Winning the Hearts and Minds, Part Three

Deja vu all over again. Yesterday, the House passed a bill that made it a federal law to descrate an American flag. In the 60s & early 70s, they were sending kids to jail for wearing flags on their blue jeans.

And then today we have:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The top American commander in the Persian Gulf told Congress on Thursday that the Iraqi insurgency has not grown weaker over the past six months, despite a claim by Vice President Dick Cheney that it was in its "last throes."

Gen. John Abizaid's testimony came at a contentious Senate Armed Services Committee hearing at which Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld clashed with members of both parties, including a renewed call by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts for him to step down.

It's not what was said, but how it was said!!!

I can't disagree with any of the top 10. Extremely memorable lines.

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- The American Film Institute's list of top 100 quotes from U.S. movies, with film title and year of release:

1. "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn," "Gone With the Wind," 1939.

2. "I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse," "The Godfather," 1972.

3. "You don't understand! I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I could've been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am," "On the Waterfront," 1954.

4. "Toto, I've got a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore," "The Wizard of Oz," 1939.

5. "Here's looking at you, kid," "Casablanca," 1942.

6. "Go ahead, make my day," "Sudden Impact," 1983.

7. "All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up," "Sunset Blvd.," 1950.

8. "May the Force be with you," "Star Wars," 1977.

9. "Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night," "All About Eve," 1950.

10. "You talking to me?" "Taxi Driver," 1976.

11. "What we've got here is failure to communicate," "Cool Hand Luke," 1967.

12. "I love the smell of napalm in the morning," "Apocalypse Now," 1979.

13. "Love means never having to say you're sorry," "Love Story," 1970.

14. "The stuff that dreams are made of," "The Maltese Falcon," 1941.

15. "E.T. phone home," "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial," 1982.

16. "They call me MISTER Tibbs!", "In the Heat of the Night," 1967.

17. "Rosebud," "Citizen Kane," 1941.

18. "Made it, Ma! Top of the world!", "White Heat," 1949.

19. "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!", "Network," 1976.

20. "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship," "Casablanca," 1942.

21. "A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti," "The Silence of the Lambs," 1991.

22. "Bond. James Bond," "Dr. No," 1962.

23. "There's no place like home," "The Wizard of Oz," 1939.

24. "I am big! It's the pictures that got small," "Sunset Blvd.," 1950.

25. "Show me the money!", "Jerry Maguire," 1996.

26. "Why don't you come up sometime and see me?", "She Done Him Wrong," 1933.

27. "I'm walking here! I'm walking here!", "Midnight Cowboy," 1969.

28. "Play it, Sam. Play 'As Time Goes By,"' "Casablanca," 1942.

29. "You can't handle the truth!", "A Few Good Men," 1992.

30. "I want to be alone," "Grand Hotel," 1932.

31. "After all, tomorrow is another day!", "Gone With the Wind," 1939.

32. "Round up the usual suspects," "Casablanca," 1942.

33. "I'll have what she's having," "When Harry Met Sally...," 1989.

34. "You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow," "To Have and Have Not," 1944.

35. "You're gonna need a bigger boat," "Jaws," 1975.

36. "Badges? We ain't got no badges! We don't need no badges! I don't have to show you any stinking badges!", "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre," 1948.

37. "I'll be back," "The Terminator," 1984.

38. "Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth," "The Pride of the Yankees," 1942.

39. "If you build it, he will come," "Field of Dreams," 1989.

40. "Mama always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get," "Forrest Gump," 1994.

41. "We rob banks," "Bonnie and Clyde," 1967.

42. "Plastics," "The Graduate," 1967.

43. "We'll always have Paris," "Casablanca," 1942.

44. "I see dead people," "The Sixth Sense," 1999.

45. "Stella! Hey, Stella!", "A Streetcar Named Desire," 1951.

46. "Oh, Jerry, don't let's ask for the moon. We have the stars," "Now, Voyager," 1942.

47. "Shane. Shane. Come back!", "Shane," 1953.

48. "Well, nobody's perfect," "Some Like It Hot," 1959.

49. "It's alive! It's alive!", "Frankenstein," 1931.

50. "Houston, we have a problem," "Apollo 13," 1995.

51. "You've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya, punk?", "Dirty Harry," 1971.

52. "You had me at 'hello,"' "Jerry Maguire," 1996.

53. "One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I don't know," "Animal Crackers," 1930.

54. "There's no crying in baseball!", "A League of Their Own," 1992.

