The Washington Spectator/Farewell to All This
Shiflett, Dave
FAREWELL TO ALL THIS I first came to Washington in the summer of 1978, setting myself up as a house painter—interiors and exteriors, five dollars an hour, gratuities accepted. My boss was the...
...As has now become apparent, all that stuff about the evils of government ended soon after the Republicans dropped their trunks in the public trough...
...The moral crusade was marching toward Washington...
...Moon's organization began squiring around infanticide commissars from the People's Republic of China, and then there were the corpse marriages, reincarnated children, and other variations on the Dave Shiflett is moving 1,700 miles beyond the Beltway to take a job at the Rocky Mountain News in Denver...
...FISH OR CUT BAIT, MR...
...What about my sacrifice...
...And ever since then, I've had an unshakable suspicion that the world really does fly by the seat of its pants...
...The boss coughed up a hefty bonus...
...We're going hard right," he promised...
...It was easy to feel at home with Uncle Ron...
...I tend to doubt it, though I never thought to ask...
...My boss was the live-in boyfriend of a Republican man about town, and there was a homosexual houseboy in the basement to boot...
...The yellow brick road winds through many dark forests on its way to the Land of Oz...
...I spent the usual twenty minutes on the piece, heaping a skyscraper of condemnation atop a foundation of two or three very thin facts...
...El THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1989 49...
...These were his conservative friends talking...
...My guess is that many of the outraged will continue their sacrifice until one day, stuffed with prime-cut pork chops, they drop dead at their desks...
...Hanging there like dead snakes are belts of 36, 38, and perhaps 40 inches...
...Which is not to complain...
...T n 1983 I came back to Washington 1 as a journalist for the Washington Times, locking arms with the Reverend Sun Myung Moon to drive Communism from the face of the earth and bring traditional values back to America...
...A dozen," I said, with authority...
...Perhaps the oddest presence in the household was an autographed picture of Ronald and Nancy Reagan...
...How are we going to get good conservatives to cut federal spending if we can't even pay them a lousy $100,000 a year...
...Even if you knew nothing, the opportunity was there...
...My colleagues gave me credit for launching a military operation...
...The celebrants would pop the poppers, crank up the stereo, turn on the mirror ball that hung from the ceiling, and go at it...
...As the chopper lifted off, Reagan looked over at his staff and recalled the writer's barbs...
...One of the more interesting aspects of the job has been watching the steady evolution of the Reagan Revolution's storm troopers...
...The Horror...
...This was before the Rev...
...The purpose of the visit was to discuss education policy with Terrel Bell, but the great man dropped in and told anecdotes about Nanette Fabray in China...
...It sat right outside the jacuzzi room, and one day the boss explained that the country was about to undergo a big change...
...Would Molly Yard have filed sexual harassment charges on my behalf...
...Soon there was a visit to the Roosevelt Room, where the guests found themselves sitting face-to-face with Ronald Reagan himself...
...Eventually the houseboy departed, citing his inability to honor some of his superior's carnal requests...
...What's more, he didn't seem to know much either...
...Trophies from the war on government...
...The warmth radiating from his rosy cheeks was unforgettable...
...M y last job in Washington has been as a bureaucrat, a minor member, in fact, of Ronald Reagan's Administration...
...The Achille Lauro had been hijacked and his response had been confined to harsh rhetoric...
...When fall came I fled South, vowing never to return...
...The editorial "rankled" as he boarded his helicopter for a trip to Chicago...
...Despite my admiration, I later wrote an editorial very critical of his terrorism policies...
...The houseboy told of various goings on in the big house, especially the butyl nitrite parties in the jacuzzi room...
...Judeo-Christian theme...
...My starting salary in Washington was twice that of my former job...
...Sitting in their offices beneath portraits of Ron (who backed the raise), Reaganauts whined like children...
...They've been sucking so hard the sides are caving in...
...Perversion, cults, the abandonment of ideals: these are memories to carry from Washington—a strange stop on life's journey...
...The extent of my own ignorance was exposed when a friend, hearing I was Washington bound, asked how many justices were on the Supreme Court...
...And there really was a Conservative Opportunity Society, of which my job as a commentator on public policy was overwhelming proof...
...The editorial in the Washington Times hit him hard on that Thursday morning," Hugh Sidey wrote in Time magazine...
...The Italian government fell because of the incident...
...Then an odd thing happened...
...They might have come to town wearing a 34-inch belt...
...Look in their closet now...
...Their increasing love of the federal life can be charted by their expanding waistlines...
...According to Sidey, the President "brooded" about the editorial...
...He protested to his aides...
...Is public service worth nothing...
...Then he sent the Navy after the hiby Dave Shiflett jackers...
...The live and let live philosophy came in very handy those days...
...At no time has the corruption been more obvious than after the defeat of the 50 percent pay hike for Senior Executive Service personnel...
...How can a man work in such circumstances...
...The President read it—and took it seriously...
...REAGAN read the headline...
...No doubt, their families will petition the government to allow burial at Arlington National Cemetery...
...Zounds...
...A typo was added as garnish...
...Live and let live was my motto, yet it was still unpleasant to look down from the ladder and see a herd of poofs looking back up with that evil glint in their eyes...
Vol. 22 • August 1989 • No. 8
