The first word...

...not the last.

I'd almost forgotten this quote of mine, from a speech in the late '90s before The Freedom Forum.

It ended up on a Free Speech Calendar in July 1999.

My point was that our role as journalists had been profoundly transformed by the arrival of the Internet. Now, we could no longer close the book on any given topic. Instead, we acquired a new role -- to start the conversation.

The community of the interested (my phrase) would show up at our cue to move any story that really mattered forward. It (the story) would acquire a life of its own, virally. We reporters no longer carried the hopelessly arrogant burden of being arbiters of "the truth." Instead, we were more like advance scouts, tipping off the community to new sightings, new threats, new hopes.

Much as, in my imagining, we did in our days as cavemen. The biggest, burliest, fastest, and most violent cavemen no doubt hunted down the animals that fed the tribe. Those of us perhaps of slighter build, with poorer eyesight, less inclined to kill, but more gifted verbally found our place as story-tellers, chronicling the valiant hunt by those big benefactors of ours.

For that reason, they would have kept us around.

I've gotta wonder, though, way back then, how often we got the girl? Apparently often enough, perhaps through subterfuge, that in today's world, the Geek may often prove as successful at acquiring a mate and children as the Jock.

One is probably the average woman's idea of a good reliable father and the other a perfect sexual fantasy figure. I suppose I've been a confusing figure to the women in my life -- an intellectual, able and willing to talk about any subject, rather successful in conventional terms, but also, at 6 feet & 200 pounds, somewhat athletic and extremely aggressive sexually, when I'm attracted to someone, not exactly "safe," comprende?

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