I'd returned to my basement to brood about all the work left undone while I sashayed around the country for six weeks promoting Virtuous Reality. Then the Random House publicist called. Three radio stations, CNBC, and Court TV wanted me to appear on Tuesday, partly because of the book and also because the Supreme Court was expected to hear oral arguments on the constitutionality of the Communications Decency Act the next day.
I balked. I dread becoming one of those eternal media panelists, speechmakers, and commentators. I had another nonfiction book to write and a novel long overdue. I'm behind on movies. Scully still has cancer hanging over her. Plus the car pool has covered for me long enough.
But I headed back into talk-show hell. It was perhaps the worst night of the tour, mediaphobia-wise, and that is saying something. If it tells you anything about how it went, my early evening appearance on Hardball was just a warmup.
It was on Court TV that the real torture began.
Earlier in the day, the producer who called me assured me that Court TV didn't go in for yelling and screaming, that their audience was lawyers, that lawyers disagreed often but liked thoughtful and reasoned discussions. She said she'd been reading my HotWired tour reports and chuckled sympathetically about all those attack panelists. It sounded like the Canadian media, which I sorely missed, so I agreed.
But now I saw on the guest list that one of the other guests was from the ACLU and another was Cathy Cleaver of the Family Research Council, the rabid attack-panelist I had encountered on CNN a couple weeks earlier.
To my shock - I hadn't ever watched Court TV at 10 p.m. - the hosts were Nancy Grace (a shrill attorney who plays the part of Pat Buchanan) and Johnnie Cochran. The two are co-hosts of a new broadcast called Cochran and Grace.
Yup, it was that Johnnie Cochran. Me vs. Johnnie Cochran. I'd be eaten alive for sure. How much time was he likely to have spent on the Web?
The hosts were in New Orleans, for reasons that were never explained. Cleaver was in Washington, the ACLU attorney in Brooklyn. Cochran came on just before air time to plead for us to fight. "Look, we know nothing about this subject, so it's up to you. Just jump in, interrupt each other." This didn't bode well for the reasoned discussion.
From the outset, the broadcast was beyond hostile. It was offensive. Grace railed about sadomasochism on the Net and ridiculed me for "admitting" that there are active sex chat rooms on AOL.
The ACLU attorney kept reminding her and Cleaver that child pornography was already illegal, that the CDA curtailed free speech, but both simply ignored him, interrupted, and talked over him. Grace cut of me off again and again, refusing to let me respond to calls from viewers. The notion that families were responsible for their own kids was absurd, she said. Then she denied saying it. She nodded sympathetically as a caller described the Net as a "playground for pedophiles." She refused to let me respond when a caller asked Cleaver and I if the country's obsession with pornography didn't draw attention away from much more dangerous problems facing children.
She agreed enthusiastically when Cleaver said the CDA was vital, pornography on the Net was out of control, children were in grave danger from it. Cleaver said I was sympathetic to pornography and indifferent to the damage it did to women.
The lucid and intelligent ACLU attorney - stubborn, not a screamer, kept trying to point out the unconstitutional and unnecessary provisions of the CDA. He said parents needed to take more care with their children. He repeated again and again that the law was vague and unenforceable.
I very nearly was eaten alive. This was my worst performance ever. I did all the things all you netizens have been telling me not to do: I didn't smile. I slouched. I looked away from the camera. I was exhausted and discouraged. The arguments seemed so outrageous, false, hostile, and shrill I gave up trying to answer. It was clear once more why the Washington political and journalistic culture has become a national nightmare. As for Court TV, they faithfully showed my book jacket half a dozen times, honoring the true nature of our contract - hype for heat.
Truly, I lost it. Then a miraculous thing happened.
Johnnie Cochran, of all people, saved me.
Watching him on the monitor, it seemed instantly clear why they had constructed the program the way they had. A courteous, soft-spoken man, he had surprisingly little appetite for talk-show combat. Thus he had been paired with a particularly aggressive co-anchor. He was there because he was a celebrity, she was there to touch off sparks. It was also clear he was too smart and sophisticated to buy into the junk he was hearing, even though he and his co-host just as clearly had only the vaguest idea what the Internet was, let alone what kind of sexual imagery might be on it.
The CDA was, he said quietly, "disturbingly vague." He challenged Grace's outrageous statement that to get on sadomasochistic Web sites, all kids had to do was turn on a computer. He said there were important First Amendment issues involved, that the issue of kids and pornography was complicated, that the problems had to be "thought through" much more than the sponsors of the CDA had.
I sensed he was worried about the pounding I was taking, and the lack of fairness in the program format. He seemed to be signaling me to speak up, and offering me opportunities. Toward the end of the longest hour, he said, "I really want to take a few minutes to hear what Jon Katz has to say. Let's let him talk." It struck me as an order to the producers more than an invitation. Grace and Cleaver mysteriously - and for the first time - shut up.
