My Presidental Motorcade, Part 3

I raised an eyebrow toward the fat man, but his expression relayed none of what I felt. The sexy European merely ran his hands through this wavy hair and adjusted the camera slung over his shoulder. Everyone was calm, and the Secret Service agent in front of us continued to listen intently to her earpiece.

Suddenly, she stepped out of our way and the chase was on again. We all sprinted up the driveway and past a gauntlet of sentry Secret Service agents, through the wide-open front doors of the embassy. Our various dress shoes clicked across the polished floors and we made a right hand turn and came in full view of the four flights of stairs awaiting our arrival.

So we grunted on, especially my fat friend, and we made it up step after step, flight after flight, until finally we burst onto the correct level of the building and emerged panting and sweaty to the very prim and proper setting of President Bush and the Pakistani Prime Minister standing together in front of their county’s respective flags, doing the strange whispering into one another’s ears that always accompanies photo ops, while what appeared to be the entire staff of the embassy snapped a thousand pictures from card-deck sized digital cameras.

But all that changed quickly, as my squad of photographers showed up and elbowed those poor people out of the way. I put my headphones on, checked my levels, and fired up my recorder, tensed and ready to forever save the sound of this event.

Once the shuffling and wheezing died down, President Bush took one step forward and addressed the awaiting lenses and microphones:

“The people of the United States express their sympathy in your time of need. We will do what is necessary to aid your country in recovering from this disaster.”

He then produced a pen and wrote something I couldn’t see into a ledger that was on a table to his right, in a rather stylized script, I must say. President Bush then shook the Prime Minister’s hand, the cameras when crazy at that, and began to walk behind a curtain than was set up behind the two men.

As he was leaving, some of the reporters shouted out questions (remember, this was in late 2005, when President Bush was still trying to convince people that stony silence was the same thing as strong leadership). But he did not answer the reporters (one asked about Harriet Miers, the doomed-to-be-former Supreme Court candidate, and the other was about Iraq), he merely smiled broadly and waved, although he couldn’t have been more than ten feet away from the reporters asking the questions.

After President Bush disappeared from view the tight knot of people in the center of the room relaxed. I glanced down at my recorder and saw that I had one minute and thirty seconds of garbage. A mindless quote and a wave from the President. Then it occurred to me: what happened to all of those SWAT Secret Service agents?

I looked around for some sign of them: a used machine gun magazine, a muddy foot print, a grappling hook, anything, but there was nothing to be seen. Secret Service agents in suits came in from their posts at the walls and ushered us back down the flights of stairs, across the cul-de-sac and back into our designated Suburban.

We took off again, through the streets of Washington DC, headed back the West Wing and the press briefing room. The prospect of more sitting around was eminent. I decided that the SWAT Secret Service people must just have been practicing some kind of danger scenario. Then I realized that we weren’t so different that day, them and me. We both wanted to leap into heroic action, serving the United States and saving the populace (in our own ways). Yet, in the end, we were both only sweaty, with the memory of a smirk and a wave from President Bush.

My Presidential Motorcade, Part 2

Riding in the one of the two press Suburbans in the Presidential motorcade, I was flanked on my left by a man in his fifties with glasses, balding and of little consequence to this story or to the world in general (ooo, ‘moted!). On my right was a fat man, nearly bursting out of his suit, who was busying himself with the interior of a newspaper. In the row of seats in front of me, there sat two nondescript newspaper men and a vaguely European-looking photographer with dreamy, wavy blonde hair, a five o’clock shadow and an accent that I couldn’t place, certainly it was a sexy one, though. These three seemed to know each other and spent the trip recounting war stories from their decidedly un-war-like profession.
Exerpts:
“…I had to wait forty five minutes for the return call to do the interview. [Scoffs] I was like, ‘Hello? Washington Post here…’”
(in the sexy accent) “Then the shutter jammed and as I went for the spare camera I had slung ‘cross my back, but the bird had already flown away and the Prime Minister had already brushed it off.”
“…didn’t you used to know Sebastian Bach?”
And while these men shared their stories, our motorcade sped through the shut down streets of Washington DC, on our way to the Pakistan Embassy.

