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One sad memory from my days as managing editor of the local daily came one morning when a sweet little old woman walked into the newspaper office and explained that she had been arrested for shoplifting on the day before at a supermarket. It was all a mistake and a misunderstanding, she said, and would I please not follow the newspaper's policy of reporting all local arrests?
I told her she'd have her day in municipal court, and we'd report that too. Further, I believed it was important to report every local arrest, because in some countries (this was long before our Patriot Act) you could be secretly arrested and held incommunicado.
She didn't see it that way, of course, and offered me $200 to keep the arrest out of the paper. I declined, and she raised her bid to $300. I told her that I could be bribed, but her offer was way too low. I'd need at least $1 million, enough so that I could invest it and live comfortably off the interest, since if I took a bribe, I'd never be able to work in my profession.
How ignorant I was. The Bush Administration spent $88 million on public relations last year, and some of it was bribery: $240,000 to columnist Armstrong Williams to tout No Child Left Behind, $10,000 to columnist Michael McManus to promote Republican marriage ideals, $41,500 to columnist Maggie Gallagher for more marriage promotion.
And then there was James Guckert, a/k/a Jeff Gannon, the porn website operator who lobbed softball questions at White House news conferences.
While this may turn out to be some Karl Rove conspiracy
to discredit the media -- they're all for sale, and look
at the kind of people who are calling themselves
journalists these days
-- I have a family, and so I
can't afford to ignore these financial opportunities. Thus
I offer a price list:
· For a mere $10,000 per occurrence, I will pretend that No Child Left Behind is not an unfunded federal mandate. For the same fee, I'll contend that the Healthy Forests Initiative means healthy forests, and that the Clear Skies Initiative is connected to better air quality.
· For only $5,000 per usage, I will learn to
write in the Republican Dialect. That means that the
Administration's proposed Social Security changes will
involve personal accounts
rather than private
accounts.
I shall never write treasonous phrases like
the occupation of Iraq
when I could be patriotic and
upbeat with the liberation of Iraq.
And I will always refer to that partisan farrago of
collectivists and traitors as the Democrat Party,
rather than use proper grammar with the Democratic
Party.
Grammar, after all, is something that only a
Blue-State elitist might care about. Red-meat NASCAR real
Americans don't care about wimp stuff like that.
· As a life-long resident of our Red State, I
won't need more than $100,000 to write about how wonderful
it is to live in the only place in the world that has the
verb to debruce.
I'll ignore our statistics on
church attendance (low) and divorce, suicide, alcoholism
and drug abuse (high), and instead write often about how
wholesome we are.
The last time I called the White House press office, I got shunted to an intern who promised to call back with an answer to my question, and never did. It was a totally innocuous question: I just wanted to know if there had been any special ceremony when the President signed the Lincoln County Conservation, Recreation, and Development Act of 2004 last Nov. 30.
So I doubt I could even get into the briefing room. But
if they agree, I'll charge only $15,000 a month, plus
first-class travel expenses, to attend White House news
conferences and ask questions like How soon will the
Interior Department be ready to add G.W. Bush to Mt.
Rushmore?
or Will the President walk on water again
when he visits Mobile Bay next month?
Every now and again, I run into somebody I went to high
school or college with, and I hear something like We're
so proud of you, Ed, because you never sold out.
Outwardly, I graciously accept the compliment. But the truth is that no one's ever made me a good offer. Now that the Bush Administration is writing checks to columnists, though, journalistic prostitution is starting to look rather promising. On the other hand, the pay may never be all that good, since so many people are willing to do it for free.
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