The Obama Miracle

Whatever your political leanings, there can be no question that the election of Barack Obama is a miracle of self-realization, an inspiration to all that self-discipline, singleness of purpose and creative imagination can achieve astonishing results.

The arc of Barack Obama’s narrative is dazzling in its implications. We all know the story and marvel at its denouement. One can find parallels in history, both ancient and recent, in which the will and determination of a single individual finds a way to achieve what is truly an impossible dream.

“Yes, we can,” was exactly the right slogan for the Obama campaign. He certainly proved that he can indeed and his victory against extraordinary odds is a historic event that will be cited and celebrated for years to come. If all of the self-help and inspirational books ever written were piled to the moon, they could not convey how this man achieved the most powerful and most coveted political prize in history.

While we marvel at his achievement, many of we questers who seek through art or science to find the key to human behavior, puzzle over this miracle of aspiration. How the hell did he do it? To me, discovering that link to his inner world is the most interesting aspect of his victory.

Like most of us inspired by his journey, I yearn to know the crucial secrets of the inner man. Who on earth wouldn’t want to emulate him? To all of us, he is the ultimate role model.

I look for clues, unique symbols, characteristics, actions, words, body language and relationships. After all, I am an outsider to his world. I never met him and all I know about him is what his campaign let us know, what was reported to us through various information outlets, the television images of him in action as a campaigner and through his interviews and speeches.

Admittedly, my analysis of the inner man is purely subjective, reflecting my own life experiences and the projection and insight that is fundamental to the novelist’s art. Taking a crack at what goes on in the mind and heart of another human being is a risky endeavor indeed and I do it with some trepidation, although there might be an attempt to put a political spin on my analysis. No way. I assure everyone reading this essay that it is politically neutral.

For some odd reason I find Obama’s choice of clothes, particularly the white shirt, the ubiquitous white shirt he wears, one of the most important clues to his character. A white shirt is a unique symbol of self-discipline. Making color choices detracts from focus. It tells me that anything that interferes with his single-mindedness is simply unworthy of his time.

I’m sure a psychoanalyst might find another explanation, but I cannot get away from the notion that this is a man whose determination is so acute that anything that does not serve his focus is rejected. I do not say this in a pejorative way. Nothing great is achieved without total focus and I frankly and enthusiastically admire him for such discipline.

Then there is the matter of his exercise routine. He knows the true meaning of keeping his body tuned and alert and what we have learned is that nothing, absolutely nothing interferes with his exercise routine. How many of us yearn for such physical discipline?

I am also fascinated by his walk, the cool graceful manner of his walk. There is something totally unique in the way he moves. In some ways, he reminds me of the late John Wayne, an actor with a manner of moving that stands as a marker of his heroic character.

Observe his cool demeanor as he slowly moves to the stage to confront countless thousands. Imagine your own reaction when faced with such a normally intimidating and formidable situation. Think of the self-confidence required to perform this feat. What does he feel inside of himself? I truly believe that his self-confidence knows few bounds. Here is a man who truly believes in himself and is completely comfortable in his own skin.

His facial presentation is also unique. His smile is broad, attractive and exudes charm and ingratiation. It captures his magnetism and allows him to be self-deprecating about his big ears and other features of his face. I found it perfectly acceptable and interesting to characterize himself as a “mutt”, citing a biological diversity that we know from our DNA, is ubiquitous in all of us.

His speech is deep and soothing and the delivery of his words and phrases is impeccable. His oratorical ability has surely been carefully self-trained and his eloquence is formidable. With his resonant voice and phrasing, his speeches have been honed to hit the right notes at the perfect moments and they truly move people, an absolute attribute for a great leader.

It is also worth noting that his choice of mate offers yet another lesson in discipline. He is matched with a formidable, brilliant and strong woman who has quite obviously been extremely helpful in his rise, someone who is a true believer in his uniqueness. You can easily see that the discipline and work ethic that they have lived by is being transferred to their two daughters, both of whom they are trying to make as super achievers as themselves.

