The following essay contains two bad words recently used by Vice President Dick Cheney. If he can drop f-bombs on the U.S. Senate floor just hours after the Senate passes a Decency Act, I guess I can use them here.

Having spent the last 48 hours attempting to discuss Michael Moore's "Farenheit 911" I can only say one thing. Hold the presidential election tomorrow. Everybody's mind is already made up. Nothing is going to change. Count the votes and see which way a 50/50 nation breaks this time.

I base this not on the comments of people who have seen the movie but on the comments of people who will never see the movie. The level of vehemence against Mr. Moore is astonishing. Unfair, mean, ambush interviews, slanted, selective inclusions, selected ommissions; it's quite a long list.

In my rounds I met exactly one person who disagrees with Mr. Moore who plans to see the movie and make up his own mind.

What I heard the most: All politicians are crooked, they have always been crooked, and it's unfair to single out Dubya. I compare this logic to not pressing charges against the arsonist who burns down my house because there's a lot of arsonists out there. Makes no sense to me at all.

Let me be clear. Yes this movie has an agenda. Yes it's got a slant and yes it's got more insinuation than evidence of a conspiracy. The importance of the movie, however, does not lie in its flaws but in its very existence, and that's why I give it a two word review.

Fucking brilliant.

What makes this movie a must-see is the fact that media has changed, probably forevver, and Mr. Moore is going to show you things you will not see anywhere else. I am a news junkie, and there were at least three things in that movie that I have never seen reported anywhere else.

This point is captured in a 60-second montage midway through the movie, as a parade of network news anchors -- Cavuto, Rather, Couric, Koppel -- just flat embarrass themselves in trying not to appear unpatriotic.

As an ex-reporter, let me fill you in on an important fact in the news business. Your success depends on access, and if you constantly rail against someone, they will cut off your access. This is particularly crucial in terms of the military. Yes, the embedded reporters in Iraq got a front-line view, but make no mistake, they reported what the military wanted reported or they were gone.

Mr. Moore's freelancers in Iraq, thanks to their independence, had no such constraints. I cannot imagine CNN doing a story on what songs tank crews crank up in their headsets when unleashing an attack, especially when one of the songs has a refrain "Burn motherfucker, burn."

In my opinion, the star of Farenheit 911 is not Mr. Moore or Mr. Bush but a woman named Lila, the mother of a soldier in Iraq. Not to give too much away, she has one single quote I can't get out of my head. Paraphrased (I wasn't taking notes) it goes something like this:

"I thought I knew what was going on, but I didn't."

I suspect there's a lot of Lilas out there today, as evidenced by new polls showing for the first time the majority of Americans now believe the Iraq war was a mistake.

It took quite a blow for Lila to see things in a new light.

For the rest of us, all it would take is seeing a movie.

-30-

A Virginia Beach 11-year-old was sentenced to 30 hours community service Tuesday, and his mother fined, for a violation of city code 21-464.

The technical name for a 21-464 is "playing in the street."

On the ticket, under vehicle, is written "skateboard."

If you think this is patently ridiculous, keeping reading.

The fine for such a heinous act is $15 and court costs are $59. The perpetrator's mother, a single mom owed thousands in back child support and someone to whom $74 is no trifling matter, decided to attend court with her son.

Considering the ticket was issued without a single complaint from residents, considering other children were involved and not ticketed because the policieman decided it was her son who was going to be the example, considering that on any given day in this low-traffic neighborhood there are dozens of skateboarders on the street, she figured it was a good opportunity to show her son that the system works, that judges are wise and to be respected.

Her reward for taking time off work and going to court? In addition to the court costs, the kid got hit with community service. She'd have been better off just paying the fine.

If you think this is patently ridiculous, keeping reading.

In this particular incident, the policeman was in the neighborhood on an unrelated matter. Perhaps he was in a bad mood over that call, perhaps he was trying out for a role on Reno 911. Upon spotting four children skateboarding -- not exactly an uncommon occurrence -- he advised the children, all under the age of 12, that playing in the street was illegal.

So they hopped on their boards and headed to a cul de sac to continue boarding there. The policeman considered this an unacceptable affront to his authority (as opposed to typical pre-teen bonehead thinking about walking first and boarding later) and busted the last kid in line. The kid sentenced Tuesday.

