1) Back to the real issues. Tom Brokaw framed the issue as Clinton wished: saving Social Security versus a tax cut. ABC picked up on two liberal causes: protests over sweatshops and Indian logos.

2) "Is she thinking about running for President or Vice President in 2000, instead of for the Senate?" speculated Dan Rather about Hillary Clinton.

3) Geraldo Rivera can't move on, griping about funding by "Richard Mellon Scaife, the same Clinton-hating billionaire who bankrolled the project that dug up the dirt that lead the world to Paula Jones in the first place. I mean pity the President, poor guy."

4) Calling himself a "progressive" and "one of the smart ones," Ted Turner said Reagan frightened him and suggested the Ten Commandments are "a little out of date," especially the one against adultery.

5) NBC's Law & Order delivered Hollywood's perception of Ken Starr: a sex-obsessed prosecutor "on a rampage" who inspires his victims to recall Joe McCarthy in demanding "Have you no shame?"

6) Letterman's "Top Ten Signs the President is Trying to Kill You."

 1

Back to the real issues Wednesday night at the networks with each leading with a different story. NBC's Tom Brokaw started with the choice President Clinton presented: "Social Security and Medicare for the future or fewer taxes right now?" CBS went first with the murder trial in Jasper, Texas and ABC led with efforts to prevent further leaking from an oil tanker off the Oregon coast. Later in the show ABC dealt with two pressing socials trends, aka liberal causes: protests over low-wage foreign apparel-making jobs and claims of racism in using Indian names for sports teams.

     -- Tom Brokaw opened the February 17 NBC Nightly News:
     "Good evening. Bill Clinton has about a year and a half left before a new President is elected and he has a lot of ground to make up after last year. He's hoping you'll help by turning your back on a big tax cut. Does that sound like the world has been turned upside down? It is the new battleground after impeachment: Social Security and Medicare for the future or fewer taxes right now? NBC's David Bloom tonight on the President doing what he does best: campaigning."

     -- With the impeachment scandal over, ABC took advantage of the available news time to highlight two liberal causes. Students may not have cared what Clinton did in the Oval Office, but as Peter Jennings announced, they care about something else:
     "In several parts of the country today there were demonstrations on college campuses, and it looks a little like a movement that is beginning to pick of momentum. One college administrator said that after so many years of apathy it was nice to know that college students care about something other than basketball and bonfires."
     Reporter Bill Blakemore began by recalling the wonderful 1960s: "It feels like the '60s. Students occupying administration buildings. Campus protests on a matter of principle. In this case, no clothing made in sweatshops should be sold on campus or bear college logos..."

     ABC's very next story looked at another liberal concern. Jennings explained: "There is another issue that is causing some controversy at colleges and at high schools. The Justice Department has launched its first investigation into whether mascots with Indian themes violate the civil rights of native Americans."

     From Asheville, North Carolina ABC's Bob Woodruff reported on how the federal boys from up north are checking on any racial problems caused by a high school team using "Squaws" as its name.

 2

Hillary for President? Tuesday night after a story on speculation about Hillary Clinton running for Senate in New York, CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather added this odd comment, as transcribed by MRC analyst Brian Boyd:
     "An editor's note, one of the arguments reportedly being made to Hillary Clinton by those urging her to run, is you win a Senate race in New York and you might be in position to run for President later. Is she thinking about running for President or Vice President in 2000, instead of for the Senate? No one in a position to know will say."

     Huh? In order to run for President as a Senator she would have to become a Senator thereby precluding a presidential run until 2004. Sounds like the dreams of CBS News writers got ahead of sound reasoning.

 3

Geraldo Rivera has moved on. He's moved on to impugning another woman taking on Bill Clinton and anyone associated with her, MRC analyst Geoffrey Dickens noticed in watching Rivera's CNBC Tuesday night shows. The woman: Dolly Kyle Browning who is suing Clinton for supposedly preventing her book on their affair from being published.

     On the February 16 Upfront Tonight Rivera warned: "Ms. Browning is being represented by Larry Klayman, a man whose organization Judicial Watch has been funded by Richard Mellon Scaife, the same Clinton-hating billionaire who bankrolled the project that dug up the dirt that lead the world to Paula Jones in the first place. I mean pity the President, poor guy."