As a role model to all of us and especially to people of color, he can be inspirational by showing us what self-discipline can achieve, how a focused outsider who believes in himself and his mission can, with luck, astonishing luck, make it to great heights of success. He shows us by example that the two parent family offers the best alternative to rearing the next generation, a severe dysfunction in the African American community where most child rearing is done by a single parent. If his example makes even a small dent in this area, he will have gone a long way to improve the lot of his brothers and sisters of color.

Whatever he achieves in his governing, his message to all of us is profound. Indeed, he has already carved his legacy into the public consciousness.

It is no wonder that people are clamoring to witness his inauguration. If I were a person of color, considering their horrendous history, I would be camping out in front of the White House even now to get a glimpse of this man in his moment of glory.

When I think of the daunting problems that face him as President, I begin to despair for him and the rest of us. At this moment in our national history, the act of governing seems untenable. The issues debated during the campaign did not even begin to address our problems, some of which may be impossible to solve.

For example, the population of this country doubled in the last 50 years and is likely to double sometime in the next four decades. How can a country that is now 300 million cope with a population that will be 600 million in the lifetime of many of those now living. When you contemplate that situation, you realize that our country’s future is in peril and we will have to be enormously creative when we consider immigration, health care, our economy , our infrastructure, energy and the big elephant in the room, terrorism.

Worse, there are so many people needlessly slurping in the public trough, locked into entitlements that are not sustainable and others who are dependent on the public purse, that extracting them from this habitual form of largesse will be close to impossible. A largely incompetent and unpopular Congress is facing an avalanche of states, corporations and seekers of all stripes with tin cups looking for handouts.

Obama will need to call up all his reserves of self-discipline and persuasion skills to tame the appetite for giveaways by a dysfunctional Congress and the greed and endemic selfishness that is corrupting every aspect of our system. Shifting the balance to protect the truly needy will be a challenge, requiring steel nerves and restoking the talent of persuasiveness Obama brought to bear during his campaign.

For the record, I did not vote for Obama. As someone even older than John McCain I am, admittedly, locked into the ideas that have sustained us through the great Depression, World War II and the Cold War. I understand that mindset and the echoes and slogans of those historical moments. In that arena I was in sync with McCain. Unfortunately, my idea of change is to look backward and contemplate the changes that have occurred in my lifetime. Future change is not a happy concept for a senior citizen whose stake in the future is in the worrisome fate of his offspring, rather than the prospects of his own life on which the curtain is descending.

Nevertheless, the old fashioned verities still persist in my zeitgeist. One of these is respect for our President and the patriotic notions of flag and country. As a soldier I marched under that flag and followed the orders of my Commander in Chief and I will continue to do so under our new President.

With all sincerity, I wish him Godspeed and good luck on the treacherous journey ahead of him. …and us.

The E-Book Revolution

Twelve years ago, I took the astonishing step of gaining the reversion of all my books from my English language publishers and converting them into digital formats. Most people thought I had lost my mind, since there was no user friendly portable reading device even remotely on the horizon and the books had to be read on either laptops or immovable computers.

My motives were twofold. I did not want to suffer the fate of so many of my fellow authors whose books were declared out of print by publishers while existing copies were moldering on shelves in private homes and in libraries where they would be eventually discarded. Another obvious motive was an attempt to keep my authorial name in the public eye for the foreseeable future.

There is, of course, a great deal of ego involved in such an investment of time and money, but as every author knows, the writing of a book whether it be a work of the imagination, opinion or scholarship, is essentially a product of an inner voice that is determined to be heard.

Before the age of digitization there were few options for authors to preserve their work for future generations. Now that digitization makes such preservation possible, there is no reason for any author to accept the extinction of his or her work through unavailability.

Of course, keeping these works alive and available does not mean that anyone will ever read them in the future. Even the most popular writers of yesterday disappear from public view at astonishing speeds, a fate that is sure to be shared by most contemporary best sellers. Digitization will not guarantee readership and many digital books may simply float aimlessly through cyberspace until the end of time, a lonely exile into infinity.

While that long time bet remains in force, digitizing my books involved a shorter term bet as well. I felt certain that, despite all the numerous failures and the dashing of high hopes which ravaged the e-book dream, that reader friendly devices, would one day emerge from the brains and skills of our electronic engineers and eventually reward both readers and entrepreneurs.