55. "La-dee-da, la-dee-da," "Annie Hall," 1977.

56. "A boy's best friend is his mother," "Psycho," 1960.

57. "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good," "Wall Street," 1987.

58. "Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer," "The Godfather Part II," 1974.

59. "As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again," "Gone With the Wind," 1939.

60. "Well, here's another nice mess you've gotten me into!", "Sons of the Desert," 1933.

61. "Say 'hello' to my little friend!", "Scarface," 1983.

62. "What a dump," "Beyond the Forest," 1949.

63. "Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me. Aren't you?", "The Graduate," 1967.

64. "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!", "Dr. Strangelove," 1964.

65. "Elementary, my dear Watson," "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes," 1929.

66. "Get your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape," "Planet of the Apes," 1968.

67. "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine," "Casablanca," 1942.

68. "Here's Johnny!", "The Shining," 1980.

69. "They're here!", "Poltergeist," 1982.

70. "Is it safe?", "Marathon Man," 1976.

71. "Wait a minute, wait a minute. You ain't heard nothin' yet!", "The Jazz Singer," 1927.

72. "No wire hangers, ever!", "Mommie Dearest," 1981.

73. "Mother of mercy, is this the end of Rico?", "Little Caesar," 1930.

74. "Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown," "Chinatown," 1974.

75. "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers," "A Streetcar Named Desire," 1951.

76. "Hasta la vista, baby," "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," 1991.

77. "Soylent Green is people!", "Soylent Green," 1973.

78. "Open the pod bay doors, HAL," "2001: A Space Odyssey," 1968.

79. Striker: "Surely you can't be serious." Rumack: "I am serious ... and don't call me Shirley," "Airplane!", 1980.

80. "Yo, Adrian!", "Rocky," 1976.

81. "Hello, gorgeous," "Funny Girl," 1968.

82. "Toga! Toga!", "National Lampoon's Animal House," 1978.

83. "Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make," "Dracula," 1931.

84. "Oh, no, it wasn't the airplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast," "King Kong," 1933.

85. "My precious," "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers," 2002.

86. "Attica! Attica!", "Dog Day Afternoon," 1975.

87. "Sawyer, you're going out a youngster, but you've got to come back a star!", "42nd Street," 1933.

88. "Listen to me, mister. You're my knight in shining armor. Don't you forget it. You're going to get back on that horse, and I'm going to be right behind you, holding on tight, and away we're gonna go, go, go!", "On Golden Pond," 1981.

89. "Tell 'em to go out there with all they got and win just one for the Gipper," "Knute Rockne, All American," 1940.

90. "A martini. Shaken, not stirred," "Goldfinger," 1964.

91. "Who's on first," "The Naughty Nineties," 1945.

92. "Cinderella story. Outta nowhere. A former greenskeeper, now, about to become the Masters champion. It looks like a mirac ... It's in the hole! It's in the hole! It's in the hole!", "Caddyshack," 1980.

93. "Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death!", "Auntie Mame," 1958.

94. "I feel the need -- the need for speed!", "Top Gun," 1986.

95. "Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary," "Dead Poets Society," 1989.

96. "Snap out of it!", "Moonstruck," 1987.

97. "My mother thanks you. My father thanks you. My sister thanks you. And I thank you," "Yankee Doodle Dandy," 1942.

98. "Nobody puts Baby in a corner," "Dirty Dancing," 1987.

99. "I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too!", "The Wizard of Oz," 1939.

100. "I'm king of the world!", "Titanic," 1997.

Hey Shrub, what's it like to be another Texas president with an unpopular war?

Who woulda thunk it that George Bush the elder was such a much smarter president than we gave him credit for. GB listened to his advisers and got the hell out of Iraq as quickly as possible once the objective was obtained (driving the Iraqis out of Kuwait). Now along comes No. 1 son who doesn't listen even to POPs, and now he has an unpopular war on his hand and little idea of how or when to get out.

Remember Lyndon Johnson? What a legacy he left for himself.

(CNN) -- Nearly six in 10 Americans oppose the war in Iraq and a growing number of them are dissatisfied with the war on terrorism, according to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released Monday.

Only 39 percent of those polled said they favored the war in Iraq -- down from 47 percent in March -- and 59 percent were opposed.

The survey of 1,006 adults, conducted by telephone Thursday through Sunday, had an error margin of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The percentage of Americans dissatisfied with the war in Iraq is comparable to responses to similar questions in other recent polls.

