I skyped for the first time last night.

That is, my wife and I used www.skype.com to talk to our son and his wife in New York - with a webcam on both computers providing the video link as well.

Talking on the phone will never be the same again.

Of course, video conferencing has been around a long time, and I’ve been in a number of business meetings that included video of the face behind the voice on the other end of the line.

But this is different.

This is talking to loved ones in the comfort of your home (and their home), seeing them and laughing with them - all on a free long-distance connection.

It beats the telephone - whether cell or land line - all to heck.

I remember when our son (the same one) first went off to college, 2,000 miles away at the University of Southern California, we would ask him to go stand next to the Tommy Trojan statue, where there was a live webcam, so we could see his face.

That was 1996, when he was a freshman in college. That’s how far webcams go back.

He’s come a long way since then - about 3,000 miles across the country, married, with a little girl and another on the way.

Now I can chat and interact with my son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter - and I don’t have to ask them to stand next to a statue.

I was thinking about what I should say about the Jesse Jackson/Barack Obama snafu when the New Yorker magazine cover came out.

Both are cases of media behaving poorly. Both are national stories that got little play in The Evening News. We’re a local newspaper that focuses on covering the Monroe County area. We print as much national and world news as we can in the space that’s left - and sometimes interesting stories like these get short shrift.

Both are interesting to me because they highlight issues that weren’t handled well by the media.

The first story involved the off-camera (he thought) remarks made by Rev. Jackson about Mr. Obama. A camera was running, and caught Rev. Jackson saying:

“See Barack been, um, talking down to black people on this faith based. I wanna cut his nuts off. Barack, he’s been talking down to black people.”

When the story hit the mainstream media, the Associated Press and most newspapers decided not to report the actual text of the comment. The Associated Press story in The Evening News made two references - first to “a crude comment,” then calling it, “a slang reference to wanting to cut off Obama’s testicles.”

Like most readers, I immediately wanted to know what actually was said. It didn’t take long to find the video on the Internet. I thought it was going to be pretty vulgar. I couldn’t believe that “I wanna cut his nuts off…” was considered to be inappropriate for a general audience - especially since we’re talking about two very high profile people, one running for leader of the free world.

The biggest sin, I thought, was that the paraphrasing made it sound worse than the actual words. Roy Peter Clark, who writes for the Poynter Institute, said it better in this blog post on the subject. By not reporting the actual words, we (the media) deprived people of the chance to decide for themselves how grievous the offense was.

Now, along comes the New Yorker cover. An entirely different kind of mess.

The New Yorker is famous for satirical covers. This time they blew it big time.

In an effort to satirize the offensive stereotyping of Barack and Michelle Obama during the presidential race, the artist depicts Sen. Obama in a turban, giving a fist bump to his wife, who has an afro and is holding an AK-47 in an apparent attempt to portray her as a terrorist. The American flag burns in the fireplace behind the couple,and a picture of Osama bin Laden hangs on the wall.

I’m sure that New Yorker editors thought their sophisticated and liberal audience would appreciate the joke. Ha, ha.

The problem is that satire only works when it’s obviously satire. Too many Americans have believed the untruths that politically motivated rumormongers have spread about the Obamas. The magazine cover reinforces the very lies and hatred it attempts to satirize.

I’m the first to defend The New Yorker’s right to publish satire. I’m generally a fan of satire. But in this case, the stakes were too high and the attempt missed too badly. In a race that should be about issues and leadership and who has the best plan to move the country forward, this cover puts race and bigotry right back in the forefront.

Nice, try, New Yorker, but it didn’t work. The end result is likely to be the opposite of what you intended.

When the world’s leaders get together in a place called Rusutsu, Japan, and agree to cut global greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2050, it sounds like something a long way away that could hardly mean anything to folks in Monroe County.

And, it is true, most experts pooh-pooh the move as meaningless rhetoric.

But few places in the world have more at stake than Monroe County. How many other communities have two coal-fired power plants - not to mention a cement plant.