I knew in my gut that this would happen and it has. The issue has always been convenience, portability and reading clarity. That issue has been resolved and will now be improved upon exponentially. The first generation Kindle, the Sony Reader and variations of smart phone technology will in a few short years surpass the paper book as a method to distribute content.

I have been making that statement for more than a dozen years. I have been excoriated, pummeled, insulted and cajoled for making such a statement in various public forums. Time and again, people have extolled the technology of the paper book as the only acceptable format for conveying content.

People would declaim:“I love my paper book, the tactile feel of the it, the smell of it, the look of it. I will never abandon my love for the paper book. For me it will be the only way to enjoy stories and absorb information.”

It was difficult to deflect such a view since I, too, love the paper book. My passion is books. Reading them, writing them, savoring them not only for their content but for the beauty of their appearance, the feel of them. For me they represent one of the joyful wonders of life. Admittedly, there were moments of doubt, not doubt about the ultimate clarity and portability of content, but whether or not the human mind would accept the transference and absorption of digital content in a way that would provide people with a satisfactory experience that could rival what one achieved through the paper book.

Even with those devices currently on the market, particularly the Kindle, all of my doubts have been put aside. In fact, I can say with absolute conviction that reading books on this new device has increased the pleasure and absorption of content that not only rivals but in some cases surpasses the experience of reading a paper book. It has even made the act of purchasing the book more convenient and user friendly. I can make my choice, sample it first with excerpts, then buy it at a huge discount from what I would normally pay for a paper book and download it to my device in a matter of seconds.

There are still some obstacles to book selection which may never be overcome, although there are attempts to inform and review the various books that are offered by the companies that dispense them. Unfortunately wading through the hype and the lack of credibility and bias among the reviewers is an enormous problem and my instinct is to ignore them and make my selection based on the downloaded samples and excerpts.

Frankly, although she is widely respected, I do not take my reading cues from Oprah and I have long eschewed reviews from the media and the roar of the publishing company flacks and their profusion of buddy blurbs.

I have no doubt that the day is coming when these portable devices will dominate the educational system. Backpacks will disappear. Libraries will morph into other uses connected with books. Brick and mortar stores will change their focus. Newspapers as we know them today will fade into other forms. Digitization will take over as the method of conveying all forms of information in every profession. It is easy to be carried away by such prognostications.

Unfortunately not all of this orgy of digitization will be good. A new addiction will begin to inflict us, if it hasn’t already, information glut. Too many incoming information missiles assaulting us. But that is a matter for another discussion.

There is nothing, nothing, more wondrous, more powerful in their capacity to teach, persuade, inform and amplify the imagination than words. Stories form the very basis of our civilization. The imagery they insert into the human imagination is the power that fuels the engine of humanity. How these words are delivered may not be as important as the information they impart, but I am happy to report that the e-book method of delivery has surpassed my wildest dreams.

How I got the idea for my novel NATURAL ENEMIES

Of all the questions asked of fiction writers, the one most common is: Where do you get your ideas? It is a crucial question that goes to the heart of the storyteller's art. One might generalize and assert that it comes from an amalgam of one's life's experiences, stories told by others, books read, movies seen, dreams and fantasies, and the molten mix in the cauldron of one's imagination. This is one writer's attempt to pinpoint the spark that ignited the idea that became the story and its aftermath.


Peter Mayer, when he was the editor of Pocket Books, suggested that I write a book about a heroic woman who takes the lead in a situation of extreme danger and saves her male companion through superior ingenuity and pluck.

It was a time when the publishing industry was making a conscious effort to attract women readers through inspirational scenarios where they are portrayed as winners. I had no quarrel with the concept since I always believed in many aspects of the equality of men and women in dangerous situations. In fact, I had portrayed many women characters in defiance of those who believed that men could not create viable and accurate female characters.

I conceived of an exciting scenario in which a married couple, through various circumstances, find themselves lost in the wilderness and must find a way to survive and find their way to safety. They confront many natural dangers and circumstances that push them to the edge of death, only to find a way out at the very last moment.

