The Washington Spectator / Choice Cuts

...Molly scowled...

...The "pro" has been interdicted from accepted usage by the choice movement's lexicographers, presumably for reasons of pith...

...Or perhaps for other reasons...

...Morgan Fairchild, who has donned her negligee for any number of evening soap operas and made-for-TV movies, was chosen as HWPC spokesstarlet for the Choice Weekend...

...The starlets' every step in the nation's capital—and as a reporter I of course had to monitor each one closely—illustrated the ease with which the HWPC is able to move between the two different worlds of Hollywood and Washington...

...Almost immediately after the ruling was handed down, Jayne Mansfield endorsed George Murphy in his bid for a Senate seat, and Mamie van Doren started bitching about Quemoy and Matsu...

...Despite its potential as a political juggernaut, the HWPC likes to pace itself, selecting only a few "issues" a year upon which to concentrate—an understandable caution, since starlets, no matter how many balls are in the air, can seldom juggle more than one at a time (unless they're a producer's...

...One HWPCmember told me that, since Miss Fairchild's career in show business has lately been less than robust, there has been talk of her seeking elective office in a few years...

...Who then were the noble 250...

...Her elocution was out of this world...

...This last is the current euphemism for legalized abortion, a truncated form of the old term "pro-choice" (itself a euphemism...

...In 1986, during three humid hours around Barbra Streisand's swimming pool, it raised $1.5 million for Democratic Senate candidates...

...Sincere, honorable persons of good faith, who believe with every fiber of their being that Hollywood actresses should be summarily removed from public discourse, have seen the right to silence bimbos steadily eroded by activist courts careening under the influence of the liberal media...

...The event raised $150,000...

...Morgan spoke firmly, affecting intelligence...

...Since its founding in 1984, the Committee has slowly insinuated itself into the life of Washington...

...she even added, as a kind of lagniappe, that the "strategy was necessary to implement our feelings on choice...

...Here in the beltway, as a matter of political etiquette, it is generally agreed that every third publicly spoken sentence must contain at least one of the following words: "issue," "bottom-line," "agenda," "player," "strategy," "focus," or "articulate [verb form only...

...In using four of them in a single sentence—albeit a compound sentence—Miss Fairchild proved herself a Washington player of the very first rank...

...From there, argue the starlets' opponents, it was but a short slide down the slippery slope to Hanoi Jane...

...After her fine reading of HWPC's prepared statement, Miss Fairchild was followed at the press conference by the Mammy Yokum of the choice people, NOW's Molly Yard...

...The contrast was stunning...

...We are writers, we are actresses, we are camera people, we are producers, we are directors," announced Miss Tabankin shortly after the HWPC hit town, "and now we are here as enablers...

...The Committees first function was a Mondale/Ferraro campaign dinner in August 1984, which hauled in $1 million...

...There may not be much in the package, but what a package...

...Head high, shoulders back, her golden hair falling in angelic cascades, she read a prepared statement about applying "our professional expertise and public visibility to effect political change...

...In the early sixties, the now-notorious Warren Court discovered, through typically tortuous reasoning, an "excretion from the penumbra" of the Constitution's free speech clause allowing the Court to extend the right of unfettered expression of ideas even to people who have never had an idea: even, in other words, to overpaid, heavily mascara'd blondes who perform on television in nightgowns...

...Such purists are even to be found among the ranks of the pro-abortionists...

...Or Ralph Nader...

...Molly raged into the mike, and set the woofers in the p.a...

...Later, during one of several "press availabilities," I asked Miss Fairchild about the HWPC...

...With great excitement the hacks huddled around Kelly McGillis and Jane Fonda, Veronica Hamel and Donna Mills, Cybill Shepherd and a dozen others I have seen during my ritualistic nightly viewing of "Entertainment Tonight," although I couldn't for the life of me recall their names...

...T hus it came as little surprise when I the HWPC dispatched a contingent for what was sure to be the social event of the "choice" season: the "March for Women's Equality/Women's Lives," held here over a weekend in mid-April...

...W hich would doubtless alarm the starlet-haters—who are, I repeat, sincere and honorable persons of good faith...

...Morgan seduced the cameras with parted lips and a sultry come-hither...

...One thing a contingent of TV actresses can enable, of course, is a packed press conference, and indeed the reporters were all but swinging from the Bakelite chandeliers in the Hyatt Regency's grand ballroom the afternoon before the march, when the HWPC starlets (and the producers, directors, etc., as if anybody cared about them) joined other march organizers to meet the Washington press...

...The HWPC contingent was 250 strong—a figure that does not include the obligatory cosmeticians, hairstylists, and speech coaches, nor the starlets' finely muscled, deeply tanned toy-boys who had come along for the ride but who for the most part remained on the periphery of the weekend's activities, thoughtfully chewing gum and trying to keep their hair in place...

...More recently, the HWPC has taken to bestowing the "Barbara Jordan Award for Political Courage and Commitment...

...More than a mere player, then: this woman could become another John Kerry...

...No wonder the starlets had the Washington press corps in a lather...

...Now we have the Hollywood Women's Political Committee...

...AF *A corollary to this rule, incidentally, and one which applies only to men and women of the left, requires that the phrase "in this country" be plopped into as many sentences as possible as often as possible, e.g., "The choice movement in this country is concerned above all with the quality of life in this country" (Marge Tabankin...

...It obtrudes at that point in the cultural matrix where the interests of show business and politics most conspicuously intersect: celebrity and money...

...This kind of statement would impress any reporter, however jaded...

...A friend of mine, when she heard of the HWPC migration to Choice Weekend, complained that the starlets' presence would trivialize the cause...

...Wherever leggy TV stars slink and sashay—at a cocktail party in a Beverly Hills bistro or at a rubber-chicken dinner in the ballroom of a Washington hotel—there's bound to be money, which means that, sooner or later, politicians will show up too...

...to rumbling...

...56 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1989...

...This year the group's three issues, according to Marge Tabankin, executive director of the HWPC, are a "non-interventionist foreign policy," the environment, and "choice...

...She also serves as "chair"—another easier-to-spell truncation—of the HWPC's busy "reproductive-freedom" subcommittee...

...With repeated use it becomes sort of a verbal hiccup, much as a congressman will use the phrase "quite frankly...

...But think of it from the point of view of beltway reporters: wouldn't you rather listen to drivel from Miss Fairchild or Donna Mills than from a Washington regular like—well, like John Kerry, for example...

...As a fellow who worked for the rock group REO Speedwagon once remarked, explaining why the band had shortened its name to REO: "It's simpler, more elegant—and it's easier to spell...

...No one need worry about starlets trivializing discourse in Washington...

...In the past," she said, "we've raised a lot of money for candidates, but now we're moving into an issue focus, with an agenda that has a strategy...

...For purposes of publicity, naturally, it was the actresses who came to the fore...

...Then came another Washington regular, Fay Wattleton of Planned Parenthood, who hollered that the Bush Administration was not only "putting the government on the backs of women but into our reproductive organs as well''—an unbecoming metaphor even for a sex educator...

...Given a low enough cause, they can even elevate it...

...There is, most prominently, what we might call the First Amendment Problem...

...She said its role was—this should come as no surprise —"evolving...

...the first (and so far only) winner was . . . Barbara Jordan...

...Frank introduced Marilyn to JFK...