Being an ex-reporter, I know enough to not name a juvenile and to not add enough information to indirectly identify the juvenile. I can say, however, that I personally witnessed the entire affair from half a block away.

The kid, scared out of his wits, was forced to sit inside the squad car bawling his eyes out fearful he was going to be hauled away to jail while his mother tried to talk to the cop. The cop at one point told the kid he could arrest him for disturbing the peace if he didn't stop crying.

I'm sure that's the way they teach community policing at the academy.

If you think this is patently ridiculous, keeping reading.

A few years ago, this criminal, this menace to society, had told Mom a story about some youngsters who got in some sort of minor trouble and how they had outrun the cops. The whole school was buzzing about it. Mom was swift and sure on this one -- you never run from a cop, cops are your friends, they are there to make you safe.

How well do you think that lesson is holding up today?

Let's look at the lessons this child has learned. He has learned that by doing the right thing, things got worse. If there's a child psychologist out there, please email me so I can tell his mom how to explain to him that he has a juvenile record for doing what happens every single evening outside his bedroom window.

I wish I had the names of the cop and the judge because I'd like to publish them in 144 point type. Forget filing an appeal, or filing a complaint; the censure here is shame, pure and simple. I have told this story to a dozen people today and not a single one could make any sense of it. I want the two perpetrators of the real crime here to be able to explain to a single person just what they were thinking.

Thing is, I can hear what they would likely say right now, that they were sending a message. And it's utterly appalling that the alleged professionals involved here could not even grasp the real messages they conveyed.

Great work, Virginia Beach. Be proud.

-30-

6-7-2004
The Great Communicator

Been catching a lot of flak from my old buddies -- "You've got to go back to blogging!" -- and my routine answer is short and to the point.

"I live within walking distance of the beach."

So in the middle of a manic Web site construction schedule, in the midst of a good life with the First Dumpling, in the shade of bay pines and saltwater breezes, there's one thing I can't let pass.

The passing of The Great Communicator.

***

Ronald Reagan delivered his last presidential foreign policy speech at the University of Virginia. I saw it live as a reporter for UPI.

But here's the fun part.

All the statewide and local reporters had staked out their spots early, which was stupid, of course, because when the traveling big-time reporters arrived, we got bumped back.

When I settled into my new seat, I realized immediately what a stroke of luck had just come my way. In my line of site was both the podium and a TV monitor. I could watch him work the room and the camera at the same time.

Which he did in completely stunning fashion.

A quick Google search reveals one story on the speech, but, nothing personal to the writers, it neither captures nor conveys what happened that day.

Perhaps you've heard the phrase "speaking with the clarity of a condemned man." Maybe it was the time -- December 1988, a few weeks away from the inaugural. Maybe it was the fact that Reagan was famous for his plainspoken style. Whatever it was can be summed up succinctly -- Ronald Reagan took the stage at Thomas Jefferson's University to say I was right, they were wrong, and we won.

Which, as history would have it, is essentially what happened.

***

Despite my libertarian, liberal, eco-Marxist leanings, I used to surprise my friends in the '80s by saying there would be no better job than being a speech writer for Ronald Reagan. Take everything old-school Mom-and-apple-pie and come out in favor of it. Nothing could be more simple. I also used to tell them that if you gave me a trillion dollars to give away, I'd be known as a good communicator, too.

Meaning no disrespect to the dead, I concede Mr. Reagan's claims to greatness and his well-deserved affection as the patron saint of conservative politics, but I wish to offer two caveats on current conventional wisdom; the idea that, according to the pundits today, history will show two great American presidents of the 20th Century -- Ronald Reagan and FDR.

First, it's worth remembering that when Harry Truman left office, he was widely considered an idiot (especially by my father, who never forgave Truman for firing Gen. Douglas MacArthur) and now historians say Give Em Hell Harry did a helluva job.

Secondly, if you believe, as I do, that in 10 to 20 years the American economy, and by extension, the American government, will face something just short of total collapse because of crushing, unpayable deficits, historians are going to look for someone to blame. And they will blame the man it's named after, Reaganomics.

So call his two terms the Reagan Revolution. Call the eight-year run a helluva party. But just please remember that Mr. Reagan put that party on a credit card, and we still haven't paid the bill.

-30-

For those curious as to the perspective here, Mr. Marshall's presidential votes, including primaries, have included three Republicans (if you count John Anderson), two Democrats, two Libertarians, one no-show, one independent and one Green.