Last night I dreamt I was swallowed by a fish.
Down there, in that cavernous pit, feet swishing in six inches of dank salt water, I wandered. There was no light and when I reached out my hands into the black all around me I could feel no walls and no end.
In the distance, then, a match was struck and I began to walk towards it. When I reached its source I stood over a young man of medium build wearing a white shirt stained with fish guts, a tie, a black vest, and tuxedo pasts. He was filleting a fish that our host had swallowed whole. The man might have been thirty, but not a day more, but there was something worn in his posture, a tenseness straining his shoulders. He looked up at me and offered a faint smile.
“Hi Bill,” he said as he carved out the flesh beneath the fish’s gills.
It was odd that he knew my name. I opened my mouth to speak, but to my surprise, no words came out.
“I hope you voted Bill,” he said now sluicing guts from the fish’s belly. “I wish I could have followed that old Richard Daley maxim: ‘vote early and often.’ Ya know? Because they let me out of here every now and then and the one thing I’ve been able to count on these past seven years is some daylight on election day.”
I was curious to ask who this ‘they’ was but once again found myself mute.
He was now slipping a flat edged spoon underneath the fillet to check for remaining guts.
“The darkest day in the history of this country was not to soon after 9/11, the day that Bush urged us all to go out and shop.” His voice landed on the word ‘shop’ with elongated disdain. He snapped off the fishes tail. “I won’t argue with anyone who says 9/11 was a horrible tragedy, a national disaster. But if it was a turning point, any hope for progress died with the utterance of that word.” The fish’s spine was now exposed. “And when we as a nation quietly and quickly gave our resounding yes to that directive, we gave our very soul right over to the next seven years of lies and manipulation. We flushed our world standing right into the shit can. And for me, Bill, that’s what this goddamned election is about. Reversing those vacuous words that set us spinning into every goddamned disaster we’re staring at today. And it’s about having the goddamned balls to stand up to the soulless operators of endless campaigns and say, fuck you buddy, fuck you I get it, fuck you I understand that your lame brain candy-coated lace lined version of the American motherfucking dream is the crap we’ve all been buying for years, the crap that has us playing Rome the world over. That’s what the Bush boys and girls asked of us and we did it, most of us anyway, we did it: Be Nero, they said. Fiddle you fucks. Fiddle and watch it burn. We’ll just be right over here, barely out of sight, hell, sometimes we’ll be in plain sight, siphoning off the ashes of your American dream.”
He snapped the head off the fish.
“That’s what this election is about. Fuck hope. We got a couple of years before we can start this ‘shining city on the hill’ shit again. I’m voting for Obama, if they let me that is, because I know it’s the only chance we’ve got in this country to start making the kind of hard choices that will make us last. I think a vote for McCain is a vote for history and its ill-tempered tides. There’s not a lot of real truth in this world, Bill, but if we put the Maverick and the Pitbull in office, I think we’ll get a front row seat to the fall. America has been unbelievably fortunate, historically speaking. And we can either embrace the work that it’s going to take to restore that fortune, or we can embrace the blind, vacuous sycophancy that has guided us the last seven years. The unfettered American dream. Shop. Jesus.”
And he started eating his raw fish, picking the pin bones out of his teeth. I stood there for a while and watched him eat.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Monday, September 29, 2008
The Escape.
Chovevei Torah is located on Eastern Parkway between Albany and Troy. Aunt Rachel has not missed a Friday night service in almost sixty years. She leads tours. When Stein first suggested it, two weeks ago, as a route of escape I laughed. What Rachel does not know, what Stein and Yossi Stern (head of the volunteer civilian patrol organization, The Shmira) do know, is that the worldwide Lubavitch headquarters is connected via a series of underground tunnels to all of the influential Orthodox synagogues in the area. The tunnels, if viewed from above, form a subterranean star of David.
The plan is simple. Stein sits on the executive committee and has invited me along with Stern to be the Ark guardians. It is an honor people like Stern receive regularly (Stern, for some reason, has elected to be my guide on this escape---gambling debts aside, I find this to be deeply unsettling. Unsettling in the coming home to find a stranger sitting on your front porch sort of way. However the prospect of missing the Palin/Biden smackdown is worth the risk.) For me to be in front of the congregation is suspect at best. But, religion being the house of ready made redemption, I have rationalized that people will see me as a symbol of the fallen returning, the unerring power of Judaism to inject prudence and meaning into the lives of even the most depraved. I digress. While Stern and I are flanking the Ark, Stein will be delivering an address to the congregation on the current economic crisis and its implications on the Jewish community. Stein has the advantage of being perceived to be completely insane in general, yet profoundly informed on the subject of economics. Stein will address the congregation and will make a slip, saying some as of yet undecided deeply offensive statement that will cause the upper level of the synagogue, where women sit, to be cleared. For decorum's sake, of course. In the general hubbub that accompanies the herding of the women towards the exit, Stein will feign fainting. Stein will lose no face as he has none to lose (outbursts are always the risk one takes when allowing him to speak in public) and Stern and I will slip unnoticed into the secret exit beneath Stein's lectern. By the time Aunt Rachel has attempted to locate me, and by the time she can't find me and call's Stern's Shmira, Stern and I will be driving towards St. Louis. Meanwhile, the Shmira will conduct a thorough and fruitless search of Crown Heights and the surrounding environs.
Stein is speaking now. Droning about short selling and mark to market accounting. Aunt Rachel is nodding off. It's not hot, but the humidity has painted the room with sweat. The time is nearly nine, when Stein is to make his gaffe. Then it begins. Stein stops and seems to lose his place. One of the Rabbi's acolytes starts gesturing to the point in his speech transcript where he paused. Stein smacks his hand. The gesture is grand enough to catch the attention of the congregation. Everyone stops.
Stein steps away from the lectern now, leaving our exit unblocked, and moves center.
"I have decided as of today to stop all personal donations to the state of Israel and I implore you all to do the same," he says.
Pandemonium! Recriminations! Spittle and rage lobbed from the fur lined mouths of the elders, indignation and spite spat from the fresh faces of the young believers. He's turned the synagogue into the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. The women are herded out, the men are enraged. The Rabbi walks toward Stein and puts a hand on his shoulder. Stein bites his hand! Brilliant. The men are charging the bima like villagers from 'Frankenstein.' Stern looks at me and politely gestures toward the lectern as if to say 'after you.' I move quickly making sure not to look up and catch Aunt Rachel's eye.
We are in the tunnels now, the sounds of the synagogue melee receding.
The plan is simple. Stein sits on the executive committee and has invited me along with Stern to be the Ark guardians. It is an honor people like Stern receive regularly (Stern, for some reason, has elected to be my guide on this escape---gambling debts aside, I find this to be deeply unsettling. Unsettling in the coming home to find a stranger sitting on your front porch sort of way. However the prospect of missing the Palin/Biden smackdown is worth the risk.) For me to be in front of the congregation is suspect at best. But, religion being the house of ready made redemption, I have rationalized that people will see me as a symbol of the fallen returning, the unerring power of Judaism to inject prudence and meaning into the lives of even the most depraved. I digress. While Stern and I are flanking the Ark, Stein will be delivering an address to the congregation on the current economic crisis and its implications on the Jewish community. Stein has the advantage of being perceived to be completely insane in general, yet profoundly informed on the subject of economics. Stein will address the congregation and will make a slip, saying some as of yet undecided deeply offensive statement that will cause the upper level of the synagogue, where women sit, to be cleared. For decorum's sake, of course. In the general hubbub that accompanies the herding of the women towards the exit, Stein will feign fainting. Stein will lose no face as he has none to lose (outbursts are always the risk one takes when allowing him to speak in public) and Stern and I will slip unnoticed into the secret exit beneath Stein's lectern. By the time Aunt Rachel has attempted to locate me, and by the time she can't find me and call's Stern's Shmira, Stern and I will be driving towards St. Louis. Meanwhile, the Shmira will conduct a thorough and fruitless search of Crown Heights and the surrounding environs.
Stein is speaking now. Droning about short selling and mark to market accounting. Aunt Rachel is nodding off. It's not hot, but the humidity has painted the room with sweat. The time is nearly nine, when Stein is to make his gaffe. Then it begins. Stein stops and seems to lose his place. One of the Rabbi's acolytes starts gesturing to the point in his speech transcript where he paused. Stein smacks his hand. The gesture is grand enough to catch the attention of the congregation. Everyone stops.
Stein steps away from the lectern now, leaving our exit unblocked, and moves center.
"I have decided as of today to stop all personal donations to the state of Israel and I implore you all to do the same," he says.
Pandemonium! Recriminations! Spittle and rage lobbed from the fur lined mouths of the elders, indignation and spite spat from the fresh faces of the young believers. He's turned the synagogue into the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. The women are herded out, the men are enraged. The Rabbi walks toward Stein and puts a hand on his shoulder. Stein bites his hand! Brilliant. The men are charging the bima like villagers from 'Frankenstein.' Stern looks at me and politely gestures toward the lectern as if to say 'after you.' I move quickly making sure not to look up and catch Aunt Rachel's eye.
We are in the tunnels now, the sounds of the synagogue melee receding.
Friday, September 26, 2008
My Own Private Bailout
Aunt Rachel sits at the breakfast table rummaging through old recipe cards. The dull glow of fall rain and haze tentatively enters the room. The paper flakes in her hands. I sit opposite her, hands pressed underneath my thighs, waiting. Every morning the same thing, three weeks now. She sorts recipes at this time of year. She prepares for the New Year by sorting recipes. She prepares for the New Year sorting recipes by day light and reading during the evening by candle light. She does this because every year she cuts the power in her home in what she deems the holiest month. The power will be restored once all sins have been atoned for. One month to remind us (and all of her tenants---God only knows how they tolerate this nonsense!) of the privilege we are afforded living in this most modern of ages and how we regularly ignore said privilege in pursuit of our basest impulses.
Aunt Rachel is not a mean woman. There is a fierce and comical pragmatism to her annual power outages. Part of it is religious devotion. The other part of it is that, traditionally, there is no need to follow the Cubs during the month of September. So, she has suffered too. But, regardless of motivation, she has imprisoned me, watching my every movement. She has decided to keep me under her eye till Yom Kippur. And her will is God's will.
I had plans. Plans to travel the backroads of Ohio and Pennsylvania, interviewing the 'average' American, Tocqueville-style, and seeing what was actually happening in the vast swath of land between New York and California. Unfortunately those plans were going to be paid for by liquidating money invested primarily in AIG stock. So it goes.
But now it is too much. I have to bail on Aunt Rachel. Kastelbaum has offered me tickets to the Palin/Biden debate next week (he actually mailed me a letter telling me as much). I must find my way there. I am broke sure, but one more morning of the recipe cards and I will truly have sins to atone for. Big sins. Ones I haven't even conceived of committing since Venezuela.
I have sent a note to Menachem Stein. Aunt Rachel and I will be at synagogue tonight, for Shabbat. He will help me escape from Brooklyn, escape from the crazy clutches of what Jews refer to as hospitality. I have an idea for a book, a novel, simmering in my head. I must see the Palin woman upclose to know if this idea has any merit. But first I must escape. I have noticed Aunt Rachel watching me closely these past few days. I have never been good at keeping secrets. I wear them like Christmas ornaments tangled in my payot. So, I must be careful.
Tonight, I escape. Tonight with luck, I may be free.
Aunt Rachel is not a mean woman. There is a fierce and comical pragmatism to her annual power outages. Part of it is religious devotion. The other part of it is that, traditionally, there is no need to follow the Cubs during the month of September. So, she has suffered too. But, regardless of motivation, she has imprisoned me, watching my every movement. She has decided to keep me under her eye till Yom Kippur. And her will is God's will.
I had plans. Plans to travel the backroads of Ohio and Pennsylvania, interviewing the 'average' American, Tocqueville-style, and seeing what was actually happening in the vast swath of land between New York and California. Unfortunately those plans were going to be paid for by liquidating money invested primarily in AIG stock. So it goes.
But now it is too much. I have to bail on Aunt Rachel. Kastelbaum has offered me tickets to the Palin/Biden debate next week (he actually mailed me a letter telling me as much). I must find my way there. I am broke sure, but one more morning of the recipe cards and I will truly have sins to atone for. Big sins. Ones I haven't even conceived of committing since Venezuela.
I have sent a note to Menachem Stein. Aunt Rachel and I will be at synagogue tonight, for Shabbat. He will help me escape from Brooklyn, escape from the crazy clutches of what Jews refer to as hospitality. I have an idea for a book, a novel, simmering in my head. I must see the Palin woman upclose to know if this idea has any merit. But first I must escape. I have noticed Aunt Rachel watching me closely these past few days. I have never been good at keeping secrets. I wear them like Christmas ornaments tangled in my payot. So, I must be careful.
Tonight, I escape. Tonight with luck, I may be free.
Monday, September 8, 2008
Karma Chassid
Settling back into life in New York City is always difficult when you've been in other American cities for too long. Fortunately for me, the last two weeks of partisan rancor were such that being bumped on subway platforms and nearly run over by three consecutive bike messengers felt like a warm embrace. Unfortunately for me, my landlord saw fit to use my absence as occasion to change the locks.
The loss of residence allowed me to return to Crown Heights and possibly reunite with Menachem Stein and his nefarious underworld. But that would have to wait, as first I needed a place to stay.
Great Aunt Rachel owns and maintains a four story, rent-stabilized apartment building with two units per floor. It's in a relatively tree lined street not far from the Eastern Parkway. A clean building smelling of Murphy's Floor Soap and Lysol, it has no front stoop and no backyard and all the windows on the front of the building have tastefully decorated bars. She only rents to Chassids.
Rachel maintains the bottom floor as her own and has combined the two units into one sprawling space. She lives alone and keeps no pets. At eighty-three she still maintains the plumming and minor repairs of all the building's units. She sees no reason to pay someone else to do a job she, herself, has always been capable of doing.
At the end of World War Two, she was a young girl in Chicago. For that reason, she has always been an avid Chicago Cubs fan and was actually present during the last appearance in the World Series by said team. She is also a lifelong FDR/Truman type Democrat. So, last week was particularly tough on her.
Over a breakfast of the kind of colon stripping porridge more familiar to Russian peasants than Brooklyn Chassids (yet food she swears is the sole reason for her vigor at her advanced age) she explained much to me:
"Politics and baseball. Oy, William! To be a Democrat and a Cubs fan now, this, William, this is to suffer. Just weeks ago my beloved Cubs and that lovely young black from the South Side were doing so well. And now, in one week of indignity, those shmuck Republicans jump ahead in the polls and the Cubs can only manage one win against opponents inferior. I'm practically put out of my head." To make her point all the more emphatic she kneads her brow with her left hand and spoons gruel with her right.
"It's not enough to have not won a World Series in one hundred years..." Her voice often trails off when she speaks of this fact. It used to drive her husband wild. We all suspected that there was another man in those two wild years in Chicago right after the war. Her late husband, Benjamin, would always rant: "Why the Cubs, eh? We live in New York! Fifty years we're New Yorkers! Two years, two festunkena years in some town in the Midwest and I have to hear about it day in and day out! Enough!" It never was.
"But, William, to have lived these last eight with that goyische disaster Bush? These last eight years have felt longer than any hundred I could have ever imagined!" She stands slowly to pour herself more coffee. "But, William, this is what we must bare. It is our historical role, Democrats and Cubs fans alike. We will not rest until the final vote is counted, the final out officially recognized by the official scorer. And we'll worry ourselves bald up until that day. But this William, this is what it is to have a stake in history, to feel it in your bones. Because the Republicans, they don't care! They've got money and influence and that... that... attack machine, the one that chewed on Hillary for eight years like month old Matza... it will be just fine if they don't elect the shiksa and altacocker. They'll spend the next four years making sure the guy with the Muslim name is able to accomplish little and suffer greatly. The Republicans know what it is to know historical dominance. Life becomes mere sport." She coughs for emphasis.
"But, I see a great link in the events of the last week. I see the work of God testing us, the pathetically devout. This will be the year, but it will not be easy. The temptation now is to lament and blame the baseball Gods or the convention calendars. Circumstances, pheh! The economy is a disaster. This is on our side, eh? Zambrano is getting extra rest along with Harden, this is good, no? The last week has been hard on the Democrats, the schedule not in their favor, right? The next three weeks put the Cubs mostly on the road against playoff caliber teams. Unfair? Neither. I see opportunity William. I see fortification and tough earned experience. Invaluable experience. Because I believe, for once, I'm on the right side of history, this time. As long as we stopping bitching and whining and worrying ourselves bald, this may be a Fall to remember."
Still standing, she turns towards the back window that looks directly onto another back window and lifts her chin slightly upward.
The loss of residence allowed me to return to Crown Heights and possibly reunite with Menachem Stein and his nefarious underworld. But that would have to wait, as first I needed a place to stay.