Unfortunately, I needed to do some heavy research since, aside from my Boy Scout camping experiences and my Army basic training, I had little knowledge of the remote wilderness and even less knowledge about survival skills.

To do this research properly, I hired two female outfitters in the Denver area to take me into the remote wilderness for a week. Following their instructions, I arrived in the area properly attired and mentally ready for the adventure. The two young women were tough, knowledgeable and ready to take on this city slicker whose experience of the wilderness was many decades behind me.

We entered the wilderness in a remote area in Colorado identified on a map, if I remember correctly, as Little King Ranch. We carried heavy packs filled with dehydrated foods and other essentials for survival in the wilderness. It was tough going, climbing up and down steep hills, and in some places having to hack our way through uncharted paths. These ladies were real ecology fanatics and in superb condition.

They cut me no slack and were unmerciful and relentless in their determination to show me the very worst of wilderness travel. I was totally unprepared physically and dragged myself forward with sheer grit and willpower. Somewhere along the trail, my macho genes kicked in and I was soon in mano mode unwilling to be bested by women. It was no contest. I was a blundering weak tenderfoot. As they trudged ahead, their contempt for me became apparent. Although they knew I was researching a book, they quite obviously considered me a dilettante, effete and corrupted by city life.

Indeed, although I tried to make myself as pleasant and charming as I could be under the circumstances, they had obviously bonded together to humiliate me and were deeply critical of my performance. They had me set my pup tent up at a good distance from theirs and were adamant in lecturing me on the proposition that anything brought into the wilderness must be brought out, especially trash. Toilet paper had to be burned in the campfire after use, the ashes buried when we broke camp.
Although I was paying them, I was far from in charge since I needed them to get me the hell out of there. After four days and nights of hard hiking and tough sleeping, I insisted that they take me back. By then, we were barely talking. It has always been a mystery to me why they held me in such contempt and, at the time, my mind conjured up fearful scenarios of being left alone to fare for myself fated to be a dinner time snack for the wildlife that abounded in the area.

On the return trail, they deliberately moved swiftly and it was quite impossible for me to keep up. They seemed to delight in my struggle and would often disappear while I huffed and puffed my way up steep inclines only to find them chatting amiably at the peak of the climb.

I did manage to get back to civilization in one piece and paid my bill without further confrontation. To my eternal regret I neglected to ask them why they had taken such an obvious dislike to me. I have mulled this over for many years concluding only that they must have seen me as an intruder into what they might have believed was their guardianship of the wilderness. Perhaps my attitude was what put them off. I’ll never know, but I did accomplish my research goals.

The book was published to fairly good reviews and was optioned for the movies but never made. Nevertheless, like all experiences, good or bad, the strange adventure offered me insights and knowledge into a world in which I was a total stranger.

Ironically a few years later, my wife and I moved to Jackson Hole and loved to hike the many mountain trails in the Tetons.


To purchase a copy of Natural Enemies, click here.

The Fall 2008 Warren Adler Short Story Contest

Fall 2008 Warren Adler Short Story Contest from Warren Adler on Vimeo.

Enter your short story by clicking here. Good luck!

How I got the idea for The Henderson Equation

Of all the questions asked of fiction writers, the one most common is: Where do you get your ideas? It is a crucial question that goes to the heart of the storyteller's art. One might generalize and assert that it comes from an amalgam of one's life's experiences, stories told by others, books read, movies seen, dreams and fantasies, and the molten mix in the cauldron of one's imagination. This is one writer's attempt to pinpoint the spark that ignited the idea that became the story and its aftermath.

Living in Washington in the seventies, we were treated to an endless drumbeat of stories in The Washington Post by the young reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein about a brewing scandal involving the Republicans and the White House. Eventually the stories created an explosion that rocked the country and caused President Richard Nixon to resign after winning a resounding victory for a second term. The event has gone down in history as “Watergate.”

I had been a consultant to the Republican National Committee and the Nixon White House and knew many of the players that were involved in the scandal. It was fascinating to be an observer to this bizarre situation in which a couple of young newspaper reporters, backed by their intrepid editor Ben Bradlee and the approval of the paper’s publisher Katherine Graham, were able to bring down a sitting President.

