Op-Ed

AUSTIN, Texas -- We could be watching one of those rare etymological events ("etymology": the history of a particular word, the study of historical linguistic change), as the meaning of a word changes before our eyes. Sort of like watching a species evolve or a tectonic plate move in real time.

We now have a politics that is about money, of money, by money and for money. How long can it be before the word "politics" comes to mean money?

A perfectly charming example, reported by Tim Golden in The New York Times, involves the Clinton administration's sudden shift of policy on buying helicopters to use in the drug war in Colombia. Since 1996, the administration has taken the position that a rebuilt version of the Huey, the old Vietnam workhorse, would do nicely.

According to Golden, a group of powerful congressional Republicans have "almost an obsession" about sending the fancier Blackhawk helicopter, which costs five times as much -- $1.8 million for a Huey II, $12.8 million for a Blackhawk. So for four years they've been fighting over this, with the political implication that anyone who's against spending more money is "soft on drugs."

Oh Elian, we love you! We're the News Media. And you're incredibly special.

Many politicians, legal experts, psychologists, celebrities and pundits have wanted the world to know that they fervently desire what's best for you. We've been glad to put you on national television -- live if possible -- playing on a backyard swing set or holding your pet rabbit named "Esperanza." Hope for your future has become very important to us all.

Frankly, kids your age usually aren't interesting to those of us in the media profession. They may suffer from danger and deprivation, but the chances are slim that a spotlight will fall on their unimportant little lives. What afflicts their daily existence is apt to be too downbeat and humdrum for prime time. There's no tragic shipwreck or high-profile legal battle to recount, just ongoing social conditions. Kind of boring.

LOS ANGELES -- There's a certain kind of anti-California prejudice that has always chapped my rear: "home of the fruits and nuts," "Berserkeley," "San Francisco Democrats." As though Alabama weren't a trifle strange and Utah didn't have its moments. Even (ahem) Texas ... On the other hand, you have to admit that something is happening here, and what it is, is entirely clear.

The peculiar sickness of California politics has been apparent for some time. Peter Schrag's book Paradise Lost: California's Experience, America's Future examines that illness closely.

Not that it is startlingly new -- all friends of California have been muttering for years now: "You fools, you fools. You had the finest system of public education in America, perhaps even the world. From kindergarten through graduate school, you had great schools, and you just threw them away -- the schools and everything else government used to do here. All because you wanted property tax relief."

Nearly five years after its purchase of ABC, the Disney Company made history in late March by subjecting a confused 6-year-old boy to a preposterous "interview." For ABC News superstar Diane Sawyer, it was all in a day's work. But former viewers of the Mickey Mouse Club had good reason to cringe. Whatever his failings, Mickey never engaged in such flagrant child abuse on national television.

For three days, "Good Morning America" featured excerpts from Sawyer's visit with Elian Gonzalez, a traumatized child whose departure from Cuba several months ago ended with a shipwreck that killed his mother. Sawyer sat on the floor with little Elian and eased into questions about whether he'd rather live in Cuba or Florida. The footage, repackaged for ABC's "20/20" show, was all grist for the ABC/Disney profit mill.

"Judge Hiller assigns Lindsay the repugnant task of defending nun-killer Michael Kingston. Lindsay discovers the police search that found the body was unconstitutional, and against all her morals, moves that Kingston be released. Helen delivers an impassioned argument, stating that the Constitution was designed to protect the innocent, a category that doesn't include Kingston. In the end, Judge Hiller has no choice but to strike the body from evidence, and dismiss the charges." What's this? Episode 53 of ABC's "The Practice," as synopsized on epguides.com, is what it is, first broadcast on March 28, 1999, and recently repeated. "The Practice," about a law firm, is produced by David Kelley, formerly a writer out of the Steve Bochco stable. The show is regarded as a cultural provender of rare quality, basking in the soft glow of liberal approval.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Those of you old enough to remember the Vietnam War will recall the early years, when the majority of Americans couldn't find the place on a map and practically nobody could tell the difference between the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese. Well, it's time to look up Colombia on the map of South America and learn what FARC is.

When the history of this one is written, what will amaze everyone once again is how hopelessly clueless we all are -- the Clinton administration, Congress, the media. The media keep reporting "a $9 billion spending bill to help Colombia combat drug traffickers" as though it were just that simple.

(Actually, only $1.6 billion of the spending bill is for the "counter drug aid package for Colombia." There is $2.6 billion to pay for our military costs in Kosovo, $2 billion for disaster relief and then, somehow, amazingly, the thing came out of the House Appropriations Committee with the total price tag doubled by pure pork barrel.)

Does America have a military-industrial-media complex?

Whether you consider the question in terms of psychology or economics, some grim answers are available from the National Association of Broadcasters, a powerful industry group that just held its radio convention in San Francisco.

When a recent Federal Trade Commission report faulted media companies for marketing violence to children, various politicians expressed outrage. But we've heard little about the NAB -- a trade association with a fitting acronym. The NAB has a notable record of nabbing the public airwaves for private gain.

Nearly 40 years ago, a farewell speech by President Dwight Eisenhower warned about the "conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry." He said: "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." That potential has been realized, with major help from media.

The media summer of 2000 is now history. As leaves begin to fall, let's consider a few key dynamics of the political season that has just passed.

Despite complaints about smarmy orchestration and chronic pandering, the Republican and Democratic conventions resulted in gobs of deferential coverage. Some journalists rolled their eyes or even shed a bit of light on the big money bags behind the Oz-like curtains, but each party got what its backers paid for -- a week of mostly upbeat publicity.

Meanwhile, Americans saw very little news about the iron-fist tactics that police used in the host cities to suppress thousands of social-justice demonstrators. Evidently, several days of militarizing a downtown area is the latest new thing for laying down the political law.

In Philadelphia, while the Grand Old Party partied, police raided a protest headquarters. The gendarmes proceeded to confiscate and destroy large numbers of handmade puppets being readied for deployment in the streets. The crackdown was understandable, since art can be subversive. Better to be on the safe side!

Despite all the emphasis on new media, photography has never lost the power to move us. Some recent photo essays in major American magazines, focusing on the poor and dispossessed, are efforts to break through abstraction and indifference. They tell us a lot about the potential impacts -- and common limitations -- of photojournalism.

The March 27 edition of Time devoted six pages to the haunting black-and-white work of renowned photographer Sebastiao Salgado. Bleak images evoke humanity struggling for survival and hope: Rwandans at refugee camps, women holding pictures of men abducted from a Kurdish village in Iraq, toddlers -- abandoned by destitute parents -- crawling at a care center in urban Brazil.

AUSTIN -- Watching our homeboy George Dubya as he wends his way -- somewhat unsteadily -- toward the presidency is a nerve-racking procedure. Face it, our reputation is on the line along with the governor's. All of us know that 20 million Texans can't be brought to agree on anything, including whether the guys who died at the Alamo were heroes or fools. Nevertheless, we are all being painted with the Bush brush, so whenever he makes a cake of himself, all of us get the blame ("Those Texans, so ignorant.'')

Relatively speaking, Bush is one of our better representatives on the national scene. In Washington, which seems to have been deeply scarred by LBJ's occasional lack of couth, we are still regarded as a tribe of Visigoths. ("And then, he lifted his shirt and showed us the scar!'') Every time Gov. Preston Smith, who had a terminal West Texas accent, went on television, I used to wince: "Our biggest problem after this hurricane is all the day-brees we got lyin' around.'' So, Dubya Bush doesn't seem like anyone we'd have to blush for.