Badpuppy Gay Today

Tuesday, 15 April, 1997

At a time when defenders of a free Internet must worry about an upcoming Supreme Court decision about the Communications Decency Act, and when we must contemplate the absurdity of certain accusations originating among religious fascists and censorious right-wing demagogues, a profound book that speaks passionately, directly and effectively to our concerns has just been published.

This book, Virtuous Reality, is sure to touch nerves among certain nervous baby boomers. Boomerism, says the author, is a state of mind, one that includes some very anxious parents.

Katz, 49, bored silly by the current methodology that goes with a formal education, was once a copy boy for the New York Times, while, by night, he worked for the Liberation News Service. He was around to see "the end of the golden age of newspapers," as a reporter and editor for the Philadelphia Inquirer and The Washington Post. At the Post, he says, he was given a chance to investigate the famous Watergate break-in, but, not knowing what it was about, passed it up for fear of having to tangle with burglars. The story thence went to Carl Bernstein.

In any case, he believes, journalists should be outsiders observing local parties thrown, but in Washington, he'd noticed, such soirees were being given by prominent journalists. Katz also worked for CBS and said that at one time CBS did "the greatest information gathering ever." Since, however, he's been saddened because that "greatest" phase has faded out. There's no more depth reporting. As a result, all of us lose.

In the 1980's news journalists and their outlets were brutally hijacked in takeovers by major corporations. Reporters were asleep at the switches. Katz was surprised when the nation failed to blink as CBS News was dismantled. Friends pointed his way to the Internet.

At first, he tells, when he was told to get a modem, he whined and fussed and didn't want to do it. But when he did get one, he found himself in a new world, a new communications culture. He found this very culture to be free, outspoken, vibrant, and fluent in a way that he'd sorely missed in regular news rooms.

"Freedom lives on the web," he exults, "There's a passion for freedom that's breathtaking." Katz refers to some of his own columns, including one titled "Channeling Mencken"--and he refers also to the H.L. Mencken website.

He speaks of how cross-references and "threads" lead us with ease directly to a greater understanding of the topics we research. Writing a column on the web, as opposed to writing one in print media, he now knows the satisfaction of watching that column become a living organism, the beginning of a dialogue in which his word is not necessarily the last.

Thomas Paine, who wrote "Common Sense," the book that inspired the American Revolution, is, in Katz' view, the father of American journalism. Paine's book was bought by a half-million people in a new country with only a few more than two-million inhabitants. This means that "Common Sense" was, undoubtedly, America's first bestseller.

Paine, says Katz, would be on the Internet today. His outspoken individualism wouldn't be welcomed by corporate media, which, no doubt, would work to eliminate such ideas as he had.

While he is the best Internet champion this reviewer knows, Katz also admits that the Internet can sometimes be an unpleasant place. It isn't a paradise, no. But it does evoke the spirit of early American journalism: outspoken, loud, and opinionated.

As an example of how weird things can get, he tells about his receipt of E-mail from England after writing about Paine's stolen bones (reportedly dug up by angry Christians after the publication of "Age of Reason," Paine's little-known critique of the Bible) and his English E-mailers have begun claiming they own various unassembled parts of Paine's missing corpse. Jaw bones. Rib cages. "By the end of the year," laughs Katz, "Thomas Paine might actually be reassembled in England."

Katz relates how he's discovered, through experience, he doesn't have to be right about everything. After he writes a column, he's learned to open himself to changing his perspective as a result of his readers who add to his knowledge by calling him, through E-mail, on his mistakes. "It makes me smarter," he says.

As a newspaper veteran, he explains that a problem with mainstream media is its boast that it upholds a non-existent value: objectivity. Trying to sound objective, reporters never get to tell audiences what they themselves have really discovered but only what others may think on one side of a question or another. If Thomas Paine had done this, we'd never have had "Common Sense," backed with Paine's direct personal observations, he says. And, possibly, we'd never have had our American Revolution! "Paine would have had to ask a spokesperson for England's King George--on one side--to give his views, and, thereafter, would have had to have quoted a representative from the American colonies to allow for "balance." Instead, Paine went "subjective" and said what he thought. That is what made "Common Sense" as powerful a statement as it was. When Paine applied this same approach to the Bible, however, he became persona non-grata in the United States and elsewhere. Statues of him were torn down, and many years after he was dead, a macho American President, Theodore Roosevelt, called Paine "a filthy little atheist." Paine was not, in fact, an atheist, but, a deist.