That was the reason for the trip, to visit the embassy. At the time this was taking place in late 2005, Pakistan had just suffered an enormous earthquake. As a sign of support and fraternity, President Bush elected to take a trip across Washington to the embassy to sign an official book of condolences and pose of a photo op with some of the Pakistani officials who work at the embassy. And while this may seen like a hollow and meaningless gesture (which it is, to be sure), the amount of effort that goes into undertaking an operation like ferrying the President across town surely has to count for something, because it would have been immeasurably easier for him to just make a phone call or send a fax.

Our motorcade was fifteen cars long, three or four limousines in the front, carrying the President and his aides and whoever other administration people, and eleven or twelve specially designed Suburbans following, occupied by many, many Secret Service agents and the press. And that number fifteen is not counting the six motorcycles that ride up front or the ambulance that pulls up the rear.

And that’s just the actual motorcade, itself.

In addition to all of that, the Washington DC police also close down the route on which the motorcade will be driving, and they have officers posted every so often working crowd control as the motorcade speeds past. Because, keep in mind, the motorcade driving by makes quite a scene, and the people on the street, often because they are tipped off by the conspicuous closing of the street, mill around, waiting to see the President drive by and wave. And let me tell you, those people are very indiscriminant about whom exactly they wave to in the motorcade. They would get just as excited if the President waved back to them or a radio intern. To this I can attest.

So we flew along through streets normally clogged with traffic in the middle of the day that were for these precious, Presidential minutes, free and clear and frankly quite pleasurable to travel through. Our Secret Service driver drove our Suburban unsettlingly close to biological weapons lab in front of us, but because no one else seemed to mind, I tried to rationalize a sense of security. But I didn’t have long because we arrived at our destination in less than ten minutes.

The Pakistan embassy was a large building that sat at the end of a cul-de-sac. Our motorcade parked down the right side of the street, with the limousines in the front being closest to the building and our orientation to the embassy being quite a ways down the block.

Now, the President waits for nobody, so as soon, and I mean the instant, that we came to a stop, the sliding door of the Suburban rocketed open and we all hustled out into the sunlight and began running to catch up to the President. And we were running. I didn’t have a problem with it, and neither did the sexy European, but the others, including my very fat seatmate, were wheezing and sucking and choking during our entire sprint. But as we approached the center of the cul-de-sac, very near our destination of the embassy, a female Secret Service agent stepped directly in front of us, held her hand in front of her, indicated that we needed to stop, and put her other had up to her ear, listening to her ear piece.

We screeched to a halt and were suddenly waiting, stopped dead by this woman in sunglasses. The fat man was displeased, obviously miffed that his exertion in running had been for nothing.

Just as he had timed his gasps for breath well enough to open his mouth to speak, we all heard screeching tires behind us. Down the block, making a left hand turn onto the residential street we were standing in the middle of, another Suburban was coming back down onto four wheels and was headed right for us at a very fast speed. We all quickly shuffled to the right side of the street, near the other cars in the motorcade as the new Suburban blew past us and hopped up into the driveway of the embassy.

In one fluid motion, the Suburban came to a stop and all of its doors opened at the same time, including the back tailgate. From within emerged nine Secret Service agents, all dressed in SWAT gear: flack vests, fingerless gloves, hand guns and knives strapped to either thigh, enormous semi-automatic rifles in their hands, double ear pieces and sunglasses. One agent even popped out of the back, as if he had been crouched in the back of the Suburban the entire ride, just waiting to make the baddest entrance possible.

Needless to say, I was confused and scared. What were those guys doing here? As they exited their vehicle they all paused for an action movie instant to gather their surroundings, before running one after another into the embassy, just seconds behind the President.

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.

