The Washington Spectator

...That's all right," said Molly Yard, NOW's new president...

...No one raised his or her hand...

...Smeal, as the budding lobbyists took their seats, "is to let your Senator know that he or she had better come down on the Bork thing the right way...

...shouted one of the speakers from the platform...

...He sticks to only what The Founding Fathers wrote Protect white, hetero men Return to when Women and Blacks can't vote...

...I'm from Scarsdale...

...I've never met the man...

...As the voice came through my headphones I could almost see the singer's chins quiver, see her arms outstretched, the fingers splayed, the liquid eyes reflecting the footlights—everything the traffic will allow...

...The basic idea," said Mrs...

...At the NOW rally, held as the Judiciary Committee recessed for lunch, there was some initial confusion because the Capitol park police wouldn't allow the gals to use their behemoth sound system, so they had to settle for a smaller one...

...Two harried secretaries answered the constantly ringing telephones...

...That's up to you," said Mrs...

...I don't know," she said, by way of introduction, "should I change into like more respectable clothes...

...Just talk about your feelings...

...Remember: they have to listen to you, no matter what...

...I noticed that Miles listened intently to this, with furrowed brow...

...She had taken off her sneakers and, with the laces tied together, had slung them over her shoulder...

...It starts off with a couple of innocent piano chords—sprightly, despite the heavy echo—but then a leaden drum machine kicks in below: boom-pocka, boom-pocka is how I think they transliterate it in Rolling Stone record reviews...

...It's the only way I feel really comfortable," she told me as she strode barefoot down the marble hallway...

...When I asked them about Judge Bork, Becky took all of ten seconds before the words "right-wing ideologue" popped out...

...He grinned and offered me a sou/mate handshake...

...Great way to spend the taxpayers' money," he said, dismissively...

...A new kind of sport Stacking the Supreme Court If Ronnie gets his way we'll get Judge Bork, Judge Bork...

...Two large women of color held hands on the couch, beneath a photo of Al smiling with Mayor Koch...

...Well, D'Amato's kind of a fascist, so I just wrote, 'Check it out, dude, really.' He'll get the message...

...I have to live in this country for the next thirty or forty years," she said...

...The lobbyists were issued lobbying booklets, complete with maps of Capitol Hill and pre-printed anti-Bork letters, and sent out into the halls of Congress...

...D'Amato's office, unlike Moynihan's, was crowded shank-to-flank with NOW lobbyists...

...You'll be able to talk to somebody...

...off to one side another woman sat on the floor, nursing a baby...

...You have to hand it to the Players...

...I don't know that he's a terrible guy," Becky said...

...For Judge Bork the nominee, everybody has gotten into the act, satirists included...

...Following the rally, fifty from among this diverse crew adjourned to a room in a Senate office building, where they were briefed for intensive lobbying...

...Several of the speakers took pains to note that the anti-Bork cause—NOW has declared a "national state of emergency"—!`cuts across ideological lines...

...Becky assumed a pedantic air...

...Selling satire to a crowd of feminists, they've done about as well as they can...

...They were asked how many had made appointments to see their Senators...

...It is a policy statement in verse...

...Things disintegrate after that, for the singer opens her mouth (you can hear the wind rushing in), and there emerges this voice—a big voice, like the ones you hear at high school talent shows, roaring out of overlarge girls in evening dresses who have been planning for their big moment by sitting alone in their bedrooms listening to Liza Minnelli records...

...You make him sound like a terrible guy," I said...

...A conservative prop The cream of the crop If Biden don't flip-flop we'll stop Judge Bork, Judge Bork...

...Miles scribbled something quickly, and gave his to the secretary...

...Tell them what this man represents...

...Strictly speaking, of course, JB the song is not satire—there is in it no sarcasm, no exaggeration, no irony...

...In the back of the room a tousle-haired young woman in a torn jean jacket and gym shorts raised her hand...

...Just remember, you don't have to be the greatest expert on earth to lobby...

...I know all about this, believe me...

...Yard, sweetly...

...I didn't think so...

...I say a crowd of feminists, but that's not entirely correct...

...The police will be in the bedroom to make sure nobody's using a rubber...

...We're gonna win this one," he said with unaccustomed cheerfulness, and for a brief, icy moment, I thought he was probably right...

...Just think: how have I been hurt by this appointment...

...That's in Griswold...

...Does it help if I mention that it's sung to the tune of "New York, New York...

...According to the press release she also handed me, the Players are responsible for Judge Bork the song, having written and recorded it as part of their work as "a Washington-based social change satire group...

...To their surprise and disappointment, Senator Moynihan was unable to meet with Becky and Miles, so they headed to Senator D'Amato's office in the Hart building...

...You see...

...I thought perhaps this was a small attempt at comic overstatement, a little gag to lighten the gloom, but as the hisses rose from the crowd and the speaker nodded grimly, I saw it was no joke...

...Don't try to be a constitutional lawyer...

...I asked him what he'd written...

...We already have to worry about our free speech rights...

...A young couple, students down from Columbia, agreed to let me tag along with them as they went calling on Senators Moynihan and D'Amato...

...This is the New Pragmatism, an emanation from the penumbra of neoliberalism...

...Would you rather have them spend it on this," she said, "or bombs...

...The woman who, spying my press badge, handed me my gratis copy of the "JBJB" cassette was wearing a leopard-skin body-stocking cinched up by a wide, shiny black belt—by far the most festively dressed anti-Borker I've seen...

...Judge Bork's nomination has brought together a broad-based coalition," announced Eleanor Smeal, the former president of NOW "We have feminists here, consumer activists, gay rights people, environmentalists"—everybody...

...Becky shot him a reproving look...

...At length an aide emerged from the inner offices and announced that Senator D'Amato was undecided on "the issue," but she wanted to make sure that everyone had filled out a constituent opinion form before they left...

...The only kind of sex that'll be legal will be straight sex in the missionary position...

...Becky, a stunning nineteenyear-old brunette and obviously the engine of this duo's social activism, wore a T-shirt that said, "Another Woman for Peace...

...AF 50 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1987...

...By that time, just for starters, he'll have made it illegal for me to use birth control...

...But I do know that he's a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant upper middle-class male, and he just can't see beyond it...

...One could imagine Senator Kennedy singing it in the shower, if he were in one of his Liza moods...

...In the grand nine-story lobby, Miles stopped to survey Alexander Calder's grotesque stabile/mobile, "Clouds...

...She was attending a National Organization of Women rally in a Capitol Hill park on the day Judge Bork's confirmation hearings opened, and I took her to be a member of the "Oh So Politically Correct Players...

...Her friend, Miles, was tall and stoop-shouldered and seldom spoke, the sort of kid that in the antiquated literature of juvenile delinquence was called a "sullen youth...

...I have a cassette of the song but from what I can tell it hasn't gotten much airplay, which isn't difficult to understand...

...THE WASHINGTON SPECTATOR I'm writing under the assumption that you haven't heard the song "Judge Bork, Judge Bork" and that, regardless of the judge's fate (which as we go to press hangs in the balance), you never will...

...Becky took hers and lay on the floor, filling both sides of the sheet in a bold, intense hand...