4-20-07, 10:50 a.m.

As I had my first cup of coffee this morning, I found myself thinking about the mainstream media and, peripherally, Al Franken. This is not something that most people, other than Al Franken, would probably do as a matter of routine. But as a writer I have long understood that inspiration can come from unusual places. And this is apparently one such occasion.

I could have chosen to write about any number of things, such as abusive diatribe actor Alec Baldwin left for his 12 year old daughter. CNN deems it appropriate to air that every twenty minutes or so, along with the tag 'Baldwin Goes Beserk.' I could have written about Attorney General Alberto ('I Can't Recall') Gonzales's appearance yesterday in a Senate hearing, an appearance that demonstrates that having a legal degree doesn't guarantee understanding principles any more than having a driver's license insures understanding traffic laws. At least for some people, such as those who forgot to renew expired tags, signal left when turning left, wear seatbelts, or who have been appointed by the Bush administration. For the record, Gonzales said 'I don't recall' or a version of that 64 times; his chief of staff used the phrase 122 times.

The reason I found myself thinking about Al Franken has nothing to do with the fact that he wants to be the next US Senator from Minnesota, although he does, and if he is successful it will be an interesting change from the custom of conservative celebrities gaining office. You know, entertainers like Fred ('Love Boat') Gandy, the late Sonny ('I Got You Babe') Bono and Fred Dalton ('The guy who has been in lots of stuff') Thompson.

And it has little to do with the fact that Franken, during his stint as a writer in the early years of 'Saturday Night Live,' took a phone call from Henry Kissinger -- who was phoning to seek tickets to the show for his children -- only to be told by Franken that if it weren't for the Secretary of State's role in the Vietnam war, he could have had his tickets. I believe there was an expletive thrown in there by Mr. Franken, but in keeping with the practice of the Nixon administration that Kissinger served, I'll delete it.

Nor am I moved to write because Franken wrote and delivered, also on Saturday Night Live, a full-frontal verbal assault on then NBC president Fred Silverman, entitled 'Limo for a Lamo.' It takes a certain amount of nerve to attack the president of the network broadcasting the show one works for, and speaks volumes for the reason most networks shy away from live broadcasts.

The reason I found myself reflecting about Franken is that in his book, 'The Truth (with Jokes),' he expresses his absolute disbelief that the mainstream media, including traditional left/progressive outlets, found themselves repeating the fiction that President George W. Bush won a 'mandate' in his 2004 election victory over Massachusetts Senator John Kerry. And this started me thinking about the state of mainstream media generally.

It is worth pondering why so much of the media, at least the mainstream media, has stopped 'speaking truth to power.' There's no doubt that corporate control, and corporate culture, has a major part in this. Unless we're talking about PBS, National Public Radio, and a few other exceptions -including Political Affairs and the People's Weekly World - most media operations exist to make a profit.

The corporate barons who sit in the boardrooms of media conglomerates know as much about news as the NBC 'suits' knew about comedy, as I am sure Al Franken would attest on the basis of his SNL experience.

Let's look at the trends in television news over the past few weeks. There was the seemingly never-ending saga of the late Anna Nicole Smith and who was the father of her child, a subject customarily the in the realm of Maury Povich's syndicated afternoon television show. This was not exactly headline news to any genuine journalist. It is news only to corporate moguls who seem to be of the mindset that those who watch the broadcasts are, in essence, little more than voyeurs.

This was followed by an even BIGGER news story: Would Sanjaya Malakar ever get voted off 'American Idol?'

During the past four days, the media has been dominated by one story: The tragic shootings at Virginia Tech. The seemingly senseless murder of so many young people inspires the normal human emotions of grief, sadness, shock, revulsion. There is no doubt that it is news that deserves coverage. And our collective reaction to what happened at Virginia Tech is testimony to the fact that we are not the mindless drones that many media chief executive officers believe us to be.

At the same time, it is clear that the media is milking the Virginia Tech tragedy for all it is worth. And in the aftermath of that horror, there is something disturbing in the playing up of the fact that the young man named as the shooter, Cho Seung-hui, was Korean. His picture, along with a disturbing video he filmed, is a constant feature of the media coverage.