Great Aunt Rachel owns and maintains a four story, rent-stabilized apartment building with two units per floor. It's in a relatively tree lined street not far from the Eastern Parkway. A clean building smelling of Murphy's Floor Soap and Lysol, it has no front stoop and no backyard and all the windows on the front of the building have tastefully decorated bars. She only rents to Chassids.
Rachel maintains the bottom floor as her own and has combined the two units into one sprawling space. She lives alone and keeps no pets. At eighty-three she still maintains the plumming and minor repairs of all the building's units. She sees no reason to pay someone else to do a job she, herself, has always been capable of doing.
At the end of World War Two, she was a young girl in Chicago. For that reason, she has always been an avid Chicago Cubs fan and was actually present during the last appearance in the World Series by said team. She is also a lifelong FDR/Truman type Democrat. So, last week was particularly tough on her.
Over a breakfast of the kind of colon stripping porridge more familiar to Russian peasants than Brooklyn Chassids (yet food she swears is the sole reason for her vigor at her advanced age) she explained much to me:
"Politics and baseball. Oy, William! To be a Democrat and a Cubs fan now, this, William, this is to suffer. Just weeks ago my beloved Cubs and that lovely young black from the South Side were doing so well. And now, in one week of indignity, those shmuck Republicans jump ahead in the polls and the Cubs can only manage one win against opponents inferior. I'm practically put out of my head." To make her point all the more emphatic she kneads her brow with her left hand and spoons gruel with her right.
"It's not enough to have not won a World Series in one hundred years..." Her voice often trails off when she speaks of this fact. It used to drive her husband wild. We all suspected that there was another man in those two wild years in Chicago right after the war. Her late husband, Benjamin, would always rant: "Why the Cubs, eh? We live in New York! Fifty years we're New Yorkers! Two years, two festunkena years in some town in the Midwest and I have to hear about it day in and day out! Enough!" It never was.
"But, William, to have lived these last eight with that goyische disaster Bush? These last eight years have felt longer than any hundred I could have ever imagined!" She stands slowly to pour herself more coffee. "But, William, this is what we must bare. It is our historical role, Democrats and Cubs fans alike. We will not rest until the final vote is counted, the final out officially recognized by the official scorer. And we'll worry ourselves bald up until that day. But this William, this is what it is to have a stake in history, to feel it in your bones. Because the Republicans, they don't care! They've got money and influence and that... that... attack machine, the one that chewed on Hillary for eight years like month old Matza... it will be just fine if they don't elect the shiksa and altacocker. They'll spend the next four years making sure the guy with the Muslim name is able to accomplish little and suffer greatly. The Republicans know what it is to know historical dominance. Life becomes mere sport." She coughs for emphasis.
"But, I see a great link in the events of the last week. I see the work of God testing us, the pathetically devout. This will be the year, but it will not be easy. The temptation now is to lament and blame the baseball Gods or the convention calendars. Circumstances, pheh! The economy is a disaster. This is on our side, eh? Zambrano is getting extra rest along with Harden, this is good, no? The last week has been hard on the Democrats, the schedule not in their favor, right? The next three weeks put the Cubs mostly on the road against playoff caliber teams. Unfair? Neither. I see opportunity William. I see fortification and tough earned experience. Invaluable experience. Because I believe, for once, I'm on the right side of history, this time. As long as we stopping bitching and whining and worrying ourselves bald, this may be a Fall to remember."
Still standing, she turns towards the back window that looks directly onto another back window and lifts her chin slightly upward.
Friday, September 5, 2008
The End
Back at Le Malentendu du Jura for a breakfast of jambon, croissant, and coffee. Apparently the restaurant's ambitions take the morning off. This is strict Parisian stock and I note, as I dine alone slowly, the irony of the twenty minute wait of hungover Republican revelers. We have come quite a ways in four years, haven't we?
My Palin-pique has subsided. The only remainders of my uncharacteristic outburst are my intentionally wide spread of newspapers at the bar, combined with an aggressive lack of bathing intended to keep the seats to my left and right empty. I have seen three solo diners return to the host stand so far. Bliss, my friends, is in the simple things.
The conventions are over and not a moment too soon. Initial poling suggests a tie or a slim Obama lead. Which considering all the bile slung his way this week would be not a small victory. Credit is due to the Republican machine who made damn sure that the Democratic National Convention ended as soon as Obama left the stage. And now, thankfully, we are left to ponder the questions of the coming months: Will Sarah Palin be allowed to speak to anyone not from The View or Fox News? Will the Vice-Presidential Debate draw more viewers a Survivor Finale? Will the Democrats come out swinging or wait to react to whatever Rovian mischief is being cooked up as we speak?
Kastelbaum read me the riot act yesterday. He felt my post represented the kind of anger best left to therapist's offices and punching bags. He argued that my readers (you few, you lucky few) in all likelihood agreed with me and needed no further reason for inflaming. And anyway, we knew it was coming. The hatefest was inevitable. Obama went tough so the Republicans went back to their basics.
Of course, what's going to be really interesting is the stuff that doesn't make the cable news. It's going to be how the house to house efforts of volunteers in Ohio, Michigan, Virginia, Colorado, Pennsylvania, and, maybe, Florida fare and the who wins the registration drives for new voters. I'll be looking to talk to those people more in the next two months. They're the ones who decide these things anyway, not Keith Olbermann and Sean Hannity.
I pay the check and make my way towards the exit, the airport, and my New York home. On the way out, the same Red Bull deprived chef from Monday's visit is arriving at work. His eyes linger on the concrete and do not look up. We all have a part to play in this strange country, I guess, even the loons.
My Palin-pique has subsided. The only remainders of my uncharacteristic outburst are my intentionally wide spread of newspapers at the bar, combined with an aggressive lack of bathing intended to keep the seats to my left and right empty. I have seen three solo diners return to the host stand so far. Bliss, my friends, is in the simple things.
The conventions are over and not a moment too soon. Initial poling suggests a tie or a slim Obama lead. Which considering all the bile slung his way this week would be not a small victory. Credit is due to the Republican machine who made damn sure that the Democratic National Convention ended as soon as Obama left the stage. And now, thankfully, we are left to ponder the questions of the coming months: Will Sarah Palin be allowed to speak to anyone not from The View or Fox News? Will the Vice-Presidential Debate draw more viewers a Survivor Finale? Will the Democrats come out swinging or wait to react to whatever Rovian mischief is being cooked up as we speak?
Kastelbaum read me the riot act yesterday. He felt my post represented the kind of anger best left to therapist's offices and punching bags. He argued that my readers (you few, you lucky few) in all likelihood agreed with me and needed no further reason for inflaming. And anyway, we knew it was coming. The hatefest was inevitable. Obama went tough so the Republicans went back to their basics.
Of course, what's going to be really interesting is the stuff that doesn't make the cable news. It's going to be how the house to house efforts of volunteers in Ohio, Michigan, Virginia, Colorado, Pennsylvania, and, maybe, Florida fare and the who wins the registration drives for new voters. I'll be looking to talk to those people more in the next two months. They're the ones who decide these things anyway, not Keith Olbermann and Sean Hannity.
I pay the check and make my way towards the exit, the airport, and my New York home. On the way out, the same Red Bull deprived chef from Monday's visit is arriving at work. His eyes linger on the concrete and do not look up. We all have a part to play in this strange country, I guess, even the loons.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
P is for Pandering
Holy Shit! Jesus Christ is a woman! And she showed up in all her glory on the stage at the Republican National Convention last night! Oh, wait, I have my stories wrong. Somewhere in the late eighties while Reagan was looking more and more like the doddering fool he always was (please staff, spend extra time and millions to make movies for me explaining the issues of the day, I'm just the leader of the free world and shouldn't be expected to be able to grasp issues by reading about them!), several key Republican advisors began to syphon off his charm and fight in liquid form and were systematically injecting it into a nice little beauty queen in Wasilla, Alaska. The Gipper has returned! With a vagina! All praise.
Sorry if I am being histrionic, I'm just trying to match the tone of my colleagues here in St. Paul. There is only one word to describe Governor Palin's address to her screaming acolytes last night: pandering. It appears McCain's sole purpose in bringing this unknown entity into the spotlight of a national campaign is to drag said campaign right into the gutter. Because his top aides are already saying this campaign is not actually about 'issues.' What a farce of a Democratic landslide it would be if it actually were. Because all Palin did was energize the fringe lunatics who felt slighted by a so-called independent minded Republican bearing the Party standard. And the only new element she added to the old noise was the kind of cutting cutesy humor that flies around when one too many martinis has been consumed. So, now we have a reform ticket, that consists of a man whose 'reaching across the aisles' for campaign funding reform has been part of the lead up to back to back bank breaking elections while the economy stagnates and slumps and a woman who wanted earmarks amounting to $4,030.00 per resident of US tax payer dollars for every person in Wasilla and was for the 'Bridge to Nowhere' until it became politically advantageous to be against it. And all this nonsense is just to re-ignite the two America's fight. 'I'm just your average hockey mom,' Palin says. Great and grand, now go back to being that and leave the ruling of this country to adults.
All last night proved is that this woman can read a speech. Which is quite an accomplishment on this presidential ticket, but that's beside the point. She hit all the Republican talking points that get Republicans elected and that they promptly forget until the next election cycle. The way they govern is to ceaselessly drive our country into economic and ecological ruin, roll back advancements in science and civil liberties, and wage one pyrrhic war after another.
If you actually listened to the speech (which was hard enough with the crazies vaulting out of their seats every two sentences) all you heard was noise. If you think Obama says nothing, then you should spend a few minutes with this one. Any and all salient points about governing may as well have been uttered by our current leader, the Bush man.
So, once again, it's us versus them. The elites versus the down home American values crowd (whatever those are). Serious discussion about serious issues out the window. Thanks Maverick, thanks a lot.
Sorry if I am being histrionic, I'm just trying to match the tone of my colleagues here in St. Paul. There is only one word to describe Governor Palin's address to her screaming acolytes last night: pandering. It appears McCain's sole purpose in bringing this unknown entity into the spotlight of a national campaign is to drag said campaign right into the gutter. Because his top aides are already saying this campaign is not actually about 'issues.' What a farce of a Democratic landslide it would be if it actually were. Because all Palin did was energize the fringe lunatics who felt slighted by a so-called independent minded Republican bearing the Party standard. And the only new element she added to the old noise was the kind of cutting cutesy humor that flies around when one too many martinis has been consumed. So, now we have a reform ticket, that consists of a man whose 'reaching across the aisles' for campaign funding reform has been part of the lead up to back to back bank breaking elections while the economy stagnates and slumps and a woman who wanted earmarks amounting to $4,030.00 per resident of US tax payer dollars for every person in Wasilla and was for the 'Bridge to Nowhere' until it became politically advantageous to be against it. And all this nonsense is just to re-ignite the two America's fight. 'I'm just your average hockey mom,' Palin says. Great and grand, now go back to being that and leave the ruling of this country to adults.
All last night proved is that this woman can read a speech. Which is quite an accomplishment on this presidential ticket, but that's beside the point. She hit all the Republican talking points that get Republicans elected and that they promptly forget until the next election cycle. The way they govern is to ceaselessly drive our country into economic and ecological ruin, roll back advancements in science and civil liberties, and wage one pyrrhic war after another.
If you actually listened to the speech (which was hard enough with the crazies vaulting out of their seats every two sentences) all you heard was noise. If you think Obama says nothing, then you should spend a few minutes with this one. Any and all salient points about governing may as well have been uttered by our current leader, the Bush man.
So, once again, it's us versus them. The elites versus the down home American values crowd (whatever those are). Serious discussion about serious issues out the window. Thanks Maverick, thanks a lot.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Labor Day 2008
St. Paul, Minnesota.
Le Malentendu du Jura is a popular restaurant specializing in Southeastern French cuisine here in St. Paul. It launches a two front offensive against the diner: on one front Le Mal (as it is known in local shorthand) proffers the traditional bistro-esque interior of tastefully smudged mirrors with specialites emblazened on the surface, the high ceilings and marble floors that amplify the clink of toasting glassware and the scratch of silverware on herring bone china, and the weird Toulouse Lautrec lighting that enhances merriment and drunkenness. From the other front swoops in dishes inspired by the mountains of Jura, a small range of mountains north of the Alps that separates the Rhine and the Rhone rivers. The food, a mix of the fish caught in those two rivers paired with the gamey elements of the mountains themselves, is a welcome change to traditional bistro fare. I, as always, am excited to eat.
Today, the restaurant is empty as service begins promptly at 5:30pm. Kastelbaum and I have two hours before we're needed at the wholly paired down first night of the Republican National Convention. We sip glasses of vin jaune and pop pieces of brochette Jurassiene into our mouths. The chef, a squat Napoleonic man with thinning hair and a pronounced squint is leaning on the corner of the bar looking out disapprovingly at the lack of diners. I'm sure they expected to be busy all week. He is sipping on a Red Bull and muttering to himself when, suddenly, he slams his hand on the table, screams 'Gustav!', pivots on one foot, and marches back towards the kitchen. He leaves the Red Bull perched precariously on the bar's edge.
"The great thing about being middle management in the News world is that I can skip out on days like today and let the senior figureheads and the young go-getters handle the brunt of the work." Kastelbaum is in much better shape than at our breakfast in Denver. He does not appear to have slept, but now that is not dampening his enthusiasm. I think he is also relieved that Ms. Dowd gave me a press pass as a parting gift.
I, on the other hand, am anxious to talk about Palin and what she means. I read this today: Tamar Fenton, 45, of suburban Minneapolis, said she admired Palin, a mother of five, and was not bothered by the governor's relative lack of experience. "If you can go up against a teenaged kid," said Fenton, "you could go up against a world leader." I now quoted these exact words to Kastelbaum.
"Well, that's pretty disturbing, Bill."
"Pretty disturbing?" I am enraged. A meteor shower of mostly chewed Jura cheese and ham sprinkle the table top. "This woman, who is not even a fan of Palin's, is basically saying that any parent who can lock horns with their wild child teenager is capable of leading the free world! Is that not shocking?"
Kastelbaum, all of a sudden unflappable, orders two more glasses of vin jaune and continues chewing.
"Bill, this is not news. The only politician to be elected president since Carter, who was nuts, that has had the kind of resume we all would call properly experienced is H.W. And he only lasted one term. The leaders who've succeeded the most were relatively new governors whose gifts were first and foremost rhetorical. Reason has no place in political campaigns. The polls are bullshit, the news coverage is publicly condoned masturbation, the punditry are by any means diagnosable bi-polars, and the electorate has taken to voting for people who appear to make them feel better about themselves." He is positively beaming as he picks up the wine list and starts deftly flipping through the pages. His cynicism makes him ebullient. He goes on.
"So, this woman was mayor of a town that you probably could drive through in less than a minute. So, she pulled a John Kerry on the whole 'Bridge to Nowhere' fiasco and her reformer streak may be purely political. And so what if she's outed in this whole Troopergate scandal. Until she falls flat on her face on the campaign trail or Biden eats her for lunch on foreign policy, she's going to energize a lot of surprising people. Because she is the real face of the American dream!"
The whole restaurant has, apparently, gone nuts. Kastelbaum is glowing and looking around for a waiter to order more wine, and the chef is back at the bar berating the bartenders because his Red Bull has gone missing. Between the noise of Kastelbaum repeating the words 'Burgundy' over and over again and the chef accusing his staff of being 'fucking liars making very bad decision' I try to make sense of Kastelbaum's logic. I feel like I'm screaming on an airfield when I finally ask:
"Morty, what the hell do you mean?"
"Bill, is the American dream to work hard at a trade for ten, twenty, thirty years day in and day out to be rewarded, eventually, with position, privilege, and salary? Or is the real American dream to wake up someday in Assfuck, Alaska to find out that hey, someone has just given you all of that on a platter not because of anything you've really done, but because of who you are? Which one really captures the old imagination?"
It is too much. The fierce illogic, the screaming Gaul, the noise echoing off hard marble and glass. I throw fifty dollars on the table and leave without saying goodbye. Kastelbaum can drink alone tonight. I head for the Convention.
Le Malentendu du Jura is a popular restaurant specializing in Southeastern French cuisine here in St. Paul. It launches a two front offensive against the diner: on one front Le Mal (as it is known in local shorthand) proffers the traditional bistro-esque interior of tastefully smudged mirrors with specialites emblazened on the surface, the high ceilings and marble floors that amplify the clink of toasting glassware and the scratch of silverware on herring bone china, and the weird Toulouse Lautrec lighting that enhances merriment and drunkenness. From the other front swoops in dishes inspired by the mountains of Jura, a small range of mountains north of the Alps that separates the Rhine and the Rhone rivers. The food, a mix of the fish caught in those two rivers paired with the gamey elements of the mountains themselves, is a welcome change to traditional bistro fare. I, as always, am excited to eat.
