The freedom to enjoy music, to be left alone, not to be criminalized in the fascist war on drugs for smoking a joint. The freedom from mindless consumerism, materialism and selfishness. The freedom to establish our own liberated zones without being profiled by Rambos with a badge and a gun. The freedom to dream of a society with kinder and gentler buds and the widespread use of organic hemp.

Hemp is the proverbial “pot of gold,” riches beyond belief that can move us away from the artificial petrochemical culture. The miracle weed that we can wear, burn, eat and write on — can I get a “Right On” brothers and sisters?

A year or so later, some friends suggested that a group of us do our own show, and for over 10 years, Vast Wasteland was central Ohio’s (insert tongue in cheek here) video guide to pop culture. But in the fall of last year (1999), we made the decision to stop production despite the warm positive response we were still receiving from the majority of the viewing community. Anyone who has every participated in a public access production knows that the reward comes from learning that you have reached your audience and they have responded as you had hoped. Over the years we were well rewarded.

For three days, "Good Morning America" featured excerpts from Sawyer's visit with Elian Gonzalez, a traumatized child whose departure from Cuba several months ago ended with a shipwreck that killed his mother. Sawyer sat on the floor with little Elian and eased into questions about whether he'd rather live in Cuba or Florida. The footage, repackaged for ABC's "20/20" show, was all grist for the ABC/Disney profit mill.

When the history of this one is written, what will amaze everyone once again is how hopelessly clueless we all are -- the Clinton administration, Congress, the media. The media keep reporting "a $9 billion spending bill to help Colombia combat drug traffickers" as though it were just that simple.

(Actually, only $1.6 billion of the spending bill is for the "counter drug aid package for Colombia." There is $2.6 billion to pay for our military costs in Kosovo, $2 billion for disaster relief and then, somehow, amazingly, the thing came out of the House Appropriations Committee with the total price tag doubled by pure pork barrel.)

Despite complaints about smarmy orchestration and chronic pandering, the Republican and Democratic conventions resulted in gobs of deferential coverage. Some journalists rolled their eyes or even shed a bit of light on the big money bags behind the Oz-like curtains, but each party got what its backers paid for -- a week of mostly upbeat publicity.

Meanwhile, Americans saw very little news about the iron-fist tactics that police used in the host cities to suppress thousands of social-justice demonstrators. Evidently, several days of militarizing a downtown area is the latest new thing for laying down the political law.

In Philadelphia, while the Grand Old Party partied, police raided a protest headquarters. The gendarmes proceeded to confiscate and destroy large numbers of handmade puppets being readied for deployment in the streets. The crackdown was understandable, since art can be subversive. Better to be on the safe side!