I have no idea where you normally get your news, but today's alternative media also includes some TV and a lot of radio.

The Dan Rather incident was not, in itself, important, but that, along with a considerable number of other things that have happened over the past few years, has shown people not just what the mainstream media has tried to get away with recently, but what they had certainly been getting away with for years before that.

If there was no internet, Kerry would be President. Hell, if there was no Rush Limbaugh, Al Gore would be President. That's not "alternate history." That's a solid bet. There was no Fox News during Watergate. As I said in my earlier post: The networks and the New York Times were gods back then. It's small wonder the media is nostalgic.

Another good example is the Swift Boat Veterans. The media spiked their news conferences for three months, and the Kerry campaign made the mistake of counting on that. The SBV were able to release TV ads in a few locations with the money they had. In the world of the 1970s, that would have been the end of it. But the ads got put on the internet, and some more people without multi-million dollar access to broadcast and print facilities got to get their opinions and facts out to America.

It would indeed be interesting to see what would have happened if everything to do with Watergate had been accessible to the average American through the internet. Court proceedings, arguments from various people, transcripts of statements, and all the rest. For that matter, it would be interesting to think about what massive public access would have meant to earlier administrations. Don't know what might have ended differently for Nixon, but there would have been something more to the argument than the Washington Post pronouncing "thumbs down."