Hella Nation - Evan Wright [167]
EPILOGUE
DOLLARD AND I MEET for dinner at a Santa Monica steak house a couple of nights before Christmas. He claims that on September 11 he underwent an experience—part spiritual, part patriotic—in which he was struck sober, and has been clean ever since. He certainly looks better than I expected. A few weeks earlier he had cataract surgery, and for the first time in more than a year his gaze is clear. Over Caesar salads and steaks, Dollard tells me it’s important that people in the public realize he doesn’t “advocate drugs or the drug lifestyle. I don’t think taking drugs is cool. I suffer from the disease of alcoholism like millions of other people.” Unable to stomach the “whiny assclowns” at AA meetings, Dollard remains in solo combat with his personal demons.
In the battle against Islamofascism he is gaining new allies. He says that Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., an assistant secretary of defense during the Reagan administration and charter member of the Project for the New American Century, has begun discussions with him about helping to distribute Young Americans. (Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy has produced TV ads and promoted documentaries aimed at stiffening the American public’s resolve to carry on the war in Iraq.) Dollard is also in direct negotiations with Fox News VP Ken LaCorte to provide clips to the network. “I’m becoming a member of the Fox family,” he tells me.
In mid-January, Andrew Breitbart hosts a conservative coming-out party for Dollard to celebrate his upcoming Fox deal. (According to Dollard, Fox News head Roger Ailes was “stoked” about bringing him into the Fox fold after viewing his website.) About thirty people gather at Breitbart’s hillside home in Brentwood to view Dollard’s clips. When I enter, Ann Coulter stands by a bowl of guacamole, eating tortilla chips and venting about the lack of spine shown by her own partisans. “I meet so many conservative men afraid to say they still support the war,” she says. “Conservatives are pussies. That should be the title of my next book.” The large man behind her in a double-breasted, white linen suit is Richard Miniter, author of Losing Bin Laden (plot spoiler: It’s Clinton’s fault). Miniter, chewing an unlit cigar, huddles in conversation with a bald guy in a baseball cap, discussing battle plans to promote more “pro-war content” in the movies. The guy in the baseball cap is part of a small contingent of movie-industry people on hand, a writer and a couple of producers who represent the new face of butch Hollywood. While maintaining the same careers they had before 9/11, at parties like this they now talk forcefully of the need to confront the Islamofascist threat. I find Dollard—who flew in from his undisclosed location—in the living room wrestling with loudspeakers and computer cables in preparation for his screening. When he sees me, Dollard throws his arm around my shoulder and asks, “Dude, how’s your fucking mother?”
Having recently learned of an illness in my family, Dollard has bombarded me with phone calls and e-mails inquiring about my well-being, providing me with leads on experimental medical clinics offering nontraditional cures. Dollard, when he is not off in a war, on an anti-liberal rant, or locked away on a binge, becomes an obsessively and at times intrusively caring friend. Tonight, he scolds me for not being at the hospital with my mother, and offers “anything, anything I can do to help. Just ask, dude.” After I decline, Dollard switches gears, asking if I have read his latest e-mail. In it he writes that liberal enclaves