The White House on line one, Mr. Rose

One evening In 1996 during that Presidential election I was watching Charlie Rose, and his guest was the writer and activist Norman Mailer. By this point Bob Dole and Bill Clinton had sewn up their respective nominations and now it was the march to the Nov. vote. (I think you can still find this interview on YouTube. It's worth checking out for Mailer's take on the Dole and Clinton races, how Dole was like a 'leading man' in the movies whereas Clinton was so much more like 'a star'.)

Anyway, Clinton was ahead in the poles and Charlie asked Norman is there was anyway Bob Dole could pull this out. Mailer said to the effect yeah, but only if Dole went to the mat over Iran Contra and the drug running out of Mena Arkansas. Charlie chimes in with: "Of course that's never been proven." At that moment I knew I was seeing something important transpire but back then I didn't have a word for it. Now I do: GateKeeper! Charlie The GateKeeper wasn't going to let that one about Mena slip by unchallenged. And he couldn't if he didn't want to put this job in jeopardy. "The White House on line one, Mr. Rose." It's funny how people in big corporate media broadcast journalism don't have the luxury of being a delusional paranoid. It's a dead certainty already that 'they're being watched ... '