Like Paine's "Common Sense," Jon Katz' "Virtuous Reality" is a polemic. Polemics, which include my own book, "The Gay Agenda," are often so shocking, so direct, that we seldom see them in newspapers, except, in moderate contexts, on Op-ed pages. What does a polemic do? First, it gives the author's opinion. He says: "I'm upfront. Here are my personal reasons for the way I see things. Next, I'm pleased to provide supportive data for my opinion. Take it or leave it."

"Thomas Paine," says Katz, "embodied the spirit of American media as it was meant to be. It's a shame that has been lost."

Following in the footsteps of his literary hero, Katz has done a top-notch job in "Virtuous Reality." To worried parents, told incessantly that their children spend too much time in front of various kinds of screens, locked in their bedrooms with computers, Katz says that their concerns are perfectly valid. "Good parents always curb their children's unhealthy excesses, from overindulging on Chee-tos to joining a pack of neighborhood vandals."

"But," he writes, "the notion that exposure to pop culture is inherently dangerous is unsupported by research, statistics or common sense. We lose credibility with kids by giving it such weight. Most MTV watchers are safe, law-abiding, middle-class children; they know quite well that exposure to vulgar videos won't send them into the streets packing guns or into their bedrooms wearing leather bustiers."

Katz himself is a parent. He's as concerned, he says, as anybody about what's good for his child. However, he explains, "Years of battles over comics, rock and other forms of youth culture seem to have left us none the wiser. We take the bait every time. Rather than engage our children in intelligent dialogue, we simply come across as the pompous out-to-lunch windbags many of us have become."

He quotes another parent: "Its not that complicated. I can figure this out. I can make my own decisions about media, values and morality. I don't have to choose between traditional culture and the new media. I can live a happy and fulfilling life even if I never see the World Wide Web.

"Whatever they (my children) should or shouldn't watch, however much time they spend on-line, my children are not dumb and they're not in danger from movies, TV shows, music or computers. Many children, especially underclass children--really are suffering from horrific violence, and they need more and better parenting, better schools, fewer guns and drugs and lots of job opportunities. If I'm so worried about kids, I will help them.

"If I really want to protect my own children, I will make sure they have more, not less, access to this new cultural and technological world. I won't ever call them stupid for watching things I don't like. I don't have to be at war with them. I can work out a social contract with my children that protects them, guides them through their new culture and brings peace and rationality to our home."

Katz has written "Virtuous Reality," he says, "primarily to persuade you that pop culture, new media, the Internet and the technologies driving them all are not destroying civilization, making your kids dumb or causing violence and immorality."

This book, he says, "is for nervous parents, neo-Luddites, kids, journalists, rappers, intellectuals, digital wanna-bes, Webheads, MTV users and banners, Beavis and Butthead fans, survivors of the 1996 presidential election and buyers of William Bennett's moral fables."

Katz tells us that his book is about "public discussions of culture and new media" which are "hysterical, confusing and irrational." He tells us that we must start over. "We blame our ascending, technologically distributed culture--music, TV shows, movies, computers--for crime, civil apathy and other social woes, while their complex causes and expensive solutions are ignored. Don't believe what cultural conservatives like Bennett and Bob Dole, fuzzy-headed liberals like Tipper Gore or nervous boomer parents like Bill and Hillary Clinton (not to even mention blockheads like Charlton Heston) are telling you. These people have created a national trauma I call Mediaphobia--the notion that culture and new media are dangerous."

"Journalism," observes Katz, "has lost its moral moorings. Its new corporate owners have taken it far from its original purpose, as practiced by Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, and transformed it into a timid, stuffy, "objective" and increasingly destructive entity.

"We need to understand the good things the information revolution is bringing and not just wring our hands....."

Once you've read "Virtuous Reality," you may better understand Badpuppy's GayToday, which has been formed--independently-- upon the same freedom-loving traditions that author Jon Katz so eloquently celebrates. It will help you understand the Internet even better, and assist you if need be, answering critics who defame the Internet. Buy this simply-written and powerfully crafted book and make sure your neighbors know about it too.

Author Jon Katz writes for the Internet magazine, SLATE, and after reading "Virtuous Reality," you may wish to compliment him E-mail-wise at JDKatz@aol.com.