From my vantage point as a mere observer who knew many in the cast of characters in this ordeal, I was able to enjoy a smorgasbord of ready-made research into the dynamics of this struggle between the media and the political elite. Also, I had been a newspaperman, starting my career as a copy boy for the New York Daily News and going on to be the editor of the largest weekly on Long Island.

I knew the turf, knew the inside story of the political scene and the way in which stories are assigned, written and placed. Viewing this story unfolding before my eyes provided the raw material for the idea of my novel.

If a newspaper had the power to bring down a sitting President, did it not have the power to create one?

That was my central theme. Since I lived in Washington, I had some cursory knowledge of the history of The Post and the personalities that ran it, including some very private behind-the-scenes material that I had picked up through the gossip mills of Washington. We were very much a part of the media/political social scene, circulated freely, listened and observed, picking up material like a giant sponge.

My publisher at Putnam, then a family business before movie moguls and the mega corporations overran it, liked the idea and gave me a small advance. I wrote the novel. Because of my inside knowledge of the backstage story, it contained elements that could be considered a roman a clef, although I was careful not to come too close to the bone of what could be considered reality. Nevertheless the people at The Post considered it such and totally ignored it in their pages. In fact, the media fraternity considered it an attack on the system and it was hardly reviewed and mostly dismissed. But I had it right, and it is as fresh today as it was when written nearly thirty years ago.

The story doesn’t end there. A few months after publication my wife and I spent the Christmas to New Year’s holiday at a spa in Mexico where, of all people, I got very friendly with one of the guests, Katherine Graham, owner/publisher of The Washington Post. We played tennis together and generally bonded as people do when thrown together in a relaxed atmosphere. All she knew about me was that I wrote novels, lived in Washington and was very familiar with her newspaper and the circles in which she moved. I found her one of the most interesting people I had ever met in my life. In fact, I adored her.

But sometime during the holiday, she discovered from people back in Washington that I had written this novel. The perception was that it did not treat the people at The Post kindly and was a vicious attack on their integrity. She had also perceived personal references in the character of my fictional publisher and assumed that they were unfavorable references to her and her family.
Journalists have thin skin and think of themselves as perpetually under attack by people who doubt their motives. They truly believe they are worthy of canonization as truth seekers and see the world in stark terms of black and white. In this self-characterization, they are the good guys and they consider all critics of their work the bad guys.

Apparently, Kay Graham bought their characterization and treated me to a three-hour emotional confrontation insisting that The Post didn’t bring Nixon down, but that his own foolish act destroyed his presidency and any personal references suggested by my fictional character were insulting to her. I was quite shaken, but listened carefully to her accusations. She had not read the book, but from the information she was given from the home office, she determined that I had been vicious and inaccurate. My only defense, of course, was that this was a work of fiction and, while admittedly it did contain characters and events with some peripheral similarities, it was a work of the imagination.

She had a point of course. There is a thin boundary between fact and fiction and while she hadn’t read the book, those around her had, and were quick to characterize it as a roman a clef with nasty intent. The fact was that the idea was loose and no amount of explanation on my part could expiate my supposed sin. I will admit to being somewhat ingenuous, both then and now. In her place, I might have reacted with the same anger and emotion. Nevertheless the deed was done, and I felt awful that I had hurt my new friend, who I admired enormously.

After her outburst, she settled down and while hardly forgiving me, we did enjoy the rest of our holiday and saw each other on occasion in Washington. My admiration for her has grown with the years. In my mind she remains a heroic figure, a paragon of womanhood. Her autobiography, published a few years before her death, was one of the best I have ever read, beautifully written and honestly told, revealing the same vulnerable, charming and forgiving human being that had crossed my path briefly but memorably at that spa in Mexico.

That said, I nevertheless defend my novel as a truthful, insightful and accurate snapshot of that moment in time.

The Blame Game

While the smoke continues to pollute the environment in the worst economic conflagration most of us have seen in our lifetime, it is time to confront the issue of who to blame. Here is my blame list.

