Jim Hightower

Jim Hightower noting that as we approach Thanksgiving in these raucous and tumultuous times, let's be grateful for a few small favors that play to our gentler, more peaceful sides.

For example, while phone companies, cable systems and others are merging, gobbling each other up and contorting themselves into one megagiant that will dominate [echo] "The Information Superhighway," shoving 500 channels of digitilized television into our homes and heads . . . [sweet, soft, peaceful music] let's hear it for Magnavox.

This TV-maker has come up with "Smart Sound," a gizmo that automatically muffles those blaring television commercials. Now that's progress -- about time, too.

Now, as starting linebacker for the Denison High School "Yellow Jackets" in 1961 -- I know football is a violent sport. But a big part of the violence these days comes not from the players, but from the turf. A quarterback plants his foot to pass just as he's hit in the knee. His cleats stick in the turf . . . so his knee gives in. Or a receiver is knocked to the ground and his head slams against the "artificial turf," which is nothing but concrete with a thin sheet of green plastic over it.

But help is on the way. Harry Weiss out in Scottsdale, Arizona, has invented cleats that break away -- so knees won't. and several of the team owners are finally making plans to switch from artificial to real turf. About time, huh?

Now here's one you wouldn't have thought possible -- a polite political campaign. In Islip, New York, Pamela Bednarik ran for town clerk without slinging mud or calling her opponent names. A Democrat in a Republican stronghold, Ms. Bednarik lost her election a few days ago . . . but she's a winner.

This is Jim Hightower saying . . . [ECHO] "It's about time!"