Big Brother Tommy Thompson really is watching you

[DaveSZ]

http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/news/editorial/8914426.htm


Posted on Sun, Jun. 13, 2004







KATHLEEN PARKER


Big Brother really is watching

KATHLEEN PARKER


WASHINGTON – While you were watching President Ronald W. Reagan’s caisson wend its way up Constitution Avenue to the Capitol Rotunda on your TV screen, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson was watching you on his screen.

Or, more accurately, watching out for you on numerous satellite video screens in his Washington-based “Command Center” – a surreal, high-tech, couch-potato fantasy located in a large, converted conference room a few steps from Thompson’s office in a non-descript building on Independence Avenue.

Thompson gave me a tour of his universe Wednesday, a few hours before Reagan’s body arrived in Washington for funeral ceremonies. The aptly named Command Center looks and feels like a hybrid of “Star Trek” and “ER.” I half expected Spock and Leonard McCoy to beam down and report to Capt. Thompson.

All four walls are filled with plasma TV screens, the latest in display technology, including some with satellite videoconferencing capabilities. The floor space is filled with rows of tables and computers and populated with men and women from various branches of the military as well as civilian experts in science, medicine and bioterrorism.


-more

[latebloomer]

1. The author is "comforted" by the thought

that Big Brother is watching.

Isn't that special.

:eyes:

[DaveSZ]

2. Don't make me report you to the Thought Police

;)

[number6]

3. I know ...

and KATHLEEN PARKER -blek- :puke:

[Leprechan29]

4. I don't think she found it likable

"It is an odd sensation to find comfort in the knowledge that your government is watching, but so it goes in the age of terrorism. The movie is us, and “remote control” isn’t just a channel changer anymore."

She just meant that it was a wierd feeling to know that it was happening.

So it goes in the age of terrorism.

[DaveSZ]

5. Oh yeah

Parker is a real wingnut isn't she?

She wrote a scathing editorial about Ted Kennedy the other week.

[NC_Nurse]

6. How bored he must be...

if he's watchin' me.

[Deja Q]

7. I truly miss Jocelyn Elders... a Surgeon General who worried about people

And not looked out rabidly for "terrorists" at the funeral of the skunk who masturbated with them until discarding them like the kleenex he used.