Washington Gaga Over Gates abcnews.com
(superhead: The Enchanting Bill) Time to revoke Fred Moody's probationary status. Having turned the much dreaded Chrysler car radio defense on its head, Fred finds another company line "compelling". Builds on his old theme of Bill the populist hero, saving us from the white-jacketed Unix geeks. He can't seem to see the contradiction between this view and the MSN experience, but you know what they say about consistency.
And looking through stories in both the Post and the Wall Street Journal, I was relieved to see that Gates spared no rhetorical punches. He described one question as "beyond bizarre," another as "dishonest," yet another as "unfair." "Come on!" he said to one questioner, and "give me a break!" to another.
They left out the "you're so random" part. So, between the timely fawning Newsweek cover story and the pre-hearing daily paper puffery, the Post has apparently joined the WSJ as the press organs of choice. Could there be some exclusive marketing agreement at work here? That's cool, the NYT still has the best writing, and the sharpest coverage I've seen. Plus subtle irony in place of the heavy handed sarcasm you get from me.
Resolution of this and other government investigations is months, if not years, away. But there is a paradox at work for Gates when he goes to a place like Washington: In the battle for public opinion, the spoils go to the one who can charm the press. And Gates works his charm by refusing to be charming. The more open he is, and the more angry-in short, the more he is the way he is-the more the press likes him, and the more interesting and sympathetic they make him appear. It is a subtle thing lurking between the lines in stories about Gates, but it is nonetheless real and powerful.
Fred must be surveying a different press than I am. All in your point of view, I guess. Bill the politically naive software engineer again. It's honest to be disingenuous, like it's ethical to be unethical. It's all in the presentation.
They are so starved inside the Beltway for real people displaying real, unfiltered passion about controversy that they can't help but portray sympathetically the occasional living, breathing human who comes storming in to say, of the constant series of government investigations of Microsoft, "If a policeman follows you for a thousand miles, you might decide he needs to write you a ticket at some point. In other words, he kind of looks a little stupid."
Oh, right. Bill denies being a legal expert. I'm sure he was just as sincere in that as in the rest of his testimony, so Fred has to believe that line too. Fred, though, he's a real expert, like Reggie. Sherman Act? What's that? At any rate, it still isn't a very good idea to flip the bird to the cop. Might find yourself in jail with various aches and pains all over, facing "resisting arrest" charges. What? You say the policeman hit you? Unprovoked? Got a videotape of that?
Cheers, Dan. |
