The Block and Tackle Caper

The office lights that animate skylines at night are an illusion; they conceal the fact that, for the most part, only cleaning crews give life to the city after dark.  That’s the way it was in Kansas City when I landed a second shift job at a major corporation.  I used to enjoy dinner in the employee’s cafeteria looking past the huge curtains and plate glass windows into downtown Kansas City unencumbered by the daytime rat race. The scene was particularly memorable when light snow would profile its buildings - a wonderland by night, especially during Christmas.

Since it was my first real job after college, I had a lot to learn about the feudal life of the castle run by some of the strangest masters I’ve ever encountered.  For the most part the serfs were quite docile, but once in a while temptation would lead to mischief against the manor in the form of theft.  Interestingly enough, theft was broad, ranging from embezzlement by a corporate executive to stealing by the firm’s factory workers and janitorial supervisors who pumped vending machines with coat hangers until the coin mechanisms gave up their bounty.  What separated the professionals from the amateurs was daring, co-ordination, and most important of all, stealth.

Every Wednesday the cafeteria would serve its famous bean soup accompanied by corn bread.  At approximately 9:00 P.M. I sat down at a table next to the windows that had the best view of Kansas City at night.  Out of nowhere I noticed a thick rope descending in front of me.  I thought, “That’s kinda strange.”   Window washers work during the day.  Something was up and it wasn’t a free floor show.  Next in appearance came office furniture.  There arose a considerable murmur among the other employees in the cafeteria and apparently at least one alerted the security guards who quickly put out an unexpected welcome mat on the bottom for the crooks.

The caper had most of the hallmarks that would have made the theft the stuff of inside legend if they had pulled it off.  There were at least two teams: the roof team and the ground team that included a getaway truck.  It was an inside job where someone had obviously cased the joint.  The daring of the robbers could not be challenged; stealing from the boss during working hours.  The only problem lay in their flagrant disregard for stealth (past the employee’s cafeteria at dinner time).  What were they thinking?  America’s stupidest criminals are key examples of how Darwinism culls the herd and makes us laugh.

The London Flop House

I returned to London when there was an air of suspense surrounding public transportation.  An escaped Japanese terrorist from the Tel Aviv massacre was rumored to be heading to London.  I walked past Buckingham Palace where city crews were removing the bunting from the Duke of Windsor's funeral.  As I paused on the shaded south side of the palace to look at the royal vehicles, I suddenly heard the clip-clopping noise of horses.  I turned around to see magnificent chestnut horses drawing the caisson back to the palace.  When they stopped one horse bolted sideways and slammed into a car, denting it. The funeral of the duke was an historical occasion and I was sorry to miss it, but competing for a room with thousands of arriving strangers was out of the question.  Besides, I don’t enjoy big cities.

My last night in England June 6, 1972, the twenty-eighth anniversary of D-Day, was spent in a “bed and breakfast” east of Victoria Station.  It actually still exists, but I can’t use its name because it was my first encounter with a flop house.  A cot cost £1.50 with a hot bath 5p extra. The proprietress assured me, “We’re very clean around here.” The bed sheets still had hair in them, the wash basin wasn’t clean, and the towels looked and smelled dirty.  A sign on the wall read: “In case of fire, roof is readily available.” Perhaps jumping off it in case of fire was an option too.

I had to share the room with a Bristol dairyman who was only partially drunk.  We had a pretty good talk before it got dark, but how do you tell someone he stinks from ripe cheese, spoiled milk, and manure encrusted on his trousers?  Even our old high school basketball work-out jerseys didn’t smell that bad.  There was one cot left and I wondered who would stumble in during the night to complete the trio.  In the wee hours of the morning another drunk came in holding a pint.  As he sat on his cot he slowly lifted his head and quietly blurted out,“shee-ooo.” It was a page straight from Red Skelton’s old Freddy the Free Loader routine.  He guzzled and slobbered all night.  He never slept.  I never slept.  The dairyman slept soundly.  Because of these two unexpected guests I had to hang my head halfway out the window all night.  Thank goodness for the foggy night air of London! 

My days in the U.K. ended with a mixed bag.  I was impressed with its historical side: the buildings, palaces, railroads, monuments, and even the gruesome chopping block of Mary, Queen of Scots.  The English sentimental attachment to their royalty disappointed me, but I share their love of history and continuity - content and meaning which practically doesn’t exist in the U.S.  I began to think of Calais and France.

