_______________ ISN'T IT ROMANTIC? BY CHARLES TAYLOR (05/19/98)
	I had an indelible moment in my life last evening thanks to Charles Taylor's love letter to "Charade." I was captivated by Taylor's rapturous appreciation, so I made a paper copy and put it in my bag to have with me the next time I visit the video store. Then I was off to the Upper West Side of Manhattan to meet a friend for the theater. When I got there, I noticed a small, bespectacled gentleman waiting for his own party to arrive -- Stanley Donen himself! Of course I tore into my bag for Taylor's article and went up to him, explaining as briefly as I could Salon and the coincidence of the article's appearing that very day. He had not heard about it, and as he looked through the pages -- "All this?" he said, like the father of famous children learning of the accomplishments of one of the less celebrated, one who worried him a little -- he beamed with pleasure. "May I keep it?" he asked (as if I could possibly have grabbed it back), with the same charming modesty we've seen him embody on television, as if he's never gotten used to the delight others show in his work. It was a lovely moment for me, and I'll always have a soft spot for Charles Taylor's work because of it. Rereading the piece today, I think Stanley Donen will too. -- David W. Irwin Charles Taylor's celebratory review of Stanley Donen's "Charade" has me afloat in admiration. It's wonderful to discover a new critic so gifted. Excuse me now while I hasten to "Search" to read everything of his I can lay hands on. -- B. J. Layman
_______________ TRASHING THE FLAMERS BY MIKE GODWIN (05/15/98)
	While I'm well aware of Mike Godwin's record on defending online speech, and have no desire to attack his views on Internet filters, I must take objection to some of the points made in "Trashing the Flamers." Specifically, his comparison between Eudora's e-mail filters and commercially available content filters obscures some very real differences between these products and their potential uses and abuses. First, Eudora filters e-mail messages, which are highly structured and therefore very predictable in content. If Eudora sees the string "mnemonic@well.com" in an e-mail message, it can safely assume that this is an e-mail address, which it can interpret accordingly. However, Internet content filters do not have the benefit of such structured text, or context in which to interpret the text. To use the oft-repeated example, an Internet content filter can not distinguish between the use of the word "breast" in an erotic story, a chicken recipe or a cancer discussion group. Second, Eudora filters are totally under the control of the end user: You determine what you want to block, and how you want it blocked. Internet filtering products provide users with limited control over the blocking lists: In some cases, vendors refuse to even disclose criteria for being blocked. This reduces users to passive, uninformed consumers of a vendor's decisions. Having said that, I don't have any objection to any individual or family deciding that they want to use Internet filters. I would urge anyone considering such products to understand the implications and limitations of such tools, so that they might make an informed decision. However, private homes are not the issue of concern here. The placement of filtering software in schools and libraries raises some very real difficulties with respect to the free flow of information that I think we all take as a good. In my opinion, this is turf worth fighting over. To some extent, I agree with Godwin's contention that we should focus our energies on the censors and not the technologies. However, as a concerned computer professional, I take issue with the use of technology to obscure questionable motives, and that's exactly what seems to have happened with some of the content filters. Godwin's right to say that we will see more filters, not fewer. If widely used, technologies like MetaData, XML and P3P will provide us with more ways of classifying and understanding information that we see on the Net. By thoroughly understanding the strengths and limitations of the current generation of Internet filtering tools, we can work toward appropriate, empowering use of these new technologies. -- Harry Hochheiser Director at large, Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
_______________ THE ANATOMY OF A VIRTUAL CONSPIRACY BY PETER J. OGNIBENE (05/18/98)
	Peter Ognibene is on target. But conspiracy for revenge against a president is not a new game, nor one that Clinton strategists are particularly inept at defending against. Molly Ivins says Lyndon Johnson would not have stood for it, but "MacBird," with its charge of Shakespearean murder in the White House, was a minor success on Broadway. She's right, though, in the sense that any reporter who asked LBJ to react would never have been called on in an LBJ press conference again. Franklin Roosevelt's race with Herbert Hoover had its public campaign and its "whispering campaign" designed by Charles Michaelson to be delivered semiprivately by word-of-mouth -- in bars by union activists, for example. And Robert Rutherford MacCormick's Chicago Tribune, in turn, vilified Eleanor and Franklin every day, not just on the editorial page but on the front page. Today conspirators use the Net so blatantly that earlier this year the White House Web page had "links to hate." Today the print and broadcast media are overwhelmingly owned by people who are too wealthy, and are used methodically for propaganda to increase the income gap far beyond any basis in merit. We have in this country a Democratic Party, which, true to its name, hires pollsters to define its principles, and a Plutocratic Party, which polls only the richest 0.1 percent, then depends on pricey television advertising to persuade the public to vote against its own interests. We already live in a media plutocracy, with a few exceptions like Salon Magazine. We've always had a legal plutocracy based on lawyers' fees, as venal in outcome as if judges were required to live on bribes in lieu of salary. The pollsters and the voting tallies still agree, so we are not already, irretrievably, a political plutocracy. We still have some economic democracy in the help-wanted pages and the malls. We need to defend information democracy on the Net, against Bill Gates' monopoly. -- Brux Bjuke This rather imaginative article omits one rather glaring fact: Many similar smears were attempted against Carter, Reagan and Bush by their political enemies. Problem is, they didn't stick. So why do these same types of attacks stick to ol' Bill? I should think that a truly objective journalist would be more interested in analyzing the phenomenon than defending the president. Give it a try. -- William A. Ryan Upton, N.Y. Peter J. Ognibene's piece was wonderful. I'd like to add one thing: When it turns out that there is no evidence to back up any of the wild charges (and there never, ever is), Clinton's foes say this is proof there has been a cover-up! The lack of evidence is itself proof of the crime! It's exquisite! -- Dave Johnson SALON | May 26, 1998