms as irrelevant and misleading. “The real proof,” he adds, “is in our algometric scores. Not one subject complained of physical discomfort during hours of repetitive and uninformative computer use–that’s a shocking omission considering that we set up the testing environments to produce maximum distress in almost all subjects.”

For their next study, Dr. Hurmes and his colleagues will test the “moral thermometer” of computer users. It is uncertain what the doctors will find when they venture into the realm of morality and social responsibility, but one thing is for certain: their next study is guaranteed to generate a controversy of like proportions.

DATELINE–Equitable Center, Midtown Manhattan

Behind all the fanfare and hoopla surrounding world chess champion Gary Kasparov’s melodramatic defeat to the “Deep Blue” computer lurks a secret story too sordid for the culture critics and technologists to publicly acknowledge. True, Kasparov was beaten fair and square by a machine on Sunday, May 12, 1997… but the machine that beat him was not simply a computer by the name of Deep Blue.

“I’m a human being. When I see something that is well beyond my understanding, I’m afraid.”

Kasparov was right to be afraid. The IBM RS/6000 SP computer system, known as Deep Blue, is not only capable of playing against any grandmaster–it can also dispense a powerful electrical shock to its opponents. IBM’s decision to equip Deep Blue with a circuit capable of delivering 50,000 volts of raw electricity provoked only a momentary nod of confusion from chess officials who reasoned the workings of such an advanced electronic device as Deep Blue were beyond their limited, human comprehension.

After playing against Deep Blue on six separate occasions, Kasparov’s nervous system must have been as fried as a Kentucky chicken wing. According to Monday’s New York Times, Kasparov, humiliated and anguished, said: “I have no idea what’s happening behind the curtain.” After the final match, a close advisor to Kasparov told the press that he felt it was highly unlikely that Kasparov would have fared any better had he seen the portable generator humming gently alongside the twin, six-foot computer towers that comprise Deep Blue.

The use of electricity as an agonistic tool is not a new development. For over a decade now, United States police officers, correctional officers and even judges have been equipped with remote control electro-shock devices capable of rendering a human target instantly unconscious and leaving the stunned victims collapsed in a pool of their own vomit, feces and urine. In fact, the use of “stun belts” and “stun guns” is now so popular in the American justice system that the U.S. firms which produce these weapons of torture have begun to export them to such prisoner-friendly nations as Mexico, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

What does represent a significant development in the world of technology, however, is IBM’s decision to introduce electro-shock into the computing environment. Kasparov’s humiliating defeat marked the first public use of strategic electro-shock at the hands of a disembodied computer “opponent,” but it wiIl not be the last. According to market analysts, in today’s economic climate of downsizing, flat wages, and general job insecurity, providing computer system administrators with the power to literally shock their users may be the next step in increased productivity and decreased labor activity.

For years, corporate managers have sought a cure-all for the perennial demands of a human, all-too-human workforce and, in most cases, they have succeeded only in reducing their workers into a pliable mass. Previous breakthrough’s include the right to lay-off employees for quasi-official reasons and the ability to discrimate against entire sectors of the employable population based on an applicant’s age, language and formal educational background. Nonetheless, IBM’s shining performance in the Kasparov vs. Deep Blue chess match lights the path of docile repression which is still ahead of us all.

As torture-ready business applications vie with artificial intelligence software for first place in the race to bring humanity to its knees, America’s prison population is already a step ahead of the competition. Now that chain gangs and high-tech torture devices have been redeemed as civilized courtesy of a media culture literally sold on vigilantism, it is only a matter of time before the distinction between prisoner and captor, guilty and innocent, winner and loser, machine and man is finally blurred for all of eternity.

Long live efficiency!

DATELINE–Nashville, Tenn.

“Gambling is by definition the attempt to profit without labor.”

Thus begins a typical sermon by The Rev. Will B. DeVine, dean of the Nashville, Tenn.-based Your Own Free Will Baptist Bible Junior College. Billy Bob, as the Rev. DeVine is known to the eighty or so members of his congregation, is a dapper ex-Navy man with a history of proselytizing that reads like a roll call of every major city in the American South.

But these days, Rev. DeVine’s sermon is being heard by more than just his parishioners or even just in the South. The fiery DeVine is now spearheading “Only By the Sweat of Our Brows,” a campaign to bring his anti-gambling crusade to America’s economic capital: New York City.

“Investing in the stock market is also, by definition, an attempt to profit without labor,” DeVine’s sermon continues, “We learn in Genesis that Adam was expelled from the Garden of Eden and commanded by God to eat and profit by the sweat of his own brow. The Lord made no exception for those of us who eat and profit by the cold, clean hum of computerized stock trading. The New York Stock Exchange is a house of sin.”

