that's how the light gets in
Jul. 6th, 2004 12:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rmWhen I was in university, I was a member of the College Democrats. I was the freshman rep on the board of our school chapter. I remember campaigning for it, wearing a grey minidress and talking about the work I had done with the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation on local health policy issues here in NYC. Work that, since I was sixteen at the time, mostly involved getting coffee, listening a lot, and sometimes working on finessing documents or providing a youth perspective. In other words, it was a bunch of crap that just shot out of my mouth, and I got elected. Shortly therafter, the public relations person on the board quit, and as a freshman I wound up with a real position on the board, which was, in the weird way things were then, a big deal.
Afterall, I went to university in Washington, DC and everyone was a political science major and every joined the CDs or CRs or YAF or whatever, because they wanted a political career (well, and to poke at the six people in the Objectivist office down the hall). This was the beginning. You did this, you ran for university council, you volunteered on campaigns, you drove to terrible places you didn't understand for no pay and no sleep and they maybe one day you'd be a city councilman, and from there maybe state assembly or if you were really lucky one day a member of Congress, or president.
We took it so seriously. I don't even know how to explain it. And my peers there were miles ahead of me, because not only had they been wanting this sort of thing their entire lives, they'd been hearing the words on how to do it -- be a lawyer, be a boy scout, be careful of everyone you know, everything you say, everyone you fuck. Document nothing. Party hard. Draw a circle and don't let people cross in or out of it. Go to church. Believe and believe in convenience. These people, had lived this life in their heads since they were four-years-old, and nothing, not their own desires, not money, not the greater good, not lack of sleep nor a distaste for states with snow was ever, ever going to stop them.
I learned very quickly that to be a politician took terrible amounts of internal compromise. There was so much you had to unchoose for yourself. Especially in 1990 at a conservative college in Washington DC. As a Democrat your challenge was to demonstrate that you were tough on crime and disinterested in pleasure. I suppose that hasn't changed much.
I worked on exactly two campaigns in college. Harvey Gantt, when he ran for Senate against Jesse Helms, and a school campaign for student government president. My candidate lost in both cases, and it both cases there was a lot of heartbreak. Those races had seemed so desperate, and in those times were, part of that was college, and part of that was a world with somewhat lesser evils and much different rhetoric.
Watching election returns though, has always been a massive part of my life. When I was little, my parents let me stay up for it, and in college, everyone did it, even for the midterm elections. And when Clinton won, we all went down to the White House (I lived about five blocks away), and there were all the conservative kids from YAF and the CRs lighting candles and singing hymns, because they really thought Clinton getting into office was somehow the end of the world. It's amazing to me that there was ever a time when watching Clinton tie himself in knots over gays in the military and having a wife who didn't like to bake were our national issues. What the hell? We were pretty fucking innocent in 1992.
When I worked for the AP, I covered the DNC in Chicago, which was insane for all sorts of reasons. Because here were all those sorts of kids I knew from the 5th Floor of the Marvin Center, but almost grown up and running around saving the world and being smart and talking numbers estimating other numbers and believing they were Right, so much so, that you had to want to be one of them, and had to want to hate them too. And being a journalist seemed... well it seemed like being a stage manager -- really hard work you always had to justify to people because they thought you did it just because you couldn't make it as an actor, when you just maybe wanted a different view.
One of the things that happened in Chicago (other than a lot of time scrounging for food in the sponsor tent, and having insane IRC conversations about a relationship I apparently wasn't having), was that a Clinton advisor resigned, during the convention, because of his association with a hooker. It was this huge thing, and the only thing resembling news to come out of the convention (well that, and an amazing speech by a congressman from somewhere in Texas -- one of the greatest speeches I've ever heard in my life, and it caused a flurry of excitement at the convention, eventhough it was at two in the afternoon and no one except CSPAN watchers ever saw it or heard of it -- basically the guy had gotten elected to Congress on a dare from his students who didn't believe that really anyone could make it politics in America), so people were crazed. Lots of press conferences, arguments, excitement. It was, in short, something to do.
It was then that I got very sad, because I could stomach the weird sexual morality we seemed to require of candidates, but of political advisors -- not policy advisors, but of the people that showed you how to win an election... what the hell was that? Of course those people were going to be scary. Those people were scary! They were supposed to be. I didn't get it, and once again I was reminded that there was no place for me the former freshman board member of the GWU College Democrats, because nobody told me when I was eight I better be careful who I kiss if I want to be paid for being clever.