England had her characters: the girl in the plaid miniskirt, the Lincoln Hippies, the guy in Edinburgh with the black eye, the suspect Inverness farmer, the ex-communist in Liverpool, the talkative train conductor, and the two drunks in the London flop house. Because of the common language and being a humble backpacker I was able to see the U.K. on a real and more personal level.  I concluded there were many pearls set in a silvery sea. They were all interesting and not all of them were white.

That Cannon on My Hip

The moderator of Hard Ball on MSNBC recently chided Wayne LaPierre, head of the NRA, for defending gun ownership by stating many Americans have weapons because of their fear of riots and mobs.  The obvious implication was that LaPierre was using the race card to justify gun ownership.  Does Chris Matthews have that short a memory?  I know I don’t.

The threat became personal for me when high school mobs from Kansas City’s east side converged on City Hall to precipitate the April, 1968 Kansas City Riot.  A popular saying at the time was: “We’re gonna burn out ol’ whitey.”  Thank goodness for the Missouri National Guard.   I wished I’d had a cannon.  For more on my experience see the web site of Journal of the Silent Majority. There’s a photo of the bursting of the first tear gas canisters in front of city hall

The past is the kryptonite of the Left, but as President Nixon used to say, “Let’s look at the facts.”  My sample comes from one year – a treasure trove of uncomfortable truth: 1967, Facts on File’s Five Year Index 1966-1970, “NERGROES (RIOTS)” p. 522-523.The books are large. You can’t miss them.  Libraries would gladly inform the Media of their existence.  Listings of riots in 1968 explode after the death of Martin Luther King Jr.

Arizona: Phoenix riot of July 25

Michigan: Detroit riots July 23,

Chicago disorders and riots beginning May 21

Massachusetts: Lansing riots of July 14-15

Minnesota: Minneapolis riots of July 19 and July 21

Missouri: Kansas City disorders of July 9

New Jersey: Newark riots beginning July 12; Elizabeth riots July 17, Englewood riots of July 21 and July 23, Passaic riots of July 27-28

New York: Rochester riots July 23 and July 25; Mt. Vernon riots July 24-28, Newburg riots July 29-30

North Carolina: Durham riots July 19-20

Ohio: Cleveland riot April 16; Cincinnati riots June 12-16; Dayton riots June 12-15

Rhode Island: Providence riots July 31-August 2

Tennessee: Nashville riots April 8-10

Texas: Texas Southern University riot May 16-17

Wisconsin: Milwaukee riots July 30-August 3

Is it wise to insult the collective intelligence of 80 million Baby Boomers who lived during those times? We saw the nightly news on CBS, NBC, and ABC.  What became of the stock footage?  There are also millions who witnessed the riots like me and I qualify - a National Guardsman on all corners of my block and an M-60 tank parked three blocks away.  The situation is even more precarious today because inner city armories have disappeared.  There goes the response time just like in 1992; should MSNBC forget the Los Angeles Riots and the story of the Koreans who defended their businesses against the mob? The Media’s effort to revise or ignore history insults our intelligence.

Millions of Americans have had to face real threats and answer the question: “What are you gonna do when they come for you?”  My politically incorrect answer is “I’m proud of that cannon on my hip.”

Winter on the Farm

The bad days are those in which you can’t get outside and do something.  In the Ozarks where snow is rare that means cold and rainy days spent inside watching the History Channel or, better, in the garage near the wood stove tinkering.  When the ground is soft I can’t make the rounds cutting sprouts or cleaning out the fence rows.  Environmentalists will be happy to know that nature has won in the Ozarks.  The farmers are gone for the most part and nature is reclaiming what is left.  It’s a mess, but the deer like it.  Many Californians have retired in the Ozarks and placed expensive houses on cheap acreage, but they are the exceptions and not farmers. 

Cutting brush by hand is what the doctor ordered.  He believes in exercise and I do necessary farm chores as well.  To me a cluttered farm is an inefficient and inoperative farm that can’t sustain the margin needed to buy equipment or fertilizer.  When Dad used to take us to Michigan during summer custody, we would marvel at the rich fields of Illinois and Indiana and their tall corn.  That’s where the money is.  You’re lucky to see corn in the Ozarks.  Our biggest crop, rocks, can’t be used because they are of that awful softball variety nobody wants.  Is Scotland the Ozarks without the trees?