In a Gallup poll earlier this month that asked, "All in all, do you think it was worth going to war in Iraq, or not," 56 percent said it was not worth it and 42 percent said it was. (Full story)

A poll taken in December 2003, shortly after the capture of Saddam Hussein, found that 62 percent of Americans believed the war was worthwhile. (Full story)

War on terror
The poll showed that approval for the Bush administration's war on terrorism also has declined, with 10 percent of respondents saying they were very satisfied with the way things were going in the war on terrorism, down from 19 percent in a February poll.

Forty-seven percent of respondents said they were "not satisfied" with the war on terrorism -- up from 35 percent in February -- and 42 percent were "somewhat satisfied," compared to 45 percent in the earlier poll.

Without comment . . .

from the New York Times:





By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published: June 15, 2005

Philip A. Cooney, the White House staff member who repeatedly revised government scientific reports on global warming, will go to work for ExxonMobil in the fall, the oil company said today.

Mr. Cooney resigned on Friday as chief of staff to President Bush's environmental policy council, two days after documents obtained by The New York Times showed that he had edited the reports in ways that cast doubt on the link between greenhouse-gas emissions and rising temperatures.

A former lawyer and lobbyist with the American Petroleum Institute, the main lobbying group for the oil industry, Mr. Cooney has no scientific training.

The White House, which said Friday that there was no connection between last week's disclosure and Mr. Cooney's resignation, repeated today that Mr. Cooney's actions were part of the normal review process for documents on environmental issues involving many government agencies.

"Phil Cooney did a great job," said Dana Perino, a deputy White House spokeswoman, "and we appreciate his public service and the work that he did, and we wish him well in the private sector."

Winning Their Hearts and Minds: Part Deux

Carl P. Leubsdorf writes in the Dallas Morning News:

"A top congressional Democratic supporter of U.S. action in Iraq said Thursday that President Bush should make a nationally televised speech and 'level with the American people' about the long road ahead there.

"Faced with declining public support, Mr. Bush needs to tell Americans 'it's going to take a lot more time . . . at least through the end of 2006,' and explain what still has to be done there, Sen. Joe Biden told reporters after returning from his fifth visit to Iraq.

"The Delaware senator, senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said he gave his suggestion Tuesday to Stephen Hadley, Mr. Bush's national security adviser, after finding 'a total disconnect' between the situation in Iraq and optimistic statements by Mr. Bush and his top aides. . . .

"A White House aide acknowledged the Biden-Hadley meeting but had no comment on the senator's proposal, noting that Mr. Bush often speaks about the situation in Iraq."

Snowflakes

Time Magazine writer Margaret Carlson lays the whole stem cell issue on the line, and so I include a recent column she contributed to Bloomberg. Please note that she is also writing from the heart. She has a son with cerebral palsy.

Snowflakes’ Cloud Debate on Stem-Cell Bill


By Margaret Carlson

June 9 (Bloomberg) -- Watching the Sunday morning talk shows can usually be done in the midst of reading newspapers, minding children and fixing breakfast. But when Republican Senators Sam Brownback of Kansas and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania met recently on ABC's ``This Week,'' the conversation was far too riveting for such distractions.

The topic was legislation that would relax restrictions on federal funding of stem-cell research, which might bring cures for cancer, Alzheimer's and other life-crippling diseases. The bill, which passed the House and has majority support in the Senate, would make available for research some 400,000 frozen embryos that were created for in vitro fertilization.

Debating Specter, Brownback invoked the right's newest rallying cry -- ``snowflakes,'' -- the moniker meaning ``frozen and unique'' given to babies born from embryos left over at fertility clinics. At a press conference, President George W. Bush showcased children wearing T-shirts emblazoned with ``this embryo was not discarded'' to drive home his point that embryos have the same status as a child.

When Specter expressed doubt that life is truly present in a petri dish, Brownback shot back that Specter should ask the snowflakes: ``That's where their life did start.''

Specter, whose voice is hoarse and head is bald from treatment for Hodgkin's lymphoma, snapped, ``Well, Sam, I'm a lot more concerned at this point about when my life is going to end.''

Snowflakes vs. Hope

And that's where the debate stands -- snowflakes vs. Specter's hope for a cure for his and (many others') diseases.

I didn't think it would get here. In 2001, Bush limited Bill Clinton's policy, in place but not yet operative, which would have given federal funds to the creation of new stem cells. Bush heralded those stem cell lines that already existed as all that researchers would need and forbade the destruction of any more embryos for research.

