Before I was so rudely interrupted by a vicious hack attack that took down all the MediaChannel sites, including this blog and my ShockJocks site, for weeks… before our not-for-profit lack of financial resources was thrown into sharp relief once again… before dozens of members of the community responded – again, and thank you all again! — with checks to keep us at least on a cyber-respirator… and well before hundreds more responded to our survey about re-launching “MediaChannel 2.0″…

And before Michael Jackson died, and the media’s inherent propensity to go “live from death” was exposed again in all its awful hunger… before Walter Cronkite, our longtime lead adviser and longstanding media reform hero, passed away…

Before the Twitter Revolution was replaced by still more reports of celebrity deaths, and before Twitter and Facebook were knocked out by hackers over the ongoing Russia/Georgia dispute, revealing again how our unprotected reliance on new media technologies can backfire in a nanosecond…

And before the Reverend Moon-controlled Washington Times began its inane prattling over health reform “death panels,” and before Glenn Beck began calling Obama a “racist…”

Before GE and NewsCorpse executives did their control-the-news deal with Fox and NBC and ordered Olbermann and O’Reilly to cease-and-desist… and before O’Reilly and Olbermann went right back at it….

Before Rupert and the AP tried to corral the wild Internet and put up pay walls for “information-that-wants-to-be-free…” and the AP tried to out-wiki Wikipedia… and before the New York Times tried to run the Boston Globe into the ground permanently… before Mouthpiece Theatre suggested Hillary drink “Mad Bitch” beer and got its ass cancelled… even before the entire “Beer Summit” and “Gates-gate” erupted…

Before Dan Rather cried - again! – and called for a presidential commission to ‘assess’ the news, and before Bill Keller said –again - he is ‘confident’ in the future of said news… before Scripps reported “2Q profit with 23% revenue decline…” and before the Washington Post censored Tank McNamara over Dick Cheney.

Before Fox Business Channel – with fewer than 30,000 primetime viewers began negotiation with Don Imus to bring nappy headed ho’s back onto mainstream cable and before Conde Nast decided to make its employees drink tap water and before media gadfly Michael Wolff attacked not only Frank Rich but Frank Rich’s freaking children.

Before NBC ‘newsman’ Brian Williams began shilling for Jay Leno and before the ever-shrinking LA Times redesigned its website - again!

Before Glenn Beck advertisers finally started to pull their ads… Even before the New York times unveiled its “Wine Club…”

And before yet another MSM stalwart left a ‘major metropolitan daily’ for a Web-based outlet and before Vibe magazine died… and came back to life along with the magazine subscription card itself!

It was before the San Francisco Supervisors led the way on hate speech in the media and even before the Washington Post tried to cash in on its pay-to-play special salons… before Tina Brown urged Hillary to take off her “burqa” and long before Hillary’s epic trip to Africa turned into another bad hair day!

But that was then - and this is NOW.

Yes, as you can see, things move fast out there in MediaWorld - even in the summer.

As I was saying… it’s good to be back!