Okay. I give up. I can no longer defend CNN as a "news" organization. Well, actually, I could, but like Melville's Bartleby -- I prefer not to.

When Ted Turner unveiled his marvelous 24-hour news creation in June, 1980, I was there. I was there as network conglomerates and corporate behemoths nervously derided Turner's vision, withheld advertising revenue, and forced him to establish CNN -- brick by ethical brick -- as the most trusted name in news.

I was there when the ravenous Rupert Murdoch grabbed a piece of the action with his FOX News Network, and CNN was caught like a deer in a Mack Truck's headlights. I submit that the JACKAL News Network more aptly describes Murdoch's voracious venture and, since I am relatively sure Murdoch has not copyrighted that particular title, I will henceforth refer to his network as "JNN." From the first day, JNN established itself as a rollicking, hypocritical, right-wing "all day singing and dinner on the grounds" picnic for the Republican Party in general and for George W. Bush in particular.

Yes, I hung in there, a bewitched glutton for punishment, as CNN fought for ratings by taking a frenzied wrong turn at every journalistic branch in the road. I was there as CNN head Walter Isaacson disgraced both himself and the network by scurrying through the halls of Congress, plaintively begging for the job as handmaiden to the stars. Upon his triumphant return, CNN "news" soon took a back seat to more trivial pursuits.

CNN helped to create the shadows of doubt that resulted in releasing back into society a national football hero who most likely not only viciously slaughtered his wife and her friend, but splattered his own beyond-a-shadow-of-doubt DNA over a two-block area. The down side to this debacle could be that CNN also created Greta Van Susteren in the process, who wasted no time in bolting to JNN where the seeds of her spin could flourish in more fertile soil.

CNN led the pack in a malicious crusade to overturn two legal elections and destroy a sitting president for almost having sexual relations with a plump intern who literally "thong-armed" him into disgrace. In spite of what CNN said, that woman -- Ms. Lewinski -- was old enough to know better. And so was the president, although to be impeached for lying about a sexual tryst is rather laughable, considering the lies of the current administration that have catapaulted us into bloody chaos in the Middle East. But that's another story -- and one you probably won't see on CNN...

CNN and JNN, both suffering from a Clinton-Lewinsky hangover -- with no verifyable facts and while successfully drowning out continued declarations of Modesto police that he was not a suspect -- tag-teamed California Democrat Gary Condit to political death over the disappearance of intern Chandra Levy.

They each cleaned up their act, however, when Lori Klausutis, an aide to Florida Republican Joe Scarborough, was found dead in his office in July 2001, and -- to this day -- each has meticuously refused to mention it. Scarborough, who had just been reelected, suddenly felt the time-worn urge to spend more time with his just-divorced family and fled Congress. He is now being rehabiliated, ala the devious Oliver North and the ghoulishly bloated Henry Kissinger, in the media. But that's at least three other stories that, alas, you will not find on CNN.

I stayed with CNN throughout all the state-level news tragedies of missing children and murderous moms, thinking that, somehow, the national tragedies of our raped and pillaged economy, job losses, presidential environmental mischief, the discarding of critical social programs such as Head Start, the disarray within the Pentagon as Donald Rumsfeld's shadow government goes head-to-head with the people's government -- would at least generate a blip on CNN's radar screen. Yeah. I know. Must have been something I ate...

If we are to believe our own lying eyes by reading international coverage of journalists on the ground, Dubya's war on "terror" in Iraq is terrifying indeed. Everywhere but in the US news media, Operation Enduring Freedom is leaving a sea of blood in its wake. However, if we are to believe CNN, war is not hell; it is merely "heck." There is no blood worth mentioning, no depleted-uranium danger to US troops and no dissent or voices crying in the national wilderness.

The only bodies we've seen on CNN were the cleaned-up and reconstructed Uday and Usay Hussein, Saddam's evil spawn. CNN seems to be a bit confused as to how many coalition troops, or Iraqi civilians for that matter, have been slain. But then, you can hardly blame them because, like former Central Command (CENTCOM) General Tommy Franks said -- "We don't do body counts..."

Well, let me help you out a little here, because I do "do" body counts. As of September 2 (http://lunaville.org/warcasualties/Summary.aspx), there were 286 US soldiers and marines killed, 50 United Kingdom and 2 from other countries. That's a total of 338.

The body count that seems to be of no consequence to CNN or other US media is the number of slaughtered innocent Iraqi civilians which, at last count (http://www.iraqbodycount.net/) was 6,118 confirmed and a total of 7,836 reported.

What about the wounded? The Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12096-2003Sep1.html) says since the war began in March, the number of wounded in action is 1,124. If you're waiting for updates from CNN, it might be quicker if you just turn off the TV and camp out in the bushes at Andrews Air Force Base, where troops are shuttled back from the war front in the dead of night...

It's been painful, but I'm nothing if not faithful, and I stayed the course. I was there throughout CNN's pitiful, downward spin into journalistic Alzheimers. Ted Turner jumped ship long ago, which is a diplomatic way of saying he was forced to walk the plank because a loose cannon like Turner couldn't be trusted to stand mute as his once-proud CNN was turned into an obedient, impotent state-controlled propaganda machine...

There are a few things I wish I could ask CNN before I go. Not important, really -- just curious...

...Why have you never mentioned that your top political analyst, William Schneider, is a research fellow at the right-wing think-tank, American Enterprise Institute?

...Why has Arnold Schwarzenegger become -- like George W. Bush -- your charge to keep? C'mon, after digging into Scott Peterson's lurid conversations in order to publicly trash and convict him of murder before his trial, why not air Arnie's "gang-bang" remarks to Oui Magazine?

...With your round-the-clock, round-the-year obsession with campaigns and elections, why are you not frantically investigating the controversy surrounding touch-screen voting machines? Are you not concerned with the possible irreparable harm to the "fair and balanced" voting process in this great nation?

...Why haven't you delved into the reasons George Bush made a recess appointment to slide the dangerously racist warmonger Daniel Pipes to the US Institute for Peace?

...What were Dick Cheney and Poppy Bush doing in Saudi Arabia last week?

I wish I could stick around while CNN regurgitates yesterday's silly and totally irrelevant Tucker Carlson/Brittany Spears tabloid circus act for the hundredth time today as if it had any bearing whatsoever on anything at all and who gives a shit whether that vacuous, gum-chewing twit "trusts" the president or if maybe she just "remembers" what CNN did to the Dixie Chicks?

Carlson: "Do you trust the president?"

Spears: (smack, crack)..."Do I trust the president?" (chew, blink, grin, smack, smack) -- "Yeah. I do. We need to trust everything he says and just be faithful..."

BREAKING NEWS....Brittany Spears supports George W. Bush! Brittany goes on record as supporting the President!

That's it, CNN. I'm outta here.

Hasta la vista, Baby...