Today, the restaurant is empty as service begins promptly at 5:30pm. Kastelbaum and I have two hours before we're needed at the wholly paired down first night of the Republican National Convention. We sip glasses of vin jaune and pop pieces of brochette Jurassiene into our mouths. The chef, a squat Napoleonic man with thinning hair and a pronounced squint is leaning on the corner of the bar looking out disapprovingly at the lack of diners. I'm sure they expected to be busy all week. He is sipping on a Red Bull and muttering to himself when, suddenly, he slams his hand on the table, screams 'Gustav!', pivots on one foot, and marches back towards the kitchen. He leaves the Red Bull perched precariously on the bar's edge.
"The great thing about being middle management in the News world is that I can skip out on days like today and let the senior figureheads and the young go-getters handle the brunt of the work." Kastelbaum is in much better shape than at our breakfast in Denver. He does not appear to have slept, but now that is not dampening his enthusiasm. I think he is also relieved that Ms. Dowd gave me a press pass as a parting gift.
I, on the other hand, am anxious to talk about Palin and what she means. I read this today: Tamar Fenton, 45, of suburban Minneapolis, said she admired Palin, a mother of five, and was not bothered by the governor's relative lack of experience. "If you can go up against a teenaged kid," said Fenton, "you could go up against a world leader." I now quoted these exact words to Kastelbaum.
"Well, that's pretty disturbing, Bill."
"Pretty disturbing?" I am enraged. A meteor shower of mostly chewed Jura cheese and ham sprinkle the table top. "This woman, who is not even a fan of Palin's, is basically saying that any parent who can lock horns with their wild child teenager is capable of leading the free world! Is that not shocking?"
Kastelbaum, all of a sudden unflappable, orders two more glasses of vin jaune and continues chewing.
"Bill, this is not news. The only politician to be elected president since Carter, who was nuts, that has had the kind of resume we all would call properly experienced is H.W. And he only lasted one term. The leaders who've succeeded the most were relatively new governors whose gifts were first and foremost rhetorical. Reason has no place in political campaigns. The polls are bullshit, the news coverage is publicly condoned masturbation, the punditry are by any means diagnosable bi-polars, and the electorate has taken to voting for people who appear to make them feel better about themselves." He is positively beaming as he picks up the wine list and starts deftly flipping through the pages. His cynicism makes him ebullient. He goes on.
"So, this woman was mayor of a town that you probably could drive through in less than a minute. So, she pulled a John Kerry on the whole 'Bridge to Nowhere' fiasco and her reformer streak may be purely political. And so what if she's outed in this whole Troopergate scandal. Until she falls flat on her face on the campaign trail or Biden eats her for lunch on foreign policy, she's going to energize a lot of surprising people. Because she is the real face of the American dream!"
The whole restaurant has, apparently, gone nuts. Kastelbaum is glowing and looking around for a waiter to order more wine, and the chef is back at the bar berating the bartenders because his Red Bull has gone missing. Between the noise of Kastelbaum repeating the words 'Burgundy' over and over again and the chef accusing his staff of being 'fucking liars making very bad decision' I try to make sense of Kastelbaum's logic. I feel like I'm screaming on an airfield when I finally ask:
"Morty, what the hell do you mean?"
"Bill, is the American dream to work hard at a trade for ten, twenty, thirty years day in and day out to be rewarded, eventually, with position, privilege, and salary? Or is the real American dream to wake up someday in Assfuck, Alaska to find out that hey, someone has just given you all of that on a platter not because of anything you've really done, but because of who you are? Which one really captures the old imagination?"
It is too much. The fierce illogic, the screaming Gaul, the noise echoing off hard marble and glass. I throw fifty dollars on the table and leave without saying goodbye. Kastelbaum can drink alone tonight. I head for the Convention.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Kastelbaum's Lament
Airport bars. Never open late enough, but always there for you first thing in the morning.
Kastelbaum and I downed cups of coffee and bloody mary's two at a time. He looked at me with tired, jealous eyes. Ah, the life of a salaried News man. I had spent the week milling about the blog room and laying the venerable Maureen Dowd. She dumped me this morning, via text message no less, and that was that. What happens at the DNC stays at the DNC.
Kastelbaum was all over the place. His mind warped into a nebula of Obama-mania and McCain Veepstakery. Politics, politics, politics. But somewhere, in that twisted nest of neuroses, he was tapping into something very interesting.
"The point that's got me going from the speech last night were the bits about personal responsibility that Obama threw in. See, I really liked when he hammered it home to his own people about being better parents, fathers specifically, earlier during the campaign. But, the whole personal responsibility thing has been co-opted by Republicans and pretty well mangled. And, what finally made sense to me last night, was how the Democrats can finally reclaim those two words as their own." He stopped and looked up at me. He'd been addressing the entire monologue, thus far, to an empty pint glass lined with tomato seeds and horse raddish flakes. His eyes were splattered with red veins. He put two fingers in the air in the general direction of the bar and continued. "See, Bill, the difference is, when Republicans talk about personal responsibility they talk about what is mine: this is my income, how dare you tax it, this is my community, how dare you tell us what we can and cannot do. And on. What Obama was talking about last night, for me, was the idea of what is ours. You have a responsibility to raise your kids right and have the right to have government support in doing so because it's better for all of us. So, yeah, your tax dollars are going to pay for a lot of services you never see, but if it's done right, then you will see the benefits. And that's about being responsible to the nation as a whole. Mine versus ours. If I take care of me, then I will be ok versus if I take care of me and support a government, that is not going away anytime soon by the way, in supporting others, then the overall effects help me. It's more work for everyone, which has always been a problem."
The drinks finally arrived. Kastelbaum paused and stared at the mural of the Rocky Mountains framing the Dunkin Donuts across the walkway. I didn't know what to make of his little monologue. Morty's a bit of a mystery. One question did immediately leap.
"Morty, why do you work for Fox News?"
"They pay better."
Enough said.
Kastelbaum and I downed cups of coffee and bloody mary's two at a time. He looked at me with tired, jealous eyes. Ah, the life of a salaried News man. I had spent the week milling about the blog room and laying the venerable Maureen Dowd. She dumped me this morning, via text message no less, and that was that. What happens at the DNC stays at the DNC.
Kastelbaum was all over the place. His mind warped into a nebula of Obama-mania and McCain Veepstakery. Politics, politics, politics. But somewhere, in that twisted nest of neuroses, he was tapping into something very interesting.
"The point that's got me going from the speech last night were the bits about personal responsibility that Obama threw in. See, I really liked when he hammered it home to his own people about being better parents, fathers specifically, earlier during the campaign. But, the whole personal responsibility thing has been co-opted by Republicans and pretty well mangled. And, what finally made sense to me last night, was how the Democrats can finally reclaim those two words as their own." He stopped and looked up at me. He'd been addressing the entire monologue, thus far, to an empty pint glass lined with tomato seeds and horse raddish flakes. His eyes were splattered with red veins. He put two fingers in the air in the general direction of the bar and continued. "See, Bill, the difference is, when Republicans talk about personal responsibility they talk about what is mine: this is my income, how dare you tax it, this is my community, how dare you tell us what we can and cannot do. And on. What Obama was talking about last night, for me, was the idea of what is ours. You have a responsibility to raise your kids right and have the right to have government support in doing so because it's better for all of us. So, yeah, your tax dollars are going to pay for a lot of services you never see, but if it's done right, then you will see the benefits. And that's about being responsible to the nation as a whole. Mine versus ours. If I take care of me, then I will be ok versus if I take care of me and support a government, that is not going away anytime soon by the way, in supporting others, then the overall effects help me. It's more work for everyone, which has always been a problem."
The drinks finally arrived. Kastelbaum paused and stared at the mural of the Rocky Mountains framing the Dunkin Donuts across the walkway. I didn't know what to make of his little monologue. Morty's a bit of a mystery. One question did immediately leap.
"Morty, why do you work for Fox News?"
"They pay better."
Enough said.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Notes from Denver
Maureen and I ate Eggs Florentine in her suite this morning. Her interest in me is waning. Measurably waning. Three times during breakfast she counseled me on the proper way to hold a fork. Apparently, in her words, I ate like an urchin from 'Oliver Twist' and, while we went at it like rabid teenagers the night before, she could not shake the image of me, banging my fork on the table and screaming for more. Well, we may have nothing to say to each other now, but, there is something about not one energizing Clinton speech, but two and on back to back nights that really gets the political junkies' libido ramped up. Perhaps, tonight's tumescent swell of populist bliss at Invesco will extend our little tete a tete another week or two and I can meet some people of interest at the Times and obtain new assignments. I have been texting Kastelbaum like a fiend, trying to procure advice on how to keep standing with a woman of Maureen's stature. The only response from him has been a question: 'Do you remember the last time you were with a shiksa?" And indeed I do. Maria, oy! But that is a story for another time.
I am sitting in the hotel's designated blogging area. There are no additional seats. It's worse than LaGuardia. Krugman eyes me suspiciously every few minutes from across the room. I suspect he is catching on. I must make this last through Minnesota. Can you imagine if I, Wild Bill, were actually witness to history as opposed to continually making it up?
The bus is leaving soon. There will be question and answer sessions all day and then the One will make his speech. May it stir the imaginations of millions and the loins of one!
I am sitting in the hotel's designated blogging area. There are no additional seats. It's worse than LaGuardia. Krugman eyes me suspiciously every few minutes from across the room. I suspect he is catching on. I must make this last through Minnesota. Can you imagine if I, Wild Bill, were actually witness to history as opposed to continually making it up?
The bus is leaving soon. There will be question and answer sessions all day and then the One will make his speech. May it stir the imaginations of millions and the loins of one!
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
A Brief Encounter
Krugman's press pass worked well. Better than expected. So well, that I ended up seeing absolutely none of the evening's proceedings. It went something like this:
"Paul, why are you wearing that hat?" The voice was sultry, a slight gravelly purr owed to cigarettes and gin.
I had no idea what what Paul Krugman sounded like. In retrospect, his voice was probably similar to mine, nasal and direct, owed to Hebrew School and mastering the art of complaining. Instead, I chose to answer in something deeper, Marlboro-manish.
"Felt like I'd take a look at this whole idea of Change firsthand." I said. Potentially the stupidest line I'd ever uttered and not even buried in the furthest outreaches of a Princeton trained economist's lexicon. I turned to see a woman whose dark red hair swooped down on either side of her sharp face. She had pencil thin eyebrows, a sharp nose, and thin red lips. There was no mistaking, this was the one and only Maureen Dowd.
I swooned, if only briefly, and then laid on a thick smile. She was hot.
"I like it, Paul. I like it a lot." She whispered a lot and her breath rifled across the ends of my peyot.
"And you look luscious." Who the hell was I? Certainly not Paul Krugman.
"Let's leave." She said. Fate had played its hand and who was I to argue. I ran my hand down her skirt leg and smiled. Suddenly, a distant pang of professionalism shocked me back to eager surroundings. The thousands of devoted, the spirit of change, the---
"You know how these first nights go Paul. Ted Kennedy is going to make a bunch of people cry and Michelle is going to come off better than everyone expected. You can read about it online. Let's leave."
And with that were we gone. The night was glorious, tawdry, and exhausting. I think Dowd must have screwed eight years of angst out of me. I had never been in the presence of of so much prowess and power. I slept for hours.
This morning (afternoon?) I awoke to a note and fresh pot of coffee:
"I know you're not Krugman and I don't care. I'll see you on the floor tonight, Chassid. There's a special press pass for you next to your suit. Krugman spent the whole morning meeting bitching about missing last night. If he only knew... Maureen."
Oy. Now this is change I can believe in!
"Paul, why are you wearing that hat?" The voice was sultry, a slight gravelly purr owed to cigarettes and gin.
I had no idea what what Paul Krugman sounded like. In retrospect, his voice was probably similar to mine, nasal and direct, owed to Hebrew School and mastering the art of complaining. Instead, I chose to answer in something deeper, Marlboro-manish.
"Felt like I'd take a look at this whole idea of Change firsthand." I said. Potentially the stupidest line I'd ever uttered and not even buried in the furthest outreaches of a Princeton trained economist's lexicon. I turned to see a woman whose dark red hair swooped down on either side of her sharp face. She had pencil thin eyebrows, a sharp nose, and thin red lips. There was no mistaking, this was the one and only Maureen Dowd.
I swooned, if only briefly, and then laid on a thick smile. She was hot.
"I like it, Paul. I like it a lot." She whispered a lot and her breath rifled across the ends of my peyot.
"And you look luscious." Who the hell was I? Certainly not Paul Krugman.
"Let's leave." She said. Fate had played its hand and who was I to argue. I ran my hand down her skirt leg and smiled. Suddenly, a distant pang of professionalism shocked me back to eager surroundings. The thousands of devoted, the spirit of change, the---
"You know how these first nights go Paul. Ted Kennedy is going to make a bunch of people cry and Michelle is going to come off better than everyone expected. You can read about it online. Let's leave."
And with that were we gone. The night was glorious, tawdry, and exhausting. I think Dowd must have screwed eight years of angst out of me. I had never been in the presence of of so much prowess and power. I slept for hours.
This morning (afternoon?) I awoke to a note and fresh pot of coffee:
"I know you're not Krugman and I don't care. I'll see you on the floor tonight, Chassid. There's a special press pass for you next to your suit. Krugman spent the whole morning meeting bitching about missing last night. If he only knew... Maureen."
Oy. Now this is change I can believe in!
Monday, August 25, 2008
Press Credentials.
Denver, CO.
My attempts at getting press credentials at the Saturday night Media party had been futile. I couldn't even get in and was repeatedly reminded by fresh-faced college interns with annoying bright eyes that the deadline for application had, in fact, been February 1st, 2008.
I was temping in a Hartford Insurance company office then. I had given up on politics in particular and writing in general. How could I have known that fate would thrust me back onto the campaign trail?
So, I reveiwed my options and was delighted to see the name of Morty Kastelbaum on the Fox News team covering the Obama-Fest. Morty and I had been friends since college, although we had barely spoken in a decade. Morty, it appeared, occupied a tony position at FOX News and, I assumed, could easily provide me with the necessary credentials. We met for a brunch at Denver's Lola restaurant where I was able to secure us a table on the patio overlooking the majestic Mile High City skyline. We drank Bloody Maria's and reminisced about a girl in college of the same name who we had both had the pleasure of delighting in. It was my one tangible experience with a shiksa. Many laughs were had about our days editing the Collegiate Mendele Review and our nights directing avant garde adaptations of the works of Bellow and Sholem Aleichem. Brunch was a festive Mexican delight of Lola Huevos and El Admiral (both of using the out of town out of kashrut rules to justify our pork gilded meals). We were in full merriment when I tactfully requested that he slip me an extra press pass. He had always been a more conservative type, the kind who used college as a sort of petri dish of human experiment in order to justify the remainder of his life following a strict routine, so, it was with little surprise, that I noticed his drunken hue drain to a sober white as he quickly remembered who he worked for.
'Bill,' he said chewing on his third order of chorizo, 'you know there is no way I can get you in with FOX.' He believed that simple statement would be enough to quiet me.
'But, Morty, remember Hunter S. Thompson marching onto the campaign floor with the Nixon Youth in 1972! Stranger things have happened, my friend! And it's me! All I need is a good view of the proceedings and I'll have enough material to write for weeks.'
'Bill, it's impossible. And don't think I know you'll be wanting the same treatment next week in Minneapolis.'
He had me there.
'Nah, Morty, I've got something lined up with the Weekly Standard there already. No problems on the Republican front.' Morty was chewing more aggresively now and signaling our waitress for the check.
'Listen, Bill, I really should get to work. I can't believe I had so much to drink! Good to see you, though, old pal, and maybe we can do the same in Minneapolis. Huh? Anyway, I got this one and I gotta go.' And with that he threw cash on the table, much more than brunch required, and quickly left the restaurant.
Dejected, I wandered out into the oppressive midday Denver heat, sweat quickly soaking through my black coat and hat. My peyot had lost their bounce. Having little to do and even less hope of finding the necessary credentials, I spent the afternoon loafing in and out of local bars, chatting with the people of Denver about Obama and McCain and the state of our great country. I was, unfortunately, far too drunk to remember anything said and too dejected to take notes. After six hours of steady drinking I stumbled into the Sheraton Denver Tech Center, the hotel housing the Illinois Democratic Delegation. In the bar, much to my surprise, I saw a familiar face, head down on the bar, snoring.
It was Paul Krugman of The New York Times. Fortune had smiled upon me! There, hanging off the back of his chair, was his press pass. With little thought, I walked over to the bar, patted him aggressively on the back, yelled a declarative and familiar 'Hey Paul!' and slipped the pass off his chair and into my pocket. Krugman didn't budge.
I was home free.
My attempts at getting press credentials at the Saturday night Media party had been futile. I couldn't even get in and was repeatedly reminded by fresh-faced college interns with annoying bright eyes that the deadline for application had, in fact, been February 1st, 2008.