In the last several months my goal was to continue cleaning up the old external fence lines and eliminating the internal ones because there is no need for them.  Most farmers here are hay and cattle people.  Don’t let the horse and donkey people fool you.  Diversification disappeared with the family farm.  I can’t remember when I last saw a chicken.  Cattlemen have sold most of their cattle because of the drought, but I sharecrop hay and rent pasture to feed steers, cows, calves, and one gentle old bull.

I’ve come to terms with the Chainsaw from Hell.  It’s an old Stihl Farm Pro 026 that had a starting problem for years.  Of course, I never needed it much in Lee’s Summit when I lived there.  Down here, it’s different.  After three trips to the small engine repair shop I found out the hard way that it wasn’t the chainsaw, but me.  I had to revisit one of my saw manuals to figure it out.  I’m pleased to announce that the problem was an improper fuel adjustment screw setting – my fault.  The Chainsaw from Hell is still with me and it generally runs fine although I have to feed it constantly with new chains because of the Black Jack oaks.  Sharpening them doesn’t work.

February is fertilizer buying month and it costs thousands.  The days of farmers moving west after they drained the fertility of their old places are long gone.  I’ll be lucky just to break even, but there’s something about a family farm with hay bales in the field and a rainbow in the sky.  This year I’m going to take the Missouri Conservation Department’s advice and replant my creek bottom land with switchgrass and gamagrass, native species that are resistant to drought.  The cattle didn’t like the old water grass that had taken over the field.

I pick rocks in March and April after the cattle have cleaned up the place and return to their own pastures. The reason why farmers pick them is to prevent costly machinery repairs when they collide at 2,000 RPMs with the mower blades.  The Cherrys have been picking rocks for three generations on this place.  An old Ozark farm can be identified by their fields free of rocks.  There are piles of them everywhere stacked by hand.  I guess when we're gone they'll be just as mysterious as the Indian mounds are.

Beyond Full Metal Jacket

For the most part, the story of the torment of Private “Gomer Pyle” at Parris Island was accurate. It’s that accuracy that makes the movie so endearing to Marines, especially the older ones.  We recall our nick names like Rafter Man, Snow Ball, and Joker. Squad bays had the Secretary, King Rat and his House Mouses, and the most unfortunate of all, Joe S**t the Rag Man. My name was “The Demonstrator” because I had college.  The platoon commander hated me because he thought all college graduates were protesters.  I also had the dubious honor of being classified as a “K” or reservist, a status prominently stamped on our SRBs (Service Record Books). He hated me because I had not gone to Vietnam, but I think he just hated everybody.

Private Pyle, driven to madness, has the last say the night before graduation when he locks and loads, Charlene, his M-14 and dispatches Gunnery Sergeant Hartman.  This is probably the most popular scene in the movie; what private hasn’t wanted to take out his sadistic and abusive drill instructor?  That’s where Hollywood made the movie suspect.  The suicide of privates in boot camp happens, but not in such a dramatic or unrealistic way.  Rifles are turned in long before graduation.  A round could have been smuggled in from Edson Range or Camp Pendleton during live fire, but how would he have fired it?  We knew from the start that the tips of the firing pins were shaved at MCRD (Marine Corps Recruit Depot) San Diego.

Normally a recruit expects the culling process to be hard.  My Platoon had 76 recruits to begin with in November, 1975.  We finished with 50, but along the way most of us anticipated harassment, sleep deprivation, “bends and thrusts forever,” and sentences to Magic Valley when we got to the rifle range.  MOTO (Motivation Platoon) and the chain gang breaking rock outside the chow hall alerted us early on as to our proximity to the Gates of Hell through which we eventually passed.  I had no problem being blown off the ground during the infiltration course at Camp Pendleton or being cold-cocked in the pugil stick ring.  They were to be expected.

The first indicators that something was extraordinarily wrong at San Diego happened at night in the squad bays.  Because I was on perpetual punishment, I drew a lot of fire watch.  Early on I started seeing ambulances back up to adjacent barracks to pull bodies out, sometimes with sheets over their heads. Private X tried to kill himself on my fire watch by slashing his wrist.  The next day we had a course on how to commit suicide the right way.  On other occasions before lights out our platoon commander would call off the names of those who were to “report for punishment” in his hooch.  That’s how the culling went: slapping, “Where would you like it private?” punches, beatings, or, in my particular case, hobbling.  The goal was to eliminate undesirables before final testing and inspection.

