Rick Perry. Hmm. Is the governor of Texas gay? As a former Texan myself, I've been participating in a long-running, Austin-based email list that is currently, feverishly debating it. It's good dish. One list member knows about the apartment Mrs. Perry obtained in an effort to leave the governor and also about the gay lover she caught him with being exiled to Houston. Another list member contends it's only an urban myth with no journalists publishing any proof. But how many heads of state issue public denials in the Austin American-Statesman to dispel an urban myth? 

    I re-watched the Oscar-nominated film, The Insider (1999) on HD cable this week. Hadn't seen it in a few years and its whole message of journalism being in serious trouble because of corporate domination and profits seems more relevant now than ever. In the film (true story), CBS is on the verge of being bought by Westinghouse while big tobacco is threatening CBS with a multi-billion dollar law suit if the producers at 60 Minutes air an intensely revealing interview with downsized tobacco vice president Jeffrey Wigand (Wigand had signed a confidentiality agreement with his former employer). The corporate executives at CBS are more worried about their lucrative buyout being compromised than they are about the ethics of news. The main producer of the story, Lowell Bergman, is ordered by CBS to go on vacation and his segment is re-edited without his participation to exclude Wigand. Again, all of this happened about a decade ago. Before 9/11. Before the Iraq war. 

    Today we mostly complain about the news being all Paris Hilton, all the time, with very little coverage of Iraq. But before you buy into the sex (and scandal) sells excuse, consider this: how well would the gossipy Perry-being-gay thing fit in with the Paris-all-the-time thing? Very well. But we don't get that story. It seems reasonable to conclude that corporate interests who have suppressed public health news and war news could easily bury a damaging story about the Republican succeeding Bush as governor of Texas. Seems like that would be pretty easy to do considering everything else they've done.