I was temping in a Hartford Insurance company office then. I had given up on politics in particular and writing in general. How could I have known that fate would thrust me back onto the campaign trail?
So, I reveiwed my options and was delighted to see the name of Morty Kastelbaum on the Fox News team covering the Obama-Fest. Morty and I had been friends since college, although we had barely spoken in a decade. Morty, it appeared, occupied a tony position at FOX News and, I assumed, could easily provide me with the necessary credentials. We met for a brunch at Denver's Lola restaurant where I was able to secure us a table on the patio overlooking the majestic Mile High City skyline. We drank Bloody Maria's and reminisced about a girl in college of the same name who we had both had the pleasure of delighting in. It was my one tangible experience with a shiksa. Many laughs were had about our days editing the Collegiate Mendele Review and our nights directing avant garde adaptations of the works of Bellow and Sholem Aleichem. Brunch was a festive Mexican delight of Lola Huevos and El Admiral (both of using the out of town out of kashrut rules to justify our pork gilded meals). We were in full merriment when I tactfully requested that he slip me an extra press pass. He had always been a more conservative type, the kind who used college as a sort of petri dish of human experiment in order to justify the remainder of his life following a strict routine, so, it was with little surprise, that I noticed his drunken hue drain to a sober white as he quickly remembered who he worked for.
'Bill,' he said chewing on his third order of chorizo, 'you know there is no way I can get you in with FOX.' He believed that simple statement would be enough to quiet me.
'But, Morty, remember Hunter S. Thompson marching onto the campaign floor with the Nixon Youth in 1972! Stranger things have happened, my friend! And it's me! All I need is a good view of the proceedings and I'll have enough material to write for weeks.'
'Bill, it's impossible. And don't think I know you'll be wanting the same treatment next week in Minneapolis.'
He had me there.
'Nah, Morty, I've got something lined up with the Weekly Standard there already. No problems on the Republican front.' Morty was chewing more aggresively now and signaling our waitress for the check.
'Listen, Bill, I really should get to work. I can't believe I had so much to drink! Good to see you, though, old pal, and maybe we can do the same in Minneapolis. Huh? Anyway, I got this one and I gotta go.' And with that he threw cash on the table, much more than brunch required, and quickly left the restaurant.
Dejected, I wandered out into the oppressive midday Denver heat, sweat quickly soaking through my black coat and hat. My peyot had lost their bounce. Having little to do and even less hope of finding the necessary credentials, I spent the afternoon loafing in and out of local bars, chatting with the people of Denver about Obama and McCain and the state of our great country. I was, unfortunately, far too drunk to remember anything said and too dejected to take notes. After six hours of steady drinking I stumbled into the Sheraton Denver Tech Center, the hotel housing the Illinois Democratic Delegation. In the bar, much to my surprise, I saw a familiar face, head down on the bar, snoring.
It was Paul Krugman of The New York Times. Fortune had smiled upon me! There, hanging off the back of his chair, was his press pass. With little thought, I walked over to the bar, patted him aggressively on the back, yelled a declarative and familiar 'Hey Paul!' and slipped the pass off his chair and into my pocket. Krugman didn't budge.
I was home free.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Obama-Biden
The reaction here in Denver is favorable among the majority (the people who would have been happy if Obama had chosen a cocker spaniel as his VP) and predictably maudlin among the Clinton devout. Of course, Obama could have chosen a collective running mate culled from the DNA of FDR, JFK, Susan B. Anthony, and Martin Luther King Jr. and those people still would be upset. Time is short before we all huddle into crowded bars and watch the coronation in Springfield, and you can read about all the reaction from far more credible sources than yours truly. But I would like everyone to take a moment and consider this comment from today's New York Times online:
"I am sorry, but I cannot vote for any presidential ticket which reads: Obama - Biden. It sounds like,
and reads like, the FBI’s #1 Most Wanted terrorist since 9/11. Any other VP choice would have at
least given him a chance."
I am deliberately not putting this person's name in here as he/she has already made a big enough ass of themselves in a publication that many, many more people will read. If this is a joke, then this person is making Jeff Foxworthy look like a genius. If there is even a trace of serious sentiment here, and if someone actually deigns to use this as criticism of any stripe of the Democratic ticket, then I think it's time to go back to the drawing board on this whole humanity thing.
"I am sorry, but I cannot vote for any presidential ticket which reads: Obama - Biden. It sounds like,
and reads like, the FBI’s #1 Most Wanted terrorist since 9/11. Any other VP choice would have at
least given him a chance."
I am deliberately not putting this person's name in here as he/she has already made a big enough ass of themselves in a publication that many, many more people will read. If this is a joke, then this person is making Jeff Foxworthy look like a genius. If there is even a trace of serious sentiment here, and if someone actually deigns to use this as criticism of any stripe of the Democratic ticket, then I think it's time to go back to the drawing board on this whole humanity thing.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Ah... the leaves are...
...What? What's that you say? It's not late October? Oh, yes, check the calendar and the thermometer: It's August.
What an unfortunate fact that must be over in the land of the mainstream media. How my colleagues are so greatly relishing in the demise of the One, the imminent splattering of Hope on the pavement of realpolitik. How readily they trumpet what Obama must do and do now to save his once vaunted (by them, no less) campaign. How the angry Maverick is on the rise. How this convention is do or die.
This is politics in the age of mass pontification. And the entire endless proceedings are moderated by a bunch of attention starved, mind numbing whores. Hell, my memory has been ravaged by all sorts of chemical degradation, but even I remember the fucking exit polls showing Kerry beating Bush soundly in states Bush eventually won (the means behind those victories may be in question, but). And you may ask what that has to do with my current state of outrage about the blathering going on about the demise of Change? Well, everything, to be frank.
Because, with all our excessive means of gathering and sharing information, we're still wrong all the time. And with little substantiative information demanded by the media and, therefore, even less offered by the candidates, we have nothing to do through the infinite election cycle other than blow hot air. Unfortunately, for those of us interested in the actual fate of the country, that hot air is what propels candidates into office.
And nothing will stem that momentum. Certainly, nothing I say. So, for now, fuck it! Obama's going down! Clinton would have been ass raping McCain with a strap-on while Bill riffed off Miles Davis on his saxophone in the background! McCain is going to open up a 15 point lead after it turns out that not only will Obama not shake the hands of soldiers in Afghanistan, but that he actually flings his own feces at their returning caskets for fun!
The sad thing is that with a little polish and a mass email to the right people, I could probably influence some votes with that last statement.
What an unfortunate fact that must be over in the land of the mainstream media. How my colleagues are so greatly relishing in the demise of the One, the imminent splattering of Hope on the pavement of realpolitik. How readily they trumpet what Obama must do and do now to save his once vaunted (by them, no less) campaign. How the angry Maverick is on the rise. How this convention is do or die.
This is politics in the age of mass pontification. And the entire endless proceedings are moderated by a bunch of attention starved, mind numbing whores. Hell, my memory has been ravaged by all sorts of chemical degradation, but even I remember the fucking exit polls showing Kerry beating Bush soundly in states Bush eventually won (the means behind those victories may be in question, but). And you may ask what that has to do with my current state of outrage about the blathering going on about the demise of Change? Well, everything, to be frank.
Because, with all our excessive means of gathering and sharing information, we're still wrong all the time. And with little substantiative information demanded by the media and, therefore, even less offered by the candidates, we have nothing to do through the infinite election cycle other than blow hot air. Unfortunately, for those of us interested in the actual fate of the country, that hot air is what propels candidates into office.
And nothing will stem that momentum. Certainly, nothing I say. So, for now, fuck it! Obama's going down! Clinton would have been ass raping McCain with a strap-on while Bill riffed off Miles Davis on his saxophone in the background! McCain is going to open up a 15 point lead after it turns out that not only will Obama not shake the hands of soldiers in Afghanistan, but that he actually flings his own feces at their returning caskets for fun!
The sad thing is that with a little polish and a mass email to the right people, I could probably influence some votes with that last statement.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Jew too?
Ah, Denver. The Mile High City. The place that pioneering spirits wondered at the Rocky Mountains, gathered their toughest and strongest for the rough road ahead, and left the pussies and complainers behind to found. There is nothing to do here. The Obamamaniacs work with religious fervor and, after the One's beating in the press, refuse to talk to me. So, I called an old friend from the McCain campaign, a high ranking member who wishes to remain anonymous.
WBH: Thanks for joining me ----.
HRM: Let's make this quick Bill. You've been banned from the campaign for months now.
WBH: I want to talk about McCain's potential running mate.
HRM: That's why I'm here. We're sick and tired of all this noise about Obama and who he's going to anoint to join his cult leadership.
WBH: Well, I must say, your campaign has made a spirited comeback, albeit by using the Republican attack tactics that your man initially said he was above, but none the less you've scored a major coup in the media. They're angry at Obama for making them look wrong. All the cooing and bluster they lobbed at him like confetti in his battle with the Clinton woman is now looking as vacuous as it actually was and the media is starting to doubt him because they feel slighted in the realization that the guy is actually human.
HRM: Yeah well, I mean, he's young and inexperienced and clearly struggling to find his footing. And, I'll tell you what, we would have done the same thing to Clinton. Because the one quarter of her voters still pissed enough to not vote for Obama would be the same one quarter of his supporters holding out out of childish spite. And our Republicans, the sensible ones anyway, are coming around to the importance of keeping the party in power. This is McCain's game to win now baby. I like him putting the idealists and the elitists on edge.
WBH: Yeah, you guys are confident. So, let's look at the top four: Romney, Ridge, that guy from Minnesota who no one has heard of, and, uhhh, Lieberman. Now, obviously, you people are practical, so we can cross Lieberman off the list---
HRM: That's actually where we're leaning Bill.
Prolonged Silence.
WBH: Are you fucking insane?
HRM: Not at all, Bill. In fact, Lieberman epitomizes the future McCain administration. Bi-partisan and independent with a keen eye toward broadening American military strength worldwide and bolstering a stagnant economy at home.
WBH: And you believe Joe Lieberman is the man who is going to provide the knock-out punch with the general electorate? He's the guy to once and for all topple the Obamamaniacs and all their fervor?
HRM: We're more concerned with the way the man will govern. We believe we can win this election with any of the current finalists.
WBH: Have you paid an ounce of attention to the way he has handled himself as a public servant since letting Dick Cheney eviscerate him in the 2000 Vice Presidential Debates? The man is a biohazard to campaigns. Are you hoping to attract to the racist upper class, comically pro-Israel septegenarian voting bloc? Picking Lieberman is not reaching across the aisle! It's like reaching into a tank full of poisonous snakes! The man will bury you! He's the perfect independent. He only cares about Joe!
HRM: Listen, Bill, with all due respect, this is getting out of hand. This is the exact kind of nonsense that got you kicked off the campaign in the first place. So, I gotta---
WBH: You're ending the interview? Oh, no sir, I am ending the interview! You people disgust me! Go, take your fake war hero and your misunderstood, myopic misrepresentation of my people and ride that horse straight to second place! Why don't you give Thomas Eagleton a call. I'm sure you could exhume him for a second run at the White House!
Silence.
WBH: Douchebags.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Notes from Frontier Airlines Flight 3301, LaGuardia to Denver
The terminal in LaGuardia resembles the hallways of Charlton Heston's apartment building in 'Soylent Green.'
The same man who checked my bag is now taking my ticket. At least I didn't have to pay to check my bag.
Inside the plane is surprisingly neutral. I was expecting something more rustic or faux 'Western' after seeing the wings and tail of the plane covered in a glamour shot of a galloping steed.
Much to my chagrin I am sitting in B, therefore, the middle, and therefore, nowhere to sleep.
A young IPhone wielding technocrat, covered from head to toe in Obama gear, takes the window.
Not a minute later a slightly older woman wearing a homemade 'Hillary was robbed' tee takes the aisle.
About thirty seconds after they notice each other, they're at it. Taunts of racism and sexism, platitudes about experience versus change, personal barbs and insecurities being masked by political baiting. I'd record the specifics, but, trust me, you've heard them all already.
Meanwhile, across the aisle, there's some guy a suit smirking. He's in a row with two seats and one of them is empty.
But, that's not why he's smirking. He's not wearing any buttons or tee-shirts proclaiming his support for anyone, but it's as obvious as the material of his suit who he's voting for. He's a McCain guy reveling in the Democrats still playing the you upended my personal Christ game. Meanwhile, the McCain campaign has started conforming to traditional Republican campaigning strategies and has managed to pull almost even in the polls.
This is why I stopped writing about politics for two and a half months. It was doing just fine without me. The color of one guy was a little different, that's all. Republicans play to win, Democrats play to feel superior. The rest is noise.
I order a bloody mary and a vodka tonic and down both in less than a minute, pausing only to knock back four Ambien in between gulps. I'll have two weeks to listen to this prattle day in and day out.
Sleep warms over me.
The same man who checked my bag is now taking my ticket. At least I didn't have to pay to check my bag.
Inside the plane is surprisingly neutral. I was expecting something more rustic or faux 'Western' after seeing the wings and tail of the plane covered in a glamour shot of a galloping steed.
Much to my chagrin I am sitting in B, therefore, the middle, and therefore, nowhere to sleep.
A young IPhone wielding technocrat, covered from head to toe in Obama gear, takes the window.
Not a minute later a slightly older woman wearing a homemade 'Hillary was robbed' tee takes the aisle.
About thirty seconds after they notice each other, they're at it. Taunts of racism and sexism, platitudes about experience versus change, personal barbs and insecurities being masked by political baiting. I'd record the specifics, but, trust me, you've heard them all already.
Meanwhile, across the aisle, there's some guy a suit smirking. He's in a row with two seats and one of them is empty.
But, that's not why he's smirking. He's not wearing any buttons or tee-shirts proclaiming his support for anyone, but it's as obvious as the material of his suit who he's voting for. He's a McCain guy reveling in the Democrats still playing the you upended my personal Christ game. Meanwhile, the McCain campaign has started conforming to traditional Republican campaigning strategies and has managed to pull almost even in the polls.
This is why I stopped writing about politics for two and a half months. It was doing just fine without me. The color of one guy was a little different, that's all. Republicans play to win, Democrats play to feel superior. The rest is noise.
I order a bloody mary and a vodka tonic and down both in less than a minute, pausing only to knock back four Ambien in between gulps. I'll have two weeks to listen to this prattle day in and day out.
Sleep warms over me.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Menachem Stein
The awning of Empire Kosher at 529 Empire Boulevard in Crown Heights, Brooklyn is red, yellow, and blue. There is a shopping cart between the words ‘Empire’ and ‘Kosher’ that resembles an angular Pac-Man ready to chomp down. The chipper sign stands in stark contrast to the ruddy and chipped façade of the block long stone building. The windows on the second floor are broken and boarded; the paint on the roof is rusted. The sun is setting on a Friday and a young Chassidic boy is pulling down the grey metallic paneling that protects against vandalism. There is a lot of vandalism to protect against.
I know my way to the second floor. Through the service entrance and then into the deserted store, past shelves stacked with Tradition Foods and towards the Handicapped Bathroom I walk. At the bathroom door a man, tall and angular with pomaded peyas and a blunt jawbone, emerges. He is Yossi Stern, head of the volunteer civilian patrol organization, the Shmira. We know each other, but from the blithe way he brushes past me, I doubt he remembers why. I’m not here to see him and he has more pressing issues on his mind than unpaid gambling debts.
In the Handicapped Bathroom I flush the urinal three times and a panel to its left slides open. I walk through the opening and close the door carefully behind me. The eighteen steep stairs end at an opening draped with beads.
“William, good of you to make it back to the old neighborhood.” The voice, arid and accented cuts through the tobacco coated air. The voice belongs to Menachem Stein, the man I have come to see.
“You got my email then?” I ask. I stand just inside of the doorway, waiting for an official invitation to cross the waiting room and enter Stein’s inner office.
“We do not live in the stone age, as you may like to think.” Stein’s voice does not express annoyance; it rarely betrays emotion of any sort. “Come in Bill, let me have a look at the man you have become.”
Now, I walk across the waiting room, empty but for one plastic folding chair and an unwatered acer palmatum ‘koto ito komachi’ plant and push open Stein’s office door.
Menachem Stein is a bilious man. He has a face like a mound of half eaten pastries. His flesh, necrotized in patches, reads like a map of humanity’s woes in the seventy years his life has spanned. It is all there: a fading tattoo on the right forearm, remnants of radiation poisoning from a period in his life in the fifties of which he is not obliged to speak, unsightly furrows in his cheeks from repeated high voltage water pelting. And that is merely what is visible. Beneath the dusty and frayed black jacket, beneath the alcohol and pastry stained white shirt, beneath the tattered prayer shawl are countless and uncatalogued abrasions and burns. It is no wonder he has stuffed himself so full of food and drink since I last saw him. He can no longer look down past the bulging plate of fat jutting out from what, if one really was to strain his imagination, was once a neck. His girth provides a welcome bit of ignorance.
