From: WildcatPrs@aol.com Date: Tue, 28 May 1996 13:26:26 -0400 Subject: Fwd: "My Two Cents on Amendment 2" -- Column by Patricia Nell Warren ****************************************************************************** NEWS YOU DIDN'T SEE ON TV A commentary by Patricia Nell Warren 5/28/96 ****************************************************************************** MY TWO CENTS ABOUT AMENDMENT 2 By Patricia Nell Warren Unpacking boxes and reorganizing my office after a move, I am pondering the meaning of change. In a society, real change is seldom visible to the naked eye. That's why I gave my column its name. We seldom see, or even want to see, the real news -- any more than we can visually track the gene drift of insects as their immune systems learn to resist pesticides. TV has become the be-all of how our culture "sees life." Yet real life is so complex that TV news can't package it all into nice neat 60-second slots -- any more than a single wildlife documentary can capture the messy intricacy of biomass in a rain forest. CNN used to delight its first fans because it had such a raw unedited true-life style. These days, CNN has hardened off into standard news formats, just another empire built on sound bytes. An event becomes a "non-event" if it gets bumped by something more urgent, or if it is too scary to discuss -- like Steven Wilson's murder, or the highly infectious nature of CFS, or the falling curve of available U.S. farmland heading for its rendezvous with the curve of U.S. food needs. ( And if the radical-right family promoters have their way, the new baby boom will drive our population swiftly to that fateful meeting.) In an election year, the TV-ization of news becomes more urgent. Politicians, their handlers, their believing supporters all want flags waved, cages rattled, buttons pushed, doomsdays predicted. Much is said about the Roman Empire, and how its "decline of morality" and its "fall" relates to U.S.life today. Probably the citizens of the Roman Empire in 400 A.D. had little inkling that anything was "falling" -- they may have noticed aqueducts going unrepaired, a rise in the price of olive oil, the banning of spectacles. Suddenly a new state religion -- Christianity -- was heading the state, and soldiers were going around knocking the heads off statues of the old Gods and Goddesses. The fact is, the Roman Empire didn't "fall" at all -- its laws and bureaucracy were simply re-evolved into the new religion. But newscasters and historians love the simplicity of statements like "Rome fell," "the American radical right rose to power," "a jet plane crashed in the Everglades," "So-and-so has AIDS." Right now, much is being made of the Supreme Court decision on Amendment 2, and right-wing reactions to same Yet, beyond party rhetoric, the fact that prison building and convict labor is becoming a major economic force may weigh more heavily in the next 20 years than any single court decision. Domestic convicts are way cheaper than workers in Macau or El Salvador. What simpler way to score points with voters, end unemployment and crime, even get rid of troublesome unions and minorities, than to fill our prisons with young able-bodied "workers"? No wonder our government doesn't have a philosophical problem buying prison-made products from the Republic of China! Oh, and what better way to "reform" gay men or lesbians into "useful, productive citizens" than to put them to work on a prison production line? To accomplish this "goal", both Republicans and Democrats must pass laws that criminalize more and more things, and mandate longer sentences. And this, in fact, is what both sides are doing. Our so-called wars on drugs, youth crime, violence, sex offenders, illegal aliens, even the criminalizing of people who purvey four-letter words on the Internet, are actually having the effect of sweeping a lot of first-time offenders into prison, swelling the rank and file of the Jailbirds Union. But how much of TV focuses on this kind of glitch in our spiritual genes? So this column aims for digital-camera glimpses of those deeper evolutions -- those slippery recombinings of our cultural DNA. As a writer, I want to see broader bytes on those fears, beliefs, myths and rules that wind us all into a human helix. ****************************************************************************** Patricia Nell Warren is author of "The Front Runner" and other bestselling books about gay life. Her publisher is Wildcat Press. For information on her books, her web page can be found at http://www.gaywired.com/wildcat/wildcat.htm ***************************************************************************** Copyright (c) 1996 by Patricia Nell Warren. All Rights Reserved. This letter may be crossposted on the Internet without change and in its entirety for non-commercial purposes without prior permission from the author -- just send us an email to let us know where it reappears. For permission to reprint in print media, please call 213/936-3666, or fax 213/933-0999, or email wildcatprs@aol.com. Please run the above author's note and copyright notice with the reprint. Wildcat Press, 8306 Wilshire Blvd. Box 8306, Beverly Hills, CA 90211. ******************************************************************************