I suppose that’s how Private Lynn McClure was killed when he refused to fight in the pugil stick ring.  He was two weeks ahead of me and in a different platoon.  He died in March, 1976 from his injuries.  Some called him retarded.  The Drill Instructor sicked more recruits on him until his brain looked like hamburger.  I remember reading the LA Times article about the incident to the guys in the squad bay one Sunday during our one-hour free time.  It went on to be one of the Marine Corps’ worst scandals also reported by Rolling Stone Magazine (September 23, 1976) and Time Magazine (July 12, 1976). It led to a Congressional investigation and a review by President Ford himself, but I did not know that until the Internet came along.  At the time I did not connect all the dots, but MCRD San Diego was out of control.

The black guide to another platoon nearly drowned during survival training in the swimming pool.  Being black probably saved his life because he told me that the way life guards found him was because of his black form on the bottom of the crowded pool.  My turn came when I was almost drowned by a Drill Instructor who apparently thought I was faking being able to breathe.  They tried to kill me by pushing me under with a pole that slashed my wrist. I was only saved when a staff sergeant life guard told the DI to leave me alone.

After the pool incident, I was hobbled in the Platoon Commander’s hooch by having to stand at attention with one DI in front and another in back who alternated kicking my left knee until the cartilage tore.  At about the same time my left eye had swollen shut due to infection and the only thing that saved me was a rare appearance at the mess hall by an inspecting major who noticed me limping. He ordered me to sick bay.  The Platoon Commander was furious and even more furious when I returned with a chit and exemption from the final PFT (Physical Fitness Test).  It’s hard to run three miles when you’re crippled or can hardly breathe.

It gets more interesting.  While in sick bay the Navy doctors brought me an ex-ray of my lungs showing them to resemble peanut lobes in the ground.  I had acute bronchitis.  Then, all of a sudden, five doctors started running into the room next to me to revive a fat recruit going into a coma from heat stroke.  From what I heard he did “bends and thrusts” too slowly on the asphalt grinder where close order drills are practiced.  He was in a bath tub up to his neck.  His veins had burst splattering the whole room with blood while they tried to keep him conscious by telling him count backwards from one hundred.  A returning graduate to Headquarters 24th Marines who was several weeks behind me said he had died.  I wonder if the guy in the tub was Lawrence Warner also mentioned in the Congressional hearings (Committee Serial No. 94-59).

Telling it like it is can be emotional.  We can enjoy fiction when it reminds us of something approaching the reality we knew.  That’s where real people draw the line.  Too often fiction, like Full Metal Jacket, is just the tip of the iceberg whose depth no one wants to plumb.  It’s the absence or white washing of real events that bothers me.  The big boys do a masterful job in telling seemingly isolated stories and limiting investigation.   The truth eventually surfaces, but it took me more than thirty years to put the pieces together and I was there.

Liverpool and the Ex-Communist

As luck would have it on my trip to Carlisle the sun came out in the morning, but gave way to cold sporadic showers.  I wanted to head south to see the famous Hadrian's Wall which represented the northern most border of the ancient Roman Empire.  I missed a transfer in Sterling and ended up back in Edinburgh and eventually landed in Glasgow for another attempt at a transfer to Carlisle.  Yes, it was confusing.  The railmen then misguided me to a suburban feeder line in Glasgow.  It was never pleasant to have so much bad luck and I ended up in the heart of the city shortly before dark.  This part of Scotland was just like other big cities with trash blowing on the sidewalks, dirty streets, and toilets nowhere to be seen. Inconveniences stretch the patience of the most experienced backpacker.  Where were the tourist maps of the city?  At the train station there were no announcements of arrivals or departures. You had to pay to use the toilet. My biggest victory of the day was getting a room at the YMCA.  Catch is as catch can.  Youth hostels were not always available.