Ignorance is not something Stein would ever profess too. His disposition may be as sour as the bile in his corroded liver, his body may be an altar of self-loathing and debasement, but his mind is still quick, his pride still strident. He sits behind his newspaper covered desktop, stacks of books framing him, with ink stains on his fingertips and a half smoked Camel clasped between his chapped lips and looks at me. He is not pleased with what he sees.
“Shit,” he says and turns his attention right back to what he was studying. A bolt of panic shoots through my gut. For the first time in years I stop to consider what I have actually done to myself, what I look like to one who once had deep faith in me. Had he been whipped into a Yiddish or Hebrew screaming frenzy, had he stood up behind his desk and flung a book at me in disgust, had he calmly admonished me for my transgressions it would have been enough. But this one look, one derisive word, in English no less, tells me all I need to know about the man I have become. Pride trumps panic momentarily and I muster a great speech on the life I had seen and the Earthly experience now in my possession, the kind of experience that could shoot holes in all his scholarly learning. But then I remember what kind of Earthly experience he has and his response to it, and I lower my head, shamed, and turn to exit.
“William, sit down. Oy, you were always so dramatic and impetuous. I wasn’t talking about you.” This makes me feel worse, but I walk to the carpenter’s stool in front of Stein’s desk and take my customary place. Visitors are not intended to be comfortable here.
“This neighborhood is in decline again. Our people, the blacks, and the goddamn real-estate developers are all warring it out for dominance. It’s going to be a long summer. I’m sure you and Stern crossed paths coming and going.” I nod and scratch my nose.
“I’m here to ask you about McCain.” I say. And as soon as I do, I feel the strains of a child tugging at my heart and mind; there is something decaying, fetid about the whole office, probably the entire life of Stein. The room is dry, the window shades drawn, and there is little light beyond the borders of Stein’s Cadillac of a desk.
“William, I know you have been following this McCain character for some months now. I urge you to stop…” He looks disdainfully at his pillar of ash. I wait for him to continue.
He reachs into a desk drawer and pulls out a brown accordian file. He runs his liver spotted hands over the dusty brown container. A sinister smile creeps onto his face. The smile is slight and sly and can mean only one thing: revenge.
“Bill, I am due at the synagogue in fifteen minutes. I’d invite you but I doubt you’d deign to join us.” I nod my head with a mixture of pride and shame. “I can also think of a few people who would not take kindly to your presence.”
I stare at the folder on his desk. What’s in that thing? My face betrayed my thoughts and Stein’s smile fades.
“Take it,” he says and heaves it across his desk. I reach out to catch it and practically fall off the stool. It weighs more than I expect.
“In there is everything you need to know and every reason for you to stop and stop now. Now leave. I will contact you soon.”
No goodbyes are exchanged. I stand and leave. I understand as I cross the barren waiting room and descend the scuffed staircase that Stein’s urge to stop is his way of pushing me forward, of testing my mettle. I have no way of knowing what sort of information is in the case and of what use it will be (let’s face it, the esoteric sect of any religion do not always have the kind of information that readily captures the public’s imagination), but I know it will lead me in unexpected directions throughout the coming months.
Outside the sun is setting and the streets are quiet. I will wait till the end of the Democratic primary season to open the folder, I decide. I doubt Stein will contact me before then.
I know my way to the second floor. Through the service entrance and then into the deserted store, past shelves stacked with Tradition Foods and towards the Handicapped Bathroom I walk. At the bathroom door a man, tall and angular with pomaded peyas and a blunt jawbone, emerges. He is Yossi Stern, head of the volunteer civilian patrol organization, the Shmira. We know each other, but from the blithe way he brushes past me, I doubt he remembers why. I’m not here to see him and he has more pressing issues on his mind than unpaid gambling debts.
In the Handicapped Bathroom I flush the urinal three times and a panel to its left slides open. I walk through the opening and close the door carefully behind me. The eighteen steep stairs end at an opening draped with beads.
“William, good of you to make it back to the old neighborhood.” The voice, arid and accented cuts through the tobacco coated air. The voice belongs to Menachem Stein, the man I have come to see.
“You got my email then?” I ask. I stand just inside of the doorway, waiting for an official invitation to cross the waiting room and enter Stein’s inner office.
“We do not live in the stone age, as you may like to think.” Stein’s voice does not express annoyance; it rarely betrays emotion of any sort. “Come in Bill, let me have a look at the man you have become.”
Now, I walk across the waiting room, empty but for one plastic folding chair and an unwatered acer palmatum ‘koto ito komachi’ plant and push open Stein’s office door.
Menachem Stein is a bilious man. He has a face like a mound of half eaten pastries. His flesh, necrotized in patches, reads like a map of humanity’s woes in the seventy years his life has spanned. It is all there: a fading tattoo on the right forearm, remnants of radiation poisoning from a period in his life in the fifties of which he is not obliged to speak, unsightly furrows in his cheeks from repeated high voltage water pelting. And that is merely what is visible. Beneath the dusty and frayed black jacket, beneath the alcohol and pastry stained white shirt, beneath the tattered prayer shawl are countless and uncatalogued abrasions and burns. It is no wonder he has stuffed himself so full of food and drink since I last saw him. He can no longer look down past the bulging plate of fat jutting out from what, if one really was to strain his imagination, was once a neck. His girth provides a welcome bit of ignorance.
Ignorance is not something Stein would ever profess too. His disposition may be as sour as the bile in his corroded liver, his body may be an altar of self-loathing and debasement, but his mind is still quick, his pride still strident. He sits behind his newspaper covered desktop, stacks of books framing him, with ink stains on his fingertips and a half smoked Camel clasped between his chapped lips and looks at me. He is not pleased with what he sees.
“Shit,” he says and turns his attention right back to what he was studying. A bolt of panic shoots through my gut. For the first time in years I stop to consider what I have actually done to myself, what I look like to one who once had deep faith in me. Had he been whipped into a Yiddish or Hebrew screaming frenzy, had he stood up behind his desk and flung a book at me in disgust, had he calmly admonished me for my transgressions it would have been enough. But this one look, one derisive word, in English no less, tells me all I need to know about the man I have become. Pride trumps panic momentarily and I muster a great speech on the life I had seen and the Earthly experience now in my possession, the kind of experience that could shoot holes in all his scholarly learning. But then I remember what kind of Earthly experience he has and his response to it, and I lower my head, shamed, and turn to exit.
“William, sit down. Oy, you were always so dramatic and impetuous. I wasn’t talking about you.” This makes me feel worse, but I walk to the carpenter’s stool in front of Stein’s desk and take my customary place. Visitors are not intended to be comfortable here.
“This neighborhood is in decline again. Our people, the blacks, and the goddamn real-estate developers are all warring it out for dominance. It’s going to be a long summer. I’m sure you and Stern crossed paths coming and going.” I nod and scratch my nose.
“I’m here to ask you about McCain.” I say. And as soon as I do, I feel the strains of a child tugging at my heart and mind; there is something decaying, fetid about the whole office, probably the entire life of Stein. The room is dry, the window shades drawn, and there is little light beyond the borders of Stein’s Cadillac of a desk.
“William, I know you have been following this McCain character for some months now. I urge you to stop…” He looks disdainfully at his pillar of ash. I wait for him to continue.
He reachs into a desk drawer and pulls out a brown accordian file. He runs his liver spotted hands over the dusty brown container. A sinister smile creeps onto his face. The smile is slight and sly and can mean only one thing: revenge.
“Bill, I am due at the synagogue in fifteen minutes. I’d invite you but I doubt you’d deign to join us.” I nod my head with a mixture of pride and shame. “I can also think of a few people who would not take kindly to your presence.”
I stare at the folder on his desk. What’s in that thing? My face betrayed my thoughts and Stein’s smile fades.
“Take it,” he says and heaves it across his desk. I reach out to catch it and practically fall off the stool. It weighs more than I expect.
“In there is everything you need to know and every reason for you to stop and stop now. Now leave. I will contact you soon.”
No goodbyes are exchanged. I stand and leave. I understand as I cross the barren waiting room and descend the scuffed staircase that Stein’s urge to stop is his way of pushing me forward, of testing my mettle. I have no way of knowing what sort of information is in the case and of what use it will be (let’s face it, the esoteric sect of any religion do not always have the kind of information that readily captures the public’s imagination), but I know it will lead me in unexpected directions throughout the coming months.
Outside the sun is setting and the streets are quiet. I will wait till the end of the Democratic primary season to open the folder, I decide. I doubt Stein will contact me before then.
Monday, May 5, 2008
It's the Economy, Jew Boy!
PART FOUR.
Lieberman walked out from behind the desk towards me. White cuticles of hair lingered around the rim of his black loafers. With a boyish bounce he seated himself on the front side of the desk and crossed his legs. A harsh glare, much more intense than the rigged interrogation lamps, reflected back at me. My hands instinctively covered my eyes. As my eyes accepted the new glare I was able to face Lieberman’s smug grin. The bastard wasn’t wearing any socks.
He continued his drone: “You see, Bill, I do not believe for one second that the American people are stupid. The fact is that they don’t like to think. It’s taken me many years and a failed presidential campaign to understand that fact. I don’t believe it to be a failure of character so much as a fundamental flaw in all human beings. We, the people, have just exacerbated it, turned excess’s harsh light on a basic plague afflicting us all. It’s not pretty, Bill, not pretty. So, I am going to ask you once, nicely: start playing ball. You want to stay on this campaign, maybe even get paid for your writing?”
I nodded reflexively.
“Well, good. Welcome aboard. You get to cover the Senator like every other nutless douchebag with a press pass and a better salary. Stick to the facts, ask opaque questions, nod, laugh at bad jokes, and turn in your 500 words. Maybe you could come up with a catchy slogan, something the campaign can use. In the mean time, get out of my sight. I don’t want to see you again and you certainly do not want to see me again.”
And with that he left. A door opened on the right side of his desk and he walked through it. Another door opened on the left side of the desk and one of the bodyguards gestured towards it. I was free to go.
Lieberman walked out from behind the desk towards me. White cuticles of hair lingered around the rim of his black loafers. With a boyish bounce he seated himself on the front side of the desk and crossed his legs. A harsh glare, much more intense than the rigged interrogation lamps, reflected back at me. My hands instinctively covered my eyes. As my eyes accepted the new glare I was able to face Lieberman’s smug grin. The bastard wasn’t wearing any socks.
He continued his drone: “You see, Bill, I do not believe for one second that the American people are stupid. The fact is that they don’t like to think. It’s taken me many years and a failed presidential campaign to understand that fact. I don’t believe it to be a failure of character so much as a fundamental flaw in all human beings. We, the people, have just exacerbated it, turned excess’s harsh light on a basic plague afflicting us all. It’s not pretty, Bill, not pretty. So, I am going to ask you once, nicely: start playing ball. You want to stay on this campaign, maybe even get paid for your writing?”
I nodded reflexively.
“Well, good. Welcome aboard. You get to cover the Senator like every other nutless douchebag with a press pass and a better salary. Stick to the facts, ask opaque questions, nod, laugh at bad jokes, and turn in your 500 words. Maybe you could come up with a catchy slogan, something the campaign can use. In the mean time, get out of my sight. I don’t want to see you again and you certainly do not want to see me again.”
And with that he left. A door opened on the right side of his desk and he walked through it. Another door opened on the left side of the desk and one of the bodyguards gestured towards it. I was free to go.
Monday, April 28, 2008
It's the Economy, Jew Boy!
PART THREE.
Not the question I expected.
“I missed that one, Senator.” I said. All thought was whisked away by Lieberman’s absurd question. I sat dumbfounded. Perhaps, this was a Beltway ploy I had yet to experience. A riddle? An enigma? A riddle wrapped inside an enigma? A brief mental image of Joe Pesci sporting a bleached muskrat hide on his head and ranting to Kevin Costner nearly caused me to vomit. I steadied myself and met Lieberman’s gaze. It was evident that his question struck him as not the least bit bizarre.
“Hadassah and I saw the film in a theatre in Washington. Behind Enemy Lines is based on the book Return with Honor by Captain Scott O’Grady. Owen Wilson plays Lt. Chris Burnett who is a fictitious Navy navigator shot down in Bosnia. Wilson is pursued by the Serbian Army. Gene Hackman, who I admire very much, plays Leslie McMahon Reigart. Admiral Leslie McMahon Reigart. At one point Hackman tells Wilson, ‘You don’t know the FIRST thing about serving your country!’ That line really stuck with me, Bill, because I never served in our country’s great military. And I used to regret that, I truly did. And the fact is I never truly considered the depths of my regret until I was watching Behind Enemy Lines. Yes, that fact had been pointed out to me at almost every step of my career in politics, but for some reason, sitting in that dark theatre in Washington D.C. watching Owen Wilson, a man I can relate to, dodging hails of bullets, evading sniper fire, and outwitting evildoers I felt that I had truly let something pass me by in life. So, I started cheering. Cheering and whooping and pumping my fist in the air every time Wilson survived yet another impossible to survive scenario. Several people in the theatre looked back at me, but I did not care. I could have had them deported if I wanted to anyway. I screamed ‘Yeah!’ and ‘All Right!’ and for the first time in my life I felt a sense of gestalt. A wholeness and unity of being unlike one I had ever experienced before.”
Lieberman adjusted his arms moving them from the desk in front of him to the chair’s armrests. He leaned back on his elbows. His entire body tensed. He continued: “You see, Bill, in that moment of gestalt I became Owen Wilson. I experienced the strange sensation of leaving my own body, floating across the other seats in the theatre and merging, becoming one, with the actor on the screen. For the last hour of the film, I was experiencing the reality of combat, the power of service. The man cheering in the audience was me too. I was both in the film and watching my participation in it. And the experience changed me because I truly understand now what it means to serve one’s country. Can you say that, Bill?”
And then he did something truly strange. He stood up from behind his desk and removed his suit jacket. Do whatever you want to Lieberman, but please, for the love of God, keep your shirt on! Oy, oh, no, please don’t roll up the shirt sleeves! Iraq, that’s it, send me back to Iraq! I’ll fight! I’ll look for land mines! Just keep your clothes on Lieberman!
Not the question I expected.
“I missed that one, Senator.” I said. All thought was whisked away by Lieberman’s absurd question. I sat dumbfounded. Perhaps, this was a Beltway ploy I had yet to experience. A riddle? An enigma? A riddle wrapped inside an enigma? A brief mental image of Joe Pesci sporting a bleached muskrat hide on his head and ranting to Kevin Costner nearly caused me to vomit. I steadied myself and met Lieberman’s gaze. It was evident that his question struck him as not the least bit bizarre.
“Hadassah and I saw the film in a theatre in Washington. Behind Enemy Lines is based on the book Return with Honor by Captain Scott O’Grady. Owen Wilson plays Lt. Chris Burnett who is a fictitious Navy navigator shot down in Bosnia. Wilson is pursued by the Serbian Army. Gene Hackman, who I admire very much, plays Leslie McMahon Reigart. Admiral Leslie McMahon Reigart. At one point Hackman tells Wilson, ‘You don’t know the FIRST thing about serving your country!’ That line really stuck with me, Bill, because I never served in our country’s great military. And I used to regret that, I truly did. And the fact is I never truly considered the depths of my regret until I was watching Behind Enemy Lines. Yes, that fact had been pointed out to me at almost every step of my career in politics, but for some reason, sitting in that dark theatre in Washington D.C. watching Owen Wilson, a man I can relate to, dodging hails of bullets, evading sniper fire, and outwitting evildoers I felt that I had truly let something pass me by in life. So, I started cheering. Cheering and whooping and pumping my fist in the air every time Wilson survived yet another impossible to survive scenario. Several people in the theatre looked back at me, but I did not care. I could have had them deported if I wanted to anyway. I screamed ‘Yeah!’ and ‘All Right!’ and for the first time in my life I felt a sense of gestalt. A wholeness and unity of being unlike one I had ever experienced before.”
Lieberman adjusted his arms moving them from the desk in front of him to the chair’s armrests. He leaned back on his elbows. His entire body tensed. He continued: “You see, Bill, in that moment of gestalt I became Owen Wilson. I experienced the strange sensation of leaving my own body, floating across the other seats in the theatre and merging, becoming one, with the actor on the screen. For the last hour of the film, I was experiencing the reality of combat, the power of service. The man cheering in the audience was me too. I was both in the film and watching my participation in it. And the experience changed me because I truly understand now what it means to serve one’s country. Can you say that, Bill?”
And then he did something truly strange. He stood up from behind his desk and removed his suit jacket. Do whatever you want to Lieberman, but please, for the love of God, keep your shirt on! Oy, oh, no, please don’t roll up the shirt sleeves! Iraq, that’s it, send me back to Iraq! I’ll fight! I’ll look for land mines! Just keep your clothes on Lieberman!
Friday, April 25, 2008
It's the Economy, Jew Boy!
