Holidays in Hell: In Which Our Intrepid Reporter Travels to the World's Worst Places and Asks, "What's Funny About This" (36 page)

That night there was a dinner at the American ambassador's
house. "The hell with the bunch of them," I told a deputy assistant
political officer who had the misfortune to be seated next to me,
"let's invade." This is called Double Foreign Policy on the Rocks.

"That's what the Sandys say we're going to do," I explained.
"And that's what the peace creeps back home say we're going to do,
too. So, what the hell? Sure, there'll be a worldwide outbreak of
anti-Americanism. But how much more anti-Americanism can
there be than what we've got already? Tell me that! And some of the
Nic-os will probably bitch-complaining about Yankee imperi alists while they apply for VISA cards and open Tower Video
franchises and begin eating again. But, shit, if we're going to have
the Marines run U.S. foreign policy, let's do it right. Better than
having them sneaking around the National Security Council and
testifying in front of Congress wearing their goddamned marksmanship medals. Whaddya say?"

I don't remember exactly how the deputy assistant political
officer responded, but I don't believe that he absolutely flat-out told
me no.

DECEMBER 1987

You can imagine my excitement at being right there, my personal
self, intimately present at this actual moment of eventhood. There I
was, eye-witnessing the arrival of Mikhail Gorbachev in the United
States of America.

I mean I watched it on TV-me and most of the other seven
thousand reporters covering this combined summit conference,
missile kissoff and Soviet-American love-in. There was some kind
of media-pool screw-around that you had to sign up for eleven years
in advance to really go to Andrews Air Force Base, or really go to
the White House, or really go anywhere else. As a result, only a
few hundred reporters ever laid eyes on the Big Glasnosky. The rest
of us were stuck in the windowless sub-basement grand ballroom of
the remarkably ugly J. W. Marriot Hotel, in the Reagan-Gorbachev
Summit International Press Center (or "Press Pit" as it was called),
where we crowded around the half dozen Sony monitors and gaped
at CNN. One Japanese TV crew even pointed their camera at the screen and vidoetaped the video of the occasion. So-in case you'd
ever wondered where reporters get their news-they get it the same
place the rest of us do, from television.

"Mongolian Cluster Fuck" is the technical term journalists use
for a preplanned, wholly scripted, news-free event. A summit
conference is as interesting as a second cousin's wedding. Some
stuff goes on that we might like a peek at, but it goes on behind
locked doors. What we get to see is the bride and groom walking
down the aisle.

Anyway, here was Gorbachev. He's young (well, youngish) and
handsome (in a Fred Mertz sort of way) and highly charismatic (by
old, fat Politburo standards). He got off the plane with his wife,
Raisa-who everyone agreed is very lifelike-and strolled down
the red carpet pumping mitts with everybody in sight. Gorby did
not kiss the ground. Otherwise, it was more or less the same arrival
ceremony that the Pope got. I'm beginning to wonder about America's love affair with foreign authority figures. Did we put an ad in
the newspaper or something?

Gorbachev made some VERY SIGNIFICANT REMARKS, the contents of which I'm sure I'll remember in a minute. Ditto Secretary
of State George Shultz. Then the Gorber and his little Raisa Bran
hopped into the hilarious Soviet Zil limousine, which looks like a
double-wide Studebaker Lark, and booked.

Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, Dan Rather and the rest of
Punditry, Inc., immediately went on the air to explain WHAT IT ALL
MEANS, and I would gladly do the same except I was sick the week
we studied this in journalism school.

It was to be a short visit for the G-shevs. More than four days
in the U.S. and Raisa's VISA card bill would shatter the fragile
Soviet economy. There was time only for a bun fight or two, a
couple of fireside chats about whether the Russians should screw
the Afghans or let the Afghans screw themselves, and, of course, the WE HAVE SEEN HISTORY MADE TODAY signing of the INF
treaty-a treaty that makes the entire world safe for the other seven
billion atomic warheads the U.S. and the Soviet Union have
pointed at each other.

Only one way to cover a story like this, and make that a
double, bartender, please. American Spectator reporter Andy Ferguson and I took ten or a dozen Stolichnaya practice shots at the
Washington Press Club and lit out for the Vista Hotel, where more
than a hundred Soviet journalists were bunked. We figured we'd
join them in some tabletop cossack dancing and in singing bawdy
songs and then get them to spill the beans about what they'd like to
do to the Jewish reficseniks if nobody was looking.

But when Andy and I got to the Vista, somebody had shut off
the funski valve. It had never occurred to us that the Kremlin's new
anti-booze campaign would apply to journalists. Now, that's a
human-rights violation. The commie agitprop artists were all being
herded into a buffet dinner without so much as an aperitif. Andy
and I tried to blend into the crowd but were given away by our
neckties. The Sovs are becoming reasonably Western-looking,
about like the Munsters, but they still lag in necktie technology and
wear dirt-and-lint-colored polyester stripes the width of a bedspread. "No reception! Is only dinner!" said a guy in a large suit
who I don't think checks spelling for Pravda. "They are only
eating. Do not American reporters eat?" he joshed (a genuine
example of KGB humor).

Well, in our case, actually, no. We drink. So we waited in the
lobby bar. But, as soon as the buffet was over, the Soviets trooped
into the hotel elevators and disappeared, sealed off by a line of
U.S. marshals. Maybe they were just anxious to get back to their
rooms and finish Gorbachev's hot new best-seller, Perestroika-a
real page-turner with fabulous plot, deft characterizations and a
surprise ending I won't reveal here.