I blame all the sad dreamers who believed you could buy a house for little or no money down and the rest on borrowed money, absurdly convinced that the market for this house would continue to rise. Like any commodity real estate goes up and down. Nothing goes up forever. Worse, the purchase of a house is the first step in an avalanche of expenses, furniture, appliances, carpets, TV sets, things, lots of things. If people who bought a house they couldn’t really afford and all the things that went into it, how did they think they were going to pay for it? How did they buy into the notion that they were entitled to such largesse?

I blame all the pandering and plundering politicians of both parties for passing the laws that made it so easy to purchase these houses for little or no money down. They just threw the faux red meat to the gullible crowd on the premise that the more you give away, the more people will vote to keep you in office. Beware of a politician’s promises. They have one goal that motivates them: to get elected and re-elected. A politician’s office becomes an election campaign headquarters the moment he or she gets elected.

I blame all the lobbyists for bankers, mortgage brokers, stock brokers, housing advocates, the real estate industry, the credit card industry and all those who would profit from the never ending tsunami of profiteers who were paid to persuade (make that bribe) the clueless politicians to pass the laws that made it possible for people to buy a house for little or no money down that they could not afford to sustain.

I blame the army of greed-driven brokers, bankers and lawyers who cut themselves fees from the people who bought the houses for little or no money down, then sliced the mortgages which paid for them, then mixed them up with allegedly safer mortgages and sold them as “risk free” certificates to suckers all over the world.

I blame the politicians for taking the money from the lobbyists in exchange to do their bidding. Never believe a politician who takes this money and says it won’t influence his or her vote. I blame the voters who don’t do their due diligence on the politicians who seek their vote. If they elect clever manipulators who have invented themselves out of whole cloth, who are modern day snake oil salesman interested only in their own personal ambition and ego satisfaction, then they have only themselves to blame. Don’t look for solutions from people like these. Invariably they will make things worse.

I highly recommend an obligatory course in legislating and governing for every politician in the country presently in office or any future aspirant, and declare ineligible any potential candidate that doesn’t get a get a high passing grade and has submitted to a lie detector test. My estimate is that more than ninety percent of the present crop of politicians will flunk the course.

I blame all the fools who paid for things by credit card and extended the debt on these cards, paying ridiculously inflated interest rates resulting in a process from which they will never ever catch up. Indeed, they are going up the down escalator and they will almost never reach the top. Anybody that lets debt mount on a credit card needs a refresher course in simple arithmetic.

I blame the credit card companies for promoting these plastic time bombs to people of all ages who are persuaded and manipulated to take these cards and can’t afford to pay the debt they incur within thirty days. Credit card issuers make their money on the debt from the poor saps who allow themselves to continue to pay these pony interest rates that will eventually destroy their ability to ever get credit again.

I blame the parents of kids ignorant of the realities of debt who allow them to get credit cards to instantly gratify their adolescent desires. And I blame these stupidly indulgent parents for not teaching their children the value of thrift and savings.

I blame the educators and the bureaucrats who run the sadly dysfunctional educational establishment for not creating programs to teach young people about economics, the dangers of overextended debt and the value of thrift. It is an essential ingredient of a good education to prepare a child for real life. While we are at it, how about similar programs for adults?

I blame the pompous and self-inflated idiots on the boards of companies who receive high payments to serve on these boards and reward the CEO’s of these companies with astronomical high pay. The people who they screw are the stockholders they purport to represent and, of course, the rest of us. As for the stockholders, why are they not storming the ramparts?

I blame the advertising industry and all the manipulators in the media for persuading people to buy things whether they can afford it or not. Beware of the words free, bargain, discount, special sales, once in a lifetime and all those soothingly false pictures of people allegedly living the good life. Check it out. Be wary. Be alert. Never buy anything endorsed by a celebrity. Their praise is pure baloney. They are trying to get you to part with your money. If you buy into it and you can’t really afford the product they tout, the consequences are your own damned fault.

As for the current election, maybe the best course for all of us is to vote present. It seems to have worked for at least one candidate.

