The Linear Canvas

As a fifth grade student during the 1968 presidential campaign, I was thrilled to see my favorite for the coming election, Richard Nixon, make a speech from the caboose of a train that passed through my town. Five years later, I was disgusted by the deeds of this man and his entourage. The American press, “The Fifth Estate”, had its greatest moment then. They did not bring down this disgraced leader, as some would say, they held a single man up to the rule of law and that man paid a price, though I would argue not high enough of one.

For a time afterwards, the press was magnificent in ferreting out corruption and meting out justice to all public servants and corporations that dared to hoodwink voters and consumers. That magnificence seems to have diminished somewhat over the years.

With recent stories by The Rolling Stone magazine and previous government reports from the General Accountability Office, it is interesting that with so much verifiable information concerning voter fraud in Ohio and around the country in 2004 that the national media and front line news organizations have had so little to say about it. Most of the coverage it has gotten has been to portray the situation as a bunch of loony conspiracy theorists that just haven’t found any UFO’s yet.

The right wing reaction to this has been to point out the voting irregularities in Chicago during the 1960 presidential election. This vote total manipulation accusation was common knowledge in 1960 and the Republicans still did little to nothing about it at the time. The whole story was that there was wide spread voter fraud accusations in the South and the Republicans Party did not want the scrutiny that any prolonged Chicago voter fraud investigation would have brought. If there were any voter fraud committed in 1960, even by the Democrats, I would want to know about it and would have been in favor of the most severe penalties for the guilty. This is not about party affiliations. This is about the right to free and fair elections that I want to guarantee even to those with whom I might not agree at times. I do not feel that I have my Republican friends support in the same manner on this issue for some reason. Presented with so many alleged instances of deceit in 2004, it is my feeling that Republicans should want to get to the truth as well, regardless of which political party was involved.

I am very disappointed with the local newspapers and the national corporate media for paying so little attention to possibly one of the biggest news story of our lifetimes. I have always thought that our free press was looking for that big scoop, the story that made headlines all over the world. The one big story that makes all the reporters and publishers involved, media stars with book publishing contracts.

My message to the media:
This might be the big one. Please don’t let this one get away.