A Note, Because I've Been Away

A quick update that will not be a real post. I have one on what its like to ride in (IN!) the Presidential motorcade that is maybe half done that I'll be putting up in epic trilogy form. But its not done and right now I need to mention a few things:

1. Working in the professional media has been a disheartening experience. As I'm learning in ever more grizzly detail via my research paper, all too often the media are forced (choose?) not to pursue a story and focus more on simply reporting what people say, inferring somehow that there are no objective facts to be found, only opposing opinions to be endlessly repeated...

2. Washington DC is an enchanting, inspiring city. I love the monuments and statues that are everywhere, commemorating the footsteps on the foundation of our country. They make me feel a part of something bigger than myself, some legacy, like life is a play and I may contribute but a few lines, as Mr. Keating would say...

3. Thomas Jefferson knew what he was doing, building his house on Monticello. His Virginia-centric worldview seems warranted at that house. It is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been, and that’s coming from a Southern California boy whose family is from Hawaii. The Blue Ridge Mountains, which surround the hill upon which Monticello resides, appear like the ocean, peeking through the trees on Jefferson's property. Sometimes I guess I see what I want to see. But more to the point, Monticello (and the University of Virginia, for that matter) served to make me even more certain that, if the Framers were a boy band, and I were a twelve-year-old girl, Thomas “TJ” Jefferson would be on my middle school locker…

4. There is a girl. Good lord is there a girl.

Motorcade story is up next. See you soon!

Going After Idealism With A Cheese Grater

I’ve been trying to make the general tone of these entries kind of upbeat. But circumstances at the moment seem to necessitate a bit of, I don’t know, outrage? Maybe disquietedness? Is that a word? (Word says: yes)

I’m just so AAAARRRRRGGGGHH!!!!!!

Here’s the thing: our government appears corroded and corrupted beyond repair. And I’m not really even talking about the people in it (but they definitely deserve some blame). The system itself is so saturated with money; I can’t even deal with it!

I’ve had the misfortune to be taking a class here at the Washington Center laughably titled “Washington Ethics.” And through this class I’ve been reading a whole bunch of articles from the reader (like you do), and in the section on campaign finance reform, I just about macvasinated.*

Politicians (both red and blue) take so much money from wealthy corporations and individuals that they can’t help but be beholden to them. And these articles had all these smug quotes of these empty suit business douches saying things like, “We pay for access.” and “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

So these guys pay the parties hundreds of hundreds of thousands of dollars, and then they get to go to these exclusive parties with the political mucky mucks. And that’s the “access,” having a flirtini with Karl Rove or James Carville and getting to “elbow elbow, nudge nudge” your point of view to the guys making decisions that effect everyone.

And everybody does it, because they all figure that, if they don’t, then they’ll lose because the other guys will. Which is probably true.

So there’s really nothing I, or anyone else, can do about it. Fear of the actions of others will continue to maintain the status quo at the expense of everyone.

Great.

This is a depressing town. I am ashamed to be a person right now.


*mac-vas-in-ate v. 1. Describes the feeling of wanting to gouge out your eyes and stab pencils in your ears in order to escape an unbearably frustrating or morally heartbreaking situation 2. May also be used in excruciatingly boring situations.
When Marsha’s wrist watch alerted her that the politician’s speech was entering its third hour, she began to seriously consider macvasination.

Brainiacs on Display, Press Passes Lead the Way

I remember playing Math Blaster in the elementary school computer lab. I also remember Number Chomper or Chompster or something like that, as well as the ubiquitous Oregon Trail, all on the original “floppy” floppy discs. But the reason I bring up Math Blaster in particualr is because I happened to attend an event the other night that was put on by the Davidson Foundation, which is owned by the husband and wife team the Davidson’s and they were the people who put out Math Blaster all those many years ago. Whew!

In the time since I was a tetherball-hitting, pog-slamming little kid up to now, the Davidson’s have done very well for themselves. They sold their business during the height of the dot com bubble in the late nineties and with their new found wealth, they decided to create a foundation that would give scholarships to gifted children.

