The Washington Spectator
Nathan, George Jean
THE WASHINGTON SPECTATOR I was planning to use this space to point out that it is already difficult enough for us Reaganites to brag about "America: Standing Tall"--particularly when the President...
...Zoe Caldwell, the Australian actress who played Miss Hellman, looked the part, with her hair, dimly gray, piled high on her head, her eyes narrowed into tiny slits, and a cigarette forever pressed between the tips of her fingers...
...No matter...
...Why are people so crazy to buy this thing...
...And I hope to meet the President, because I've read numerous amount of writing about how Reagan is one of the best Presidents ever for physical fitness...
...What's it matter...
...Lillian, a new one-man show by William Luce about the playwright Lillian Hellman, has come and gone, but not before it gave Washington-boosters another chance to applaud the town's emergence as a cultural center...
...I love TV, and I like expressing myself...
...No, no...
...People are very concerned...
...He seemed surprised...
...Where...
...The lives of our children, our grandchildren...
...Look, our lives are all involved in this thing...
...Well . . . "Okay, okay...
...He has an advanced degree in economics...
...I don't have five bucks...
...It's pretty humorous...
...To be scooped with a joke, and by neo-liberals...
...I'm putting out a product...
...And Reagan doesn't dye his hair, right...
...Soviet Life, the Russian news services...
...All these things come across...
...On the phone, Steirman sounds a lot like Ed Koch...
...GJN 56 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1986...
...Want to hear it...
...It's unexplored territory...
...He's also offered to carry a horse up a telephone pole in front of the Washington Post building, which may not go over too well with Sally Quinn...
...In his review, David Richards of the Post coughed up the usual blurb-size bits of praise that theatre critics are left with as deadline approaches: "a fine piece of art," an "elegant evening," "nakedly honest," and so forth...
...I think there are many, many things in this book that are very revealing of the man...
...So the man's a little vain...
...The guys wear scarves regardless of the weather...
...The audience lapped it up...
...Miss Caldwell, her eyes elevated past the footlights, searching for the revolutionary dawn, or the New Man (Hellman had several), declaimed the final line of the play in a voice that I gathered was supposed to suggest indomitability: "The then and the now are one...
...I've written the commercial already...
...You think Reagan writes his own speeches...
...And when I get out of the shower ...' When he was finished I asked him why he came to Washington from his home in Boston...
...do you just' crouch underneath the thing and sling it over your back, or what...
...She giggled...
...But since John Wooten was there, so was I. Wooten is the strongest man in the world—TAS material—and to prove it he has back-lifted the Harvard University Marching Band, pulled a 240,000-pound train sixty-two feet, dragged a municipal transit bus through the streets of Malden, Massachusetts, beat an elephant at tug-of-war, carried a horse up a ladder—that kind of thing...
...I was planning to add, by way of consolation, that if we can weather the humiliation of having one named Bud for two years, we could most likely weather anything...
...So we're looking at sales of 40-45,000 in the first two months alone...
...You could almost feel this Washington crowd shudder...
...THE WASHINGTON SPECTATOR I was planning to use this space to point out that it is already difficult enough for us Reaganites to brag about "America: Standing Tall"--particularly when the President won't even lob so much as a hand grenade into the Bekaa Valley—without our having to endure the added humiliation of a National Security Adviser named Poindexter...
...After I'd had a chance to leaf through a copy of Mikhail Gorbachev's first American collection, A Time for Peace, I called up Hy Steirman, Chairman of Richardson & Steirman, the New York publishing house apparat that's putting out the book...
...Numbers, a nightclub on 19th Street, is not my kind of place...
...If we can do something with this book, to open a door, to head us down the road to peace . . ." Uhhuh...
...You know...
...They're very pleased," he said...
...I disagree...
...The play was true to its subject as well: self-pitying, prevaricating, lugubriously self-reflective...
...But now, just before we go to press, I see that my little joke was scooped by a neo-liberal weekly here in town...
...On the barstools the girls perch themselves with arched backs, cross their long legs, drag off thin cigarettes, lick their teeth a lot...
...the bouncers' fists are the size of pineapples...
...I've even offered to carry a horse up the steps of the White House...
...Steirman also said, by the way, that the Soviet Embassy calls him from time to time to find out how the book is doing...
...That line, of course, makes no sense whatsoever...
...But the crowd didn't seem to mind...
...These are all original photos...
...Oh, hell no," he said, disdainfully...
...I'm the strongest man in the world...
...And the boosters flocked—each performance was close to a sell-out...
...This one-man show apotheosizes her with American culture's ultimate tribute...
...For a five dollar fee," he said...
...But you can't keep me away from a night of high culture (see above), so I scrounged for a ticket...
...You've got to remember, this is a very educated man we're dealing with here...
...He let her kiss him anyway...
...The titles of the chapters"Speech at the Reception in Warsaw in Honor of the Participants in the Summit Meeting of the Party and State Leaders of the Warsaw Treaty Member Countries...
...The book's doing very, very well," he said...
...The line has entered the canon of American liberalism, despite the fact that the tailoring metaphor should call to mind less Hellman's revolutionary resolve than her decidedly bourgeois enjoyment of the finer things: expensive suits, cardigan sweaters, Blackglama fur coats...
...she cried, and as the curtain fell the audience rose in a thunderous cheer...
...I prefer to do my drinking in scruffier, less pricey—well, dumps...
...This mind over matter I'm doing, it's perfect for product endorsements, motion pictures, what-have-you...
...Here's this new guy on the scene, and people want to get a look at him, to get a feel . . ." Yeah, but are people really going to get to know this guy from this book...
...He is an attorney...
...It's as simple as that...
...I told Steirman I noticed the photos in the book were re-touched to remove that unsightly splotch on the Gorbachev pate...
...and as he detailed an elaborate scheme involving pulleys and eye hooks and lengths of reinforced rope, a girl ran up to kiss him...
...Look," he said, returning to earth, "I'm a publisher...
...The room itself is subterranean dark, the only light reflecting endlessly round the mirrored walls...
...I'm sure they're not re-touched...
...Where'd you get the pictures...
...I asked him exactly how you went about carrying a horse up a telephone pole...
...I'm trying to get the Mennen company to let me endorse their Baby Magic Baby Powder...
...Around here, you take your culture as you find it...
...I'm just selling a book...
...That'd just be like—like you're just carrying a horse or something...
...But it is to places like Numbers that the Congressional AA's come, and the deputy assistants to the Deputy Under Secretary for Fluoridating Water—the cream of the mid-level...
...That's what I was planning to say...
...Do you know me...
...What I'd do...
...We had a first printing of 25,000, which we sold in the first month...
...It looks like the usual Commie stuff to me...
...After the camera crew from Channel 7 had recorded his feat of lifting a wooden plank with seven girls on it (their backs arched, their legs crossed), John told me that this was how he in-tended "to ease my way into the theatrical business through the back door...
...He is well-read...
...May I?" she asked...
...Now we're in our second printing, and so far this month, we've sold most of those...
...Most impressive were the sober moments, reminders of our country's shameful past—particularly the reenactment of Hellman's testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee, complete with a climactic recitation of her famous let-ter to the committee: "I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions...
...It is the final humiliation...
...So what if he didn't write every word...
...That's not exactly . . . "I disagree...
Vol. 19 • February 1986 • No. 2