In outlining his decision, Bush was careful to go no further than he needed. He talked of ``potential life'' and mentioned IVF clinics approvingly as helping ``so many couples conceive children.'' He avoided one big fact: IVF clinics were creating embryos by the thousands, even though most would be destroyed.

Bush played the politics just perfectly. It's one thing to take on victims of Parkinson's and quite another to tangle with the thousands of couples who don't want government coming between them and their fertility treatments.

Sidestep, Dig In

In the ensuing four years, however, even conservative Republicans began asking: If Bush can countenance IVF clinics, surely a relative few of those embryos that are going to be discarded anyway could be used in a quest to cure diseases of the living.

Bush's response is to sidestep the question and dig in. Perhaps it's because he wakes up every morning wondering what his evangelical base wants from him that day. Perhaps it's that he thinks he can bring back some of the strays in his own party, like Orrin Hatch, by turning specks into people.

I'd like Brownback to turn his inquisition about when life begins on Bush. If Bush believes that life in the petri dish is equivalent to my brother with cerebral palsy, I want to hear it with my own ears.

Veto Threat

If the bill passes, Bush says he'll veto it (the first veto of his presidency), and that will virtually end federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research. The existing lines he spoke of in 2001 aren't enough. There are state efforts, but medical breakthroughs, like the Salk polio vaccine, happen with federal money. Without federal research, there's no help for Specter or his children or their children.

Bush also avoids what his elevation of embryos means for IVF clinics storing those 400,000 dot-sized particles in refrigerator cases. If embryos are people, under Bush's dictum couples should create only as many as they would use. IVF would be crippled.

And that's where snowflakes come in. They help Bush put off a confrontation with infertile couples who don't want the government telling them how to get pregnant. The idea of snowflakes makes it okay to create surplus embryos: They aren't going to be destroyed; they're going to be adopted.

That's poppycock: Embryo adoption is minuscule. Even if it increased dramatically, there would still be hundreds of thousands of embryos sitting in clinics -- or displaced persons camps, if you believe the rhetoric of a tiny, vocal segment of Bush's party.

What I'd like to see is Brownback pound on Bush about when life starts. When he was governor of Texas, Bush didn't believe it started in a lab. Polls show people don't want government in Terri Schiavo's hospice room, a gay person's bedroom or at the pharmacy saying who should get birth control pills or medical marijuana. Government should stay where it belongs, in the research lab.

Margaret Carlson , who was a columnist and deputy Washington bureau chief for Time magazine.

Where there's smoke, there's fire . . .

On the same day that the New York Times breaks a story on the Bush Administration using an oil company hack to edit and rewrite government papers on global warming, we have federal attorneys "surprising" the tobacco industry with an unmerited gift.

Tobacco Escapes Huge Penalty
U.S. Seeks $10 Billion Instead of $130 Billion

By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 8, 2005; Page A01

After eight months of courtroom argument, Justice Department lawyers abruptly upset a landmark civil racketeering case against the tobacco industry yesterday by asking for less than 8 percent of the expected penalty.

As he concluded closing arguments in the six-year-old lawsuit, Justice Department lawyer Stephen D. Brody shocked tobacco company representatives and anti-tobacco activists by announcing that the government will not seek the $130 billion that a government expert had testified was necessary to fund smoking-cessation programs. Instead, Brody said, the Justice Department will ask tobacco companies to pay $10 billion over five years to help millions of Americans quit smoking.

Before it was cut, the cessation program was the most significant financial penalty still available to the government as part of its litigation, which had been the largest civil racketeering and conspiracy case in U.S. history. The government contended that six tobacco companies engaged in a 50-year conspiracy to defraud and addict smokers and then conceal the dangers of cigarettes.

"We were very surprised," said Dan Webb, lawyer for Altria Group's Philip Morris USA and the coordinating attorney in the case. "They've gone down from $130 billion to $10 billion with absolutely no explanation. It's clear the government hasn't thought through what it's doing."

The Justice Department offered little explanation for the figure. Associate Attorney General Robert D. McCallum Jr. and members of the trial team declined to answer questions as the court session ended. In 2001, then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft tried to settle or shelve the government's racketeering case against the industry before a public outcry forced its revival.

"It feels like a political decision to take into consideration the tobacco companies' financial interest rather than health interests of 45 million addicted smokers," said William V. Corr, director of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. "The government proved its case, but the levels of funding are a shadow of the cessation treatment program that the government's own expert witness recommended."