Most of all, I blame the DNA of the human animal that has made us slaves to our desires, dreams, hopes, aspirations, yearnings, fantasies, pleasures and cravings. Somewhere in that double helix construction there must be a yet undiscovered fault line that is responsible for an errant stupid gene floating aimlessly somewhere in the brain.

All that said, if you really want to find the true culprit, look in the mirror.

Warren Adler is the author of 30 novels, including The War of the Roses and his latest, Funny Boys.

The End of Influence

It used to be that the main sources of credible and allegedly reliable political information came from the major big city newspapers, the three major TV networks, the two major news magazines and, more recently, the two competing cable channels CNN and Fox. I do not wish to denigrate newspapers and television in other markets throughout the country, but most people will acknowledge that the lion's share of influence came from the sources I have cited.

By far the movers and shakers of the political world pored over the New York Times and the Washington Post as the bibles of the wise world view, the quintessential oxygen of the zeitgeist.

The mighty Washington Post had the power to bring down Presidents, and the newspaper of record, the old grey lady, the New York Times was the major news source with the clout to seed every important major media in America and, arguably, the planet.

Staffed by a dominant cadre recruited from the elite feeder colleges, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Columbia and others that could be shoehorned into that category, the major "elite" media became a kind of branch of this closed shop of contemporary academic orthodoxy and entitlement. Like ethnic groups who felt more comfortable in their neighborhoods with similar neighbors, the so-called major media became more comfortable with their own kind, those educated in these colleges and universities underline once again the old birds of a feather cliché.

It became true of all power clusters in America, from Wall Street to law and other major wealth producing occupations that an Ivy League old school tie was and, arguably, still is the major gateway to fame and fortune. As an aside, one cannot fail to mention that those recruited from the business schools of these great institutions led the disastrous charge on Wall Street that heroically bugled us all over the cliff into the greatest American financial debacle of all time.

Ironically, it might be unseemly to point out that three of the most powerful of our founding fathers, Washington, Franklin and Hamilton, never graduated from college, although the latter dropped out of King's College, the precursor of Columbia.

While working in the media does not offer the heady awards of wealth, it does offer a far more seductive aphrodisiac, power and notoriety, the ability to amplify one's alleged wisdom through the bullhorn of the printed and spoken word. The psychic satisfactions of the power to influence cannot be exaggerated. It is the Holy Grail of ambition.

Alas, this power to influence via the traditional media is deteriorating rapidly under the onslaught of technology, which has spawned a Tower of Babel Internet culture where the number of voices has expanded exponentially and the pool of influence has become an angry ocean of riptides making the old methods of navigation impossible. We are being informed more and know less. Everyone seems to believe that everyone is entitled to everyone's opinion.

What was only a few years ago called the "major media" is quickly losing its monopoly of influence. The signs are everywhere. Newspapers are losing circulation at an ever-accelerating pace. The once vaunted three networks have become shadows of their former glory. The news magazines are becoming increasingly irrelevant. The bottom line, of course, is that advertisers, whose only measure of effectiveness is how many eyeballs they can attract and where they can pinpoint their message, are fractionalizing their ads and spreading them over a wider swath undermining the economic base that fuels this media.

On television, the three major networks have long peaked in influence and offer their news messages to an older and older demographic, slicing away people under sixty from their range of influence. In a few more years they will join their print brothers in the influence cemetery of the extinct. Even the cable networks with their self-hyped authenticity and increasingly inarticulate talking heads increasingly cater to an ever more aging demographic. Look where their ads are pointed, to the incontinent, the erection disabled, the sleep deprived, the diabetic, all markers of the ravages of aging.

The people who run these enterprises are not fools. They are discovering that playing to people with the same biases is their only business lifeline, especially in New York City and Washington where the educated elite huddle together in an easily targeted and self-important, although increasingly leftist, segment. I suspect that if, for example, the Times took too a big a step right, they would lose enough subscribers to push them that much closer to a Bear Stearns finish. It is probably true of the other former big guns of the mainstream media.