Is there anyone who can remember the name of the disturbed man who killed several Amish schoolchildren? We remember the act of grace of the Amish families who expressed care and concern for his widow even as they mourned for their dead children. We remember Dylan Kliebold and Eric Harris because the Columbine massacre is commemorated each year, and schools take precautions every April 20 because they're concerned about copycat acts. But few people outside the Chicago area are likely to remember Laurie Dann, an emotionally disturbed woman who entered a suburban elementary school in 1988 and shot several people, killing young Nicky Corwin, before taking her own life.

The media's talking heads are already assembled, some talking about how the Korean culture (and Asian cultures generally) don't deal well with matters of emotional illness. Even if this were so, the media has played this up in a way they never have in similar tragedies.

To my knowledge, no one claimed back in 1988 that Laurie Dann's elementary school rampage, and her obvious history of emotional illness, was a product of a being Jewish and growing up on Chicago's north shore. And if we draw any lessons from Hubbard Woods Elementary School, Columbine High School, the small Amish schoolhouse, or Virginia Tech it is there are few cultures that deal well with emotional illness, especially our own.

The media portrayal of emotional illness has much to do with this, since it is rarely accurate, let alone sympathetic. The late actor, Anthony Perkins, was a master at portraying characters with emotional illness. But many more people remember his portrayal of the homicidal Norman Bates of 'Psycho' than remember his nuanced performance as the emotionally disabled baseball player, Jimmy Piersall, in 'Fear Strikes Out.' For every violent, emotionally disabled criminal offender given prominence by the mainstream media, there are countless persons with emotional disabilities who are leading normal, law abiding lives, taking things one day at a time like so many who do not have emotional disabilities.

More Americans are enlightened about depression, thanks to the advertising of medications like Prozac, but you don't see ads for medications that provide treatment for bi-polar disorder or schizophrenia. Is this because the pharmaceutical industry believes people who live with either or both these disorders don't watch commercials? Is it because treating erectile dysfunction is more profitable? And while I am on this topic, why not discuss how expensive prescribed medications have become, how the Bush administration made it illegal to buy prescription medications in Canada not because of post 9/11 concerns (which is how that action was spun) but to protect the profit margins of the pharmaceutical industry.

Instead of focusing on the Korean heritage of Cho Seung-hui, why not focus on whether he had access to proper medical care and prescription medication? Why not focus on the need for universal health care, and the need for better education across the board that is focused on not stigmatizing emotional illness. Any illness, whether physical or emotional, that is not treated is potentially dangerous.

The way in which the media coverage is shaping up on this issue is something to keep our eyes on very carefully for a several reasons.

The first is that racism is a tactic the rulers of this nation will not hesitate to employ, and the fact that the widespread outrage over the comments Don Imus made about the Rutgers women's basketball team resulted in his firing should not lull us into a false sense of secruity on the question of racism.

The second is that Cho and his family are immigrants from South Korea, and the anti-immigration movement has been built on a sometimes subtle-sometimes not racism, and the Virginia Tech tragedy could be used as a catalyst by these forces.

Finally, let's remember we have a faux Texan in the White House who probably is convinced that John Wayne was killed at the Alamo, and whose knowledge of world affairs is such that he's probably itching to send US troops into Pyongyang yelling 'Remember Virginia Tech.' The fact that Cho's family hails from South Korea, not North Korea, wouldn't play a part since this administration has shown that it doesn't allow facts to interfere with a military invasion.

That last point is something Al Franken would recognize as,a form of satire since the Bush administration shouldn't have any notion of invading North Korea, at least based on the Virginia Tech tragedy.

But it does serve as a reminder that young men and women are being killed and maimed every day in Iraq, something you wouldn't know based on the 'top news stories' of the past few days. The abrupt ending of their young lives is, in every moral way, as horrific and tragic as those whose lives ended on a campus in Virginia.

I've had my coffee, finished my writing, and think I'll get back to watching today's news. Oh, look, they're playing the Alec Baldwin tape again....

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