Sources and government officials close to the case said the trial lawyers wanted to request $130 billion for smoking-cessation programs but were pressured by leaders in the attorney general's office, particularly McCallum, to make the cut. Arguments within the Justice Department continued behind the scenes through yesterday morning, according to the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the controversy over the matter.

Why am I continually being shocked and dismayed by this Administration. Surely I would be now have seen the light, but apparently not.

George Bush's existence is why I know there is no god in heaven! Intelligent Design would never have concocted such a lapdog.

Oops!

A guest column today (and a week before you read it in the Business Journal):

USA Today ran a cartoon in Friday's paper that originally appeared in The Detroit News upon the Supreme Court ruling that Arthur Andersen was not guilty of obstruction of justice in the Enron debacle. It shows a robed justice standing beside the tombstone of Arthur Andersen Inc, and he says simply, “Oops, sorry.”

It was a striking conclusion to the journey of 85,000 people who were part of a global family that was once the world's premiere public accounting firm. For many of them, I suspect for many it was a little like the convicted felon who is released from jail after DNA confirms their mistaken identity. Until the Supreme Court ruling, many former Andersen partners and associates have lived in a professional purgatory, learning to explain their resumes with a dimunitive spirit that is a mix of what was once unabashed pride peppered with the shame of a schoolchild made to stay after school for a transgression he didn't commit.

As the Andersen worldwide story goes, Kansas City sat on an island all its own. As the firm slowly broke apart both in the U.S. and in key worldwide offices, National Public Radio sent a reporter to Kansas City to interview Managing Partner Jeff Dobbs, other partners and clients. How was it that, unlike any other city anywhere in the world, Andersen Kansas City was able to retain all of its clients, and even more remarkably, all of its people?
Young managers were routinely queried by their parents as to why they weren't job searching. Partners were actively pursued by other firms promising them the moon. Clients were getting a full court press from other Big Five accounting firms. Why did Andersen Kansas City remain almost entirely intact when it made its eventual move en masse to KPMG? Why did then Chamber of Commerce chair Jeffrey Comment elicit a standing ovation for Andersen's handling of the situation? Why did story after story quote Kansas City CEOs who remained supportive of their Andersen team til the bitter end, eventually moving their business to KPMG to remain loyal to their now former Andersen team?

The answer is, as most thing are at their core, simple. The Andersen team behaved as all good enterprises do: establish strong, committed and whatever-it-takes relationships when times are good and they will bear you in good stead when you suddenly need them in ways you never fathomed. The Kansas City business and civic community didn't rally behind the local Andersen office because anyone asked them to. They stepped up because for years before, Andersen had stepped up for its clients and for its community. Community and clients alike seemed to respond to the Andersen travails with one single, silent battle cry: “it's payback time.” In the end, a group of the city's highest profile CEOs got together over a lunch to toast the Andersen leadership, and to bid them a fond Kansas City farewell. No shame. No dishonor. Just support and gratitude for a service ethic and professional integrity built with the right stuff.

Though the names, faces and circumstances are all different, many other KC businesses have had similar brushes with fate that had or have the potential to conclude as Andersen did. So, what is the lesson for those businesses who hopefully never have to travel that fateful road?

It is the lesson of deep humility best embodied in that sage quote: “Be kind to those on your way up, because you never know who you'll meet on the way down.”

The people of Arthur Andersen Kansas City were kind and thoughtful and client-focused and civic-minded on their way up to the top of Kansas City's accounting world. The trip down was a wild spiral that ended in a hard, fatal crash. But on that downward journey, they learned the one simple truth that is the essence of the Kansas City spirit. They learned that what matters most is not always the destination, but the relationships you build along the journey.

The day the Supreme Court rendered its opinion, I, for one, silently raised my glass in a toast to the people of an enterprise gone by. I remember watching what seemed like a death march as Andersen associates went to turn in their key, their IDs, their laptops in those final days. I wondered how each of them would sleep in the days and weeks that followed.

They knew then what we all should now have learned through too many sagas stories of corporate greed and misdeed: that years hence, when you put your head on the pillow, the most important thing you ever take home is a sense that you conducted yourself with integrity, with unyielding commitment and with a feeling deep in your gut that you gave it your all.

Sleep well, Arthur Andersen. At last, you've earned a good night's rest.

--Roshann Parris is President and CEO of Parris Communications, a public relations and strategic communications firm that represented Arthur Andersen for nine years.