Now I know what you’re thinking if you’re at all similar to me, because this is what I thought when I first learned of the information I have just given you. You’re thinking that you remember the stupid GATE classes back in elementary school and that the kids in those classes weren’t all that smart, and in fact most of those kids just had really overbearing parents and many of them were wealthy beyond that and what the hell do they need specific scholarships, much less a whole foundation, devoted to them?!

Yeah, that’s still true, but seriously, the kids I saw at the dinner were, as the Davidson Foundation says “profoundly gifted.”

There was some kid from Idaho who worked for NASA designing computer models that could determine the optimum angle for the Mars rover’s solar panels to be set at so to maximize the amount of sunlight hitting it, while minimizing the build up of Martian durst on the panel itself. Sound confusing? Some girl from New York was (get this, I’m not making this up) synthesizing chemotherapy with a type of genetic (read: stem cell) therapy to create a radical new cancer fighting technique. By the way, he’s sixteen and she’s seventeen.

So there. But anyway, this is what happened:

The folks at Talk Radio News didn’t think that the event for the gifted kids was news, but I went after work anyway. However, because I am not “profoundly gifted,” I didn’t bring any sound equipment. Idiot.

I brought a roommate of mine, at the last minute, to have some company. He wore jeans and a shirt and I was still in my dress shoes and suit pants, but in a polo shirt. These facts come into play later.

We ride the Metro over to the Jefferson Building in the Library of Congress and are immediately stopped by a security guard in front of the building. If you’ve never seen these buildings, you are leading half a life. If medieval Catholics perfected the power of architecture to inspire specific feelings of awe and reverence, then the architects of these buildings took their queue from them. The Library of Congress buildings are enormous, intricately carved, tremendously statue-d testaments to the highest ambitions of the United States. And this security guards thinks he’s going to keep us out? A little flash of the press pass takes care of him and we, slowing spinning with gazes to the walls and ceilings, enter the building.

After press passing our way through yet another line of security guards, these ones with metal detectors, we hear voices echoing down the highly polished marble hallways. We follow the voices past busts of old, important, dead white men and happen across a very formal (ball gowns and tuxedos) swath of people milling around several folding tables. We approach, but are again stopped, and again, the press past thwarts the nefarious intents of suspicious individuals who would keep us from going where we’d like.

The girls in low cut ball gowns behind the folding tables tell my roommate and me that, “This is indeed the dinner for the gifted kids,” but I can tell from her sour expression that she is unimpressed with our choice of personal décor.

I give her a sad story about being a new reporter and about the city being oh so big and terrifying, and she melts like taffy Washington DC humidity. We are unleashed upon the party to dine on the fancy-fancy, classy-classy hours dourves. They even had a weird upscale (and unfortunately rather bland) seven-layer dip with tortilla chips. And being that I am far away from the land of avocados, I partook of quite a bit of it.

All the gifted kids went up on stage and gave little speeches and accepted trophies from the Davidson’s. But the thing was, some of the kids’ speeches were phenomenal. One kid, who was six (6), and a piano virtuoso, centered what he said on the theme of a “Great Society,” and the fact that in his view, art was a necessary and underappreciated part of a “Great Society.” This statement caused me to take a pause and consider what I was doing when I was six; I’ll let you do that now, as well…

Now I know he probably didn’t write his speech. But Meat Loaf doesn’t write his own songs. There’s something to be said for being an excellent deliverer of speeches and this six-year-old Asian boy was definitely that. Plus, Meat Loaf (and meatloaf) is awesome.

Anyway, these kids were outrageous and the food was boring tasting, but the presentation was top notch. Plus, my roommate and I got to the two weird college kids with five o’clock shadows meandering around a super formal party, probably looking like total jackasses.

Those press passes will get you in anywhere.

An-arch-y in Washington DC!

This past weekend there was a big protest in Washington DC. Cindy Sheehan was here along with over one hundred thousand other people and they marched on the White House chanting with signs and the whole thing.