All of this is inspired by having watched the West Wing election episode tonight, and thinking about what it's going to be like come November of this year. It'll probably be another nailbiter, and I think it's going to be really scary emotionally for everyone, no matter what happens.
On the night of the 2000 election, I went out to a bar/club after the election had been called for Al Gore. A few hours later at the bar, we found out no one knew what was going on, and we sat there for hours watching it, me explaining the Electoral College to people over and over again. And in the morning it wasn't any different. And then that whole nightmare ensued, and it revolved around so many batshit ideas; and the one that sticks in my craw the most was the notion that democracy was somehow not supposed to be raucus.
Al Gore refused to get angry. Everyone agreed to accept all sorts of crazy decisions in an unprecedented situation "for the good of the country". Maybe I learned everything wrong in fifth grade, and maybe this was all just stuff they told us to keep us engaged, but I learned about democracy as this thing where people argued passionately, eloquently, and crassly. The people fought and fought for their positions, that they approached the constitution with the logic of scientists and the faith of preachers -- that our constitution was designed to expand to suit any situation -- not by creating new constraints, but by always having more space for the light to get in. I felt like I was seeing our living document and our living government become this very dry, strange, brittle thing, a country built on imagination killing itself with literal-mindedness because argument was bad and simple sentences were a moral imperative. It was very strange, and very alarming, and so much has happened since then, it's often hard to remember. In a lot of ways, that stuff upsets me a lot more than 9/11.
So many people I know are really worried about the RNC being here. It will of course be a MASSIVE headache, at the very least. (I'm, btw, making t-shirts to sell on Cafe Press -- "New York is a City, not a Symbol" because I hate seeing my home used and vilified at the same time, to the detriment of the people just trying to make a life and a living here). I keep thinking about election night though, and what those were like when I was small, and what those were like in DC, and what 2000 was like, not just for what happened, but for where it falls in my own history as well.
One of my really vivid childhood memories is from when the Mets won the world series. My parents and I went out to get ice cream to celebrate, and I remember seeing people surfing on tops of buses on first avenue. It was such an oddly quiet night in my neighborhood, with these bizarre moments of punctuation that were joyous but could have easily turned dark corners.
I don't know how it's going to go this year, but I know there will be strange punctuation in that night, and that I'll be thinking about all those people I once knew, who were always careful about who they kissed, and when they paid their cable bills and all that, being at those parties and holding their breaths and maybe wondering if all their conviction and all their sleeplessness really makes them correct and if in the end, it really matters to our country at all. Our country, which more and more lately, I envision as some great sentient sea beast we know neither the size nor shape of, just that it is moving, maybe with a plan than concerns us all a lot less than we are prone to thinking.
West Wing made me cry, because oh to live and die by the polls, to speak clever sentences and be convinced that if you just slam your fist into the table hard enough while you make a point, that you will be right, and that people will follow.
The dreams I have now, seem sane by comparison to seventeen. People react so negatively to people wanting to be famous, or even wanting to have a career in the arts, but my god... the political life is easily as astounding and irrational a greedy, heartbreaking thing.
Afterall, I went to university in Washington, DC and everyone was a political science major and every joined the CDs or CRs or YAF or whatever, because they wanted a political career (well, and to poke at the six people in the Objectivist office down the hall). This was the beginning. You did this, you ran for university council, you volunteered on campaigns, you drove to terrible places you didn't understand for no pay and no sleep and they maybe one day you'd be a city councilman, and from there maybe state assembly or if you were really lucky one day a member of Congress, or president.
We took it so seriously. I don't even know how to explain it. And my peers there were miles ahead of me, because not only had they been wanting this sort of thing their entire lives, they'd been hearing the words on how to do it -- be a lawyer, be a boy scout, be careful of everyone you know, everything you say, everyone you fuck. Document nothing. Party hard. Draw a circle and don't let people cross in or out of it. Go to church. Believe and believe in convenience. These people, had lived this life in their heads since they were four-years-old, and nothing, not their own desires, not money, not the greater good, not lack of sleep nor a distaste for states with snow was ever, ever going to stop them.
I learned very quickly that to be a politician took terrible amounts of internal compromise. There was so much you had to unchoose for yourself. Especially in 1990 at a conservative college in Washington DC. As a Democrat your challenge was to demonstrate that you were tough on crime and disinterested in pleasure. I suppose that hasn't changed much.
