Here Comes Trouble - Michael Moore [116]
I laughed. “Yes. You do.”
“Well,” he continued, “I’ve been following what you’ve been going through, and with this possible law in Congress, and I was really just calling to see if there was any way I could help. Maybe I could do a benefit or something for your legal fund or for your paper.”
“Really? Um, wow, I don’t know what to say.”
“Well, you don’t have to say anything right now. I’m a little busy working on a new album, so I won’t have time ’til the new year.”
“Wow, that’s great news!” I interrupted, my voice going up half an octave to fainting-schoolgirl level. “A new album!”
“Well, I’ve been sorta quiet for a while, being a dad and all. But I’m ready to get at it again, and now that I’m legally a resident of your fine country I plan to be more involved and [going into the accent of an American] exercise my constitutional rights. And so if there’s something you need, I can give you my number and you can give me a call if you want.”
Listening to this amazing offer, from the voice of the man who had meant so much to so many of us, I just didn’t know what to say. So I tried.
“Can you get Shea Stadium again?”
He laughed. “God, bloody no! Once there was enough! Hey, I did do that concert in Ann Arbor…”
“For John Sinclair. I was there. ‘Ten for Two!’ He went to my high school.”
“You don’t say. Small world. Well, I have to get going…”
“John, I, uh, um—thank you so much! It’s been a crazy few months here. I will definitely call. Thank you so much. This will mean a lot to everyone here.”
“Keep your spirits up, mate,” he concluded. “I’ll be around.”
On September 29, the Senate passed the Privacy Protection Act of 1980 by a voice vote. Two days later the House passed it 357–2. On October 13, 1980, the president signed it into law. That’s how things worked back then, both parties unanimously coming to the defense of their citizens’ privacy and First Amendment rights. And to support the need for a press to function without threat or intimidation.
And all that needed to happen to kick-start Public Act 96-440 into becoming the law of the land was for two cops to raid the printing office of a small underground paper in an out-of-the-way place called Flint, Michigan. Check. And then do it again in Boise. Mate.
I never got to make that return call to John Lennon. Eight weeks later he was gone. And the month after that, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush took the reins of the country for the next twelve years. A Dark Age had begun. Few noticed at first.
Bitburg
GARY BOREN DIDN’T really have an issue with the Germans, at least not with the live ones. In the 1970s, while in high school, he had been an exchange student in Bremen, West Germany, living for a year with a German family. So Gary was familiar with the younger, post-war generation of Germans, and he knew that they were not at all like their parents.
It was May Day, 1985. My conversation with Gary went something like this:
GARY: “Bitburg.”
ME: “Pittsburgh?”
GARY: “Bitburg.”
ME: “Why do you want to go to Pittsburgh?”
GARY: “I don’t ever want to go to Pittsburgh. I wanna go to BITburg.”
ME: “Oh.”
Gary grew up in Flint. I did not know him when I was younger, but now as an adult he was, among other things, the pro bono attorney for my newspaper (and for me personally whenever I needed to get out of a traffic ticket or a landlord dispute).
“Mike, can you believe this business with Reagan going to Bitburg?” he asked, hoping I would share his same incredulousness, which I did.
“I want to go there and let him know how I feel. You wanna come?”
In the spring of 1985, the seven leading economies of the world (which would later be known as the G-7, then the G-8, then the G-20, and so on) decided to hold an economic summit in Bonn, West Germany. President Ronald Reagan would attend, representing the United States.
Somewhere along the way, someone in his administration thought it would be a good idea while Reagan was in the Fatherland to go and lay an official wreath on the graves of some Nazi soldiers. When various Jewish