Stephen D. Isaacs
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 I love negative campaign advertising. Good ole rock-'em, sock-'em dirty
politics triggers goosebumps of joy up and down the back of my neck and
in between my shoulders.
Yeah, John McCain fathered a black child.
Yeah, George Bush is The Real village idiot.
Yup, Barry Goldwater will probly drop The Bomb.
And old Adlai, he's gotta be gay, eh?
And Thomas Jefferson, it may turn out that he (not George Washington)
is the Real Father of this multicultural country of ours.
And, let's see, Geraldine Ferraro was tied, through husband John, to the
Mafia.
And, speaking of the mob, Jack Kennedy (that pawn of the pope) was an
intimate of (and intimate with) the Mafia.
And his predecessor, Dwight David Eisenhower, was a Commie stooge.
And, oh yes, Rep. Helen Gahagan Douglas was not just the wife of actor
Melvyn Douglas BUT (according to 1950 candidate for Senate Richard M.
Nixon), really the wife of a JEW!!! Douglas's real name, Nixon's people
pointed out, was not Douglas but (horrors) Hesselberg !!!
How could muck like that provide anybody goosebumps of joy?
Because it should remind all of us, whether named Hesselberg or Douglas,
that we live in the U.S.A., where the First Amendment words "Congress
shall make no law" mean just what Justice Hugo Black said they say: "No
law means no law." We're reminded every campaign season that we're
pretty lucky not to be living in Tsarist or Stalinist Russia or in
Torquemada's Spain or Hitler's Germany or Caligula's Rome.
Professor Stephen D. Isaacs created the ethics course at the Graduate School of
Journalism at Columbia University ten years ago. He and colleague James W. Carey
now teach it together. Isaacs has edited and reported at a dozen newspapers and
magazines, produced for three TV networks, and is now working on a third book.
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