With a new day and better luck, my plan was to head south to Liverpool, home of the Beatles.  It was also one of my goals to see Liverpool’s harbor which Dad had seen 30 years before in 1942 when he was part of the North African invasion fleet.  He said the harbor was so thick you could cut it with a knife. The scenery on the way down was beautiful with magnificent green valleys, rock fences, and houses that dotted the slopes.  Hadrian’s Wall was supposed to have been ten feet high, but knee-level seemed to be more accurate.  I arrived at Liverpool's Eaton Station at 5:30 P.M.

Even though I found a Wimpey Bar, my bad luck returned when I learned a major convention was in town.  The YMCA was out of the question.  On the fifth try I found a room for the night at a small bed and breakfast that included supper at extra cost which I was happy to pay.   When you are on the road so long, you quickly grow to appreciate England’s dining staples like fish and chips and bacon and eggs for breakfast.  They reminded me of home.  That’s where I picked up the English breakfast tea habit.  I was never hungry in England.

As dusk approached I set out from the bed and breakfast and walked toward the docks until the sleeping red light district burst forth in neon light and activity.  I reckoned it was just too far to the docks, but I could still see them darkly silhouetted against the horizon.  Rain began to fall as I came within sight of the Irish Sea.  When I returned to the center of town guys in studded black leather jackets and Elvis Presley hair cuts emerged to make the scene at the cavern nightclubs. They were where the Beatles got their start.  I  descended into one, but I turned back because they were too confining.  There must have been a time warp.  The young people I saw had the appearance of teenagers from the 1950s.

At dawn I had breakfast with a talkative disillusioned ex-communist.  He said, as a former member of the party, that their real goal of dominating the earth was no illusion. Later in the day, on the Liverpool to London Express, I met a conductor with the same anti-communist sentiments who enjoyed pointing out famous attractions like the location of the Great Train Robbery in 1963.  He also told me how the “Cat and Nine Tails” would solve England’s crime problem.  I was beginning to like those Englishmen.

The Old Kansas City Museum

Occasionally on Sundays Mom used to take us site-seeing to one of Kansas City’s oldest attractions, the Kansas City Museum, located high above the industrial east bottoms of the Missouri River.  Getting there was an adventure in itself because we went by the way of Cliff Drive, a winding and isolated stretch of road unencumbered by traffic, houses or people.  Nocturnally, it was also the traditional dumping ground for bodies - a characterization, I’m sure, that is denied by local or state tourist officials.  As we neared the museum, it was a tradition among Sunday drivers to stop for a drink of water at a natural spring bubbling out of a steep outcrop.

One of Kansas City’s oldest moneyed families had donated the property as a public museum.  I can’t recall the details of the transaction, but regardless of the cultural benefit of its many exhibits, it was the first time I visited a mansion in all its splendor.  It was built: high iron fences, marble, and a horse shoe staircase suitable for a lavish entrance by Loretta Young herself.  In fact, in the late fifties we were there during some kind of a filming in its back yard complete with actors in costume and boom cameras, but I never heard anything more about it.

The museum’s attraction was not limited to revealing how Kansas City’s elite lived.  It was a toy department for youngsters and eye candy for adults.  One exhibit popular during the centennial of the Civil War was a panoramic topographic model of the Battle of Westport complete with cannon balls and miniature Rebels and Yanks dead or alive.  On the west side of the building there was a French baroque sitting room or parlor.  My initial thought was: "Where did someone get the money for this?" We had a tough time just acquiring second hand furniture.  On the second floor there was a crawl-through igloo that beckoned kids of all ages and their reluctant parents. The oldster history buffs enjoyed the small arms collection on the first floor behind the staircase.

I suspect that the most popular attractions of the Kansas City Museum were the 1500-year-old Inca child mummy and the three Amazon shrunken heads.  The mummy was found buried on the side of a mountain in an upright position.  My thoughts today on the shrunken heads: “Where did someone get shrunken heads?”  The political incorrectness of it all boggles the mind.  If they still exist, their ownership could be considered to be a violation of international human rights.  Of course, the initial violation of their rights occurred when their killers chopped off their heads.  If the display of the heads was a modern art exhibit, things would be different.  China’s morbid, yet popular, traveling cadavers’exhibit called “Bodies” in their various action positions elicited raving critical reviews . . . and the public went along with the charade!

I don’t know where the individual gets an appreciation for history.  Perhaps it lies in the driving force of curiosity.  It certainly does not originate from 99% of history teachers who neither understand their trade nor complement their chosen field with travel or research.  For me an appreciation began by osmosis in a confluence of favorable opportunities such as Sunday visits to the old Kansas City Museum.

