My Presidential Motorcade, Part 1
So there I was, right. At work in the White House Press Briefing Room, doing the things that White House reporters do.
That is, sitting around.
I sat in the chair marked for the Philadelphia Inquirer with a little engraved metal plaque and smoothed down my tie. To my left, reporters and cameramen huddled across the aisles of chairs around a man with a computer in his lap. He had just gotten Photoshop and he was fiddling with different filters. To my right, two cameramen had their feet up on the back of the chairs talking politics. When are people not talking politics in Washington?
And me? I was smoothing my tie. Over and over again. And this is the White House Press Briefing Room. These reporters and cameramen are all assigned to the White House by their news outlets. The way copyright works in Washington, if you attend an event and record it, then your outlet owns it and may use it in whatever capacity it wishes. However, if you were to miss an event, getting a tape from another outlet would then invoke licensing fees, which explains the multiplicity of redundant cameras and minidisk recorders at press events.
So all of these people have been assigned to cover the White House by their outlets full time. The only problem is, news does not happen in the White House full time. Scott McClellan comes out to give his sweaty, bug-eyed briefings in the morning and afternoon (and sometimes more often) but the rest of the time consists of a lot of sitting around.
Especially for the cameramen. The reporters at least have to worry about forming a coherent report for their outlet during the day. Cameramen are simply on-call to record the things the reporter or outlet has told them to record. Thus, when nothing is happening, they have no responsibilities. Even more thus: Photoshop.
From behind me, I eavesdrop on a conversation two men are having about the sad state of the light bulbs in the room. They debate the wattage of the overhead bulbs. One maintains 60 watt the other insists 75. I look up and immediately burn my eyes. They’re bright. I think 75.
But then over the PA system comes, for me, a wonderful repeal from the boredom: the announcement for travel pool.
And what is travel pool, do you ask? Well let me pull down this chart and point to various places on it with this stick. Travel pool is the term used to describe the group of reporters from the four different media genres (print, TV, radio, newswire) that accompany the President at all times. While the President is in the White House, all the press is in the briefing room, dicking around on Photoshop, and easily accessible. But if the President were to venture out into the city, or into the country, then a group of press comes along for the trip, recording anything the President does or says.
Now, this position is something of an annoyance to the individuals who actually work in the industry, because they have gotten very used to sitting around and doing the New York Times crossword puzzle, so often, I was told, travel pool presents an excellent opportunity for interns to be able to hang around the President, which is a cool gig for those of us who don’t see the President in person, every day.
When Talk News Radio’s time came up to do travel pool (it’s a rotating assignment, because, like I said, the real reporters do not like it) I jumped, nay, leapt into the air to snatch it from the hands of my superiors. That is, I would have done that if our assignments came out on pieces of paper, which would be more dramatic, but really all I said was, “Ok, I’ll do it.”
So back in the briefing room, I stood up and investigated those around me, attempting to quietly ascertain where I should be headed. I caught sight of a cameraman fiddling around in his camera bag, and I knew that would only happen if he had an assignment. And sure enough, he put his camera on his shoulder and walked out of the back of the briefing room, and I followed several steps behind.
We walked through the press bullpen, where the reporters have access to internet and phones, and past the snack machines and the sadly broken espresso maker that Tom Hanks donated after his visit to the briefing room several years ago. We walked out an unmarked door to the outside somewhere, then back inside, through a very nice foyer, and out onto the back lawn, where the Presidential motorcade was all lined up in the circular driveway and snipers were positioned every hundred yards, leaning against trees, long rifles in hand.
I walked behind my cameraman past the three or four black limousines in the front, and then past black Suburban after black Suburban, until we arrived at what I counted to be the twelfth vehicle back, a black Suburban. I showed a Secret Service agent my press credentials and my travel pool pass and piled into the car. It wasn’t until I was inside, however, that I realized that although all the Suburbans all looked the same, they all had subtle modifications and customizations to make them better suited for their specific role in the motorcade.
Take the Suburban I was sitting in, for example. The press Suburbans (there were two, I was in the first one) had large, double-wide sunroofs, not in the front, but over the back row of seats and the trunk, so that cameramen and photographers could stand while still in the car and catch all the action. Pretty neat, huh? And the Suburban directly in front of me (that would be vehicle number eleven), it had what looked like a very tall snap-tight back canopy, giving it a distinct resemblance to a paddy wagon that could be used to haul off pesky protesters who were ruining a Presidential photo-op. Which is exactly what I said the fat man in a suit who was sitting next to me. But he corrected me, and said that while, yes, he did see how someone could gather that impression from looking at the vehicle in front of us, it was, in fact, a mobile biohazard treatment laboratory and would be used if the motorcade encountered chemical or biological weapons. “Oh,” I said, “Right.”
We waited around for another five or ten minutes, under the glaring surveillance of the sniper Secret Service agents with their fingerless gloves and knives strapped to their thighs, until our Secret Service driver showed up, got in the driver’s seat, and, as the six police motorcycles at the front of the motorcade fired up their sirens, followed the paddy wagon/mobile biological weapon treatment facility at quite a crisp pace and we made our way out of the White House grounds and out in Washington, DC.