PART TWO.
Senator Joseph Lieberman (R/D, Conn.) gazed with relish at the frayed payot and scuffed prayer shawl of a member of his rarified race run afoul. His swollen nose hung like an old man’s gut over gouged smile lines. He clenched his jaw and stared at me his relishing gaze quickly disappointed and fading to the look of a man disgusted by his wife’s cooking.
One of my assailants passed Lieberman a brown, suede briefcase. Lieberman took it and placed it on his desk. His eyes never left me. He unfastened each lock with a deliberate clack and allowed the top to spring open. From the briefcase he removed an 8.5” by 11” manila envelope. The other assailant flanking Lieberman clamped the case shut and removed it from his desk immediately.
“William Heschel Herschovitchz,” he said tapping the folder. “I knew a Heschel Herschovitchz once…”
He let the words linger. I could survive an encounter with Lieberman. I doubted I could survive a conversation about my father.
“He was a congressman for a spell, Fifth District, Waterbury. A lame duck, but a mensch. Definitely a mensch. Sold beautiful watches. I am not so sure he would be proud of the man his son has become.” He paused for effect. I cursed silently under my breath. He raised an eyebrow and then emptied the contents of the folder onto his desk. Pictures and programs, a few ticket stubs, horse hair, two gun shells, a piece of parchment, a yarmulke, two copies of Shiksa Tail (October 99, shit, I have been looking for that one!), a tattered copy of Twice Chai, and then you Die, and a dreidel all tumbled onto the varnished oak desktop. The dreidel landed on Nun.
“What a shame,” he sighed. “I saw the play, Twice Chai, with Hadassah in 1998. We liked it very much. The fact is I thought you were probing the depths of the Jewish soul in a manner befitting a young Philip Roth. The fact is I thought you had promise and talent. The fact is I was wrong.” He dragged his arm across the desk, raking all the contents toward its edge. The same guard who had produced the briefcase out of apparent nowhere waited with a wire garbage can to collect my file. I wanted to scream take it, take it all, just leave me October ’99! But the relics of my life flopped into the receptacle, a side door opened, a diminutive Latino maid scampered in, took the garbage can, bowed her head in the direction of Lieberman, and scampered out.
“I wish, for your father’s sake alone, I could say otherwise. I wish that William, but the fact is your once promising career has turned into a farce. Ever since the Obie ceremonies in September of 1999 you have displayed what I would characterize as horrific judgment. Two years sabbatical in Venezuela doing God knows what. Years of co-authoring a comic book with some Canadian hip-hop has-been. I’m not going to even try to pronounce his name. Last fall you were arrested in an empty office in the RNC National Headquarters with a blood toxin and alcohol level so high it’s a miracle you didn’t explode. Actually it’s less of a miracle and more of a shame. Somehow, you have ended up covering the McCain campaign for a periodical no one on my staff heard of. A periodical we should know. And you have made a mockery of that assignment in less than a month! The Hanoi treatment? Trysts with Sela Ward? Taking claim for Recipe-gate! How do you account for this behavior? How?”
I braced and made ready to answer. I had listened patiently while my brow bunched. Before I could open my mouth though he was back at it, practically standing, and leaning on both elbows out over his desk.
“I have just one question for you, William. Just one. Have you ever seen the Owen Wilson film Behind Enemy Lines?”
Senator Joseph Lieberman (R/D, Conn.) gazed with relish at the frayed payot and scuffed prayer shawl of a member of his rarified race run afoul. His swollen nose hung like an old man’s gut over gouged smile lines. He clenched his jaw and stared at me his relishing gaze quickly disappointed and fading to the look of a man disgusted by his wife’s cooking.
One of my assailants passed Lieberman a brown, suede briefcase. Lieberman took it and placed it on his desk. His eyes never left me. He unfastened each lock with a deliberate clack and allowed the top to spring open. From the briefcase he removed an 8.5” by 11” manila envelope. The other assailant flanking Lieberman clamped the case shut and removed it from his desk immediately.
“William Heschel Herschovitchz,” he said tapping the folder. “I knew a Heschel Herschovitchz once…”
He let the words linger. I could survive an encounter with Lieberman. I doubted I could survive a conversation about my father.
“He was a congressman for a spell, Fifth District, Waterbury. A lame duck, but a mensch. Definitely a mensch. Sold beautiful watches. I am not so sure he would be proud of the man his son has become.” He paused for effect. I cursed silently under my breath. He raised an eyebrow and then emptied the contents of the folder onto his desk. Pictures and programs, a few ticket stubs, horse hair, two gun shells, a piece of parchment, a yarmulke, two copies of Shiksa Tail (October 99, shit, I have been looking for that one!), a tattered copy of Twice Chai, and then you Die, and a dreidel all tumbled onto the varnished oak desktop. The dreidel landed on Nun.
“What a shame,” he sighed. “I saw the play, Twice Chai, with Hadassah in 1998. We liked it very much. The fact is I thought you were probing the depths of the Jewish soul in a manner befitting a young Philip Roth. The fact is I thought you had promise and talent. The fact is I was wrong.” He dragged his arm across the desk, raking all the contents toward its edge. The same guard who had produced the briefcase out of apparent nowhere waited with a wire garbage can to collect my file. I wanted to scream take it, take it all, just leave me October ’99! But the relics of my life flopped into the receptacle, a side door opened, a diminutive Latino maid scampered in, took the garbage can, bowed her head in the direction of Lieberman, and scampered out.
“I wish, for your father’s sake alone, I could say otherwise. I wish that William, but the fact is your once promising career has turned into a farce. Ever since the Obie ceremonies in September of 1999 you have displayed what I would characterize as horrific judgment. Two years sabbatical in Venezuela doing God knows what. Years of co-authoring a comic book with some Canadian hip-hop has-been. I’m not going to even try to pronounce his name. Last fall you were arrested in an empty office in the RNC National Headquarters with a blood toxin and alcohol level so high it’s a miracle you didn’t explode. Actually it’s less of a miracle and more of a shame. Somehow, you have ended up covering the McCain campaign for a periodical no one on my staff heard of. A periodical we should know. And you have made a mockery of that assignment in less than a month! The Hanoi treatment? Trysts with Sela Ward? Taking claim for Recipe-gate! How do you account for this behavior? How?”
I braced and made ready to answer. I had listened patiently while my brow bunched. Before I could open my mouth though he was back at it, practically standing, and leaning on both elbows out over his desk.
“I have just one question for you, William. Just one. Have you ever seen the Owen Wilson film Behind Enemy Lines?”
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
It's the economy, Jew Boy!
PART ONE.
Apparently McCain was not fucking around.
On Friday the locks to the Straight Talk Express were changed. I slept on my jacket in the nearby woods.
When I woke Saturday morning my watch was missing and when I arrived at the weekend press briefing a grease soaked white paper bag greeted me at my customary seat. The bag smelled delicious. The aroma was sweet and briny. Bacon. I stood in the back, arms folded tight across my chest. When McCain walked in he looked at the empty seat and then at me. He smiled. I gave him the finger. His smile slid off his face and his eyes narrowed.
Sunday passed without incident.
And then, on Monday morning, I was jostled awake by four gloved sets of hands wrenching me up from the forest floor. I struggled, swiveling my head in an attempt to identify my assailants. The men all wore black ski masks. They tossed me into the back of a van and slammed and locked the doors. They did not cover my head, but there were no windows for me to look out of anyway. Fifteen minutes later, I felt the van ease down a ramp and break. The temperature had dropped in the air, I could feel it through the van's rusty hinges. The doors opened again. I was in a parking lot, below ground. The same four men yanked me out of the car and slammed me against the side of the van. One of the masked men stepped forward, cocked his arm, and punched me in the face.
When I came to I was sitting in a leather Trillipsie meeting chair (I only knew this particular make because of its offensive lack of upper back support and swivel). The overhead lights were off and two halogen desk lamps illuminated the center of what I took to be an office. One faced me and one faced a decidedly more appealing chair. The rest of the room was cloaked in a half darkness that obscured but did not obliterate the room's owners stately office furniture. I was not tied to my chair, but two men (who I assumed to be two of the four who had picked me up earlier) stood on either side of the comfy-looking chair. They still wore masks and were much more deterring than any knot could have hoped to be. The three of us sat in silence for another twenty minutes.
A door behind me opened. A brown suit passed. The back of the head attached to the suit was topped with a thick mash of wavy, styled white hair. The head was wide, made even wider by two date-sized earlobes that plumped out on either side. The man was short but purposeful. The air around him smelled like moth balls and cologne, Calvin Klein I guessed. I should have listened to McCain, I should have taken his words at face value. This was too horrible to be true. It was him. It was Joe Lieberman.
Apparently McCain was not fucking around.
On Friday the locks to the Straight Talk Express were changed. I slept on my jacket in the nearby woods.
When I woke Saturday morning my watch was missing and when I arrived at the weekend press briefing a grease soaked white paper bag greeted me at my customary seat. The bag smelled delicious. The aroma was sweet and briny. Bacon. I stood in the back, arms folded tight across my chest. When McCain walked in he looked at the empty seat and then at me. He smiled. I gave him the finger. His smile slid off his face and his eyes narrowed.
Sunday passed without incident.
And then, on Monday morning, I was jostled awake by four gloved sets of hands wrenching me up from the forest floor. I struggled, swiveling my head in an attempt to identify my assailants. The men all wore black ski masks. They tossed me into the back of a van and slammed and locked the doors. They did not cover my head, but there were no windows for me to look out of anyway. Fifteen minutes later, I felt the van ease down a ramp and break. The temperature had dropped in the air, I could feel it through the van's rusty hinges. The doors opened again. I was in a parking lot, below ground. The same four men yanked me out of the car and slammed me against the side of the van. One of the masked men stepped forward, cocked his arm, and punched me in the face.
When I came to I was sitting in a leather Trillipsie meeting chair (I only knew this particular make because of its offensive lack of upper back support and swivel). The overhead lights were off and two halogen desk lamps illuminated the center of what I took to be an office. One faced me and one faced a decidedly more appealing chair. The rest of the room was cloaked in a half darkness that obscured but did not obliterate the room's owners stately office furniture. I was not tied to my chair, but two men (who I assumed to be two of the four who had picked me up earlier) stood on either side of the comfy-looking chair. They still wore masks and were much more deterring than any knot could have hoped to be. The three of us sat in silence for another twenty minutes.
A door behind me opened. A brown suit passed. The back of the head attached to the suit was topped with a thick mash of wavy, styled white hair. The head was wide, made even wider by two date-sized earlobes that plumped out on either side. The man was short but purposeful. The air around him smelled like moth balls and cologne, Calvin Klein I guessed. I should have listened to McCain, I should have taken his words at face value. This was too horrible to be true. It was him. It was Joe Lieberman.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
The plot thickens...
The response to my post yesterday has been overwhelming. Cindy McCain has denied that the conversation ever took place. Lacey, the intern in question, says it was her idea (she is trying to negotiate some sort of deal with the O! Network as we speak and the truth is impeding her negotiations) and that I am posturing to be picked up by a bigger publication (all apologies to the fine folks at the Middletown Republican Chassidic Dispatch, if you rat bastards even exist. Return a fucking phone call! It's called common courtesy). And then, to top it all of, after weeks of requesting a one on one interview, I was treated to the more abrasive side of Senator McCain's personality in our first private conversation.
Here is a word for word transcript (I have a tape recorder in my watch! That's right John boy, you Hanoi bitch!):
McCain: Bill, you got a second?
Me: Of course, Senator.
McCain: Let's take a walk.
Me: Yes sir.
McCain: You know, Bill, I like to read the columns of everyone who travels with me. I have an intern assemble them. It's what I do over lunch.
Me: I have been very impressed by the access you've allowed the press and the respect you've offered us.
McCain: Well, Bill, that's nice, but this time you've crossed the line.
Me: Excuse me, Senator?
McCain: This whole recipe-gate thing is nonsense to begin with, and now for you to claim that it was your idea...
Me: It was my idea, sir...
McCain: DO NOT interrupt me. As I was saying, Billy, I've spoken to Cindy and she denies even knowing who you are. Now, I know my wife to be an honest woman...
Me: It was just two harmless drinks, Senator. Nothing more happened. Now, I know with all the talk on the ol' Straighttalk about me and Sela, that you might feel a bit threatened by me and Cindy sharing a private conversation, but I can assure you---
McCain: Listen, dick, I don't know what kind of horseshit you think you're running, but MRS. McCain never spoke to you and certainly would never entertain the idea of sleeping with you if she even had the first fucking clue who you are!
Me: Touchy.
McCain: What?
Me: It seems like I've hit a nerve. I'm sorry. I didn't realize Mrs. McCain's fidelity had ever been an issue. However, based on your response...
McCain: Did you think the Hanoi treatment was a joke, Bill? Well, let me tell you something my little Chassidic friend, you utter one more word about this recipe-gate, you come within ten fucking feet of MRS. McCain, I swear on my father's grave, I will sick Lieberman on you! Do you know what Joe will do to you? Do you? You think this is a joke? Huh? Because you two share the same God, you're entitled to some sort of home team discount? Well, be advised, sir, that Joe has a particularly rabid disdain for members of his tribe who don't play ball. So, unless you want one of your own people to show you that yes my friend there is a hell and dear sweet Jesus it's probably a lot better than what I'm going through right now, then I would advise you to cease all recipe-gate related activities! Me and Joe do not fuck around!
And with that he stomped off.
Well, Johnny, I hope your interns are serving this to you right now with a nice turkey sandwich on Wonder Bread with Hellman's low fat mayonnaise. I hope you're choking on your little goyische lunch, pal! Because this dog can bite back!
Here is a word for word transcript (I have a tape recorder in my watch! That's right John boy, you Hanoi bitch!):
McCain: Bill, you got a second?
Me: Of course, Senator.
McCain: Let's take a walk.
Me: Yes sir.
McCain: You know, Bill, I like to read the columns of everyone who travels with me. I have an intern assemble them. It's what I do over lunch.
Me: I have been very impressed by the access you've allowed the press and the respect you've offered us.
McCain: Well, Bill, that's nice, but this time you've crossed the line.
Me: Excuse me, Senator?
McCain: This whole recipe-gate thing is nonsense to begin with, and now for you to claim that it was your idea...
Me: It was my idea, sir...
McCain: DO NOT interrupt me. As I was saying, Billy, I've spoken to Cindy and she denies even knowing who you are. Now, I know my wife to be an honest woman...
Me: It was just two harmless drinks, Senator. Nothing more happened. Now, I know with all the talk on the ol' Straighttalk about me and Sela, that you might feel a bit threatened by me and Cindy sharing a private conversation, but I can assure you---
McCain: Listen, dick, I don't know what kind of horseshit you think you're running, but MRS. McCain never spoke to you and certainly would never entertain the idea of sleeping with you if she even had the first fucking clue who you are!
Me: Touchy.
McCain: What?
Me: It seems like I've hit a nerve. I'm sorry. I didn't realize Mrs. McCain's fidelity had ever been an issue. However, based on your response...
McCain: Did you think the Hanoi treatment was a joke, Bill? Well, let me tell you something my little Chassidic friend, you utter one more word about this recipe-gate, you come within ten fucking feet of MRS. McCain, I swear on my father's grave, I will sick Lieberman on you! Do you know what Joe will do to you? Do you? You think this is a joke? Huh? Because you two share the same God, you're entitled to some sort of home team discount? Well, be advised, sir, that Joe has a particularly rabid disdain for members of his tribe who don't play ball. So, unless you want one of your own people to show you that yes my friend there is a hell and dear sweet Jesus it's probably a lot better than what I'm going through right now, then I would advise you to cease all recipe-gate related activities! Me and Joe do not fuck around!
And with that he stomped off.
Well, Johnny, I hope your interns are serving this to you right now with a nice turkey sandwich on Wonder Bread with Hellman's low fat mayonnaise. I hope you're choking on your little goyische lunch, pal! Because this dog can bite back!
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
All right, I admit it.
It was my idea. I'm not proud of it. I'll probably lose my seat on the Straight Talk Express. I'll certainly have some answering to do to my still non-existent editor at the Middletown Republican Chassidic Dispatch. I told her to do it. We were having a mid-afternoon cocktail and I was sure she wouldn't take me seriously. I was bragging about the letter from Sela Ward. She seemed interested and my shiksometer was going ape just being in her presence. I was nervous so I made some jokes. And she laughed. A few more jokes (apparently the mere mention of a rabbi and a priest in the same sentence was enough to send her into a tizzy) and a second cocktail and all of a sudden we're chums. And then...
She glances around the bar. Her still smooth skin glows even brighter after a Stoli on the rocks. She lowers her gaze a bit.
"Bill, I have to tell someone this. I just don't know what to do when I'm First Lady. There are so many issues I care about, but, what will my issue be?" She takes a furtive sip and looks at me, expectantly.