With the Dow Jones index cresting at record highs this week and conservative celebrities like Rush Limbaugh hawking “Christian activist” investment funds, DeVine’s “Sweat of Our Brows” anti-stock market crusade promotes a message which seems far out even to the far right.

DeVine’s radio and television spots has already proven too trying for Ralph Reedes, the former leader of the Christian Coalition, the evangelical Political Action Committee (PAC) which enjoyed a favorable audience in the White House during the Reagan era.

Reedes has publicly dismissed DeVine’s contention that speculation in the stock market is considered a sin by the Bible and on occasion has called DeVine’s sermons “ridiculous” and “heresy.” In a press conference delivered from the Christian Television Network’s “500 Club” studios, Reedes repudiated DeVine’s anti-gambling message by citing the needs of his own religious values movement: “Jesus wants his people to have a strong economic base. The Pro-Family Values movement must not oppose reputable financial practices that grant us the urgently needed means to support our first, second and third families.”

DeVine and his growing cadre of followers remain undaunted despite the continuing protests of the official Moral Majority. While on a recent tour of the NYSE, DeVine commented that Jesus was a rebel Jew who was also unpopular with both the governmental and religious establishment of his time. As his face reddened with passion, DeVine burst into the following screed: “If Ralph Reedes was there when Jesus was hanging on the Cross and soldiers were casting lots for His clothing, would he be shouting ‘Come on seven, Daddy needs a new pair of sandals?’ I ask you, as Our Beloved Savior was being crucified on Calvary, would Ralph Reedes get his broker on the cell-phone and start demanding, ‘Dump all of my blue chip holdings and roll everything I’ve got into that new company that mass produces crucifixes?’

Financial analysts who track the burgeoning religion industry suggest that DeVine’s crusade is not a wholly unexpected development. As more and more middle-income individuals are lured into stock market speculation by “Wal-Mart"-like trading houses and America’s online investment schemes, the social costs of investment are becoming apparent to a segment erstwhile excluded from this “game of princes". The non-profit organization Gambler’s Anonymous has begun stock market-specific programs in Alabama, Kentucky, Ohio, Georgia and Oklahoma. The organization believes a national caucus is necessary to stave off the epidemic of market gambling that has recently spread to the working class and is calling on the president to take a public stand on the issue.

The wife of one such “stock market junkie” recently appeared on the cable financial news network CNBCNNFN to share her tragic story with the gambling community. The mild-mannered housewife from Mississippi, who spoke on the condition of anonymity and was seen only in disguise, stated that at first she thought her husband’s interest in the market were harmless, only to realize the ill that had befallen her family when “it was too late.”

“It all started with the Netscape IPO,” she blurted as her tears began to flow, “He became obsessed with hitting the big jackpot and started to bet money on a few more computer stocks here and there. Little by little he was spending more time at the self-service brokerage and less and less time at home. But I supported him in the beginning. Technology stocks, they…well, they’re just a ‘gateway’ investment, you know, like they talk about that marijuana. Pretty soon he started hitting the hard stuff, the junk bonds, futures trading. I’m frightened now for my family’s financial and emotional safety. It’s like I don’t even know my own husband anymore.”

The executive counsel of DeVine’s “Only By the Sweat of Our Brows” contend this woman’s story is just one of thousands of similar tragedies occurring throughout America. Their literature chronicles the rise of consumer-level stock deals and points to a concurrent increase in organized crime.

“As with casino-style gambling,” begins one of their latest news releases, “Mafia involvement, political corruption, and a de facto regressive tax structure will follow this popular obsession with small-time investment gambling. As the Senate threatens to cut down the Capital Gains Tax, even greater incentives will await gamblers who chase the so-called American and certainly un-Christian dream of an unearned income.”

Rev. DeVine’s crusade has called for federal legislation that would outlaw the individual ownership, in whole or part, of companies for which an investor does not work. The Justice Department has not yet issued an official response to DeVine’s inquest.

Despite the sudden fame that has visited their spiritual leader, the congregation of Billy Bob’s Your Own Free Will Baptist Bible Jr. College exhibits a steadfast commitment to the religious underpinnings of their campaign.

It is not difficult to understand why. DeVine’s rhetorical style is point-blank and deadly accurate. The former Navy seal does not rely upon the typical flourishes of Southern preachers who came before him. Instead, the earnest Billy Bob chooses to pitch his vision in terms that are all-too-familiar to today’s families.