Indeed, everybody in Washington was acting like a wet trench
coat. Picture being stuck anyplace with seven thousand reporters,
let alone seven thousand sober reporters telling each other WHAT IT
ALL MEANS.

You can always measure how important something is sup posed to be by the amount of solemn, earnest, boring behavior it
involves. I guess the INF treaty is supposed to be pretty darn
important because the whole press corps was tiptoeing around
D.C. like they'd just farted in church. And network talking heads
were swelling with self-regard, gaining two or three suit-jacket
sizes an hour. After all, if a pretty darn important thing is going on
and you're someplace near it, you must be pretty darn important
yourself. In case anybody missed the point, flacks were wearing
their summit press-credential necklaces everywhere, too-not
tucking them in a pocket as usual but letting all the little plastic
cards hang outside their Burberrys like kindergartners sent home
with notes to mother pinned on their snowsuits.

On the morning of THE SUMMIT: DAY TWO, Gorby was put
through several kinds of pomp and circumstance on the White
House lawn. Reagan was all smiles for this first Communist dictator
in history to have a hug-a-bear nickname. Then the pair of them
went off to "grok," or whatever superpower leaders do.

Raisa took a tour of Washington at 40 mph in a convoy of nine
armored limousines-which, if you think about it, is the smart way
to see an American city. (In case you've been in Antarctica or
something and haven't heard enough summit trivia, Raisa's measurements are 38, 271/2, 38-this according to European television, which is the source of many of journalism's most colorful,
though not necessarily truest, facts.)

Myself, I went across the street to Lafayette Park, where
America's Goo-Goo Clusters and Moon Pies traditionally gather to
demonstrate. Here I found Buddhist drummers who, I think, were
drumming in favor of the treaty but wouldn't stop drumming long
enough to say. A homosexual group demanded that leftover exmissile money go to AIDS research. Hare Krishnas were lobbying
for the right to bother people in Russian airports, too. Eritreans
wanted whoever it is who's in Eritrea to leave now. Some sixty peace
activists seemed miffed because this arms deal came from guys in
suits instead of people marching in Central Park. And one threeman organization with signs in Russian advocated the return of
major-league baseball to the District of Columbia.

On the sidewalk in front of the White House, a large, angry crowd of people from places like Poland, Vietnam, the Ukraine,
Afghanistan, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Hungary and Czechoslovakia were pointing out that the Soviets know how to cause trouble
the regular way, no H-bombs required.

An even angrier crowd of Jewish activists was getting itself
arrested at the Soviet Embassy. The Czars spent five centuries
trying to chase the Jews out of Russia. Now the Soviets won't let
them leave. This is something the Russians should just make up
their minds about.

It was a bit of a shock to see the Soviet flag flying all over
Washington, even though a lot of people in my family think that's
what's been going on since the first FDR administration. Reagan's
right-wing ex-pals were also not enthusiastic about that red dishrag. They want to know, "Is the Gipper channeling?" That is, they
assume Ron is a conservative Republican, at least in this incarnation. But perhaps he's gone into a trancelike state, and creatures
from the spirit world are speaking through him-Eugene McCarthy, maybe.

Such die-hard Bolshi-haters put the kibosh on a proposed
Gorby address to both houses of Congress. Congress already has
plenty of dumpy bald guys who hardly speak English addressing it,
said the right-wingers, with some justice.

But nyet-sayers were a minority. Gorby fever raged in the
capital, especially among Establishment liberal types such as the
ones who fill your TV screen every night at seven. These people
were tripping all over each other about how reasonable, convincing
and just plain friendly Splotch-Top is. They were even praising the
dread Ron for having Spot over to visit.

This was a bit of a mystery since Communists and Republicans both hate liberals. Reagan believes liberals should be
deported to Russia, and Gorbachev believes they should be sent to
Siberia. The two sides are in perfect agreement on this point. But
you know how liberals live in the past. Maybe they think good
U.S.-Soviet relations will put a stop to Hitler and Mussolini. Or
maybe the liberals feel that, if we're headed into a period of
economic fuck-ups, we'd better get tight with the folks who wrote
the book on fucking up economies. (Vid. Das Kapital.) Whatever, there's probably no truth in the rumors that Gorby will head the '88
Democratic presidential ticket. Constitutional difficulties about his
not being born in the U.S. are one drawback, but the real problem
is that Gorbachev's soft on trade sanctions and favors government
deregulation of industry.

MOMENT TO REMEMBER: THE HISTORIC SIGNING came at two
P. M., Tuesday, December 8. It's a straightforward deal. Reagan
needs something to keep his second term from being reviewed like
a Madonna movie, and Gorbachev wants to save bucks on military
expenditures. The Soviets are sick of surviving on bread and lard.
They'd like to have a more Westernized lifestyle with croissants and
lard instead.

It seems like an all-right treaty to me. The Soviets have to give
up 693 missiles, and we have to give up only 154. All the atomic
warheads will be destroyed. That will create nuclear waste, which
is good because, this way, even if disarmament proceeds to its
logical conclusion and atomic weapons are completely eliminated,
anti-nuke protestors will still have something to demonstrate
against and won't be unemployed.

On the other hand, it's not a great treaty. Ron got the Redskis
to sit down and talk butterball by being tough and filling Europe
with cruise missiles and so forth. Maybe he should have been
really tough and nuked Leningrad. The Soviets might have signed
away the whole ranch if he'd done that. Also, the commies are the
only people on earth who think Star Wars will work. If they're that
gullible, maybe we should have held the summit at Atlantic City
and let them lose all their missiles playing Keno.