Andrea sent me a PDF of Kent's article on Triage and myself, and it's very impressive, though a bit wrong in some areas. Kent posited that my ten year "silence" between 1992 and 2002 was the result of my offending the powers that be--the secret rulers of the world... Actually, he was half right. I did offend the powers that be, but he was also essentially wrong, in that the powers that I offended were nowhere near as mysterious as Kent believes. Rather, like Bill Bottrell, I simply found myself on the wrong side of the Sheryl Crow story, and, sensing a massive hit record, Polygram's very effective press department instituted a whisper campaign designed to drive both Bill and myself from the biz. Beginning with a shot across the bow from Billboard editor Tim White, who dedicated an entire page in Billboard to Bill's, Kevin Gilbert's, John O'Brien's and my own perceived and for the most part imaginary character flaws. This was followed by the two heads of A&M Records at the time; namely Al Cafaro and David Anderle spreading lies and innuendo about us throughout the hiring and signing side of the biz. In my case, it was easy for A&M to shut me down, as for a pretty good period of time, they had the power to prevent me from recording at all, as they had the rights to approval on anything I did under my own name. It was only six or seven years later that EMI America was able to buy my contract from A&M, with a savage 600,000 dollar surcharge on top. With EMI's help, I was finally free from the contractual bondage, but my name had been alsmost irretrievably trashed by a whisper campaign that was clearly orchestrated and was quite successful. There are still some circles where my name conjures up images of some ultra violent, misogynistic, demented, Manson-like figure, worthy only of destruction. (Think Stark Raving Brad's experience with John Hiatt, for example. Hiatt and Anderle are pals.) I never helped matters with my outspoken-ness and candor, and my controversial opinions about just about everything, but the fact remains that an organised campaign of slander, gossip, and misinformation was instituted, which was simply impossible to fight directly against, and which in fact destroyed Bill Bottrell's career, and helped to direct me into the less stormy waters of instrumental music. The reason that I bring this up is that I can clearly see the same tactics that silenced Bill Bottrell and myself in action now, on a vastly larger scale, in casual and everyday use, by the Bush team. No matter if their opponent is John McCain, or Max Cleland, or Paul O'Neill, or Joe Wilson, or John Kerry, the same principles follow: a mainstream news organ prints an opinion, or a rumor...for instance, in McCain's case, that he was mentally unbalanced by his stay as a POW and that he fathered an illegitimate black child. Then the mainstream organ (I can't remember which, in this case) withdraws from the story. But now the legions of whisperers have a story they can run with, and this they do, repeating, embellishing, burnishing, polishing, and building on the initial lie, until it has a life of its own. It is tremendously difficult to directly combat this kind of pernicious whispering campaign, as it rarely has a clear line of descent, and denials read, for those inclined, as an acceptance of guilt. So the damage is done, and the machine can move on, to their next victim.

This is a nasty tactic, and one that is only necessary if the truth is not on your side. The "Swift Boat Veterans" malarkey is just one of the many examples of this, and it seems to have worked, to an extent. No matter that the Navy, Kerry's crewmates, and ultimately history aligns itself with Kerry's story, doubt has been sown enough to damage Kerry's reputation.

So, be careful what you believe, even if you'd like very much to believe it, for you may be the target audience for a cynical and dastardly plot of disinformation and plain lies.