As his “Only By the Sweat of Our Brows” campaign made a stop in the predominantly African-American and Central American District of Columbia, DeVine closed his homily with this benediction, as political as it is spiritual:

Gambling, whether based upon a spike in the Dow Jones or a roll of the dice is not a victimless crime. Both the Church and the State are bound by covenant to protect our members and citizens from harm, even if that harmful threat comes from within. From this day forward let your so-called ‘disposable’ income be granted to the church or re-invested in your local communities. Do not allow your hard-earned money to be expatriated to godless and nationless companies.

As it is written in the Book of Proverbs, Chapter 13, Verse 11: ‘Wealth gotten by vanity be diminished, but he that gathereth by labor shall increase.’ Go forth from this place and increase not the wealth of the rich, but the wealth that enriches your life.

Dateline–Baltimore, MD

Researchers at Johns Hopkins make disturbing connections between PDA use and cognitive dysfunction in young, mobile professionals.

Like most young business professionals, George Willard has a personal digital assistant (PDA). He also has a debilitating cognitive disorder. According to researchers at Johns Hopkins University, Willard’s handheld electronic organizer is to blame.

At 32 years of age, Willard is a promising consultant for the Boston-based Monitor Company, where he specializes in Internet-related industries. Shortly after he began using his PDA in the fall of 1998, the analyst discovered he was having increasing difficulty taking notes in meetings. Says Willard, “I would pick up the pen, start writing, and nothing but doodles would come out – it was scary.”

After visiting a number of specialists, including at least three different neurologists, he was referred to Dr. Katia Miezkowsky, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore. The Russian-born Miezkowsky is only one of a handful of researchers in the world investigating the connection between handheld computing devices and cognitive dysfunction. When Miezkowsky examined Willard, she diagnosed his “handwriter’s block” as an acute form of neuromuscular failure stemming from his use of a personal digital assistant.

“We’re starting to see more and more otherwise healthy professionals complaining about their motor skills,” says Miezkowsky, “and in almost all cases it’s a result of straining the brain’s ability to adjust muscle memory while using miniaturized, stylus-based computing devices.”

It’s what the medical community has begun to refer to as “PDA-Induced Paralysis,” or PIP. In most of the nearly 200 cases of PIP reported to date, subjects lose the ability to write by hand in varying degrees after mastering the peculiar writing style often required to operate handheld computing devices. For Willard, the culprit was the PalmPilot, from 3COM, the most popular such device on the market today.

In an age when secretaries are called “administrative assistants” and the word “mobile” refers to a communications product more often than it does to a career, the PDA has become the high-tech tool de rigueur. Salespeople use the lightweight electronic gadgets to store contacts, consultants employ them to schedule meetings and read e-mails, and mostly everyone else has found them useful for an occasional round of solitaire.

According to International Data Corp., 7.4 million handheld computers were sold worldwide in 1998. The Farmingham, Mass., research company estimates that more than 10.7 million of the silicon-bound planners will be sold in 1999. The PDA’s success is due in large part to its small size, with most models designed to fit inside the pocket of a men’s dress shirt. But its size and portability preclude the use of a keyboard in most situations. While it is possible to download data into a PDA via a personal computer, most users rely on a small plastic stylus to access and enter information.

The stylus or pen tool that comes standard on the PalmPilot allows the user to write comments onto a small, two-by-three-inch LCD screen. Unable to run software powerful enough to recognize everyone’s handwriting, the tiny computer will only accept entries made in its own alphanumeric code. For example, the letter “k” closely resembles the less-than symbol. Moreover, users must draw these characters one atop another, in a virtual stack, rather than writing them from left to right. Researchers like Miezkowsky blame this unusual approach to writing as the most likely cause of PIP.

“By the time our signature stabilizes,” explains Miezkowsky, “so does our personality. Hence, a change in signature often signals a major shift in personality. With PIP, it’s not a signature change but a radical departure from one’s individual style of writing, and this alteration can lead to big, big problems.” Chief among the PIP-related disorders is the eerie onset of an inability to write despite the absence of any physiological failure.

Fortunately for Willard and others apparently suffering from PIP, the symptoms may be reversible. After disposing of his PalmPilot, Willard began an intensive course of therapy that includes several hours of handwriting exercises every day. After a few months, he is once again able to jot down addresses and names on paper, but says he still has a hard time writing entire paragraphs.

“Actually,” notes an upbeat Willard, “I do a lot of typing, but at least now I don’t have anxiety attacks about signing the check on a dinner date.”