That is, sitting around.
I sat in the chair marked for the Philadelphia Inquirer with a little engraved metal plaque and smoothed down my tie. To my left, reporters and cameramen huddled across the aisles of chairs around a man with a computer in his lap. He had just gotten Photoshop and he was fiddling with different filters. To my right, two cameramen had their feet up on the back of the chairs talking politics. When are people not talking politics in Washington?
And me? I was smoothing my tie. Over and over again. And this is the White House Press Briefing Room. These reporters and cameramen are all assigned to the White House by their news outlets. The way copyright works in Washington, if you attend an event and record it, then your outlet owns it and may use it in whatever capacity it wishes. However, if you were to miss an event, getting a tape from another outlet would then invoke licensing fees, which explains the multiplicity of redundant cameras and minidisk recorders at press events.
So all of these people have been assigned to cover the White House by their outlets full time. The only problem is, news does not happen in the White House full time. Scott McClellan comes out to give his sweaty, bug-eyed briefings in the morning and afternoon (and sometimes more often) but the rest of the time consists of a lot of sitting around.
Especially for the cameramen. The reporters at least have to worry about forming a coherent report for their outlet during the day. Cameramen are simply on-call to record the things the reporter or outlet has told them to record. Thus, when nothing is happening, they have no responsibilities. Even more thus: Photoshop.
From behind me, I eavesdrop on a conversation two men are having about the sad state of the light bulbs in the room. They debate the wattage of the overhead bulbs. One maintains 60 watt the other insists 75. I look up and immediately burn my eyes. They’re bright. I think 75.
But then over the PA system comes, for me, a wonderful repeal from the boredom: the announcement for travel pool.
And what is travel pool, do you ask? Well let me pull down this chart and point to various places on it with this stick. Travel pool is the term used to describe the group of reporters from the four different media genres (print, TV, radio, newswire) that accompany the President at all times. While the President is in the White House, all the press is in the briefing room, dicking around on Photoshop, and easily accessible. But if the President were to venture out into the city, or into the country, then a group of press comes along for the trip, recording anything the President does or says.
Now, this position is something of an annoyance to the individuals who actually work in the industry, because they have gotten very used to sitting around and doing the New York Times crossword puzzle, so often, I was told, travel pool presents an excellent opportunity for interns to be able to hang around the President, which is a cool gig for those of us who don’t see the President in person, every day.
When Talk News Radio’s time came up to do travel pool (it’s a rotating assignment, because, like I said, the real reporters do not like it) I jumped, nay, leapt into the air to snatch it from the hands of my superiors. That is, I would have done that if our assignments came out on pieces of paper, which would be more dramatic, but really all I said was, “Ok, I’ll do it.”
So back in the briefing room, I stood up and investigated those around me, attempting to quietly ascertain where I should be headed. I caught sight of a cameraman fiddling around in his camera bag, and I knew that would only happen if he had an assignment. And sure enough, he put his camera on his shoulder and walked out of the back of the briefing room, and I followed several steps behind.
We walked through the press bullpen, where the reporters have access to internet and phones, and past the snack machines and the sadly broken espresso maker that Tom Hanks donated after his visit to the briefing room several years ago. We walked out an unmarked door to the outside somewhere, then back inside, through a very nice foyer, and out onto the back lawn, where the Presidential motorcade was all lined up in the circular driveway and snipers were positioned every hundred yards, leaning against trees, long rifles in hand.
I walked behind my cameraman past the three or four black limousines in the front, and then past black Suburban after black Suburban, until we arrived at what I counted to be the twelfth vehicle back, a black Suburban. I showed a Secret Service agent my press credentials and my travel pool pass and piled into the car. It wasn’t until I was inside, however, that I realized that although all the Suburbans all looked the same, they all had subtle modifications and customizations to make them better suited for their specific role in the motorcade.
Take the Suburban I was sitting in, for example. The press Suburbans (there were two, I was in the first one) had large, double-wide sunroofs, not in the front, but over the back row of seats and the trunk, so that cameramen and photographers could stand while still in the car and catch all the action. Pretty neat, huh? And the Suburban directly in front of me (that would be vehicle number eleven), it had what looked like a very tall snap-tight back canopy, giving it a distinct resemblance to a paddy wagon that could be used to haul off pesky protesters who were ruining a Presidential photo-op. Which is exactly what I said the fat man in a suit who was sitting next to me. But he corrected me, and said that while, yes, he did see how someone could gather that impression from looking at the vehicle in front of us, it was, in fact, a mobile biohazard treatment laboratory and would be used if the motorcade encountered chemical or biological weapons. “Oh,” I said, “Right.”
We waited around for another five or ten minutes, under the glaring surveillance of the sniper Secret Service agents with their fingerless gloves and knives strapped to their thighs, until our Secret Service driver showed up, got in the driver’s seat, and, as the six police motorcycles at the front of the motorcade fired up their sirens, followed the paddy wagon/mobile biological weapon treatment facility at quite a crisp pace and we made our way out of the White House grounds and out in Washington, DC.
posted by August Caravalho at 7:52 PM
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