I guess I should offer a partial apology, even though I'm not really responsible for this. Jack Hammer is the on-air name for Bob Dole, who is a local (to me, Portland, Oregon) "moderator" for a "advertised as controversial" radio talk call-in show. He saw my Assassination Politics essay a few months ago, and for a few weeks just before the November sweeps Neilsen ratings period he was trying to bait me into calling in, thinking I'd be a sucker for a local audience. (He _needs_ controversy to be sucessful.) Since then he gave up for a while, although he occasionally snipes at me. I assume his interest will wax and wane as various ratings periods come and go.

Occasionally snipes at you? I've been perching here out in front of you daily now for the last two weeks. We've installed a Washington State phone line just for you. We've built an AM transmitter and purchased a satellite connection and bought satellite brodcast time and linked it to the little princess phone next to your fart sack so you can call us up and share your wonderful ideas with people in their beds and in their cars all over North America and you can do all this without having to even roll out of bed. Now you're saying it hasn't been easy enough for you? How much a minute do you think this costs us, just waiting for you to call? Oh, others have to pay to advertise THEIR ideas, in fact they consider the time so valuable they pay for that time by the second, but has anyone asked Jim Bell for as much as one thin dime for any of our time? Not anyone at all. Jim Bell, you're ducking this the same way you ducked my hat when I was passin' it around for Richard Gray. Perhaps being cheap goes hand in hand with intellectual cowardice. For two weeks now, 10 days, we've been sitting down here just waiting for you to call (360) 693-5539 between 6:00 AM and 8:00 AM PST to put you on the air live. And no, I won't cut you off. If you're such a shy fellow I will promise to not even argue with you, just let you blow anything you want but obcenities as long as you stay on topic. But you're not going to call. You won't discuss your idea in public, which is nothing more than a plan to commit murder for political purposes, i.e. racketeering. You seem to think that we'll accept your plan as the way to open the gateways to a new universe of warmth and roses. What it is is the doorway to a hell full of more drive by shootings and reprisals and paranoia and fear. And seeing the comatose response from most of the people on these lists demonstrates to me just how close the society is to letting something like that which you propose actually happen.

Klaatu Burada Nikto

"Something is going to happen... Something....Wonderful!"

Yeah, right, at least now we know that it's not going to be a phone call. HOW TO JOIN THE HAMMERNET. Receive the most interesting e-mail and get to know the best writers on the Internet. Saints and flamers, they're on the Hammernet! Here's how to join. Send the following message in the body of your text space to majordomo@teleport.com : subscribe hammernet-l It's as easy as that!