From the perspective of the world, the critics are probably right. It’s too little, too late, and isn’t likely to make any kind of an impact on the health of the planet.

From our perspective here in Monroe County, it could mean a lot if it leads to tougher controls on greenhouse gas emissions.

Most Monroe County residents want clean air. They appreciate the steps that DTE, Consumers Energy and Holcim have made to clean up their emissions. Many probably would support tighter controls that would make the air even cleaner and do our part to slow global warming. And we also have a nuclear plant and another on the drawing boards - one of the best solutions to burning more carbon.

But most Monroe County residents don’t support controls that would cost the community thousands of jobs.

The leaders of the world’s most powerful countries appeared to dodge any real commitment to cutting pollution. There are lots of reasons for their hesitation. Those reasons are understood better in Monroe County than in most places.

One of the regular users of MonroeTalks, “Kazimer,” challenged me to think about the connection between George Carlin, Tim Russert and MonroeTalks.

Kaz sent a link to a column by Rabbi Aaron Bergman on Detnews.com that made the loose link between Russert and Carlin, noting that they both “spoke truth to power.”

Neither backed down from challenging people in authority - in their own very different ways. Russert, as host of Meet the Press, was unfailingly polite and professional while asking tough questions and insisting on real answers. Carlin took pride in being rude and irreverent, both in his comedy and in his obversations on government, religion and any other institution.

What does all that have to do with MonroeTalks?

Kaz didn’t give his opinion, but I can see the direction he was heading with the question.

As the person primarily responsible for moderating MonroeTalks.com, I take a lot of grief from both sides when there is a controversial post that some think should be deleted.

Of course, I don’t make those decisions in a vacuum. They’re often discussed by several people before a decision is made. And of course, one of the underlying principles that we hold dear at The Evening News is freedom of speech. 

When it’s a close call, we’re usually going to err on the side of leaving it. That angers some people, who think we should be more aggressive in the name of decency. Like George Carlin’s comedy, some of the comments on MonroeTalks are pretty raunchy.

When does a person’s right to free speech get trumped by the public’s right to read a community discussion forum without being offended?

That’s not a question with an easy answer. We have “Terms of Service” for MonroeTalks - as well as for the comments that follow stories on monroenews.com - that prohibit profanity, obscenity and personal attacks, among other things. That helps, and we delete any clear violations. The problem is the huge gray area.

Rabbi Bergman ended his column with a plea that perhaps holds part of the answer.

“Politicians and religious leaders around the country are probably breathing a little easier, because Russert and Carlin will not be there anymore,” he wrote.

“It is up to all of us, in our own way, to continue to demand honesty and integrity from all in public life.”

MonroeTalks is a place where everyone can say what they want - in their own way. They can challenge people in authority, speaking their own version of “truth to power.” They also can tell jokes, swap recipes for potato salad, or banter about baseball.

And they can do it all like Russert, with class and respect, or like Carlin, with sharp and vulgar humor. 

My wife and I are thinking about getting a dog.

I’ve been negligent about blogging lately.

I’m following the growth of Twitter, wondering when and whether we should consider using it to help report the news in Monroe County.

Does all of this have any connection?

Only the tiniest thread.

I was reading the “E Media tidbits” blog on the Poynter Institute Web site this morning. It’s one of the ways I keep up with what’s going on in journalism new media circles.

There was a post by Michael Arrington, of TechCrunch.com, about how Twitter is occasionally turning off the reply function, because of traffic problems. Mr. Arrington noted that he just switches over to FriendFeed.com when that happens.

So I followed the link to see what that was about. This is how he started the conversation he used as an example:

“I keep thinking I should blog something, and then I look out at the ocean and go play with my dog instead.”

Note how short the message is. Typical of Twitter conversations.

Back to my story. That got me thinking about the dog my wife and I are considering. After 20 years of owning a dog, we’ve gone the last 10 or so without one. We’re thinking of getting back into the game.

The vision of walking the dog on the beach gets me thinking nostalgically about past walks with former pooches.

Which leads me to the fence I’ll need to build.

One more time-consuming project that will keep me from blogging.