I worked on exactly two campaigns in college. Harvey Gantt, when he ran for Senate against Jesse Helms, and a school campaign for student government president. My candidate lost in both cases, and it both cases there was a lot of heartbreak. Those races had seemed so desperate, and in those times were, part of that was college, and part of that was a world with somewhat lesser evils and much different rhetoric.
Watching election returns though, has always been a massive part of my life. When I was little, my parents let me stay up for it, and in college, everyone did it, even for the midterm elections. And when Clinton won, we all went down to the White House (I lived about five blocks away), and there were all the conservative kids from YAF and the CRs lighting candles and singing hymns, because they really thought Clinton getting into office was somehow the end of the world. It's amazing to me that there was ever a time when watching Clinton tie himself in knots over gays in the military and having a wife who didn't like to bake were our national issues. What the hell? We were pretty fucking innocent in 1992.
When I worked for the AP, I covered the DNC in Chicago, which was insane for all sorts of reasons. Because here were all those sorts of kids I knew from the 5th Floor of the Marvin Center, but almost grown up and running around saving the world and being smart and talking numbers estimating other numbers and believing they were Right, so much so, that you had to want to be one of them, and had to want to hate them too. And being a journalist seemed... well it seemed like being a stage manager -- really hard work you always had to justify to people because they thought you did it just because you couldn't make it as an actor, when you just maybe wanted a different view.
One of the things that happened in Chicago (other than a lot of time scrounging for food in the sponsor tent, and having insane IRC conversations about a relationship I apparently wasn't having), was that a Clinton advisor resigned, during the convention, because of his association with a hooker. It was this huge thing, and the only thing resembling news to come out of the convention (well that, and an amazing speech by a congressman from somewhere in Texas -- one of the greatest speeches I've ever heard in my life, and it caused a flurry of excitement at the convention, eventhough it was at two in the afternoon and no one except CSPAN watchers ever saw it or heard of it -- basically the guy had gotten elected to Congress on a dare from his students who didn't believe that really anyone could make it politics in America), so people were crazed. Lots of press conferences, arguments, excitement. It was, in short, something to do.
It was then that I got very sad, because I could stomach the weird sexual morality we seemed to require of candidates, but of political advisors -- not policy advisors, but of the people that showed you how to win an election... what the hell was that? Of course those people were going to be scary. Those people were scary! They were supposed to be. I didn't get it, and once again I was reminded that there was no place for me the former freshman board member of the GWU College Democrats, because nobody told me when I was eight I better be careful who I kiss if I want to be paid for being clever.
All of this is inspired by having watched the West Wing election episode tonight, and thinking about what it's going to be like come November of this year. It'll probably be another nailbiter, and I think it's going to be really scary emotionally for everyone, no matter what happens.
On the night of the 2000 election, I went out to a bar/club after the election had been called for Al Gore. A few hours later at the bar, we found out no one knew what was going on, and we sat there for hours watching it, me explaining the Electoral College to people over and over again. And in the morning it wasn't any different. And then that whole nightmare ensued, and it revolved around so many batshit ideas; and the one that sticks in my craw the most was the notion that democracy was somehow not supposed to be raucus.
Al Gore refused to get angry. Everyone agreed to accept all sorts of crazy decisions in an unprecedented situation "for the good of the country". Maybe I learned everything wrong in fifth grade, and maybe this was all just stuff they told us to keep us engaged, but I learned about democracy as this thing where people argued passionately, eloquently, and crassly. The people fought and fought for their positions, that they approached the constitution with the logic of scientists and the faith of preachers -- that our constitution was designed to expand to suit any situation -- not by creating new constraints, but by always having more space for the light to get in. I felt like I was seeing our living document and our living government become this very dry, strange, brittle thing, a country built on imagination killing itself with literal-mindedness because argument was bad and simple sentences were a moral imperative. It was very strange, and very alarming, and so much has happened since then, it's often hard to remember. In a lot of ways, that stuff upsets me a lot more than 9/11.
So many people I know are really worried about the RNC being here. It will of course be a MASSIVE headache, at the very least. (I'm, btw, making t-shirts to sell on Cafe Press -- "New York is a City, not a Symbol" because I hate seeing my home used and vilified at the same time, to the detriment of the people just trying to make a life and a living here). I keep thinking about election night though, and what those were like when I was small, and what those were like in DC, and what 2000 was like, not just for what happened, but for where it falls in my own history as well.