The Times, however, does have one saving ace in the hole. It provides the most extensive and comprehensive coverage of the Big Apple's vast array of cultural activities. Frankly, as an avid consumer of such information, I hope it will give them enough revenue to sustain them in some fashion for the long haul, although I am not optimistic. The Washington Post, on the other hand, serving a less culturally charged entertainment scene, may have a more difficult time getting traction and will attempt to vastly increase its local service coverage to keep afloat.

As for real influence, the kind they enjoyed for decades, the Times is already in free fall on that score despite its vaunted slogan "All the News That's Fit to Print" and their promise to be "a newspaper of record." The truth is that for decades they did fulfill those goals. In the last few years their focus has been too narrow and blatantly biased to make that case.

I can imagine how many focus groups they have enlisted to try to reverse their dreary business prospects. They probably were obliged, based on their research, to double their op ed cadre of conservatives, adding neocon William Kristol to join with David Brooks to give them a patina of fairness, especially since these writers are part of the intellectually acceptable conservatives in the mold of William Buckley. I doubt it will help improve their bottom line. Most of their centrist and moderate right subscribers have probably already gone.

Indeed, it seems at times that desperation rules the roost among the Times editors who support the strident outpourings of Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich, Paul Krugman, Bob Herbert and their roster of like-minded columnists who clang the pots for the disadvantaged and put-upon, few of whom are readers. One wonders if this clique is in the wrong pew, considering that the advertisements for upscale jewelry and super luxury products that can only be afforded by the folks they rail against continue to fill the adjacent space in the newspaper.

The most hopeful survival sign in the media influence department is the Wall Street Journal, which the canny Rupert Murdoch bought as his flagship newspaper outlet. The Times pretty well abdicated its money coverage giving Murdoch the perfect opening to buy the Journal, whose theme is "Money," a universal subject. The Journal is more conservative in outlook, largely because people who deal in money are less comfortable with vituperative lectures by unsettling voices of grievance.

Note how the Journal is moving into the mainstream of traditional journalism, rowing cautiously down the center and adapting some of the Times' mindset from its glory days when its approach to news gathering was more impartial. It will be interesting to see if it transforms itself under its "money" umbrella to become some hybrid that eats its way into the Times' once dominant turf. As an avid Journal paper and website reader, I am deeply impressed by their imaginative effort at transformation.

The fact is that I sorely miss the old influential culture of the once great media outlets. Perhaps I am simply being nostalgic, but I did respect what passed as the elite media of yesteryear which, I sensed, gave me a more factual and balanced picture of our world than they do today. I believed in their news coverage. I believed in the honesty of their columnists' offerings, even those with whom I disagreed. I now take everything they say with a giant grain of salt, and I ignore the pretentious faux sagacity of their editorials.

Worse, as a former newspaper editor, I can easily recognize the bias of their headline writers and the subtle ways they place their stories to cater to their committed readers. Thankfully, my experience has given me the ability to filter out all the hogwash.

That said, I will never give up my paper subscription to the New York Times, which I have been reading since I was twelve years old. I know how to interpret their politically tinged news stories and their columnists' offerings, which I read diligently but without conviction. They amuse and entertain me, and I do occasionally learn something of interest from their efforts.

But the non-political content of the Times is unbeatable and, for the most part, well written, wide-ranging and wonderfully diverse. It covers a vast panorama of the local, national and global community. It offers the best coverage of the arts anywhere on the planet, and I cannot conceive of not seeing the paper at my apartment door every morning.

Yes, their political influence has declined and they have certainly lost traction among those who do not follow their political line, but I can understand the business decisions that they must have made to continue their bias. They have been dealt a terrible technological blow that might one day bring them to their knees and are trying to cope with this onslaught as best they can by gathering together the prime adherents of their bias.

As they say in politics, they are being loyal to what has become their base. Indeed, I have the sense that any dissent to their policies from within their ranks is met with tolerant contempt and, worse, the threat of expulsion.

I wouldn't deign to predict how this decline of influence of the once powerful media will play out. Indeed, it is impossible to embrace the dizzying spiral of information being hurled at us through cyberspace. I just hope and pray the center holds, but I'm no longer as certain as I was.

Warren Adler is the author of 30 novels, including The War of the Roses and his latest, Funny Boys.