Working for Evil People

If high school and college graduates only knew who awaits them in the work place.  Every applicant is obliged to put his or her work history on a resume and be ready to account for every event that has taken place in their life.  It’s even worse if you’re going for a government job like the military, IRS, or FBI.  When I was screened for higher security clearances, every hiccup was accounted for from birth.  In the civilian world that scrutiny is much less because of legal restrictions, but the fact remains if you are not self-employed, you could be at the mercy of amoral or immoral sociopaths whose main business often does not center on goods or services.  In the spirit of equal treatment, I suggest that it is long overdue that employers from the owner to management furnish “background checks” equivalent to those demanded of applicants.  There are monsters out there seeking whom to devour. 

Since we live in a world where numbers have cheapened the value of individual workers, forcing bad bosses to the surface won’t happen; business is in the driver’s seat.  My to-be-published book, Journal of the Silent Majority, records my experience with several corporations containing the lairs of these monsters.  It was a mixed bag, but having to work for evil people, a state of being often denied by atheists, left a permanent negative impression on me.  I learned several things.  They are basically dishonest, manipulative, and wicked enough to kill their own mothers if the corporation demanded it.  I was also struck by the lack of content and meaning in their lives and how substandard men rise to the top.

The best insurance against having to work for evil people is having the options of working for yourself, faith, having financial reserves or possessing the relevant education to tell them “Take this job and shove it!”  I did it once and it felt good.  People sometimes “go postal” when there is no escape from the intersection of abuse and good pay and benefits.  They can’t escape because in many cases their family depends on the income.  They become locked in a feudal society as slaves on the same level as Scarlett O’Hara’s convicts in Gone with the Wind.  I find it ironic that most Americans think they live in a democracy or representative republic when one third of their time is spent on the manor.  For the other 16 hours, it’s just a matter of time.

I find it astonishing that high schools and colleges do not require courses like Becoming an Employee 101 or Evil Employers 101.  Christian colleges, especially, should warn young people of the treacherous waters into which they are about to sail or the terrible disadvantage of not having a ship of their own.  Like looming shoals, evil bosses can be avoided with the help of alert crews, experienced navigators, and captains wise to their shallow and dangerous nature.

Is Nonviolent Passive Resistance an Option?

At some early point in the political career of Martin Luther King Jr. a stranger bearing an unusual gift strode into his life.  His name was Harris Wofford a World Federalist and the civil rights advisor to John Kennedy.  His gift originated in India where nonviolent passive resistance had successfully been the political strategy that ended the centuries old British occupation. 

After 90 years of softening up, every province in India had its sympathetic newspaper or journal echoing the wishes of all classes crying for independence.  With the advent of Mahatma Gandhi and his belief in nonviolent passive resistance, a messiah and plan of action were in place.  The key ingredient to making it all work has been overlooked by history – the well publicized reactionary violence of the opposition required to give passive resistance the moral sanction. That stimulus-response combination allowed the collaborative Indian press in its primitive paper form to supply the moral outrage.

When Harris Wofford came bearing the gift of nonviolent passive resistance, he delivered it to two camps: to America’s 22 million Negroes led by Martin Luther King Jr. and to the American media giants who were in the process of refining political perception with television. The civil rights movement succeeded in only 14 years benefitting just 12% of citizens in a divided America.  That success alerted the media moguls to the devastating capabilities of their new electronic weapon.

The implementation of nonviolent passive resistance to America’s racial problem to relieve the plight of a minority with civil rights legislation was a pyrrhic victory because it permanently altered for the worse America’s legitimate power structure.  The technique revealed to a developing media class its power potential.  That potential reached its zenith first with the appropriation of the presidential vote tabulation, second with Watergate when two members of the Executive Branch were ousted and an election reversed, third, with the refining of election rigging by the electronic touch screen, and lastly, the seizure of the nominating process making state parties virtually obsolete.  America today is mere experimentation.

The record shows that passive resistance became the first weapon’s test of a new Media class that went on to eclipse government.  When the Media became the government, nonviolent passive resistance lost its old collaborative friend.  Why should the Media sympathize with grass roots movements from the Left or Right or a mass coalition of sympathies? It means all avenues of legitimate protest are gone.  The Media is the real power in America.