     Later, on Rivera Live, he complained:
     "Here's how you get a President. You get a President. First you locate any plaintiff, that's the symbol for plaintiff, with any litigatable claim. I don't even know if that's a word. But any claim, really almost any claim. Then you add to that, you know claim, money from whatever disreputable source as long as it's bankrolled. Then you demand discovery once you got the lawsuit underway. Then once you got discovery you go fishing. You get into any, 'Who'd you ever sleep with, who'd you ever curse at, who'd you ever pinch, who'd you ever punch?' And then regardless of the way your lawsuit goes then you can publish any salacious catch. Anything. You know whether it's Monica. That's it. This is the menu, Dennis Shea, for getting a President because the Supreme Court, all those, you know, those non-lawyer lawyers have no real world experience and they had no idea that Larry Klayman and Larry Klayman[s] of the world and we lawyers are everywhere and there's many too many of us were out there."

 4

Ted Turner is back in action advocating a one-child policy, attacking the Pope, calling Tom DeLay "dumb," saying Ronald Reagan frightened him and insisting the Ten Commandments are "a little out of date" and specifically suggesting the one against adultery be dropped. Turner identified himself as part of "the progressive movement" and asserted: "People who think like us may be in the minority, but we're the smart ones."

     All this came in a February 16 speech in Washington, DC to the 27th annual meeting of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association. According to the Drudge Report, cameras were not allowed to record the thoughts of the man who founded CNN, a network normally demanding access to all speeches and meetings.

     But a Washington Times reporter managed to learn what the Vice-Chairman of Time Warner spouted. Here are excerpts from a February 17 Washington Times story by Robert Stacy McCain:

...."We have to defeat those congressmen and senators who are standing in the way of progress," Mr. Turner told the crowd at the Capital Hilton in Washington. "We've got to win the next election."

Mr. Turner, founder of CNN and now the vice chairman of Time-Warner Inc., also suggested that world population could be reduced by the adoption of an international "one-child policy."...

The Atlanta-based billionaire and his wife, actress Jane Fonda, are active supporters of the United Nations Population Fund. In 1997, Mr. Turner pledged $1 billion to a new foundation to support U.N. efforts on population and the environment.

Though he fathered "five kids -- boom, boom, boom -- by the time I was 30," Mr. Turner said, he now believes overpopulation is a major problem and suggested people should "promise to have no more than two children."

Mr. Turner recalled a discussion many years ago with Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich, whose 1968 book "The Population Bomb" predicted that hundreds of millions of people would starve to death in the 1970s and '80s as a result of global overpopulation.

Mr. Turner said he asked Mr. Ehrlich and his wife, Anne, what the ideal world population would be. "They told me about 2 billion," Mr. Turner said. World population is now 5.9 billion, but the world could reduce its population to that ideal, Mr. Turner suggested. "We could do it in a very humane way," he said, "if everybody adopted a one-child policy for 100 years."....

Mr. Turner said that when he was first establishing his cable television empire, "the Cold War was the big problem," but said Mr. Reagan's anti-communist rhetoric frightened him. "Reagan was calling the Soviet Union an 'evil empire.' The easiest way to get into a fight is to insult the other man," Mr. Turner said.

Mr. Turner said the Ten Commandments are "a little out of date," and suggested, "If you're only going to have 10 rules, I don't know if [prohibiting] adultery should be one of them."

Speaking of himself as a member of "the progressive movement," Mr. Turner urged the NFPRHA audience to "give 'em hell" when seeking more government funds for population control. "People who think like us may be in the minority, but we're the smart ones," he said, and as a result should be able to defeat opponents he called "a whole bunch of dummies."

Mr. Turner, whose net worth is more than $3.2 billion, got laughs with his responses during a question-and-answer session after his speech. Asked about Mr. [Tom] DeLay, Mr. Turner said of the Republican Congressman: "Nobody that dumb could make it through law school."

Asked what he would say to Pope John Paul II, who opposes abortion and artificial contraception, Mr. Turner responded with an ethnic joke -- "Ever seen a Polish mine detector?" -- and then suggested the Pope should "get with it. Welcome to the 20th century."

END Excerpt

5 

Hollywood's perception of Ken Starr: a sex-obsessed, out of control prosecutor who inspires his victims to recall Joe McCarthy in demanding "Have you no shame?"

     As noted in the February 17 CyberAlert, the NBC dramas Law & Order and Homicide are running crossover episodes this week involving the detectives and prosecutors from New York City investigating a murder of a woman found dead in New York who worked in Baltimore, but who had ties to the White House, thus prompting a clash with the Independent Counsel.

     Law & Order aired Wednesday night and it soon became clear that the Independent Counsel, "William Dell," is supposed to match Ken Starr. The detectives in both cities learn that the murdered woman, "Janine McBride," was a lesbian recently transferred from a position in the Old Executive Office Building with the Council of Economic Advisers. They find a witness who may have seen the murderer, but the witness was a lover who is also a married mother with young kids so the prosecutors promise to protect her identity.

