The Washington Spectator
Nathan, George Jean
THE WASHINGTON SPECTATOR As my coryphaeus, Mr. George Will, has noted before, and often, the single most salient feature on the face of modern American political culture is precisely this:...
...Naturally, Jesse got the best seat in the plane, front row, aisle...
...0 Ever wonder what Jesse Jackson is up to on days when he's not attending a state funeral in Mozambique or crashing a memorial' service for Len Bias...
...Who, I wondered, could the Reaganites have wheeled out from Hollywood to host a similar rally for, say, SDI...
...George Will, has noted before, and often, the single most salient feature on the face of modern American political culture is precisely this: left-wingers seem to almost always get the pretty, girls...
...Oh, my dear, why...
...Even in Reagan's America, the Post never says die...
...Some will doubtless demur, pointing to the corridors of the Republican National Committee where nowadays a legion of sleek young professional women stride, confident of their looks if not their conservative credentials...
...Not only was he wearing the same clothes I saw him in, but those same two hands were on the shoulders of several of the children...
...I asked...
...Well, like everyone else who wants to matter in this world, he just might be flying the Eastern shuttle from Washington to New York...
...The schoolteacher smiled sweetly and said, "Perhaps you're right," and I stumbled away, full of gratitude for June Allyson, and for Pearl Bailey too...
...California had a good turnout, of course, as did Australia...
...Are you from the Soviet Union...
...If that statement lacks the usual Georgewillian force and exactitude (note the enervating "seem" and "almost," and the egregiously split infinitive), it nonetheless strikes the Georgewillian note of truth...
...At the park the scattered crowd was oddly listless, and on the cold gray afternoon not even Lindsay Wagner could provoke passion—although this may have just been me...
...She wondered if perhaps Gabi could help her arrange a Great Peace March through the Soviet Union...
...The magazine story was written by an extremely irenic fellow named Mike Sager, who offered the prettiest formulation of the march's raison d'etre: "They are marching to reach the roots of the country, the grassroots, the real people, and to turn them on, to empower them with the feeling that real people can make a difference in the politics of a nation, that desires can, sometimes, trickle up instead of down, that sane thinking can prevail . . ." and so on, in the rolling, exhortatory rhythms of a prose poem...
...This is doubly discouraging in light of the admirable campaign the Post waged in the week before the marchers' arrival to create interest in their trek—a cover story in the Sunday magazine, and, in the paper itself, six stories before and during the festivities, with maps explaining where in the city the marchers would be, and at what time of day...
...Fifty minutes later at LaGuardia, he and his group were met near the gate by three of New York's finest, who'd be escorting Jesse's Mercedes into the city...
...Can anyone come up with a better reason still for staying away from Jesse...
...Which is why I labor tirelessly to have Washington named the sister city of Moscow...
...June Allyson...
...Only my leathery faced colleague, William "Good Writer" Greider, the Washington correspondent for Rolling Stone, seemed to find promising portents in the languid character of the day's events, but then reality has seldom inhibited his views in the past...
...when, sweaty-palmed, I crept up to interview her, I saw that her attention was distracted by maternal worries over her own two children, and I have never thought of her in a maternal way...
...This is when I headed for the men's room before my own trip into Manhattan...
...Only in my heart," she said, raising her hand to her breast...
...And they will not let me move to the Soviet Union, of course . . ." She continued, endlessly, tirelessly, and was beginning to tell me of heroic Soviet exploits against the mujahedeen when a pert young woman broke into our conversation, deferentially, and identified herself as a second-grade teacher from Michigan...
...But considering that they had the Bionic Woman for a mistress of ceremonies, and considering that they had staggered 3700 miles for 260 days across the continent, the marchers seemed understandably disappointed at the turnout for their Welcome-to-Washington party...
...At first she wouldn't tell me her name---"The FBI, Casey, they harass me endlessly"—but finally, in a vague accent, she said it was Gabi...
...I went to the rally, and the final one that followed it at the Lincoln Memorial, largely from that inducement...
...But just as I was washing my hands, Jesse walked in, faced a urinal, and before I'd finished drying mine he flushed and headed straight for the door, his hands unwashed...
...Third World politics, Third World manners, you say...
...When I first saw him in the Eastern lounge at National, the moment seemed uneventful...
...GJN THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1987 51...
...Or so I thought until I saw a photograph in the next day's New York Times of Jesse in the company of seven youngsters from a "Children of War" tour it turns out he'd gone to New York to help launch...
...At one point Betty Thomas, the star of "Hill Street Blues," announced from the stage that "in the audience today we have twenty-five students from a place I remember very well, a little place called Kent Stater---and at last there were prolonged cheers...
...As he quietly worked the plane before takeoff, he put young women at ease with an eye and a smile...
...In 1984, while Democratic candidates were on the hustings accompanied by Rosanna Arquette, Linda Ronstadt, Tina Turner, Darryl Hannah, and suchlike, the Reagan-Bush campaign, by my reckoning, came up with exactly one female star from the Hollywood firmament to glamorize their rallies, and that female star was Pearl Bailey...
...But then again, maybe it's not fair to single Jesse out for what, after all, is a common behavioral pattern among American men...
...Will would remark on the undependability of the rank-and-file, the demos, and seal his argument with a quote from an unpublished Tocqueville letter or a citation from an early draft of Federalist 10...
...In response Mr...
...The point was hammered home yet again when I read the press release from the Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament, which contained the fetching information that Lindsay Wagner, the erstwhile star of "The Bionic Woman" and the enduring, willowy presence of my adolescent daydreams, was to be emcee of the March's penultimate rally in Lafayette Park...
...But in Reagan's America, too, even the Post must know its limits...
...Martha Rae...
...Publicity put the number of coast-to-coast marchers at about 400 (the real figure, one marcher told me, couldn't have been higher than 250), and both rallies peaked at about 1500 congregants...
...The Russians, they are poets, they are not a practical people, they do not understand the weapons of war...
...To his credit he was wearing a rather modest darkish blue suit, which accentuated his husky build, and an equally modest striped shirt with white collar...
...The ragtag faithful clustered around signs stenciled with the names of their home states and home countries...
...Off to the side, I saw a woman alone:on a park bench, holding a stenciled sign marked "Soviet Union...
...He was giving phone to someone before boarding, and his party included Roger Wilkins, a good friend of the Institute for Policy Studies...
...There is no need for one there...
...Gabi asked...
...Gorbachev, he is very enthusiastic, but Reagan and Casey, they will never allow it...
...Case closed...
...I prefer to point to experience...
Vol. 20 • January 1987 • No. 1