Why Secrets Are Best Kept as Secrets

In some strange, odd way, I really did not want to know.

Deep Throat is - according to Vanity Fair and confirmed by The Washington Post - just an old man living with his daughter in California. He has, like the rest of us who relished every minute of the Watergate Scandal, grown old. He is, we are told, allowed two glasses of wine with his dinner. It is like being told that Superman is really, well, you know, Clark Kent.

What's gone, what Vanity Fair has been taken from us, is one of the greatest kept secrets of our Baby Boomer time, wrested from the grip of the select few who'd vowed to keep it forever. The hiding of Deep Throat's identity took on a larger mythic status than any scoop Deep Throat provided, and we guarded the almost holy belief in Deep Throat.

At least it was to me. Deep Throat was the perfect, nameless god. Deep Throat represented the idea that reporters (and their background sources) could save the world, and that trust was still trust, and truth was still true. Once we had the hope that to bring down an evil Administration, you need only go to the shadows of an obscure parking garage. Now, people go to parking garages to get their cars and evil Administrations continue to rule our lives unpunished. Where's our hope?

Deep Throat is W. Mark Felt, former assistant director of the FBI during the Nixon administration. Who?

What could be more of a letdown than finding out who Deep Throat is? And for crissakes, finding it out in Vanity Fair with Nicole Kidman on the cover? And not really finding it out in Vanity Fair so much as feeling it crash-land across the Internet and the cable news networks, days before the magazine even hits the stands? How awful can it be watching it not resonate among people younger than 30. I doubt that either of my sons care to much about it. And you know what is even worse? Finding out that you yourself don't care that much anymore.

The concept of Deep Throat once set the rules of the New Journalism. You did not stop with "balancing" your story with quotes from "the other side." You kept digging until you had the truth. That's why being in journalism in the 70s was so exciting. Today, hard hitting journalist is digging up whether J. Lo has a new hottie.

It did help that the Great Secret had been given a dirty, porny nickname. That naturally came right from the swagger and irreverence of journalism's then-new era, asserting itself while cracking wise. In your face, Establishment. Up the Revolution!

Journalism schools, which in the 60s barely had enough people to put out a daily student newspaper, were suddenly overcrowded with people who all wanted to find the next Deep Throat. Everyone wanted to be Robert Redford (well, like who didn't!) IBM Selectrics were the writing machine of choice. Pay phones were how we communicated when we weren't at home or in the office. A cluttered desk was a sign of a serious worker. Drab newsrooms were OK. Reporters drank and smoked, and we didn't take crap from anyone.

Today you cannot even get a whiff of what it felt like. Then it was possible to go to a bar and tell a girl that you were a reporter and she was mightily impressed. It was like you too had some of the allure of Deep Throat. You were in the know. And you had secrets. Now she would tell you that she doesn't really ever look at the paper. Or worse, she only looks at it online (at best) or occasionally watches Fox News.

People are over their lust for reporters, but they still want Deep Throat. I know I do, but it's like sending signals in the sky to The Batman who never answers.

Gone is our tidy, narrow definition of evil, of corruption. The gotcha is now a tawdry exercise in minutiae, not a blow against the Establishment, against the Man. "What did he know and when did he know it" puts us to sleep. "Follow the money" is an exercise in Excel spreadsheets, occasionally praised by prize committees, but rarely read.

It turns out being in the dark about Deep Throat was more enthralling than holding it out to the light. Had he lived in this era, Deep Throat might not have lasted long. He'd be blogged to bits. The multitude of Right Wing blogs and e-publications would disprove him with their own Deep Throats. Fox News would pay him to reveal himself after a news cycle or two, and he'd walk away with a big book contract.

Was he a hero? I think so. An Administration who would hire thugs to burglarize their opponent's offices was capable of most any type of mayhem toward "snitches." Pat Buchanan, Nixon's lap dog speech writer, thinks Deep Throat was "traitorous," the worst type of presidential enemy. No matter that Nixon was a liar, a vindictive bastard and the worst president we have ever had. To Buchanan, you must show loyalty, and screw the consequences.

Perhaps Deep Throat's lovely (and daring) parting gift to us is simple: He actually exists. He is not fabrication or composite. He is one man, a fact not easily proved had he taken his secret to the grave. That in itself, in an era where trust has been shredded beyond recognition, is something to behold.

But I will miss the mystery. Thank you Deep Throat. There may never be another like you.