[Imc] The Octopus-An Editorial

[Mike Lehman]

This week's Octopus (Oct. 27, 2000) contains yet another editorial by
the curmudgeonly Jerry Landay. He rails against the News-Gazette's sin
of being a barely-disgiused Republican paper, while they try to maintain
the pretense of objectivity. He is scandalized by this, yet admits they
do publish his letters to the editor, as he condemns them for having
such an anti-Democratic Party party line agenda.

Hmmmmm... Last week Jerry's column attacked Nader supporters for voting
to, in effect in his eyes, turn the country over to the barbarian Bush
camp. He trotted out some pretty impressive looking numbers to make his
case that the Nader campaign could be nothing but a massive failure. The
only problem was that his facts were--wrong.

I wrote the following letter, which speaks of the error:

Subject: 
        Nader Needs Only 5%
   Date: 
        Fri, 20 Oct 2000 15:53:42 -0500
   From: 
        Mike Lehman <rebelmike at earthlink.net>
     To: 
        editor at cuoctopus.com
  
Dear Editor,
Jerry Landay's recent attack on Ralph Nader's presidential candidacy
fails to live up to the accuracy standards that he achieves when he's
turning his guns on the Republicans. He asserts that Nader is unlikely
to get the 15% of the vote that Landay says he needs to qualify the
Green Party for federal matching funds in the 2004 election. I hope that
Landay just has his facts wrong and wasn't trying to purposely
discourage and mislead the voting public, but the mean-spirited tone of
the rest of the article makes one wonder.

The fact is this---Nader needs to get ONLY 5% of the popular vote
nationally in November to qualify the Green Party for the federal funds
next time around.

If Nader gets 5% in Illinois, it means that, in the 2002 Illinois
election for state-wide offices, the Greens will only have to collect
5,000 signatures to qualify a candidate for that ballot. This means the
dirty pool that the state Democratic Party pulled to try to keep
Illinoisans from being offered a real alternative, in the form of the
Nader/LaDuke ticket, off the ballot in this election probably won't be
foisted on the public again.

The Dems have some excellent candidates in local races this year and I
urge voters to support them. At the national level, voters have serious
reason to abandon the Democrats because the Dems have abandoned many of
their traditional allies and policies for the lure of big, corporate
cash. Folks like Landay just don't want you to find that out, or to
allow you an alternative. Voting for Nader on Nov. 7 is the best chance
in years to take back our country from the greedy 1% at the top, who
feel they can buy anything, anytime, including our democracy.

Mike Lehman

I rather much expected my letter to appear this week in the Octopus, as
it addressed a serious issue of fact and offered a fresh and diverging
perspective on a subject of much interest. Little did I realize that the
Octopus will sure let folks like Jerry Landay dish it out, but would
deny me the chance to appear in their letters column.

They instead offered the tepid remedy of a rather arrogant sounding (it
referred to Nader supporters as the "disaffected") correction that
didn't begin to address the wider issues that I raised in my letter.
Then they offered Landay's attack on the News-Gazette party line paper
status, ohhhhh...the evil.

When I wrote my letter I was willing to concede that Landay's error may
have been inadvertent. The way this was handled by the Octopus leads me
to disbelieve my original assumption. Since the Octopus won't offer me
the right of reply, I am inclined to assume that the Landay "typo" may
not have been so inadvertent.

All I can say about the Octopus at this point is that the News-Gazette
may in fact be a party line paper, but at least it allows opposing
letters (even Landay testifies to that) unlike the Octopus, which
declines to allow me to challenge Landay's bitter, victim-blaming attack
on Nader supporters. Who is more party line now, Jerry? I guess someone
has to keep Stalinism alive in Central Illinois. Y'all don't forget to
toe that party line, ya hear.

And is it only a rumor that Carl Estabrook is banned from the pages of
the Octopus until after the election? After all, we can't have him
encouraging anyone to vote for Nader at this point, right? It would be
the end of the world as we know it.