"This is information-driven, word-driven," blather-driven anchorsaur Dan Rather intoned, as if such a disclaimer might somehow temper the televisual inadequacy of Ken Starr's 36-volume POTUS-ripper. While Starr's decision to deliver all those unnecessary boxes suggested a heretofore unseen Biscuit-like theatricality, they were still, after all, just boxes, good for maybe a minute of desultory coverage -- "Here comes another ..." -- and then what? Despite the First Fellator's mostly unrequited eagerness to swallow our leader, Idiotgate, for all the blanket coverage TV's tirelessly gawking heads have given it, has been woefully short on money shots. Even the terse, Carver-caliber descriptions of semi-clothed restroom grappling and penetration-by-proxy were an unfulfilling consolation for the sort of full-blown, toe-curling climax that Starr's US$40 million fuck-raking demanded.
In the wake of the Starr Report's essential lexicentric dullness, old-time Barnumesque ballyhoo served as the media's major compensatory action. "Excruciatingly vivid language," Newsweek tsked. "Incredibly offensive," The Washington Post harrumphed. "Beyond the pale," the San Jose Mercury News gasped. CBS News correspondent Bob Schieffer grew comically tongue-tied as he tried to describe Clinton's typically contradictory insistence upon impulsive self-denial. ("Take a deep breath," Dan Rather advised his flustered colleague, with the practiced air of a man well-versed in the techniques of coaching a virgin partner through the challenging vagaries of dirty talk.)
As it turned out, the public, which patronizes AOL chat rooms, watches Dawson's Creek, and spends more than $4 billion a year on porn videos, failed to fall for such hyperbole: Apparently it understands that spontaneous ashtray impressions and late-night phone sex hardly represent the cutting edge of sexual deviance these days. According to the Dallas Morning News, local TV stations airing live network coverage of the allegedly explicit Report did prompt hundreds of complaints -- viewers were angry "about the interruption of regular daytime shows."
Alas, a picture is worth a thousand OIC footnotes -- what the Starr Report ultimately suffered from was a lack of information, specifically that of the real-time, networked, multimedia variety. This is, after all, the age of DIY celebrity porn and surveillance entertainment; had Starr adopted the techniques of DC neighbor Jennifer Ringley, who attracts more attention reading the latest copy of Jane than a thousand textibitionists do transcribing the most intimate details of their lives, the networks might have managed to convince viewers that the Starr Report was a worthwhile alternative to Days of Our Lives. As it is, they were left clamoring for the videotape of Clinton's occasionally captious grand jury testimony - which, however "tedious and dull" it might be, is still an improvement over showing extreme close-ups of the word "cigar," as CNN and several other networks were forced to resort to in their initial coverage of the Starr Report.
Of course, the Report's lack of strong visual hooks was perhaps intentional; it ended up hurting Clinton the most. Consider, for example, if the following "scenes" had been dramatized in a cinematically compelling manner: Clinton as Ultimate Multitasker, simultaneously giving ear time to Senators and crotch time to Lewinsky. Clinton as Expert Negotiator, obtaining six drop-everything-and- bring-me-a-pizza hummers in exchange for listening to 45 minutes worth of the Blow Job Czar's thoughts on education reform. ("Those school uniforms are so heinous!") Clinton as Human Database, instantly recalling Lewinsky's full name, home phone number, work phone number, and thong size during post-rendezvous pop quizzes. If anything, the portrait of Clinton as smooth-talking, super-efficient workaholic that emerges from the Starr Report is a highly complimentary one -- but who paid enough attention to really notice?
Freedom has always been closely aligned with privacy, but QuickCams, Web pages, and a seemingly limitless number of additional technologies have pretty much inverted that paradigm. In short, The Truman Show had it all wrong: True freedom lies not in escaping hypermediation, but in attaining it. Overwhelming his would-be censors with too much information, the hypermediated individual is able to do whatever he wants - how, to use the most obvious example, might one possibly scandalize Howard Stern, who's been auto-outing his most embarrassing predilections, faults, and obsessions on a daily basis for the last two decades? The hypermediated individual places himself at the center of attention, and thus, the center of power; he turns his enemies into viewers, and what is a viewer, ultimately, but a fan? Incidents and character traits that might have once brought him down simply make him interesting. Had Clinton chosen to broadcast his affairs all along, had he created www.myfirstintern.com and treated us to round-the-clock, unedited access to his affairs, we wouldn't be condemning him now - we'd be asking him to up the ante.
Instead, a new Cold War has descended upon America, where Republicans, Democrats, and the media are all aiming the threat of exposure at one another in the hope of keeping anyone else from firing first. In the midst of this sex-scandal standoff, Clinton has a historic opportunity to lead us into a new era, to serve as a role model in the great cultural shift from the photo-op to the panopticon -- a world where real, pervasive openness replaces carefully manufactured candor. While full-disclosure pioneers like Ringley have already begun exploring the possibility of Web-based hypermediation, the technology to which Clinton has access, and the audience that he is able to command, would allow him to popularize the idea of hypermediation in a manner that no one else could duplicate.
Recently, a professor of cybernetics in England implanted a computer chip into his arm that allows him to explore a number of new interactive possibilities. And third-wave soda entrepreneurs were demonstrating new technologies for wiring vending machines to the Web, thereby increasing micromanagement capabilities. In the wake of such innovations, the obvious question arises: If they can connect nutty professors and cans of Orange Crush to the Web, why not the President and the rest of our philandering electorate as well? While the latest Brill's Content reports that playboy.com is currently receiving 60 million more pageviews per month than whitehouse.gov, that would change quickly were Clinton to agree to 24-hour QuickCam coverage, plus interactive micromanagement by his constituents. With his limited-deployment blow jobs and his wary Christmas kisses, the President has always conducted his affairs with an eye toward public opinion - so why not just poll us, in real-time, as each new genital-stimulation opportunity presents itself? We could assess the current candidate via RealVideo and choose from among various actions that Clinton might take; the President, in turn, could evaluate our responses via a small flat-screen panel embedded in his forearm and then act accordingly. It's not exactly the electronic town hall that Ross Perot imagined, but you can be sure that it would boost voter turnout to unprecedented levels. **
Republished from Suck.com