One of my really vivid childhood memories is from when the Mets won the world series. My parents and I went out to get ice cream to celebrate, and I remember seeing people surfing on tops of buses on first avenue. It was such an oddly quiet night in my neighborhood, with these bizarre moments of punctuation that were joyous but could have easily turned dark corners.
I don't know how it's going to go this year, but I know there will be strange punctuation in that night, and that I'll be thinking about all those people I once knew, who were always careful about who they kissed, and when they paid their cable bills and all that, being at those parties and holding their breaths and maybe wondering if all their conviction and all their sleeplessness really makes them correct and if in the end, it really matters to our country at all. Our country, which more and more lately, I envision as some great sentient sea beast we know neither the size nor shape of, just that it is moving, maybe with a plan than concerns us all a lot less than we are prone to thinking.
West Wing made me cry, because oh to live and die by the polls, to speak clever sentences and be convinced that if you just slam your fist into the table hard enough while you make a point, that you will be right, and that people will follow.
The dreams I have now, seem sane by comparison to seventeen. People react so negatively to people wanting to be famous, or even wanting to have a career in the arts, but my god... the political life is easily as astounding and irrational a greedy, heartbreaking thing.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-07-05 10:07 pm (UTC)thank you for sharing these pieces of your past with us (as well as your impressions).
no subject
Date: 2004-07-05 11:13 pm (UTC)In case you've somehow missed them, you might like to know about http://www.signalorange.net/home.html
since you're a New Yorker and care about the convention presence. I am shamefully glad that my current state of houseboundness (and of california, where nobody will expect any less) means I don't have to figure out how to wear an orange T-shirt without looking like I have the complexion of spoiling margarine.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-06 05:20 pm (UTC)As always, your eloquence astounds me. and humbles me, because I fear I've lost that faith. thanks for the reminder *not* to hide my head in the sand.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-06 07:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-06 10:41 pm (UTC)PS. Quoting from Anthem ... no fair. I don't expect to get teary reading LJ posts.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-06 10:58 pm (UTC)Your post brought that all rushing back to me.
I learned about democracy as this thing where people argued passionately, eloquently, and crassly. The people fought and fought for their positions, that they approached the constitution with the logic of scientists and the faith of preachers -- that our constitution was designed to expand to suit any situation -- not by creating new constraints, but by always having more space for the light to get in.
The eloquence of these sentences still rings in my ear. Thank you.
May I link to this?
no subject
Date: 2004-07-07 03:44 am (UTC)Al Gore refused to get angry. Everyone agreed to accept all sorts of crazy decisions in an unprecedented situation "for the good of the country".
Being mostly left of center (but eclectic), this is the only part of your post I feel I can even lightly disagree with. Al and George's post-election-cock-up-conduct still leaves me bothered and confused: because neither of them could act like or even spell the world statesman. Both of them began to rape the rules for advantage, and it was disgusting and it would have been disillusioning if you were retarded enough to have illusions at that point.
But - the sole bright light for me, after long reflection, was that Al Gore stopped contesting for the sake of the nation. Because while democracy is all too rare (even our perverted form of it), the peaceful and legal transitions of power are even more rare. Unlike most nations, we do not have long twilights of ungoverned times while coalitions fall or are reshuffled, or when armies have to hold the fort literally.
Someone had to let the matter resolve. And I believe the Supreme Court and the Florida State Department, and both campaigns were vile in their decision-making - but when I conceive of the tumult our nation would have suffered if Inauguration Day had come and gone with our own "Great Schism", I feel as if I heard a bullet pass my ear.
It's the closest thing to statesmanship I've seen in Presidential politics since, well, since Jimmy Carter traded the Presidency to Reagan for principles.
And, even though you haven't seen it, let me return to a thesis of mine. As long as it is "attention" that the press trades in, and not facts and news, we will have hoi polloi failing to even know about issues and facts. Yesterday I read a long and in-depth article on Illinois' Democratic Senate candidate, Obama - and realized that I'd heard of his opponent (because Jack Ryan engaged in sexual trifles during his defunct marriage) but nothing of substance about him or his opponent.
Politics is about the chrome on the bumper, it's not about the car.
Coverage about politics is the distorted reflection from the bumper as it looks up skirts.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-07 03:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-07 03:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-07 03:47 pm (UTC)If I go though, it would be to see you, sis and DC, not for anything on campus.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-07 03:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-07 04:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-07 04:06 pm (UTC)