     While in a room at the Watergate Hotel New York City prosecutor "Jack McCoy," played by Sam Watterston, as well as "Danvers," the Baltimore prosecutor, are summoned to the office of Independent Counsel William Dell who demands to know name of the witness, whereupon this exchange occurs:
     Danvers: "Aren't you charged with investigating financial misdealings by the administration? How does Janine McBride figure into that?"
     Dell: "The street only runs one way Mr. Danvers. You tell me what you know. If you're not familiar with the independent counsel statute..."
     McCoy cuts him off: "I know the statute. I also know about the leaks of grand jury testimony from your office. The Justice Department is investigating your investigation."
     Dell, growing angry: "Mr. McCoy!"
     McCoy: "Speaking for myself I'm not putting my witness in my murder case in jeopardy just to satisfy your curiosity."
     Danvers: "I have to follow Mr. McCoy's lead on this."

     Sounds like a script written by David Kendall.

     McCoy is forced to appear before Dell's grand jury where Dell actually personally questions his witnesses. When McCoy refuses to tell him the name of the witness, saying he promised to keep him or her anonymous, Dell goes into irrelevant personal matters from McCoy's past.
     Dell demands: "Mr. McCoy, what are you hiding?"
     McCoy responds: "Nothing. I'm simply trying to discharge my duties as a prosecutor for New York County."
     Dell: "Your duties. Mr. McCoy, weren't you called before the disciplinary committee of the New York Bar Association for withholding a witness statement in a murder case?"

     Dell's questions grow more personal, saying in one question: "This ADA was one of your lovers, isn't that right?" Dell then recklessly impugns New York City police detective "Leonard Briscoe," played by Jerry Orbach, saying he once was called before a police ethics commission, prompting an outraged McCoy to point out he was cleared. Undeterred, evil Dell starts talking about how Briscoe's daughter was murdered by a drug dealer. The scene then builds to its climax:
     Dell: "Wasn't he a passenger in a car driven by another one of your lovers at the DA's office when she was killed? Wasn't he drunk at the time? The accident report indicates that he was. Now one last time Mr. McCoy, what is the name of your witness and what did they tell the police?"
     McCoy, shaking his head in disgust: "Mr. Dell, have you no shame? Have you no shame?"

     (Watch this scene: About an hour after this e-mail is sent, the MRC's Sean Henry and Kristina Sewell will post, on the MRC home page, a clip of this scene in RealPlayer format. Go to: http://www.mrc.org)

     Part two airs Friday night at 10pm ET/PT on Homicide: Life on the Street. The promo run at the end of Law & Order promises the Clinton team may be implicated, though Dell, as Starr, is still "on a rampage."
     Announcer: "Friday: Law & Order and Homicide continue in an episode that hits the bulls-eye. A sex scandal turned deadly."
     Detective: "We've uncovered evidence that Janine McBride's murder may have been ordered by someone at the White House."
     Announcer: "A prosecutor on a rampage who doesn't care who gets hurt. The dramatic conclusion as Law & Order joins Homicide. NBC Friday."

 6

From the February 16 Late Show with David Letterman, a top ten list inspired by Linda Tripp: "Top Ten Signs The President Is Trying To Kill You." Copyright 1999 by Worldwide Pants, Inc.

10. He goes on TV to assure the nation that he's not trying to kill you
9. You get a card from Saddam reading "Glad I'm not you"
8. You turn on CNN and see your house in green night-vision
7. You wake up next to the head of Donna Shalala
6. You overhear him arguing with lawyers over legal definition of the word "strangle"
5. Keeps promising to "introduce you to Vince Foster"
4. He asks U.N. to pass resolution authorizing use of force against you
3. Now under construction in Arlington Cemetery: "The Tomb of The Unknown Guy The President's Going To Kill"
2. "Someone" throws a Big Mac stuffed with a brick through your window
1. Two words: exploding cigars

     And from the Late Show Web page, some of "the extra jokes that didn't quite make it into the Top Ten."

-- You're the guy whose idea it was to make the McRib available for a limited time only.
-- He give you the Secret Service code name "Roadkill."
-- Roger Clinton appears at your door saying, "You the one I'm s'posed to kill?"

     Time and space prevent me from running the further analysis of CNN's Tuesday town meeting promised in the last CyberAlert. But I will get to it in the next one. -- Brent Baker

3

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