Tripod Columns: Election 96: Harry Goldstein

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POLITICS & COMMUNITY

Fear and Loathing: On the Cyber-Road to Election '96

by harry goldstein

Don't miss Harry Goldstein's other columns on Campaign '96.

Time to start over. I'd written this really great tribute to the good Doctor of Gonzo Journalism, Hunter S. Thompson, but I clicked "No" when Microsoft Word asked me whether I wanted to save. If my word processor had been truly user friendly, I wouldn't have had to bother saving manually. But I was using Microsoft software on an Apple computer -- never a smart move. Plus, I heard strange noises in the hallway and wondered if someone was trying to get in my apartment. I gave into the politics of fear that pervades this campaign season. I got distracted, by the fear you see, and hit "No" and lost the nice Hunter Thompson tribute.
Now, if I were Hunter Thompson, I wouldn't have to worry about that sort of stuff. He used a typewriter for many years, and now (according to a friend of mine who was his personal assistant for a while) someone else types his columns for him. Could Hunter hack it on the Internet? Considering that he wrote the book on first-person journalism, he would probably feel right at home. On the other hand, as a Web journalist, I'm having trouble even getting in to see the presidential debates, much less being able to question candidates while they sit on the john, like Thompson did with McGovern in 1972.

Monotonous mantras are played on the sitar of public opinion polls. Hunter witnessed the scene first-hand, breathing in the foul stench of corruption for himself. In 1996, we have the campaign being brought to us by Scope and McDonald's and Nike. Squeezed into two hours a night, the Demlicans and Republicrats broadcast video postcards from their respective conventions, inviting everyone to join one of America's two political families. How sweet. Like bananas rotting on a sunbaked windowsill somewhere in fatal suburbia.
Yawn. Another dispatch from the campaign trail. Dole mumbling and tumbling his way through another half-hearted speech. Kemp humping on the stump, trying to stay low, while boosting his chances for the next run at the White House. Clinton's got one finger on the nation's pulse, the other on the trigger, just in case Sadaam -- or the next poll -- gets too far out of control. Big bore Al Gore sticks to the election year rhetoric, instead of talking about the environment and his vaunted Info Superhighway. Perot is such a total paranoid-delusional freak that, for weeks after the Reform Party "nominated" him, nobody wanted to run on the same ticket with him. The gaggle of alternative party candidates, from Libertarian Harry Browne to Green Ralph Nader to Natural Law Party nominee John Hagelin, all out there, all out of reach, because they cannot afford "traditional" mass media to get their message out to a broader constituency.
When I finally picked up Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail 1972" to help get me through this election cycle, I realized that, while many things have changed in the quarter century since Thompson hooked onto the political pressmobile and rode that bad boy all bent up on snarling Ibogaine head trips, too much alcohol, and painful overexposure to the inner workings of the doomed McGovern campaign, many of issues from 1972 sound eerily similar to today's. Drugs. Abortion. Defense. Taxes. The Environment. This same monotonous mantra played on the sitar of public opinion polls, sung out in boring speeches and vicious TV ads, accusations and promises that ring as hollow as yesterday's news. McGovern versus Nixon.Ford versus Carter. Clinton versus Dole.

Corporate journalists are a lot like the politicians they cover.
Even with the apparent speed at which communications technology is advancing, the way we get our information about the candidates -- TV and newspapers -- hasn't changed since Hunter blazed the campaign trail with McGovern and Nixon. The question is: How can Internet journalism present a different angle on the Truth the "old media" journalists spew forth from Air Force One and Bob Dole's motorcade? First, Internet journalists can take a page from Hunter Thompson's reporter's pad and tell you exactly where we're coming from. That's also the essence of the Internet -- we're all just people involved in a huge conversation. Hunter Thompson didn't pretend to be objective -- you might not have known where, exactly, he was coming from, but you knew for sure it wasn't a position he'd been herded to by professors in some journalism school. He created his own school of journalism. Unfortunately, in the world of mass market journalism, Hunter is the exception that proves the rule.
In the information marketplace of cyberspace, we're all entitled to our opinions and we have access to each other. How many times have you wanted to tell Tom Brokaw he's full of shit? You can, but you can't do it directly and certainly not instantly -- even when he's shilling for Bill Gates and General Electric on MSNBC. He's insulated, as are almost all traditional big-time journalists, protected by a corporate firewall. Even Hunter, who's holed up at his place in Aspen, is "safe" from his readers. It's funny, but you'd think that people would have a harder time trusting journalists who are totally inaccessible than they would someone who is right there for you to contact, who must be responsible, directly, for what he or she says. Corporate journalists don't have to answer to anyone -- except maybe advertisers and corporate parents. I have to answer to you. That makes corporate journalists a lot more like the politicians they cover than you and me.

This campaign is an unholy orgy of fear-mongers, power-hogs, corporate toadies and policy wonks.
As I make my way down the info highway and along the Road to Victory, I've thought that if technology permitted, I'd be happy to let people plug right into my cerebral cortex and live the political event of the day through me. But for all the hype about the multimedia Web, text is still the primary medium of information exchange. Ultimately, the success of Internet journalism will be a matter of convincing people that the words we exchange here, on the Web, are as valid an interpretation of reality as what we see on the evening news or read about in the New York Times -- something that will happen as more and more people rely on the Internet for information. Until then, I'm going to have to weasel my way in wherever I can, your spy in the Process, bearing witness to the unholy orgy of fear-mongers, power-hogs, corporate toadies and policy wonks that is the 1996 campaign.

