Chapter Eight: The Washington Post Poster Children

**Dear friends I've never seen who always debate with kind hearts...

**most of us...

**most of the time.



A Soccer Mom's world is small. We spent a lot of our time with young people and other Soccer Moms who, for the most part, could care less about politics. I was accumulating vast amounts of information and I had no one I could debate it with. My 93 year-old Huela (grandmother) who raised me, read the Reader's Digest for decades. I always told her she truly had a Reader's Digest view of the world. Until the day she passed away on February 12th, I spoke to her many times during each day and inevitably I would share my research findings with her. She was a Yellow Dog Democrat who after just a few months of our Clinton talks was still a Yellow Dog Democrat but she did not like the present Administartion. It became "them" and she separated "them" from the party she loved.

During such a massive project information lumps into a big, undiscernable pile and it is important to sift it through, weigh it out and determine the category of worth of each bit of information. For that I needed other political junkies.

I had seen the Forum site at the New York Times a time or two. I registered as "jennivinson" and proceeded to muddle through an endless amount of entries. I thought that I needed to read as many prior entries a possible so that I could intelligently contribute to the conversation. I soon learned that at this site, not too many people were concerned with things like debate or civility and sometimes, not even intelligence. The game here was to state your position and stand firmly by it and to fling personal disparagments at anyone who disagreed with you.

If you can invalidate a person, you undermine the validity of any opinion they present. It is not a fair tactic. It is rather ugly in that is it condusive to divisiveness and polarization of ideas and peoples. I had seen the Clinton Administrartion master the use of this tactic against any and all who opposed them, no matter how grievous the charge. I could not participate in such a format. The next site I found was the Washington Post's Talk Central. It had a smaller group of contributers, but it was, for the most part, a very genial group of folks I came to grow quite fond of and consider as friends.

I consistantly logged in and posted at Talk Central for almost a year and a half. Most of us were capable of debate and more importantly, capable of listening to an alternative view point. Some of were not. There was a gentleman who the group kept at arm's length and even shunned a time or two because he would utilize personal attacks and disprespect individuals, but he kept coming back to the site under a different name, which was hilarious. He would eventually be found out because he would trip out and rant and rave about the same issues. He served a purpose for the site. These from among us were the most valuable to me because they allowed me insight into their partisan mantras and their partisan passion from both parties.

Bill Clinton became BC, the POTUS(President of the United States) and Hillary, HRC. We shortened as much as possible so that we could respond more quickly.

In all that time, the most memorable discussion, one which caused me an internal struggle, was about the Administration's first threat of bombing Iraq.

I began the debate convinced that America was right to procede with bombing. I entered into a discussion with an Iraqi citizen who put a human face to the issue. Our government had made it a policy not to confront the man actually responsible for the problems. We would not bomb Hussein, but we would easily bomb his people, who were being oppressed by Hussein as well.

I have family in Mexico. I could equate the oppression of the Iraqi people with the oppression that the citizens of Mexico suffer under thier government. I did disagree with alot of what my Iraqi friend had to say. He did spout a lot of his government's propaganda, but I came to realize that Americans are summarily indoctrinated by our government and that a lot of we spout out is propaganda as well. We are just more likely to sift through government lines right now because even though some of us do not admit it outright, we have a distrust of Bill Clinton and his administration.

At the end of that discussion I was surprised by how much by opinion had been altered by the interaction with this human being that I had afore compartmentalized as an enemy. The Internet had managed to bridge our gap and appeal to the "better angels of" my nature. Lincoln would be proud. I must say that my Iraqi friend was not as fullfilled by our conversations because I was unwilling to concede his every point. He tried to assure me that when his people call America the "great Devil", they mean it as a term of endearment.

We did not bomb that time, but we did later.

We also used this policy in dealing with the Serbs. Our government refused to target bombs at Milosevic's palace because the palace contained "priceless painting". It was rumored that it housed a Rembrandt. The bodies of the Serbian men women and children only house priceless "souls". [The house that was bombed on April 22,1999 was not the Royal Palace. It was, in fact a gift that Milosevic had acquired when he came into power. Even by our intelligence, it was known that Milosevic and his family did not live in that house]

At one point in our posting at Talk Central, there was a technical problem that closed the site down for what seemed an eternity. I experienced withdrawls and separation anxiety. It was circa the time that Monica(ML) came unto the scene. This was explosive stuff and we had no place to take our discussion to. I tried to go back to the NYTimes Forum site, but it had gotten worse now as partisan ranks had tightened. The language was harsh and vulgar. I felt polluted to read some of the entries. I did not stay.

We checked Talk Central Daily and E:Mailed Vic Sussman, the person in charge of Talk Central within the Washington Post and begged him to work faster and get the site back up. It was in these weeks that I labeled us a "homeless poster children".

The site was up for a short period of time before it went down again, never to return. The Washington Post did not offer any of us any explanation for their actions. They did not realize the impact the site had had on our lives and the value of what may have seemed like endless entries.

I once responded to my friend Ronn that it was, in fact, difficult to remain an active contributer to the site because so much of the discussion was worthless to me, but that I remained because I often found enough pearls amidst the piles to justify wading through it all. For example, Samuel Adams, the gentleman who joined our discussion under the guise of several aliases provided us with a twenty-five page (printed) entry of who all the major players were in the China Gate Theatre and how they historically related on the Clinton time line.(SEE THE CANDY ROSE FILE: Chapter Nine)

It is an incredible listing that I have carefully verified. He pointed me in the right direction and greatly facilitated my research. When no one else seemed to be seriously looking at the Clinton China Gate, Mr. Adams had a good grasp of who the key players were and expressed that he felt what was going on would be of dire consequences to our National Defense. I was on a constant look out for this type of "pearl".

When Talk Central went down the second time, we attempted to debate via E:mail. It was inaffective because we could scroll up or down or backup to prior pages to check on either someone else's or our own past points like we could utilizing the set program for Talk Central. We kept at the E:Mail debate for several months, eventually dwindling down to a halt. During the year and a half, relationships formed. Hal, my Liberal Arizonion fromidable debate opponent, had heart surgery. Across the country we sent up prayers, each in our way for our friend. Stephen (Doc), took time away from his book writing efforts to engage our debate with irrefutable logic. He is the master of word usage. Eric made up for logic with passionate heartfelt responses.

Marge, the lucky "turtle" from New Hampshire, immersed into the flood of politicians who flock her home town desperately seeking for political validation in their primaries. Ronn, our Dallas-based hyper-typist, super-linkist friend joined the NYTimes Forum, against my advise and was threatened by Extreme-Rightist KKK-Types. Schend, the keeper of the common sense for our group snuck in and out of the Forum and E:Mailings to keep us rational. Christy always interjected "What Jesus Would Do". Mark changed jobs and did not skip too much of a beat in his insightful, Conservative entries.

There were many more who came and went as they pleased, but these friends are most memorable. And then, of course there was Me, who still wishes for the days of astricks connecting thoughts and the civil verbal banter that demonstarted that if only our politicians would engage in meaningful debate over the many critical issues that strangle our country without utilizing the methods that devalue a person as a means of devaluing an opinion, we could achieve. We could evolve.

@Jenni Vinson July 19, 1999