Dear Mr. Simon,

I've rarely if ever written to WESAT, but I felt moved to write when I heard Mr. Simon's ill-informed and ridiculous commentary of 1//27/01. The delay in my response come due to my schedule.

Ostensibly 'reporting' on supposed the 'graceless' exit from office of the Clinton administration, Mr. Simon joined his brethren in the punditry by deploring the Clintonian excesses shown in the 'trashing' of the Oval Office. There's just one problem with the premise for this bit. There's NO proof it actually happened. Not one shred of evidence. Sure, lots of stories might have been passed around by the PR flacks like Karl Rove, a master at the propagandistic smear, but really, what PROOF have they offered to substantiate these wild and outlandish claims? NONE. Salon.com has reported on this fact, but again to little avail. As we have re-learned to our dismay, 'a lie can and will make it around the world while the truth is just getting it's boots on'. This is especially true about a lie that slyly and carefully conforms to all the media prejudices about the Clinton's. This has been going on for over 8 years now, isn't it time to stop the speculation and the suppositions and simply demand the facts behind these well crafted smears? Mr. Clinton gracefully offered to pay for all the damages, as long as they were itemized and cataloged, and he has yet to receive a reply. The smear served it's purpose though, in giving the press something to focus on besides the right wing ideologues Bush is filling out his cabinet with in an effort to 'unite' our country.

Further still is the simply astounding fact of the missing report dramatically aired on ATC/NPR earlier in the week about the discovery of a mass crematoria in a Kosovo industrial plant, (the largest lead mine in Europe), and the investigators who went out and found the 'liquidators' of some 1,500 innocent souls for the cause of 'ethnic cleansing' by certified Serbian war criminals. Let's see, given the choice to once again focus on the petty, the hypothetical, the manufactured inside the beltway BS, and a real story having the impact of life and death on thousands of people, what would our experienced NPR commentator chose to spend his 2-3 min. commenting about for the week? You guessed it, some more sneers at the Clinton's, not for saving nearly a million civilians from the resurgence of genocidal intent in Europe for the 2nd or 3rd time in half a century, but for the all too common 'crime' of 'bad taste' or 'bad form'. How very telling an omission, how very silly and ill informed of Mr. Simon to think that *possibly* removing 'w's from a few keyboards is somehow MORE excessive or egregious than the discovery of a mass site for the systemic disposal of the thousands(?) of victims of a recent illegal and immoral liquidation campaign?

Can we then weigh Mr. Clinton's moral compass or effective 'compassion' with that of Mr. Bush's? Let's see. Mr. Clinton almost single handedly saved nearly a Million Kosovars from a certain fate of death or forced exile. He planned this feat while being impeached for 'giving false and misleading testimony under oath' about a private consensual affair which lasted some months. We just confirmed an Bush Attorney General who lied repeatedly, blithelessly, and often about most aspects of his 30 year record of public service to a committee of Congress. Even his home state papers concede this fact. [Advantage: Clinton]. Mr. Bush's father and his by now infamous Sec. Of State, Jim Baker, would not even deign to give starving Bosnian's food drops in 1991-2 during the 2nd attempt at mass murder by the Serbian regime. Baker then famously said "We don't have a dog in that fight". It was one of Clinton's first acts as President to go ahead with those food drops. [Again, Advantage Clinton]. (BTW: At the very height of his height of his powers FDR was only willing to allow the settlement into the US of some 300 Jewish refugees at the end of WWII, we perhaps saved a few thousand more through other actions. Clinton was willing to settle more than 14,000 fleeing Kosovars into the US, a remarkable act of compassion not even contemplated by the Bush's then or now.) [Again, advantage Clinton].

Where was Mr. Simon's outrage when George Bush Sr. pardoned all his fellow co-conspirators in the Iran Contra scandal, thus effectively ending all possible investigation of his central role in the operation and the coverup? (See consortiumnews.com for more details if your memory fades, or 'Firewall' by L. Walsh.) Where was Mr. Simon's outrage when Ronnie Reagan was bought a 2 million dollar+ ranch by some of his cronies before he left office? Did Mr. Simon know that Dick Cheney was once a part of Marc Rich's legal team, defending him against criminal charges in the very case being cited?

No, by example of your deepest apologies to the Republican groups for your 'excesses' in a prior weeks commentary, this is entirely telling of the lengths to which you are willing to go to kow-tow to the new powers that be. Will you ever awaken to the real fact of your consistently and egregious double standard of reporting of almost everything 'Clinton'? No mention was also made of the serious and widespread inaugural protests--the first in a generation, or the desperate need for electoral reform evinced by the massive failures exposed from the extensive reportage of the errors seen in Fl and elsewhere. No all these stories of possibly REAL & considerable interest to your listeners were missed in your commentary. Much the pity still that you ignored these vitally important stories to focus instead on giving some play to a deliciously manufactured beltway story intended to make Mr. Bush look somehow larger by comparison. You needn't have bothered, we know this unworthy tribune for what he is, an unelected President selected by 5 partisan justices on the Supreme Court. He's someone who refused to count legitimate votes cast by citizens of an erstwhile free nation. Someone who proudly sent goons to stop the counting of votes and then cheerfully gloated to the assembled party faithful afterwards by way of rewarding their foul efforts. One of these days you and your brethren in the press might wake up to this fact. Let's just hope neither you or I need much saving from the dictates of his ideologically pure right wing stalwarts before then. Europe in not accepting many refugees, and you'll not have Mr. Clinton to kick around and blame for the putsch.