Harry Goldstein is a writer and editor living in Manhattan. His work has appeared in "Utne Reader," "American Book Review," "Promethean," AltX, word.com, and other periodicals.
© 1996 Harry Goldstein, All Rights Reserved

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POLITICS & COMMUNITY Fear and Loathing: On the Cyber-Road to Election '96 by harry goldstein Don't miss Harry Goldstein's other columns on Campaign '96.	Time to start over. I'd written this really great tribute to the good Doctor of Gonzo Journalism, Hunter S. Thompson, but I clicked "No" when Microsoft Word asked me whether I wanted to save. If my word processor had been truly user friendly, I wouldn't have had to bother saving manually. But I was using Microsoft software on an Apple computer -- never a smart move. Plus, I heard strange noises in the hallway and wondered if someone was trying to get in my apartment. I gave into the politics of fear that pervades this campaign season. I got distracted, by the fear you see, and hit "No" and lost the nice Hunter Thompson tribute. Now, if I were Hunter Thompson, I wouldn't have to worry about that sort of stuff. He used a typewriter for many years, and now (according to a friend of mine who was his personal assistant for a while) someone else types his columns for him. Could Hunter hack it on the Internet? Considering that he wrote the book on first-person journalism, he would probably feel right at home. On the other hand, as a Web journalist, I'm having trouble even getting in to see the presidential debates, much less being able to question candidates while they sit on the john, like Thompson did with McGovern in 1972.
Monotonous mantras are played on the sitar of public opinion polls.	Hunter witnessed the scene first-hand, breathing in the foul stench of corruption for himself. In 1996, we have the campaign being brought to us by Scope and McDonald's and Nike. Squeezed into two hours a night, the Demlicans and Republicrats broadcast video postcards from their respective conventions, inviting everyone to join one of America's two political families. How sweet. Like bananas rotting on a sunbaked windowsill somewhere in fatal suburbia. Yawn. Another dispatch from the campaign trail. Dole mumbling and tumbling his way through another half-hearted speech. Kemp humping on the stump, trying to stay low, while boosting his chances for the next run at the White House. Clinton's got one finger on the nation's pulse, the other on the trigger, just in case Sadaam -- or the next poll -- gets too far out of control. Big bore Al Gore sticks to the election year rhetoric, instead of talking about the environment and his vaunted Info Superhighway. Perot is such a total paranoid-delusional freak that, for weeks after the Reform Party "nominated" him, nobody wanted to run on the same ticket with him. The gaggle of alternative party candidates, from Libertarian Harry Browne to Green Ralph Nader to Natural Law Party nominee John Hagelin, all out there, all out of reach, because they cannot afford "traditional" mass media to get their message out to a broader constituency. When I finally picked up Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail 1972" to help get me through this election cycle, I realized that, while many things have changed in the quarter century since Thompson hooked onto the political pressmobile and rode that bad boy all bent up on snarling Ibogaine head trips, too much alcohol, and painful overexposure to the inner workings of the doomed McGovern campaign, many of issues from 1972 sound eerily similar to today's. Drugs. Abortion. Defense. Taxes. The Environment. This same monotonous mantra played on the sitar of public opinion polls, sung out in boring speeches and vicious TV ads, accusations and promises that ring as hollow as yesterday's news. McGovern versus Nixon.Ford versus Carter. Clinton versus Dole.
Corporate journalists are a lot like the politicians they cover.	Even with the apparent speed at which communications technology is advancing, the way we get our information about the candidates -- TV and newspapers -- hasn't changed since Hunter blazed the campaign trail with McGovern and Nixon. The question is: How can Internet journalism present a different angle on the Truth the "old media" journalists spew forth from Air Force One and Bob Dole's motorcade? First, Internet journalists can take a page from Hunter Thompson's reporter's pad and tell you exactly where we're coming from. That's also the essence of the Internet -- we're all just people involved in a huge conversation. Hunter Thompson didn't pretend to be objective -- you might not have known where, exactly, he was coming from, but you knew for sure it wasn't a position he'd been herded to by professors in some journalism school. He created his own school of journalism. Unfortunately, in the world of mass market journalism, Hunter is the exception that proves the rule. In the information marketplace of cyberspace, we're all entitled to our opinions and we have access to each other. How many times have you wanted to tell Tom Brokaw he's full of shit? You can, but you can't do it directly and certainly not instantly -- even when he's shilling for Bill Gates and General Electric on MSNBC. He's insulated, as are almost all traditional big-time journalists, protected by a corporate firewall. Even Hunter, who's holed up at his place in Aspen, is "safe" from his readers. It's funny, but you'd think that people would have a harder time trusting journalists who are totally inaccessible than they would someone who is right there for you to contact, who must be responsible, directly, for what he or she says. Corporate journalists don't have to answer to anyone -- except maybe advertisers and corporate parents. I have to answer to you. That makes corporate journalists a lot more like the politicians they cover than you and me.
This campaign is an unholy orgy of fear-mongers, power-hogs, corporate toadies and policy wonks.	As I make my way down the info highway and along the Road to Victory, I've thought that if technology permitted, I'd be happy to let people plug right into my cerebral cortex and live the political event of the day through me. But for all the hype about the multimedia Web, text is still the primary medium of information exchange. Ultimately, the success of Internet journalism will be a matter of convincing people that the words we exchange here, on the Web, are as valid an interpretation of reality as what we see on the evening news or read about in the New York Times -- something that will happen as more and more people rely on the Internet for information. Until then, I'm going to have to weasel my way in wherever I can, your spy in the Process, bearing witness to the unholy orgy of fear-mongers, power-hogs, corporate toadies and policy wonks that is the 1996 campaign. Harry Goldstein is a writer and editor living in Manhattan. His work has appeared in "Utne Reader," "American Book Review," "Promethean," AltX, word.com, and other periodicals. © 1996 Harry Goldstein, All Rights Reserved