Casual
FERGUSON, ANDREW
Casual It Takes a Writer To Exploit a Child My three-year-old daughter not long ago got a toy doctor’s kit, and the other night she took it upon herself to give me a check-up. With the...
...I am now going to shift scenes, and allow you to see how the mind of a hack writer works...
...President and Mrs...
...I’ve made the mistake before of agreeing to write columns at regularly scheduled intervals, and I inevitably discover, with the hot breath of a deadline on my neck, that I have absolutely nothing to say...
...Well, Dad,” she announced, gravely, “you’ve got some brains, but not too many...
...all kids are cute—though this may change after Madonna has her baby...
...And writing about your kids tops the list...
...And I should know, having often fallen into it myself...
...If Bill and Susan keep at it, they too may someday sink as low as James Carville and Mary Matalin, whose baby has already been put through more photo shoots than Kate Moss...
...And when they do at last do something cute, I fret: “But is it cute enough to use...
...And it’s catching, too...
...Seconds after my daughter spoke I remembered a lunch I had several years ago with a columnist friend, who is widely admired for his lapidary dissections of public policy...
...By puberty, the poor kid will probably pass out every time she sees a camera...
...It doesn’t matter how cute they are...
...Answered an e-mail from Roger Stone...
...And as my daughter can confirm, I have some scruples, but not too many...
...I just did something I told myself I’d never do,” he said...
...Andrew Ferguson...
...So—to return to my daughter the doctor—instead of simply savoring this instance of her sempiternal cuteness, I began calculating whether I could use it in a piece of writing and thereby, not to be too crass about it, make it pay...
...Try getting a cutie like that with your Visa...
...This is not the first time I’ve mined my most treasured personal relationships for reasons of vulgar professional expediency, nor will it be the last, but even apart from questions of taste, I think it’s a bad habit to get into...
...I actually wrote a column about my kids...
...Look!—a baby...
...It was a lovely moment, the kind that all parents remember forever, but let me tell you something...
...Friends bring their kids over and I envy them if their kids are doing cuter things than mine are...
...By dropping hints that they may adopt after the president’s reelection, they have managed to exploit a kid before the kid has even been born...
...And then this deadline, the one that I face right now, came roaring up...
...Politics has always been a carnival of kid-exploitation, of course, but it has lately reached new heights, or depths...
...When you drag them into your columns you become the journalistic equivalent of the barroom drunk who won’t put the pictures back in his wallet...
...I knew at once what he meant...
...Even I—even I—felt my stomach heave at James and Mary’s latest adventure in self-promotion...
...Oh...
...At least Bill Paxon and Susan Molinari, the Ken and Barbie of the Republican Congress, waited till parturition before they began wringing every last drop of publicity out of their new daughter...
...There are many cheap tricks that a columnist, no matter how casual or familiar, should do his damnedest to avoid—lapsing into ethnic dialect, for example, or inventing fictional cab drivers, or quoting Tocqueville...
...But I recalled my friend’s comment and dismissed the possibility...
...The result: I stalk around the house like Jack Nicholson in The Shining...
...He was looking unusually glum...
...With the plastic scope she peered deep into my ear canal...
...Gosh, those American Express cards are useful...
...They even carried her onto the podium after Mom’s speech at the Republican convention...
...There were James and Mary surrounded by all kinds of neat stuff that they (presumably) got with their American Express card: a fax machine, a shredder, a lawn mower, and— Hey...
...Clinton, much to their credit, have exploited their own daughter only as much as is necessary and not a bit more, but here as elsewhere they are innovators...
...The kid came in extra handy recently when the Battling Bickersons of the Beltway posed for an American Express ad...
...I resolved not to exploit an intimate moment in such a way...
...It’s a bad habit to get into, as I say...
...Had he cheated on his wife...
...I start wondering whether I can write off their food and clothing as a business expense...
...I prepared to wince at some grisly confession...
...You can see how successfully I kept my vow...
...With my editor holding on the other line, inquiring after my overdue column, I stare at my kids and think, “Do something cute, dammit...
...Colored his hair...
Vol. 2 • September 1996 • No. 3
