Inspecting the Throne Room
WEST, WOODY
Inspecting the Throne Room It's the ultimate inside-the-Beltway perk. BY WOODY WEST STATUS is the shiniest currency among those who pull the oars of governance in Washington. Their salaries may...
...The spaciousness of one's office in the Department of DitDat and DooDah signifies one's worth to the commonweal...
...It is unclear on the face of it, however, that racial bias is an unarguable deduction...
...This summer a senior manager at EPA was awarded $600,000 in federal court after what she called years of harassment...
...But it does have an understated aura of superiority, doesn't it, for a Washington Bigfoot...
...One of the aggrieved EPAers told of being ordered to clean a toilet during an EPA "event" in North Carolina...
...At a senate hearing this summer, a federal official justified the protection by noting that there recently was a cream-pie attack on agriculture secretary Dan Glickman...
...She was the only black employee and asserts that she was singled out to clean the toilet "in anticipation of the arrival of EPA Administrator Carol M. Browner," according to a news story...
...Whatever the validity of the other complaints of bias by EPA workers— arbitrary performance evaluations, retaliation for complaining about unfair working conditions, unequal promotions standards—the alleged North Carolina affair is out of the ordinary...
...If one attracted a superior's baleful eye or was not inconspicuous when chores were assigned, it was possible to clean toilets for a good many sunrises...
...To have access to a helicopter or jet is close to beatitude...
...Where one is seen lunching, and with whom, and to which parties one is invited at which Georgetown home are definitely coin of this realm—glory itself if the event is noted by the newspapers...
...In the naval service it is called "Captain of the Head"—a "head" being the sea-going designation for a toilet...
...Perhaps the offended employee was the junior member of the traveling delegation, or possibly looked to be the most competent of the six bureaucrats, or simply failed to make herself scarce when the supervisor wanted to tidy up the premises...
...There is murmuring among the disaffected at EPA of a class-action lawsuit...
...But now there is apparently a potential new Washington status symbol, one that could see-and-raise even a personal security detail...
...world worked...
...Until this round of sue-the-feds at EPA is resolved, though, the new perk probably will be in abeyance...
...This innovation became public knowledge the way much does along the Potomac— through members of the bureaucracy displeased with their plows and furrows...
...The political appointees and the permanent departmental helots in the nation's capital, however, find compensation in the perks that define eminence...
...She [Miss Browner] does not use the toilet behind anyone else," the environment specialist quoted her supervisor as saying...
...she said she was among six agency employees staying at a lodge on a business trip...
...Courtiers, of course, are jealous protectors of the perks of their dukes and duchesses, or what they think would please them—and If one attracted a superior's baleful eye, it was possible to clean toilets for a good many sunrises...
...It was accepted as the way the G.I...
...Their salaries may be a hoot to the Fast Eddies of Wall street and risible to freshly IPO'd software wizards...
...During a recent rally of other disgruntled workers, the somewhat delicate new symbol of Washington status was disclosed—it involves what Don Quixote's sidekick, Sancho Panza, described as doing that which no one else can do for you...
...But of course such archaic fatalism cannot be translated into the ethos of public service and Washington folkways...
...The EPA administrator's spokesman was eloquent about how arduously Miss Browner has labored to make her agency an exemplar of non-discrimination and diversity...
...to be assigned a car and driver is almost as good as it gets...
...Their annual pricetag is nearly $30 million, in part because the big guys (and big gals, to be sure) insist that their bodyguards accompany them when traveling—and of course federal officials dig being on the road...
...There are now 42 high and higher bosses at 31 federal agencies (not counting the president, vice president, and secretary of state) who surround themselves with gun-toting guardians, according to a study by the General Accounting Office...
...certainly the denial should be regarded with the credence that a Washington denial deserves...
...Woody West is associate editor of the Washington Times...
...Lest one immediately think that the bias is against sound science and sensible evaluation of ecological threat, the complaint rather is over racial and sexual bias—which is not to be taken lightly, to be sure...
...at the Environmental Protection Agency is complaining of what a news report labels "rampant bias...
...Well...
...Presumably there will be a full airing of the toilet allegations when and if the battalions of lawyers for the aggrieved get to cruising speed...
...A more recent and envied indicator of status is to be assigned a security detail—stern young men and women so loaded with armament and communications electronics that they are at risk in a thunderstorm...
...A band of employees (a clamor of bureaucrats...
...Those who have been government functionaries in uniform will be familiar with the EPA employee's predicament...
...Miss Browner, who has spent her career energetically protecting us from ourselves, quickly had a denial issued: Such a protocol was not any part of her modus operandi, vivendi, or predilection, and if the incident occurred it was due to an excessively zealous agency official...
Vol. 6 • October 2000 • No. 3
