At last, a journalist makes sense of the recent biker violence and the subsequent (over)reactions by law enforcement, and Mike Seate of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review even takes shots at his colleagues in the press for sensationalizing these events and working in concert with the police in prompting public hysteria. Read on for Mr. Seate's take on this situation, as published in his July 15, 2002 article:

Over the last few months, the motorcycle gang that made headlines for its rebellious, anti-social antics in the 1960s has been in the news again.

Hells Angels members now are middle-aged and graying, but they've been involved in fatal shootings in New York and Laughlin, Nev., had their names linked to international drug-smuggling rings and even prompted the summoning of the National Guard when they showed up at a New Hampshire motorcycle rally last month.

Unfortunately, all of this hype has little to do with the reality of working alongside a group of area Hells Angels a few weeks ago.

For a group that TV news teams and police departments from Amsterdam to Los Angeles have described as "a wealthy, sophisticated drug cartel," these guys were taking nothing stronger than Advil.

The Lake Coast chapter of the Hells Angels, who attended a motorcycle festival at Cleveland's Thompson Dragway, were an older, friendly lot for a bunch of guys who've been painted with the same brush as al-Qaida terrorists. If the Angels and other motorcycle gangs are, in fact, reaping billions from operating alleged drug empires, the profits haven't trickled down to Akron yet. These bikers partied on bargain beer, lived in a 20-year-old trailer and cooked their meals on a tiny, 99-cent discount store barbecue grill.

For all of their multi-million dollar budgets and high technology surveillance equipment, you'd think the AFT and FBI would realize that millionaire drug dealers don't ride 10-year-old Harleys and walk around with fewer teeth than are found in the back row of a Willie Nelson concert. Maybe the biggest crime being committed here is felony stereotyping.

It's true that many people over-romanticize the outlaw biker image and ignore it when these guys do break the law. But why are we still vilifying a group that contains a few punch-out artists and small-time dope peddlers when white-collar crimes - from stock fraud to dodgy accounting practices that affect the lives and jobs of millions - still don't get guys in Armani suits stereotyped as thieves?

Maybe it's because law enforcement agencies can use the so-called threat of biker gangs to scare the populace and beef up their operating budgets.

And it's a lot easier to roust a half-employed guy in a leather jacket for selling $50 worth of cocaine than it is to investigate the highest levels of corporate America. If the FBI is, in fact, looking to apprehend career criminals, they should shift their spy glasses from the trailer parks to the boardrooms of Fortune 500 companies.

For years, the media and society at large have labeled all members of certain groups by the actions of a few. Guilt-by-association, for some unknown reason, applies to some of society's minorities and not others; no one targeted red-haired Christian gun nuts after Timothy McVeigh bombed the Oklahoma City Federal Building, but it's a sure bet that Arabic men interested in airline jobs are being advised to seek different career paths these days.

Surely, some Hells Angels have broken the law in lots of weird and horrible ways. But so have plenty of Masons, Shriners, politicians and, as we learned last week, executives at energy giant WorldCom and Qwest, a Denver-based telecommunications firm.

Of course, experienced members of the media know this already. It just doesn't make a good story.