At Talk Radio News, I got assigned to cover the protest, but there was a twist: there was also a smaller protest being held on the same day but a little earlier. The idea was that this smaller protest would conduct its business in the morning and then meet up with the big protest at noon for the big festivities (and the cookies and milk). This smaller was against the World Bank and the IMF.

And it was also full of Anarchists.

Now to this point, I really had no opinion concerning Anarchists. I suppose I knew they existed, somewhere, but I never really gave them much thought. I guess I broadly approved of them, being that were members of the radical left that most of the time I found kind of amusing and silly with their wide-eyed, snarling affirmations of conviction to really, really strange causes. But no more.

I do not like Anarchists.

The anti-World Bank protest was being held in Dupont Circle at 10:00 in the morning on Saturday (I knew this because TRNS gets releases about this kind of stuff ahead of time). In the week and a half I’ve been here in Washington, I have transformed into a very responsible, punctual person. So I showed up at 9:50, just to be safe. 10:00 came, then 10:30, 11:00, 11:30. Now, there were people there, normal protest people, dreadlocks, tie-dyed shirts, the whole deal (and don’t forget about the little clans of Anarchists), but they were all just sort of milling around aimlessly, some kind of weird Renaissance Faire from the future.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. When I first walked up to the protest, I heard a familiar melody wafting to my ears, riding on the humidity like a Leprechaun on a rainbow.

Dun di-dun di-dun --clap, clap--

As I got closer to a group who was chanting and clapping and dancing and kicking and shaking, I placed it, in spite of its different, now anti-Bush lyrics. It was the Fraggle Rock theme!

Unable to believe my luck (because I though it would sound great on the radio), I busted out my microphone and began recording them. I got about thirty seconds on tape before one of them saw me and scrunched up his face.

“Hey, hey you! Stop recording! Hey, hey!”

The guy, dressed in a high school cheerleader’s pleated (very short) skirt, high pig tails clamped with cute plastic barrettes, more than three days of stubble and two Wicked Witch of the West socks on his hands, jogged over to me and said, more or less, the following:

“We don’t want you to record us at this public event, where we came of our own free will, where we are in plain sight, and making a huge racket, to boot, because we are Anarchists. Later, when we are marching in the streets, we plan on putting bandanas across our faces, as if we were desperados. It would be ok to record us then. But now, with no bandanas, it is unacceptable. The irony of my being willing to publicly protest but unwilling to work with the press, who might be able to further broadcast my message, is lost to me. I am an idiot. I dress like I live in a dumpster. I have a credit card that my parents pay.”

So I obliged and didn’t record any more of them.

But that wasn’t the last of the Anarchists that day, oh no!

After the march finally began, a whole big wad of people (maybe a thousand) began walking down the middle of the Massachusetts Ave. The whole group made it down the street and then made several turns down other streets, ranting “Whose streets? Our streets!” the whole way. But then something strange happened. The entire group seemed to become confused and all packed into one intersection, blocking traffic and standing around. We seemed to have become lost.

But my friends, the bandana-ed Anarchists, felt they knew the way. With renewed resolve, they decided right was the direction to turn, and they resumed with their chanting, going down the street way from the rest of the group. As I saw this group of about one hundred fifty Anarchists leave the main group, I knew I had to go with them. Together we all made turns down different streets, but then, maybe five minutes out, they again became confused.

In the middle of a major street, blocking traffic, the Anarchists all brought out their cell phones and tried to figure out what had gone wrong. Eventually some kind of consensus was reached, and we all retraced our steps to the original intersection where we could just see the tail end of the rest of our group (who had turned left). We ran and caught up to them just blocks from the White House and Cindy Sheehan’s protest. The winded Anarchists didn’t miss a beat though, and marched right back into the thick of things.

I stood next to one rather normal looking protester, a man of maybe forty with a brown Bill Watterson mustache, as we both watched the black clad army of seventeen and eighteen year olds parade into the anti-war protest. He and I made eye contact and I shrugged. He moved like he was about to say something, but then paused, and decided better of it. I laughed and nodded my head.

“Seriously,” I said.