ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
• Got a Clearer View of the Stars in the Night Sky? Thank Keith Richards:
"I snorted the Ort Cloud"........................................................................................pg 14
• The Democratic Primary Candidates: Which One is Least Evil for America? .........pg 23
• Do the Poor Have Too Much Free Time?.................................................................pg 31
Here are some excerpts from Part I of the feature article which appears in the long-awaited Premiere Issue of my periodical, American Weekend:
WASHINGTON D.C., March 29th -- There’s still a faint taste of Winter chill hanging in the air, but the hopefulness of Spring is signaled by the suddenly abundant burstings of cherry blossoms. The nation’s capitol is dappled with color, and awash with fragrance.
I stroll along the mall, taking in the sights and sounds, breathing in the life of this shining city. In one hour’s time I would be sitting down to conduct my interview with the Attorney General of the United States of America, Alberto Gonzales.
After getting my security clearance, I wait no more than ten minutes in the lobby of the Attorney General’s fifth-floor office at the Department of Justice. As it happens, Mr. Gonzales himself returns from a quick jaunt to a local Japanese restaurant, packages of take-away sushi under his arm and a convivial expression when he greets me:
"American Weekend?" he asks.
"That’s right, sir", I reply.
I’m faintly embarrassed for him as he bobbles the packages in his effort to shake my hand. But we both laugh, and I’m grateful that it’s broken the tension.
I follow him down the hall to his office, and he emits a satisfied grunt as he shoulders the office-door open.
Along the way, I thank him profusely for the opportunity for our sit-down, which he waves off with spritely good humor. I realize I need to reconfigure my assumptions of how this interview will transpire; I’m frankly quite surprised at his apparently carefree demeanor. He had to have been pulverizingly aware that at the very moment of our appointment, one of his deputy staff, Mr. Kyle Sampson, was giving testimony to the United States Senate on the mysterious firings of eight U.S. State Prosecutors.
The Attorney General pushes papers and briefs out of the way to make room for our shared lunch.
"I know it’s not the Four Seasons", he admits with a modest working-man’s grin. "The boys in the West Wing keep me busy 25/8, if you know what I mean... I’m afraid that, more often than not, I find myself dining ‘al desko’."
...The AG laughs it off when his secretary brings in the third gift-package of the day. He bobs his head, half-pretending to enjoy the attention as he un-wraps it, but the redolence of defeat has already started to waft from his body like sushi that was supposed to have been discarded and fed to raccoons, like, last week.
He reads the accompanying card out loud: "The fish rots from the gills down, Fredo!" he exclaims with a chuckle that seems labored. "Those kidders!" he shouts. He presses the box to his head before opening it, squinting his eyes, affecting a playfulness that appears overly rehearsed. "Let me guess -– a guillotine!"
I’m doubly surprised, not just that the AG has uncannily described the contents of the gift -– a plastic model guillotine, complete with working "blade" -- but that he would get such a curious delivery in the first place.
"No, no, no," his secretary explains to me; "These are coming in at about one an hour since two weeks ago. Guillotines, toy hatchets, a fake 'scalp', a Marie Antoinette costume -– me, I gave him an axe with a big pink bow on it."
After the AG and I get settled into our seats again, he tries to convey the situation at hand:
"See, this is just the way this town works. You’ve got to be tough here. ‘We don’t abide sissies’, as it says in the Declaration of Independence. You don’t realize that these very people who are tugging my chain by sending me these gag gifts are the ones who are going to really pull through for me when the Dems try to put my head on the chopping block."
"Are you sure about that?"
The Attorney General of the United States gets a bit of lint caught in his eye, and tries to blink it out. As luck would have it, two burly deliverymen are shown to his office door; they’re carrying a cut-off tree stump. On its surface is spray-painted the words: "Place head here".
....The hair on the back of my neck stands up when the Attorney General divulges something that’s shockingly candid:
"....I’d slipped away for a moment during a presser that the Boss was conducting in the Rose Garden. ‘When nature calls’, that sort of thing. I’m totally startled when I ease my way into some shrubbery out of camera-view, and right there in the foliage is none other than the Veep himself. Evidently, this is his ‘office’ when dealing with highly sensitive issues."
"I figure, this is a nice casual moment to talk turkey with the man who runs the show. So, as I’m urinating, I ask the Vice President straight-away how much time he honestly thinks I can survive this scandal. ‘Are we talking days, or weeks, or...?’ I remember saying to him. The Veep slaps me on the back and says ‘I’m thinking of a number, let’s say four-hundred’. This reassures me; I said ‘Really? You think I’ve still got four hundred days; that’s almost a full year’ and then he sort of cackles, and pats me on the head. He tells me: ‘Days? Ha! We’re talking breaths, homeboy, breaths!’ Even in the face of a political firestorm, the man has a wonderfully wry sense of humor; I admire that. But I’m desperate for a serious answer, you know? Was the big guy talking pre-emptive pardons, or maybe a Medal of Freedom.... I was feeling vulnerable, I needed for them to throw me a bone. So I ask him again, and he suddenly grabs me by the collar, doing that signature snarl, and he spits out this venomous attack: ‘You’re the cork in the dyke, got that, hombre? You just twist in the wind like the half-beaten caramel-colored piñata that you are! We need to run out the clock whatever way we can, so quit your belly-aching, you little brown toad! You’re nothing to us, got it?! And don’t you ever urinate in my office again, you Chihuahua, you little Shetland Erik Estrada!’ He pushed me to the ground, and I could still smell the fumes blasting from his mechanical heart-pump -– it’s like petroleum mixed with hate...."
The AG seems to be re-living the trauma as he recounts it to me, trembling. I feel sympathy welling up inside me. "It was like torture..." he confides.
"But that’s when I knew everything would be alright." I look up from my pen that scurries across my notepad, confused.
The AG spells it out for me: "If he’s able to be so light-hearted in the midst of this whole crisis, then I know we’ll weather the storm. This was Dick Cheney’s way of saying: ‘I’m going to take care of you’, just like he has been taking care of America. The man is unflappable."
End of Part I