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.