The Washington Spectator
Nathan, George Jean
: THE WASHINGTON SPECTATOR "The hand is unique to human beings," read one of Citibank's advertisements for Hands Across America. "It's what makes us different from every other species." So too,...
...What time is it...
...Behind the Archives," I said...
...Then we will have other volunteers walking up and down the Line to make sure everyone knows what songs to sing: first, `We Are the World,' then, `Hands Across America,' and then, `America the Beautiful.' At that point in time, about 3 o'clock, the human Line will achieve reality...
...It unsettled me, anyway: first the dizzy disbelief, and then, as the Line broke up and the hand-holders parted in hugs and cheers and made their way to their cars and buses, the hollow melancholia...
...Since the city was packed cheek to jowl with "press staging areas" for the event, I had trouble picking the most profitable vantage point...
...I'll see what I can come up with...
...Thus falls yet an-other barrier setting man apart from beast...
...I'd tell you what she said, but it was off the record...
...But they can never carry over the effect of staring straight into the thing, eyeball to eyeball...
...I decided to avoid the White House like an AIDS clinic...
...He grabbed someone's wrist and looked at her watch...
...The Line was, as one girl complained to me, all clunched together—three or four people deep in some sections—but it was real...
...In the face of pop psychosis on the scale of Hands Across America, only an extraordinary affirmation can haul one up from the dismal funk—something perdurable and ancient, some fundament older than the hand and even the ability to blush...
...He made pushing motions with his skinny arms...
...And if there was ever a reason for a nation to rise up and blush as one, Hands Across America was surely it...
...It didn't work quite that smoothly, of course...
...he demanded...
...Don't you see this is my job...
...Looking distraught, he made an urgent call to L.A...
...One of the HAA staffers had explained the mechanics of the Line to me this way: "People will start holding hands in clumps, see...
...Well, is he in there or not...
...But hustle...
...I considered the White House: a couple of days before, President Reagan had announced that he would forgo another snoozy week-end under the pines of Camp David and join Hands as the Line snaked up the White House driveway...
...I got Chuck Norris, Sugar Ray Leonard, maybe Coretta King...
...Denying every-thing, I ducked into the tent and spied the groaning board, stacked with buckets of Roy Rogers fried chicken, tubs of cole slaw, and two large bowls of the ubiquitous pasta salad...
...That figures," he said...
...With that he lit out toward the other side of the pool in great leaps and bounds...
...Please, people," he said in a high voice quickly going hoarse...
...He hung up the phone and looked out hopelessly at the anonymous crowd gathering around the base of the monument...
...I set my plate down at a phone bank and was soon joined by "Entertainment Tonight's" Washington correspondent, whom I often run into at frivolous events that take place within sniffing distance of movie stars...
...A mass delirium had seized the nation, and to witness the madness at close range was deeply unsettling—as if a trusted friend suddenly got a wild light in his eye and confessed to being Catherine the Great...
...Oh god," he said...
...In the White House driveway," I said, "but I don't think you can get in there...
...I don't know what the hell you let him in line for anyway...
...Right over there...
...I decided to head for a local watering hole up on Connecticut Avenue, as my spirits spiraled down and down...
...I fancied that one was eyeing my notepad and press pass...
...God almighty, we gotta go, we gotta go...
...Out of Nicaragua" button...
...Where's Reagan supposed to be...
...I drew up my last ounce of spirit and squared my drooping shoulders...
...It's 2:30...
...He was agitated...
...His wife waved their tickets, which indicated in computer codes their assigned location in the Line...
...To the side was a cooler overflowing with Cokes—Diet, caffeine-free, Classic, the works...
...So too, say some paleontologists, does the ability to blush in embarrassment...
...Finally he said, "Well, thanks anyway...
...Several of my colleagues bent over the table, skeptically examining the fare...
...I had the uneasy feeling that he was right, but I was done with interviews...
...GJN 50 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1986...
...As a half-mile captain, he was having trouble...
...That's a good place to be, because they need people over there...
...Instead, I made for the Press Command Center below the Washington Monument, where I could get out of the sun and grab some lunch...
...You want forty-five seconds with a stand-up close, right...
...But the thing is, there aren't that many stars here, per se...
...We will have mile captains and half-mile captains along the way, and they will bring the different clumps together so there is one continuous Line...
...So what do you want me to do...
...At a more leisurely pace I went back up the Mall in the same general direction as Jesse, toward the Washington Monument...
...one of the girls demanded...
...The hand-holders stared at him...
...As I passed through a stand of trees near the Ellipse I noticed two girls, minimally encased in lion-skin bikinis, lounging in the shade with a picnic basket between them...
...After they hurried off, I took out my HAA map to double-check that the Line would pass several blocks away from the rear of the Archives...
...I walked down to the west end of the Capitol, where a high-strung, wiry teenager named Jesse stood among a throng of Linees...
...I stopped off in the press tent, to jot down the standard quotes from the spokesman: just the beginning .. . dawn of a brighter day . . . a new consciousness for all of us...
...Nathan, I told myself, you are still a reporter, by God, and there is a girl over there who deserves to be interviewed...
...Tell us where we're supposed to go," she said...
...And Mary Lou Retton I can probably get, but she's . . . I agree, I agree...
...Listen to me...
...them carefully—they could have been written in braille for all I knew—and handed them back to her...
...But as I wandered the Washington Mall during HAA, wading through that now-famous river of goose-bumpy skin and flared nostrils, I saw not a hint of embarrassment...
...The television pictures of the swaying bodies in white T-shirts, the bobbing heads in white eyeshades, the clenched hands held aloft, the singing of the abysmal songs—these are now preserved for the ages...
...If it weren't for him, none of us would have to be here to-day...
...Please...
...In my long pants and sun-glasses, with a press pass dangling over my tie and a stack of HAA literature under my arm, I was frequently mistaken for an HAA staffer...
...Occasionally he would turn to wave his arms again, but the hand-holders stayed where they were, looking lost...
...his belly shook slightly as it drooped over his jeans, and on his T-shirt was pinned an enormous "U.S...
...Huddled around the entrance to the press tent was a small contingent of schoolgirls who had heard that Sugar Ray Leonard was going to show up...
...But the thought of watching the leader of the free world hold hands with his ridiculous daughter and a few kids with security clearance as they all struggled with the day's tune-less theme song"This sky so serene has felt the kiss of countless dreams/ And this earth that smells so sweet cradles us all in its great heartbeat"—was too much even for me...
...About three blocks that way...
...I'm seldom surprised when he stumbles...
...I weaved in and out of the Line...
...Along with Citibank, Coca-Cola was the corporate sponsor of HAA (on the stage behind us, a rock band churned out a song with the chorus: "Coke Classic, for the red, white and you, mm-mm-mm...
...Look, I got kind of a problem," he said into the phone...
...I took the tickets, examined...
...When HAA achieved reality, I was almost to the Washington Monument...
...You look official," barked a middle-aged man, grabbing my shoulder...
...As he listened his face got longer...
...We need you on the other side of this pool...
...It's long been obvious that the dignity Reagan brings to the presidency comes not from his principles, which are vague and indistinct, but from his natural disposition...
Vol. 19 • July 1986 • No. 7