"Cindy, I'm no politician, but it seems like your job over the next few months is to appear solid and supportive, speak eloquently, and stay out of the limelight. Why would you try to compete with Bill or Michelle anyway?" I sniff my whiskey but do not drink. I am pretending to be much cooler than I feel.
"But, that's the problem, exactly. The American people are going to want me to rise to the occasion. Be a Laura Bush, a Hillary, ya know?"
"I'm not sure I agree. Maybe you should consider the fact, especially in a campaign where race and sex are bound to play predominant roles, that your campaign might benefit from a First Lady trumpeting more, well, traditional values." I sound like an asshole. I sound like a know-it-all douchebag. I sound like a---
"That's exactly what I've been telling John!" She practically slaps my whiskey out of my hand. "But I'm no good at the traditional stuff. I mean, I can barely cook."
"Eh, get an intern to look up some recipes somewhere and post them on the site. If it sticks you can learn how to cook. You can be the nutrition First Lady. A healthy America or some shit like that."
She grabs her cellphone and dials.
"Laney, it's Cindy. I need recipes. Interesting, but not too interesting. And healthy. Very, very healthy. And with some variety. Maybe throw in little ethnic touches. Not too ethnic. We're not Democrats for Christ's sake. Oh, I don't give a shit, Laney, just find the things. Get 'em on the website. Say they're family recipes. Yeah, that sounds good. The McCain Melting Pot! No? No, that is too much. Ok, good." She turns to me. "Bill, thank you, this is brilliant. Thank you." And she leaves.
And now this... Recipegate! Oy, what a disaster! This can't be good...
She glances around the bar. Her still smooth skin glows even brighter after a Stoli on the rocks. She lowers her gaze a bit.
"Bill, I have to tell someone this. I just don't know what to do when I'm First Lady. There are so many issues I care about, but, what will my issue be?" She takes a furtive sip and looks at me, expectantly.
"Cindy, I'm no politician, but it seems like your job over the next few months is to appear solid and supportive, speak eloquently, and stay out of the limelight. Why would you try to compete with Bill or Michelle anyway?" I sniff my whiskey but do not drink. I am pretending to be much cooler than I feel.
"But, that's the problem, exactly. The American people are going to want me to rise to the occasion. Be a Laura Bush, a Hillary, ya know?"
"I'm not sure I agree. Maybe you should consider the fact, especially in a campaign where race and sex are bound to play predominant roles, that your campaign might benefit from a First Lady trumpeting more, well, traditional values." I sound like an asshole. I sound like a know-it-all douchebag. I sound like a---
"That's exactly what I've been telling John!" She practically slaps my whiskey out of my hand. "But I'm no good at the traditional stuff. I mean, I can barely cook."
"Eh, get an intern to look up some recipes somewhere and post them on the site. If it sticks you can learn how to cook. You can be the nutrition First Lady. A healthy America or some shit like that."
She grabs her cellphone and dials.
"Laney, it's Cindy. I need recipes. Interesting, but not too interesting. And healthy. Very, very healthy. And with some variety. Maybe throw in little ethnic touches. Not too ethnic. We're not Democrats for Christ's sake. Oh, I don't give a shit, Laney, just find the things. Get 'em on the website. Say they're family recipes. Yeah, that sounds good. The McCain Melting Pot! No? No, that is too much. Ok, good." She turns to me. "Bill, thank you, this is brilliant. Thank you." And she leaves.
And now this... Recipegate! Oy, what a disaster! This can't be good...
Friday, April 11, 2008
A Letter from Meridian
Dearest Bill,
When I woke up next to you two weeks ago, I was horrified. The McNasty, his mother, and I had been doing shots of Southern Comfort in the kitchen for four hours after the rest of the potential donors had said their adieus and I was, needless to say, hammered. I went walking in the garden to clear my head and found myself reminiscing over lost love and the trials of my early life. I know it’s horribly cliché, probably makes a writer like you cringe just to read a sentence like that, but it’s true. And in that haze of alcohol and melancholy remembrance I found you, sitting there in the gazebo, alone. I had never seen, let alone, met anyone like you (I don’t mean a Jew, by the way, some of my best friends, well, at least my agent and my lawyers, they’re all Jews). I lied about having read your play. I was plastered enough to not be disturbed by your encyclopedic knowledge of my career. I was so shit-housed, frankly, that your dead-on impression of me in Sisters was actually amusing as opposed to terror inducing. And I could barely keep my eyes on you as we slept together. I thought of, well, anything but what we were doing.
And yet, something about you lingers in a way no one has lingered for me for years. Maybe it was those strange braids of yours draped across my heaving chest. Maybe it was the gruff yet gentle aroma of saddle leather and parchment that seemed to ooze out of all of your pores. And, it could just be my own narcissistic delight in your clear obsession with me. Whatever it was, whatever it is, and I can’t believe I am saying this here and now, whatever it is that is keeping you on my mind I… I… I want to see you again. Please call me.
Sela
YEAH BABY!!!!
When I woke up next to you two weeks ago, I was horrified. The McNasty, his mother, and I had been doing shots of Southern Comfort in the kitchen for four hours after the rest of the potential donors had said their adieus and I was, needless to say, hammered. I went walking in the garden to clear my head and found myself reminiscing over lost love and the trials of my early life. I know it’s horribly cliché, probably makes a writer like you cringe just to read a sentence like that, but it’s true. And in that haze of alcohol and melancholy remembrance I found you, sitting there in the gazebo, alone. I had never seen, let alone, met anyone like you (I don’t mean a Jew, by the way, some of my best friends, well, at least my agent and my lawyers, they’re all Jews). I lied about having read your play. I was plastered enough to not be disturbed by your encyclopedic knowledge of my career. I was so shit-housed, frankly, that your dead-on impression of me in Sisters was actually amusing as opposed to terror inducing. And I could barely keep my eyes on you as we slept together. I thought of, well, anything but what we were doing.
And yet, something about you lingers in a way no one has lingered for me for years. Maybe it was those strange braids of yours draped across my heaving chest. Maybe it was the gruff yet gentle aroma of saddle leather and parchment that seemed to ooze out of all of your pores. And, it could just be my own narcissistic delight in your clear obsession with me. Whatever it was, whatever it is, and I can’t believe I am saying this here and now, whatever it is that is keeping you on my mind I… I… I want to see you again. Please call me.
Sela
YEAH BABY!!!!
Thursday, April 10, 2008
"This is the color of the new civil rights revolution"
And he waved a one dollar bill.
Jack Kemp was the one waving the money and making the speech. The year was 1996 and the place was Sylvia's on 126th Street and Lenox in Harlem. The real context is much less inflammatory than the initial trappings would suggest. The luncheon was private, featuring prominent New York and African American Republicans, primarily, with the addition of the types of political figures (local and powerful Democrats, Conrad Muhammad, Farrakhan's New York representative) that such an event would necessitate. Sylvia's son, Van DeWard Woods, was a Democrat turned Republican. And the event was private, with the candidate doing most of his campaigning inside of the restaurant. There was great fear in the Dole Campaign that Kemp's visit would be seen as an offensive affront to a constituency that the Republican Party had "written off" (Kemp's words). Perhaps an angry mob would greet the Vice-Presidential candidate? Raucous protest? Riots? But, no, disinterest more than anything else. The most vocal crowd were New York City Republicans assembled by the party to act as a buffer between their candidate and potential protesters.
McCain's campaign has drawn a lot of attention, especially in light of the growing surety around here that McCain will face off with Obama, for its stated intention to campaign in traditional Democratic strongholds, particularly poor urban areas with predominantly African American populations. The assertion, which is the same one Kemp was campaigning on in '96, is that, while the Republican Party has "written off" African Americans, the Democratic Party has made the worse offense of taking their support "for granted."
And there is all sorts of rampant speculation as to the role race will play in the coming showdown between the oldest white man ever to run for the presidency and the first black man ever appointed his party's candidate of choice. Because, for all the talk in McCain land right now about new Republican voters and independents and braving new political constituencies, I believe when the dust settles, both of these men, both victorious in the race for the green, will end up using the green in the exact same way their parties have for a century: to do everything within and marginally beyond the law to press the other candidate's face in the mud and take the entire campaign right down with it.
Because that's where the entertainment value is. Because on that day in Harlem in 1996, had there been riots or some event more spectacular than an innocuous luncheon, I think Kemp and Dole would have been back in the inner city begging for the controversial P.R. and trying to point out that this was what a Democratic presidency had created. Look at what the 1968 Democratic Convention did for Nixon. Instead, in 1996, the Dole campaign had lunch and never came back. Disinterest doesn't occupy a lot of time on CNN.
But Kemp was wrong. Green is not the new color of the civil rights revolution. It's merely a newly acquired weapon. The battle is still the same. And once we get through the preliminaries and to the prize fight, both sides will bring out every old trick to win.
And we'll be throwing elbows to get closest to the ring.
Jack Kemp was the one waving the money and making the speech. The year was 1996 and the place was Sylvia's on 126th Street and Lenox in Harlem. The real context is much less inflammatory than the initial trappings would suggest. The luncheon was private, featuring prominent New York and African American Republicans, primarily, with the addition of the types of political figures (local and powerful Democrats, Conrad Muhammad, Farrakhan's New York representative) that such an event would necessitate. Sylvia's son, Van DeWard Woods, was a Democrat turned Republican. And the event was private, with the candidate doing most of his campaigning inside of the restaurant. There was great fear in the Dole Campaign that Kemp's visit would be seen as an offensive affront to a constituency that the Republican Party had "written off" (Kemp's words). Perhaps an angry mob would greet the Vice-Presidential candidate? Raucous protest? Riots? But, no, disinterest more than anything else. The most vocal crowd were New York City Republicans assembled by the party to act as a buffer between their candidate and potential protesters.
McCain's campaign has drawn a lot of attention, especially in light of the growing surety around here that McCain will face off with Obama, for its stated intention to campaign in traditional Democratic strongholds, particularly poor urban areas with predominantly African American populations. The assertion, which is the same one Kemp was campaigning on in '96, is that, while the Republican Party has "written off" African Americans, the Democratic Party has made the worse offense of taking their support "for granted."
And there is all sorts of rampant speculation as to the role race will play in the coming showdown between the oldest white man ever to run for the presidency and the first black man ever appointed his party's candidate of choice. Because, for all the talk in McCain land right now about new Republican voters and independents and braving new political constituencies, I believe when the dust settles, both of these men, both victorious in the race for the green, will end up using the green in the exact same way their parties have for a century: to do everything within and marginally beyond the law to press the other candidate's face in the mud and take the entire campaign right down with it.
Because that's where the entertainment value is. Because on that day in Harlem in 1996, had there been riots or some event more spectacular than an innocuous luncheon, I think Kemp and Dole would have been back in the inner city begging for the controversial P.R. and trying to point out that this was what a Democratic presidency had created. Look at what the 1968 Democratic Convention did for Nixon. Instead, in 1996, the Dole campaign had lunch and never came back. Disinterest doesn't occupy a lot of time on CNN.
But Kemp was wrong. Green is not the new color of the civil rights revolution. It's merely a newly acquired weapon. The battle is still the same. And once we get through the preliminaries and to the prize fight, both sides will bring out every old trick to win.
And we'll be throwing elbows to get closest to the ring.
Monday, April 7, 2008
Please, don't feed the egos.
We, the press, have a lot of time to think on the trail of The Straight Talk Express. The McCain campaign cordons off the majority of the day for meetings, allowing for brief question and answer sessions once daily, and primarily allowing us to tag along like yapping sycophants sponging up every word the presumptive Republican nominee utters. And we do. And then we scuttle off to diners and bars and book stores and libraries and local monuments to see what the man on the street thinks of McCain's policies and positions. And then we collect our notes, organize them into cogent and occasionally coherent nuggets of journalese and submit them to our various editors via the world wide web. And then we sleep. We breathe, eat, drink, and sleep the world of one man.
I woke up this morning with a headache. I have to be up before five a.m. every day so I can get off the bus before the McCain team gets on. That way Joe, the Straight Talk driver, doesn't get in any trouble for letting me use the bus as my hotel. This morning I grabbed a smattering of the day's newspapers and, much to the chagrin of the McCain operatives, found myself buried in The New York Times. And, today more than normal, the names and faces of the political and business elite are stewing in scandal, miring in financial or personal catastrophe, tearing at each other's throats, and winnowing their way out of the kind of crises that would send you and me into complete paralysis. I'm so engaged that I need to be tapped on the shoulder by the same driver Joe to let me know that the bus will be pulling out and I should probably not be leaning on it when it does.
And I'm thinking, now that I've digested all the media tripe I can for one morning, that maybe this mess is all my fault. I know politics is a circus and that the men and women who occupy its center ring are there for their own gratification much more than they are for the banners of reform or progress. And I know that when we, the people, finally give them the center ring all to themselves that they'll use it for themselves first and for whatever directly benefits their interests second and then they'll start in on friends and family and the like and someday, if the media would just leave them alone long enough, they'll get to you and me, the people, and whatever our concerns were when you gave them control of that center ring. Someone was taking notes, right? And the real kicker is that I know this game, know what little it accomplishes, and yet I choose to dedicate my time to codifying and disseminating it in edible nuggets. Because I, here, think the ringleader is actually going to do something for us. I hope and pray and sometimes give the person another two or four or six years to accomplish something for someone other than himself. And then, when he doesn't, I get pissed, pack up my toys, and go write about someone else. I'm the problem then, aren't I?
I woke up this morning with a headache. I have to be up before five a.m. every day so I can get off the bus before the McCain team gets on. That way Joe, the Straight Talk driver, doesn't get in any trouble for letting me use the bus as my hotel. This morning I grabbed a smattering of the day's newspapers and, much to the chagrin of the McCain operatives, found myself buried in The New York Times. And, today more than normal, the names and faces of the political and business elite are stewing in scandal, miring in financial or personal catastrophe, tearing at each other's throats, and winnowing their way out of the kind of crises that would send you and me into complete paralysis. I'm so engaged that I need to be tapped on the shoulder by the same driver Joe to let me know that the bus will be pulling out and I should probably not be leaning on it when it does.
And I'm thinking, now that I've digested all the media tripe I can for one morning, that maybe this mess is all my fault. I know politics is a circus and that the men and women who occupy its center ring are there for their own gratification much more than they are for the banners of reform or progress. And I know that when we, the people, finally give them the center ring all to themselves that they'll use it for themselves first and for whatever directly benefits their interests second and then they'll start in on friends and family and the like and someday, if the media would just leave them alone long enough, they'll get to you and me, the people, and whatever our concerns were when you gave them control of that center ring. Someone was taking notes, right? And the real kicker is that I know this game, know what little it accomplishes, and yet I choose to dedicate my time to codifying and disseminating it in edible nuggets. Because I, here, think the ringleader is actually going to do something for us. I hope and pray and sometimes give the person another two or four or six years to accomplish something for someone other than himself. And then, when he doesn't, I get pissed, pack up my toys, and go write about someone else. I'm the problem then, aren't I?
Friday, April 4, 2008
A Greater Purpose
It's three a.m. in the lobby bar of the La Quinta Inn in Jacksonville, Florida. Next to the cash register a phone is ringing. You can bet your ass I am not going to answer it. I've got my first drink of the night in front of me, Ginger Schnapps (Don't ask.), and I'm settling in with my notes from three days of research and speeches, platforms and platitudes, congressional records and Op-Ed pieces. As I have had no luck, still, contacting my editor and my agent, the illustrious Mr. DeShapiro, is on his annual prostitution binge in Thailand, I have been bribing the driver of the Straight Talk Express to let me sleep on the bus. But, I'm fired up tonight. The bar's empty, but for one sad drunk with his head slumped in front of a half full snifter, and the bartender, who doesn't appear to be heading home anytime soon.
I've been so busy getting to know this McCain character that I haven't even thought of or called Sela (Oy Sela!).
The bartender, a middle aged man with hairy knuckles and a fanny pack like paunch, is itching to talk. He's been polishing glassware for twenty minutes with what looks like a used hankerchief. Every five glasses he stops and takes a swig of whatever bottle is closest to his hand. The phone stops ringing. He walks over and puts his chunky hands on my pile of papers. He smiles.
"So, uh, you covering McCain, right?" Obviously a seasoned drinker, he stammers a bit, but betrays no other sign of the seven shots I've watched him put down in the last twenty minutes.
"I am." I say. I am not interested in having this conversation. This enigma, this McCain is starting to coalesce into more than a concept, an idea maybe, and the last thing I need is another conversation with another drunk bartender.
"Me, I'm gonna vote for 'im. I was gonna vote for Thompson. Principally, I'd say, for his work in Die Hard Two, which kicked ass--- I used to work in an airport bar and I used to bang these lonely middle-aged types two at a time in the security office, course that was before 9/11. Shit, you just can't have a good fling in an airport security office in these trying times. Fucking terrorists. Anyway, so I liked the second Die Hard more than the first principally because it was set in an airport. And I got a lot of ass in airports. And I liked the people. And I figure any guy who could've run an airport with that much shit going down like Thompson did, well, I'd like him to kick the shit out of Osama. Ya' know?"
