NBC's Mrs. Alan Greenspan has taken pen to paper. She calls her book Talking Back To Presidents, Dictators and Assorted Scoundrels. While we think it's nice of her to include Tim Russert and Brian Williams in the title ("Assorted Scoundrels"), we aren't impressed with Andrea Mitchell's book. Inspired by Isaiah's latest cartoon for The Common Ills, we decided to provide a contextual, comic excerpt which we hope is more "truthful." We call the book Sucking Up To Presidents, Dictators and Assorted Scoundrels. From chapter nine, entitled "How Were We To Know?", here's our excerpt:
How were we to know?
That was the question on all of our lips. That and would Cha Cha run for president? That and also would Condi run for president. We're obsessed with who might run for president because we need to get our sucking in early before anyone is sworn in.
How were we to know?
I ask you, how? How? How?
Colin Powell had just delivered his Feb. 2003 speech to the United Stations. In hindsight, it's easy to look back and point to obvious flaws. That's now. But back then, how were we to know?
I cannot speak for my peers, I can barely write or dictate for myself, but I know that in Feb. of 2003, I was not equipped to critique General Powell's allegations. I was equipped to critique his stature and I did do that. But do I get any thanks for that?
No f***ing way. Just a lot of mean spirited jokes about being "Mrs. Alan Greenspan" from smart asses. As though whom I'm married to has anything to do with what I report. When John Kerry made remarks questioning my husband's performance, I critiqued them. But I critiqued them as a journalist. Why is that a problem?
The other night, at a party, I asked my good friend Lynn Cheney if she thought it was a problem? She didn't. End of story, if you ask me. Conflict of interest? Like when Norah O'Donnell had a party thrown for her, welcoming her to D.C., by Dick Cheney's former secretary? Or is it "office assistant" that they like to be called now days? I can't keep up with the little people.
But I could and did tell you that Colin Powell carried himself like a statesman. Wasn't that enough?
It's not like I just filled up my time reporting on his tie. Didn't Diane Sawyer do that? Maybe not. But I'm a little bitter towards Diane. With the semi-retirement of Barbara Walters, Diane's now sitting pretty on top of the heap and we're all being required to match her blondness.
Alan looked at me the other day, over the breakfast table, before his nap, and said, "Hello, gorgeous." Which is because I am gorgeous now. Not because, as two smart asses wrote, I'm attempting to bring back Streisand's sixties glamor but because I have a pet racoon and we all begin, as we age, to look more and more like our pets.
It's also because I care about the world around me. Specifically, I care about the environment. Which is why I have stopped using mascara, which I'm sure is a petroleum product, and now line my eyes with coal. It's a cleaner source of energy and make up, Alan says.
Where was I?
Oh, yes, Colin Powell. What was I supposed to do? Be another nut job with Helen Thomas and question sexy Powell -- all the ladies all call him "Cha Cha Powell"?
He gave a speech. I noted it. I spoke of how convincing he was. I may have mentioned his sexy butt. I really don't understand what else a journalist is supposed to do?
Powell lied. Well we all knew Cha Cha Powell was a bit of scamp, didn't we? Sexual tension just oozes from his enlarged pores.
But that's reporting. He lied and you heard about it on the news.
Some wise asses might say, "Over two years later!"
People, there is a time lag!
Research takes time!
I am expected to stand before the cameras and look like a woman half my age while women half my age attempt to usurp me. (Yes, Norah, I know you're breathing down my neck.) Tell me another network featuring a woman my age as prominently as NBC does me?
Nasty rumors tie my staying power to my shacking up with Alan and eventually marrying him. One nasty wag even wrote me a hate filled letter suggesting that I had been living in sin. Believe me, in those pre-Viagra days, nothing could be further from the truth.
So if you're a woman of a certain age, you go blonder (or in my case, blonde and then blonder) the way Lesley Stahl and Diane Sawyer have. (Please, that wasn't Diane's natural color in the seventies and that was before she started covering the gray!)
You also learn to suck up. At my age, you are especially vulnerable so you have to play the game. And I play it to win! So sue me. Alan & I have more than enough money to buy and sell everyone of you kooks! And if we don't, let me know and I'll get Alan to print up some new currency.
Some say I made it by sucking up, by kissing butt, in short, they accuse me of "on your knees reporting." To that I say, "You unimaginative little fools who didn't live through the sexual revolution have obviously failed to grasp that there are a multitude of sexual positions!" You're loss, not mine.
Sometimes, as I study the etched lines, tracks and grooves in my face as it's reflected from the toaster, I wonder, "Andrea, could you have done more?"
I don't think I could have. I am not an atomic expert. How was I supposed to know the tubes nonsense was just that, nonsese? Or, to offer another example, I don't speak Terrorista or whatever those people in the taped phone call were supposed to be speaking. So how was I to know that the intercepted calls were much more innocent than Cha Cha Powell claimed?
Some student's paper was used, from before the first Gulf War. And I'm supposed to know that how? Do you think I hang around universities reading every undergrad's term paper? Do you?
I don't even read newspapers! My reading is limited to the telepromter.
Do I regret my functional illiteracy? Well sometimes I miss the raunchy laughs provided in Richie Rich comics, but who has the time? It takes an hour alone to apply the coal to my eyes. That's not even getting into how much time I have to spend at the stylists so he can turn what he affectionally dubs my "old lady hair" into the chic, messy look that Meg Ryan dropped years ago. And, if I may repeat, blonde is not my natural color. Do you know how long it takes to add the blonde to my gray hairs?
After I've picked out one of my single color power suits, I barely have time to select my evening wear that I'll need later when Alan escorts me to all the fashionable parites, plus Sally Quinn's. I go there for laughs.
D.C. is my beat and it doesn't come alive until after the evening news! Cokie Roberts and I were talking about that recently as we waited what seemed like hours for Chris Matthews to leave the bathroom. Then we waited more hours waiting for the smell to clear out. But as Cokie said, "I built this city! I built this city as a par-tay girl!" And she did.
She didn't get ahead based on brains. Or on looks (unless the world was looking for Roger Mudd in drag). She strode into D.C. and rode that par-tay town like she owned it.
I don't boss Alan around the way Cokie does her husband. (She's prone to screeching, "Shut up you stupid idiot or we'll start splitting the bills and then where will you be? Out on your lazy ass!") With Alan, I usually just have to shake him by the shoulders to wake him up during those late night hours of eight p.m. If he doesn't wake up, I just improvise and turn him into a lovely coat rack. Functional and classy!
So what was I saying? What? Read that back to me. Does my contract have a word count in it? It does. Okay, leave it all in.
As I was saying, what was I to do but report. We now know Cha Cha lied. Why is that? Because real reporters like me, in real time, reported reality. Reality was what Cha Cha told the U.N.
I think part of the problem is that people expect too much from the news. Instead of thinking of a report as a "fact," they should think of it as a "clue" like with a crossword. It's your job to fill in the horizontal, not mine!
What? Tom Brokaw's on the phone again? Tell him I'm in make up! I don't care if you've already told him that for the last two hours, he'll believe it. Now where's my goddamn juice box?
