(With apologies to Conrad, Copolla and Digby)
I did not understand who I was to become, what I was to find out when I received my orders from Colonel Atrios. The Washington Post jungle had long grown out of control, a true no-man's land where no conscience was safe, where reality existed in an alternative universe. If you left your own river of sense and climbed the banks in to the darkness of the overgrowth that had been building for years you could be completely lost in illusion and claims about war and peace and competence that could make all but the hardiest among us lose their minds - crazed by the jungle fever that is the Washington Post. And yet, as was explained to me, it was a mission that had to be completed. A Washington Post editor named Fred Hiatt had gone renegade, had gone native.
They believed he was dressing in Brooks Brothers suits and attending two, maybe even three inside the beltway cocktail parties a night, eating expensively catered food, laughing at jokes by people like O'Bierne just for another invitation, talking in small circles completely divorced from the world and then taking what he heard and splashing it across the editorial pages so that there was nothing but danger, but darkness. He was not alone in the jungle, we knew that, but his last editorial scared us all. It seemed to completely disregard reality, have little resemblance to even passing common sense. This was a man who could do damage and I had to find him.
But stopping Hiatt was not the reason I went. I needed to find out for myself, I needed to find out what happened and why it happened. I could say over and over again to myself that it was the mission, only another mission, but I knew from those first moments it was something more - if I found Hiatt I would also find the shadows across my own soul. I had a premonition of impending doom as I talked to Froomkin, headman of one of the outposts of the Washington Post jungle where the growth had not begun to strangle decency. He shook my hand and told me to be careful, that the Bush over the Washington Post had been growing like a cancer for years. I asked him if he would come with me. Froomkin know the territory better than most, I would feel safer. He shook his head no, he could not leave his outpost. This was something I had to do alone. I had only my guide and my fears to accompany me.
I knew we were leaving the boundaries of sanity when I saw the man on the bank, perfectly dressed but with a mangled soul. He waved his fist at us screaming, "royalties, royalties, sources, sources." He seemed desperate for attention, like all he wanted me to do was look at him, applaud him in some way.
"Who is that man?" I asked, a chill traveling down my spine.
The guide had a smirk on his face. "That is the Woodward. He was once a great warrior, but no more. No he is a fool, he is lost. He does not know where he is, he can never find his way home again. All he can do is stand on the bank and scream at those who pass by, hoping that they will remember who he once was."
"What happened to him?" I asked, noticing the lines on his face, the vacant light in his eyes. For some reason I feared this crazy man on the bank, not for who he was but for what he had become.
"The Woodward is pathetic," the guide said. "He sold everything that his is, all his glory for this thing in the jungle they call access. He sold it and he can never buy it back. He is doomed to rage without sense on these banks for the rest of his life, maybe for the rest of eternity."
"You feel no pity for him?" I asked.
"If he had died a warrior's death I would have felt respect," the guide said. "Now I feel nothing but scorn. How can a man make such a choice."
I could not look at this lost man any longer. I went below deck shivering at my first true encounter with the Washington Post jungle. I could no got back on deck fearful that I might witness the rantings of another Woodward. Fearful of what this might do to me. I had made a mistake with this journey - I realized that now. Yet I could not turn back.
The boat finally came to the corrupt village of the Washington Post editorial page where they said I could find Hiatt. My guide would not go ashore no matter how much I offered him. "Would I sell my soul for money, no my friend," he said pushing away my money. "I could too easily become like that Woodward we saw on the bank. You will have to complete this mission on your own. Hold tight on to your soul."
The boat pulled away and left me on the bank. The natives surrounded me, the Krauthammer, the Will, the Broder, the Hoagland, the Cohen. They sneered me at, sense I was an interloper, mumbling "conventional wisdom" and "beltway insiders" as if I was not worthy to walk on the same ground as Hiatt. What I told them I was there to see Hiatt they sensed danger for this man with power who they controlled with their evil and their cocktail parties. They let out a high pitched scream and danced wildly around me, careful not to wrinkle their Brooks Brothers suits and button down shirts. They took me to the Howell, a strange place where all people with complaints in the jungle were taken. I tried to talk with the Howell but she seemed to have no concept of what I was saying. Seemed to have no concept of anything. I wondered what had happened in this jungle to make a human being so empty of - well pretty much everything.
I was taken to Hiatt's hut that night. He was on his cot, bathed in shadows, breathing heavily. "You have come to find me, to take me back," Hiatt said in a high pitched voice.
"Yes," I told him. "You have lost your way, you are dangerous to the world, dangerous to yourself."
Hiatt cackled. "Because I know the truth."
"I read your last editorial," I said. "There was no truth. You must know that. You could not have lost so much here in this jungle."
"You do not understand," Hiatt said. "I now know a higher truth. I know the cocktail party truth. I know the inside the beltway truth. I know the truth of Russert and Scheiffer. I know it so well they invite me on their shows and we talk of a truth that you will never know."
"There is no truth there," I told him. "Only an illusion created by a Bush fever."
"You do not know," Hiatt said, "because you cannot get invited to the right parties like me. You do not get one the shows like me and have your picture shown and worshipped on the CNN. It is the truth of those who never picked me for basketball because they are popular." He approached me and for the first time I saw the evil in his face. "Now I am the popular one, because of my truth. I sit at the popular table at the Palm. What does what you believe get you. Nothing."
I realized that looking in to Hiatt's eyes I looked in to the heart of darkness.