I got the cue, if that's what it was. I don't know where the adrenaline came from - probably anger - but I rallied. I said I had recently been on a Web site where kids had been emailing chronically ill children all over the world. That the CDA was not only an outrageous curtailment of freedom, but the obsession with pornography distorted the reality of the Net and the Web. That the elderly found community here. That women were pouring online. That the disabled could find each other here. That my teenaged daughter, of whom I am immensely proud, is a profoundly moral person and has been online for years, and that my wife and I seem to have accomplished her upbringing without the intervention of the United States Congress.
This was a sad discussion, I said. And it was. It damaged the notion of free speech by falsely equating it with bestiality, murder, rape, masochism, and violence. It distorted the nature of the Net.
It made me especially heartsick to see how Court TV, one of the great and innovative ideas in broadcast-journalism history, had sunk even lower than Capital Gang. The broadcast, like so many others I had been on, was dishonest and manipulative.
You could sense the people on the program didn't even believe what they were saying. They were, as the caller had suggested, drawing attention away from the real problems of children. As usual, ordinary people - parents, kids - were excluded from the conversation in favor of professional and fanatic ideologues, the kind that are so much easier for producers to book, and that are happy to scream.
Blocking software wouldn't work, I said. We couldn't turn the clock back to a time when children lived in bubbles.
We had to supervise and teach them. I said the worst thing I'd seen on a screen in years - much worse than any image I'd ever encountered on the Net - was the bank shootout in LA in which police blew a robber's brains out. We had to monitor small children's access to technology, teach them about the violence and sexuality they would inevitably encounter; we couldn't leave them alone with it, I said. Nothing else would work. Censorship isn't a viable alternative in the digital age. It was our job and responsibility, not the government's or the Family Research Council's. I could see Cochran nodding slightly in the monitor.
What I forget to say was that freedom was fragile. That the Net was the freest information culture we had. That there was a great outpouring of individual speech there, and it would be a nightmare to post guards all over the Internet to police politician's notions of "decent" speech.
Cleaver, asked to respond, stumbled, and said she couldn't really disagree with anything I'd said. The ACLU lawyer said it was eloquent. Cochran said it was a "powerful" statement. The show ended with Cleaver interrupting the ACLU attorney's final remarks, the two of them shouting at one another as Cochran and Grace signed off laughing.
As I removed my earpiece, Cochran's voice came into my ear. The velvety tones were so familiar. First, he told Cleaver he hoped she didn't feel "ganged up on." That's right, said Grace, after all, she had been lined up all by her lonesome against Johnnie Cochran, Jon Katz, and the ACLU.
Then Cochran spoke to me. "Those remarks at the end," he said. "They were fantastic." Truly, I was too tired and disgusted to answer. And I didn't trust myself to. I was too angry. The broadcast was a travesty.
In fairness, I can't hold Cochran responsible for the mess on the broadcast. He had wandered into a world as senseless as the LA courtroom he had left, one in which he ironically had much less control. And I owe him thanks. He saved my butt.
What a world. Johnnie Cochran and I on Court TV defending the Internet. I can't top that, and ought not to try.
Was I just tired from too much touring? Maybe. When I got home, I went online for the now-familiar instant feedback, which is ruthlessly unsparing and honest. There were a dozen email messages. The first was from Troy in Missouri. He'd been reading the tour reports in recent weeks, he said. "Despite that, I never really knew what you meant about all the shrill voices and the obsession with pornography until I saw you on TV tonight. And there, in that appearance was the epitome of everything you've been writing about. I don't remember hearing anyone more shrill - or less rational - than Ms. Grace and the other woman who was on the air tonight. Not only were they not making a whole lot of sense, but it was amazing how much they lied about the CDA."
The other messages echoed Troy's. "You looked utterly discouraged," wrote Paul, a student at Harvard Law School. "But you did rally at the end. Maybe it's time to give up this touring. These people are nuts."
It was a relief to hear that it wasn't just me.
The next morning, the producer who had booked me called up, speaking cheerfully, if tentatively. She thanked me for appearing and said she thought I had made a contribution. Successful producers have gall, and this was a good one. This is the standard call all booked guests get the day after, especially when the producer wants to stick them in his or her Rolodex for future use. Normally, I would have just swallowed my anger. Some interviews are good, some aren't. It's all part of book touring. But this time it seemed wrong to do that.
So for the first time in six weeks of touring, and after countless attacks, challenges, and disagreements, I complained. I told her I was sad to see Court TV air a broadcast so dishonest and irresponsible, so clearly intended to be a cockfight more than a discussion. This wasn't Siskel and Ebert fighting about the movies. We were talking about freedom.
I told her I hated that kind of media and that I would never have appeared if anyone had been honest with me about the kind of broadcast they were seeking. The truth is, I'm sick of hearing lies about the Internet, pornography, dangers to children, freedom, popular culture, and my own moral standards from a medium that is, at least marginally, supposed to be about telling the truth.
I told her I was tired, and understood she was just doing her job. I told her I'm a big boy, and should be able to dish out criticism as well as take it. That I celebrate disagreements, online and off, and had happily endured plenty in the past six weeks. But I told her that I would never go on that broadcast again, or one like it.
So Tuesday was the real ending to the Virtuous Reality tour. The basement has never looked more inviting.
