A few days ago, someone visiting my home struck up a conversation about the situaiton in Iraq. This was an intelligent man, whom most would call "moderate" in his political thinking. Brief comments about the war led to comments about the media and about spin.

"Some demonstration in London," he said. "They talked so much about it, and then I saw on TV that there were only 400 people at the most."

I explained to him that he was watching television coverage of the night before the demonstration, and those were a few people standing around warming up for the big event. The demonstration occurred the next day, I explained, and there were a minimum of 100,000 people on the streets--some say there were 200,000.

He thought about this. "Oh," he finally said, "I guess they didn't want us to know about that."

If an intelligent person is taken in by the corporate television distortions of reality, then what of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who are not especially intelligent? What of those who are "too busy" to look around and notice that everything from our physical safety to our water is being destroyed by one of the greediest, most calculating, heartless and dishonest governments in recent history?