This man was clearly insane. I had to talk to him.
"So, I understand your position on Mr. Thompson, Mister... what's your name?" I asked putting down the David Brooks piece I had been rereading.
"Bart."
"Bart. Perfect. So, Bart, why have you taken to Mr. McCain since Mr. Thompson left the race?"
Bart was excited now. His red face flashed redder. He leaned in and I could smell the horrid combination of gin, whiskey, and creme de menthe that he had poured into his system.
"It's not because he's a Republican. I mean I voted for Clinton three times." Bart did not show a trace of irony when he said this.
"Because he got ass in the White House?" I offered.
"Exactly. I like you. What's your name?" Bart asked with a lizard like grin.
"Bill." I said.
"Bill." He frowned. I was about to ask him why the name displeased him. "It's not you." He grimaced and grabbed a bottle of Jameson's without even looking at the bottles behind him.
"Let's drink!" he said loud enough to elicit a groan from the passed out man at the other end of the bar. He poured two full pint glasses of Jamesons, leaned back on the back bar, and crossed his arms.
"The thing about this McCain guy, and I got this from listening to all those speeches this week, the thing is he's basing his whole campaign thing on this phrase that he keeps repeating: A greater purpose. Now, I bet you think that it's a Jesus thing and I 'm some sort of nut. But, that's not it. Me and Jesus, we got issues. Big fucking issues. You don't like Jesus, do you Bill?"
"No, Bart, I do not."
"Good. So, the thing about this greater purpose that McCain keeps talking about is that I think, you know since the country's fucked right now, that maybe this guy, who, as I've discovered," He leaned in and lowered his voice to an emphatic whisper, "this guy has been through more shit than any of the character's Fred Thompson ever portrayed, even the guy in Die Hard Two. Did I mention that movie yet, because I love that movie."
"Yes, Bart, you did."
He frowned again and I tensed up. I wasn't sure how Bart would take my candor. He palmed the pint glass and tipped it up to his cracking lips and downed six ounces of Jamesons in one gulp. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand and smiled.
"I get mad at myself when I repeat things. Ya know? A little sip calms the nerves. So, this greater purpose thing is important to me because I am thinking, principally, that this is a guy who knows when a man, like those guys with the weird eyebrows in that war that McCain was in, when a man's purpose is at his worst, cause he's seen it, probably seen it more than Bruce Willis ever did, even when he was walking on all that glass in the first Die Hard, which is good too, and he knows that since the country is fucked, and that a man is capable of doing some really brutal shit to another man that well since every reaction must have another reaction in the other direction, that maybe a man who's seen so much of our lesser purpose, maybe he really knows what our greater purpose is. And that is why I think he'll make the best president we've had since Nixon."
Bart was pleased with himself. He knocked back the other half of his pint full of Jamesons. I was riveted. I had barely taken a sip of my whiskey. Hundreds of questions jostled in my mind. Before I could open my mouth and ask one, Bart's entire face had changed. He wore an impatient scowl and had put his hand around the rim of my pint glass.
"Mister, it's nearly 3:30 in the morning. You should have been gone hours ago. Now pack of those papers and head off to wherever you're sleeping."
My jaw dropped. The childish banter, the delightful insanity of his logic, had all disappeared. He walked away with my drink in his hand and dumped the remains in a sink. He woke up the other squatter, walked through two wooden doors, and disappeared.
I've been so busy getting to know this McCain character that I haven't even thought of or called Sela (Oy Sela!).
The bartender, a middle aged man with hairy knuckles and a fanny pack like paunch, is itching to talk. He's been polishing glassware for twenty minutes with what looks like a used hankerchief. Every five glasses he stops and takes a swig of whatever bottle is closest to his hand. The phone stops ringing. He walks over and puts his chunky hands on my pile of papers. He smiles.
"So, uh, you covering McCain, right?" Obviously a seasoned drinker, he stammers a bit, but betrays no other sign of the seven shots I've watched him put down in the last twenty minutes.
"I am." I say. I am not interested in having this conversation. This enigma, this McCain is starting to coalesce into more than a concept, an idea maybe, and the last thing I need is another conversation with another drunk bartender.
"Me, I'm gonna vote for 'im. I was gonna vote for Thompson. Principally, I'd say, for his work in Die Hard Two, which kicked ass--- I used to work in an airport bar and I used to bang these lonely middle-aged types two at a time in the security office, course that was before 9/11. Shit, you just can't have a good fling in an airport security office in these trying times. Fucking terrorists. Anyway, so I liked the second Die Hard more than the first principally because it was set in an airport. And I got a lot of ass in airports. And I liked the people. And I figure any guy who could've run an airport with that much shit going down like Thompson did, well, I'd like him to kick the shit out of Osama. Ya' know?"
This man was clearly insane. I had to talk to him.
"So, I understand your position on Mr. Thompson, Mister... what's your name?" I asked putting down the David Brooks piece I had been rereading.
"Bart."
"Bart. Perfect. So, Bart, why have you taken to Mr. McCain since Mr. Thompson left the race?"
Bart was excited now. His red face flashed redder. He leaned in and I could smell the horrid combination of gin, whiskey, and creme de menthe that he had poured into his system.
"It's not because he's a Republican. I mean I voted for Clinton three times." Bart did not show a trace of irony when he said this.
"Because he got ass in the White House?" I offered.
"Exactly. I like you. What's your name?" Bart asked with a lizard like grin.
"Bill." I said.
"Bill." He frowned. I was about to ask him why the name displeased him. "It's not you." He grimaced and grabbed a bottle of Jameson's without even looking at the bottles behind him.
"Let's drink!" he said loud enough to elicit a groan from the passed out man at the other end of the bar. He poured two full pint glasses of Jamesons, leaned back on the back bar, and crossed his arms.
"The thing about this McCain guy, and I got this from listening to all those speeches this week, the thing is he's basing his whole campaign thing on this phrase that he keeps repeating: A greater purpose. Now, I bet you think that it's a Jesus thing and I 'm some sort of nut. But, that's not it. Me and Jesus, we got issues. Big fucking issues. You don't like Jesus, do you Bill?"
"No, Bart, I do not."
"Good. So, the thing about this greater purpose that McCain keeps talking about is that I think, you know since the country's fucked right now, that maybe this guy, who, as I've discovered," He leaned in and lowered his voice to an emphatic whisper, "this guy has been through more shit than any of the character's Fred Thompson ever portrayed, even the guy in Die Hard Two. Did I mention that movie yet, because I love that movie."
"Yes, Bart, you did."
He frowned again and I tensed up. I wasn't sure how Bart would take my candor. He palmed the pint glass and tipped it up to his cracking lips and downed six ounces of Jamesons in one gulp. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand and smiled.
"I get mad at myself when I repeat things. Ya know? A little sip calms the nerves. So, this greater purpose thing is important to me because I am thinking, principally, that this is a guy who knows when a man, like those guys with the weird eyebrows in that war that McCain was in, when a man's purpose is at his worst, cause he's seen it, probably seen it more than Bruce Willis ever did, even when he was walking on all that glass in the first Die Hard, which is good too, and he knows that since the country is fucked, and that a man is capable of doing some really brutal shit to another man that well since every reaction must have another reaction in the other direction, that maybe a man who's seen so much of our lesser purpose, maybe he really knows what our greater purpose is. And that is why I think he'll make the best president we've had since Nixon."
Bart was pleased with himself. He knocked back the other half of his pint full of Jamesons. I was riveted. I had barely taken a sip of my whiskey. Hundreds of questions jostled in my mind. Before I could open my mouth and ask one, Bart's entire face had changed. He wore an impatient scowl and had put his hand around the rim of my pint glass.
"Mister, it's nearly 3:30 in the morning. You should have been gone hours ago. Now pack of those papers and head off to wherever you're sleeping."
My jaw dropped. The childish banter, the delightful insanity of his logic, had all disappeared. He walked away with my drink in his hand and dumped the remains in a sink. He woke up the other squatter, walked through two wooden doors, and disappeared.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Holy Shit!
John McCain's great uncle was known as 'Wild Bill' McCain! I knew there was a reason I was covering this bastard! Yes! Ok, now I need to sober up and start actually reading his platform.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Service to America Tour Notebook. Day One.
Meridian, Mississippi. April 1, 2008.
The Straight Talk Express rolled into Meridian at 1pm on Sunday the 30th. Day One of the week long ‘Service to America’ tour’s stated intention ‘to show the voters the Real McCain’ began in the McCain ancestral home where the presumptive Republican nominee found himself a young base commander or some such thing or another some time after the whole Hanoi thing. But, I knew this would be a special trip for me (and not just because I had been released by customs a scant twelve hours earlier). No, there would be speeches extolling the life of an ‘American Hero,’ touching slices of life, inspiring struggles, and all the other shit that every presidential candidate since the advent of television has assaulted the poor and battered populace with for the ever swelling waistline of months and now years that we call ‘election season.’ I’ll get to all that at some point. I was here for Sela Ward.
Ever since Burt Reynold’s tabbed my dear Sela to play a small part in The Man Who Loved Women (and especially after the five greatest years of my life where every week I rode the tidal wave of Terry Reed’s alcoholism with the rest of America on Sisters), I pined to touch the hand of Jessica Savitch, I wept at the promise of kissing the thigh of Helen Kimble, I swooned to spoon Lily Manning! And here she was, a native of Meridian, a graduate of the University of Alabama, a real honest to shiksa-goodness homecoming queen, hosting a fundraiser for my man McCain!
My initial essay into the party ran smack into an angry Roberta McCain relegated to invitation check-list duty. She smacked at my payot with her clipboard and sent me scurrying into the garden. Twenty minutes later I had located the service entrance and was once again swatted away, this time by an oversized slotted spoon draped in grease and collared greens. Dejected, I wandered Ms. Ward's gazebo and started reciting lines from her 2002 memoir, Homesick: A Memoir. Two hours passed in quiet reflection, until a lilting alto mused between the hickory and tupelo's. Could it be? Could she have come to me?
We talked for hours. She had read my play, Twice Chai, And Then You Die, and had wanted, desperately, she said to play the part of Chave, the embittered wife of a corrupt rabbi who led a double life as a homemaker by day and assassin by night. Sela said she felt Chave's struggle, felt it deeply. Her knowledge of Yiddish literature and Jewish history was astonishing and stirred a primordial passion that I could not contain. As the sun rose, I kissed her, at first gently and then with increasing intensity. She welcomed my lips guiding my hands to her hands and leading me back to her home.
We wended our way, lip-locked, through the remains of the party, up the winding staircase, and into her bedroom. And there, on a bed of white satin and lace we made love. Hours passed. I knew I was missing McCain's speech, but I did not care. Sela and I were entwined not just physically, but spiritually, listening to the soft beating of each other's hearts. I was in love.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
BREAKING THE SILENCE
Tel Aviv, Israel.
Apparently, Vinny DeShapiro has some friends at Mossad who caught wind of my detainment and were able to negotiate my ‘release’ and transport to Israel.
I will be brief (Any detailed recounting of my last week would cast serious doubts in the minds of you, the dear reader, as to my ability to be objective in my coverage of Senator McCain’s campaign. Let’s just say, to tickle the old imagination, that the Hanoi treatment is decidedly not a simulation and, moreover, a no shit four alarm fire when they forget to have you removed after your appointed stay is quote unquote up and they march you and several other detainees out to a deserted schoolyard at 3am, blind-folded, and line you up against a fence and start executing every one else around you until four Mossad agents show up just in the quote unquote nick of time. Let me fucking tell you, that is the kind of experience you don’t easily forget!). Needless to say, I was not given the opportunity to accompany the Senator in Iraq, Israel, France, or England. I am writing this post on a Blackberry Curve--- my brand new Macbook Air having been bashed over my head on my first day of detainment--- while awaiting my flight from Ben Gurion International Airport to JFK. The predictive texting on this new model seems retrograde at best. I grow tired of typing with my thumbs.
I have called my editor at the Middletown Republican Chassidic Dispatch fourteen times since my ‘liberation.’ There has been no answer and, just now, it occurred to me that I would not even know who to ask for. Imagine that! I almost died covering a candidate for a newspaper where I know exactly no one. Wouldn’t that be rich! I will have to look into that upon my return to the states. There are, in fact, many things I will have to look into when I return to the states.
Wild Bill
Apparently, Vinny DeShapiro has some friends at Mossad who caught wind of my detainment and were able to negotiate my ‘release’ and transport to Israel.
I will be brief (Any detailed recounting of my last week would cast serious doubts in the minds of you, the dear reader, as to my ability to be objective in my coverage of Senator McCain’s campaign. Let’s just say, to tickle the old imagination, that the Hanoi treatment is decidedly not a simulation and, moreover, a no shit four alarm fire when they forget to have you removed after your appointed stay is quote unquote up and they march you and several other detainees out to a deserted schoolyard at 3am, blind-folded, and line you up against a fence and start executing every one else around you until four Mossad agents show up just in the quote unquote nick of time. Let me fucking tell you, that is the kind of experience you don’t easily forget!). Needless to say, I was not given the opportunity to accompany the Senator in Iraq, Israel, France, or England. I am writing this post on a Blackberry Curve--- my brand new Macbook Air having been bashed over my head on my first day of detainment--- while awaiting my flight from Ben Gurion International Airport to JFK. The predictive texting on this new model seems retrograde at best. I grow tired of typing with my thumbs.
I have called my editor at the Middletown Republican Chassidic Dispatch fourteen times since my ‘liberation.’ There has been no answer and, just now, it occurred to me that I would not even know who to ask for. Imagine that! I almost died covering a candidate for a newspaper where I know exactly no one. Wouldn’t that be rich! I will have to look into that upon my return to the states. There are, in fact, many things I will have to look into when I return to the states.
Wild Bill
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Baghdad, Iraq. 9:37 pm. Location Unknown.
My coverage from Baghdad will be limited. Apparently, Senator McCain is fond of what he likes to call the Hanoi treatment. It seems that Mr. McCain believes, rather fervently I might add, that to truly understand what his presidency will mean, to truly inform the masses about the core of his values and ideals, to truly know what McCain is, to feel what McCain feels, to see what McCain sees one must experience three days of starvation, torture, and isolation. I have been told I will rejoin the Senators in Tel Aviv in three days time.
Wild Bill.
Wild Bill.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Prologue.
I was temping in an insurance office in Hartford when the call came. It was my agent, Vinny DeShapiro:
Bill, I don't know what in hell you did, but some cracker ass Jew paper, pardon my language, but c'mon, some daily called the Middletown Republican Chassidic Dispatch, I shit you not, just called. Their guy, the guy they got covering McCain, Mordecai Weissenberg, his wife caught some weird disease, some unspecified infection, and he decided to bag out. Quit, ya know? So they want you. The pay is shit, but I said my man Bill he works for the art, and maybe a touch more than the crap you're offering. You know how it goes. Anyway, I hear you're filing papers for some actuary, so not like you're going to complain, right? So, you, guy, get on that horse of yours or whatever you're riding these days and stop by the office... No, Bill, you don't need to go to Middletown. Jesus, have you ever been to Middletown? Daughter looked at Wesleyan. Weird place. So you... you get assignments, you file everything electronically. Yes, Bill, I will get print copies for your files. Whaddaya think I am, some sort of schmuck?
And he hung up.
It is 4pm in Baghdad and we just landed. I am waiting for my transport from Baghdad International Airport to the Green Zone where I will join up with Senator McCain for his current congressional trip with Senators Lieberman and Graham.
Hell of a way to start a new gig!
Wild Bill.
Bill, I don't know what in hell you did, but some cracker ass Jew paper, pardon my language, but c'mon, some daily called the Middletown Republican Chassidic Dispatch, I shit you not, just called. Their guy, the guy they got covering McCain, Mordecai Weissenberg, his wife caught some weird disease, some unspecified infection, and he decided to bag out. Quit, ya know? So they want you. The pay is shit, but I said my man Bill he works for the art, and maybe a touch more than the crap you're offering. You know how it goes. Anyway, I hear you're filing papers for some actuary, so not like you're going to complain, right? So, you, guy, get on that horse of yours or whatever you're riding these days and stop by the office... No, Bill, you don't need to go to Middletown. Jesus, have you ever been to Middletown? Daughter looked at Wesleyan. Weird place. So you... you get assignments, you file everything electronically. Yes, Bill, I will get print copies for your files. Whaddaya think I am, some sort of schmuck?
And he hung up.
It is 4pm in Baghdad and we just landed. I am waiting for my transport from Baghdad International Airport to the Green Zone where I will join up with Senator McCain for his current congressional trip with Senators Lieberman and Graham.
Hell of a way to start a new gig!
Wild Bill.
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