CLINTON ON GAYS IN ARMED FORCES, STATEHOOD FOR D.C.

President-elect Clinton took Washington, D.C. by storm last week, visiting not only the White House, and tony Georgetown dinner parties, but walking a working-class black neighborhood of small businesses and single-family homes. "Along the way," reported The New York Times, "he also reiterated his support for granting statehood to the District of Columbia. `I was for it early and I'm still for it,'" he said.

Clinton must overcome overwhelming opposition to fulfill this dream of adding two more liberal Democrats to the United States Senate. A recent Yankelovich poll taken for Time/CNN reveals that 57 percent of Americans oppose making D.C. a state, while only 20 percent say yes.

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Gay rights in the military?

Is it a step forward? As recently as the 1984 Democratic National Convention, the Rev. Jesse Jackson was the only contender who would so much as pronounce the word "gay" at the podium. Recall that this was the convention that produced Jeane Kirkpatrick's devastating phrase, "the San Francisco Democrats."

Fast forward, now, to 1992, with a triumphant Democrat's now moving into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, having won three percent less of the popular vote than Michael Dukakis did in 1988.

"There's never been anything like this before," crows David Mixner, a top Clinton adviser and member of Access Now for Gay and Lesbian Equality (ANGLE), a California-based group that raised $1 million for the Clinton campaign.

The Human Rights Campaign Fund, the largest gay and lesbian political action committee with 60,000 members, distributed more than $1 million to chosen candidates, spokesman Gregory King told the Wall Street Journal. In addition, the fund sent 21 staffers into the field to organize get-out-the-vote drives for Clinton in such key states as California, Michigan and Illinois.

Clinton campaign finance director Rahm Emanuel confirms the pivotal role played by gay and lesbian activists in funding their effort: "From the very beginning, financial support from the gay community has been instrumental." Says spokesman King of the Human Rights Campaign Fund, "This election is like our national coming out as a political force."

OHHWWWWW-KAY!

Perhaps we shouldn't have been surprised that Clinton's first two issues to stress would be statehood for D.C. and gays in the armed forces. But we're entitled to ask: Is this what middle America voted for?

There's reason to doubt. In a stunning result in a state Clinton carried on Nov. 3, Republicans picked up a senate seat in Georgia this week. Georgia Republican State Senator Paul Coverdell ousted incumbent U.S. Sen. Wyche Fowler despite an all-out effort and campaign visits for Democrat Fowler by both ends of the Clinton-Gore ticket.

During the campaign, Coverdell stressed his opposition to official sanction for gays in the military, and Sen. Fowler's support for same. Republican Coverdell correctly sensed that this policy doesn't go over real well down around Fort Benning, and among the Bubbas of rural southern Georgia, normally a Democratic stronghold. Coverdell is only the second U.S. Senator to represent the Peach State since Reconstruction. This special election lends further credence to the notion that November's results are a repudiation not of the Republican Party and its philosophy but of George Bush personally, and his lack of any identifiable philosophy.

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Do you doubt Big Media bias?

Two private firms the NEXIS division of Meade Data Central, which provides a data base of published articles from numerous sources, and PR Data Systems, a company that quantifies the results of public relations campaigns decided to survey news coverage concerning the three presidential debates for biased reporting. They pronounced themselves "astonished" at what they found.

The companies paid five researchers to evaluate headlines, lead paragraphs, and bodies of stories in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and other outlets with a combined circulation of 7.5 million. This represents nearly 20 percent of total daily newspaper circulation in the United States. Stories were classified as favorable, neutral or negative toward the three presidential candidates, after which an average was generated.

Results:

Favorable coverage of Clinton was 48.4 percent; Perot 29.7 percent; and Bush only 21.9 percent.

Negative coverage was even more lopsided:

Bush 71.9 percent; Clinton 15.3 percent; and Perot 12.8 percent.

"Our people were astonished at how much bias and innuendo there was in straight news columns," PR Data spokesman told the British news agency Reuters.

Writer Jacob Weisberg of The New Republic, a leading liberal journal of opinion that exulted in Bush's defeat, was nonetheless remarkably candid in confirming the liberal bias of the dominant media culture. Weisberg had this to say:

"If reporters made less of Clinton's contradictions than Bush's and Perot's, it is not because they are fewer. Indeed, coverage of the campaign vindicated exactly what conservatives have been saying for years about liberal bias in the news media. In their defense, journalists say that although they have their personal opinions, as professionals they are able to correct them when they write. Nice, but I'm not buying any."

(Emphasis added.)

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Higher taxes: The "rich" only?

During the campaign, our President-elect repeatedly asserted that he would raise taxes only on the very rich and on foreign corporations. Now the Wall Street Journal reports his advisers are pondering a whole new set of tax increases not limited to the rich or foreign-owned companies.

Candidate Clinton had promised to spare the middle class. Last week, however, safely past the voters yet again, Rep. Leon Panetta (D.-California) chairman of the House Budget Committee, had grim news for middle class taxpayers. In a blatant confirmation of Republican campaign warnings, chairman Panetta had this to say:

"If you're putting together significant deficit reduction package, the middle class is going to carry part of the burden. There's no way to avoid that."

Ah yes, "deficit reduction." When last we heard that phrase, Washington's perpetual Party for the Preservation of the Incumbency, the Republicrats, gave us "The Budget Control Act of 1990." That whopper, we were told, would "reduce the deficit." Deficits immediately exploded, as Congress spent even more than it took in in new revenues.