Capital Letters: Intergenerational Work

In which our man in Washington engages Social Security, searches for interns, and contemplates incriminating stains

Michael W. Lynch from the November 1998 issue

(Page 3 of 4)

One intern, Maryanne from American University, found the firing transformative. Maryanne fell victim to the anti-gun conspiracy in her freshman year. Somehow, the economics major found herself under the temporary supervision of Handgun Control Inc., which forced her to handle a weapon--a very large one, she reported--which scared her a great deal. As a result of this trauma, she found herself at the NRA only after much coaxing by fellow ATR associates, who advised her to face her fears.

"It's OK, but I don't want to do it every week," Maryanne responded, when I asked how she felt about her second experience. Good thing too, since time spent firing guns would be time not spent working on the Reagan Legacy Project, which, as Chuck knows, was the power behind the renaming of Washington National Airport. [Washington native Chuck Freund did not cotton to having Congress change the airport's name without consulting the locals.]

If you must know, I fired off five rounds with the Smith and Wesson revolver. The target was a mere 15 feet away, and I envisioned the holes appearing closer to the center of my target than they actually did. John was kind, however, telling me that I shot a tight pattern. But that was probably only because he wanted a quote.

Subj: Local Angle

Date: Tue, Aug 4, 1998 6:45 PM EDT

From: [e-mail]

Not sure what the talking heads are saying today about whether Clinton should issue a mea culpa, but the chattering classes in my gym indicate that it's Lewinsky, not the president, who owes us an apology.

This afternoon found your humble correspondent riding the Lifecycle at level 10, random setting, for 40 minutes while reading Brink Lindsey's latest Cato study, which feeds Chalmers Johnson, Clyde Prestowitz, and James Fallows their pro-Japan-model predictions back to them in bite-sized paragraphs. Interspersed among such morsels as Prestowitz's "Japan has created a kind of automatic wealth machine, perhaps the first since King Midas," my left ear was assaulted with, "Have you seen the short skirts them White House interns wear?"

My mom taught me not to eavesdrop, so I attempted to block out the banter and get back to Brink. Still, I couldn't help but overhear pressing questions such as, "Who doesn't wash their dress for five years?" (is it really five years old?), followed by, "I don't even have a dress from five years ago, and if I do, it's in the closet dry-cleaned," and, "She's keeping a souvenir." This wasn't, of course, a scientific poll, something which I hope provides Chuck with some relief, but more like a two-, soon to be three-person focus group conducted one block from the White House's West Wing.

"What do you think about him lying?" I heard in an elevated tone. I must admit that by this time comments like "Hillary's a lesbian anyway," "I'm just mad it wasn't me," and "Maybe they had a menage à trois" had distracted me from Brink's useful analysis, producing chuckles and smiles deeper than any likely to come from even the most absurd Fallows howler. But I was still a bystander, or cyclesitter. "Shouldn't they just leave him alone?" asked a louder, more persistent voice.

I was obviously being invited to play. I turned my head, noted that I still had 21 minutes to pedal, and engaged. "What if he pressured others to lie?" I asked the woman who was walking a brisk pace on the treadmill. This didn't bother my interlocutor, who reported that when she worked as a civilian on a military base, all sorts of people were committing adultery with their spouses' blessings, and that this was probably the president's case. The other woman, whose name I don't know but whose face is familiar from afternoon workouts, said something about heading over to the White House, still miffed that she was missing out.

Then the subject turned to money. "There's kids going hungry right here in D.C.," said the indignant treadmill trotter. "Why did they need to build that Ronald Reagan building? Have you seen that building?"

Actually I haven't, but I headed off this argument quickly, employing a bit of jobilism. "That big building is going to be filled with workers," I said. "Besides, it was going to be built anyway--they just named it after Reagan." This didn't hold the treadmill-traipsing woman off for long. A woman after Chuck's heart, she shot back: "Why did they need to rename National Airport?" she asked. "You know how much that cost?"

Nobody knew, and we let it drop at that. She thought Reagan should have been investigated. I reminded her that he had been. She retorted that it didn't matter since "his wife, what's her name," ran the White House for the last two years.

Her time on the treadmill was almost up anyway. I noticed her pace slacken as the cool-down period kicked in. She said something about that being the fastest half-hour walk ever and that perhaps she should tackle some personal problems next time. We decided if we ever found ourselves in such a state again, we'd devote a half hour to current events and a half hour to her personal problems, which would include work, so she could get an hour in.

Comments

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|4.28.11 @ 6:09PM|#

It sounds like Lakia is there to protect Social Security for her grandma. Where do we get the money for Social Security? Taxes. Of course, she wants those checks to have less taxes taken out. But we need the taxes that "they" collect to make Social Security happen. I doubt she would take a libertarian anti-tax stance in order to somehow increase the benefits that her grandma reaps from taxes.

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قبلة الوداع|8.16.11 @ 6:51PM|#

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