Here Comes Trouble - Michael Moore [71]
“Yes.”
“I’m a producer here at the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite in New York. We got this story that came over the wire about what you did today, and we’d like to send a crew over to interview you for tonight’s newscast.”
“Huh?” What was he talking about?
“We’re doing a story on your speech exposing the Elks Club and their racial policies. We want you to come on TV.”
Come on TV? There wasn’t enough Clearasil in the world to get me to do that.
“Uh, no thank you. I have to get back to my room. Bye.”
I hung up and ran back to the room and locked the door again. But it didn’t matter. This became my first-ever media lesson: I don’t get to decide what goes in the morning paper or on the nightly news. That night, I was introduced to the world.
“And today in Lansing, Michigan, a seventeen-year-old boy gave a speech that took on the Elks Club and their segregationist practices, shedding light on the fact that it is still legal for private clubs in this country to discriminate on the basis of race.…”
The next day the dorm phone rang off the hook, even as I was packing up to leave. I didn’t answer any of the calls, but I heard from the other boys that there were reporters phoning from the Associated Press, two TV networks, the NAACP, a paper in New York and another in Chicago. Unless it involved them offering me free food or an introduction to a girl who might like me, I did not want to be bothered.
My parents were waiting outside in the car to take me back home. This much I’ll say: my parents were not unhappy with my actions.
When I got home, the phone continued to ring. Finally, a call came from the office of Michigan senator Phil Hart. He wanted to talk to me about coming to Washington. The aide said it was something about a bill that would be introduced, a bill to outlaw discrimination by private entities. A congressman would be calling me about testifying in front of a congressional committee. Would I be willing to do that?
No!! Why were they bothering me? Hadn’t I done enough? I didn’t mean to cause such a ruckus.
I thanked him and said I would discuss it with my parents (though I never told them; they would have wanted me to go!). I went outside to mow the lawn. We lived on Main Street, on a corner, across the street from the town fire station and kitty-corner from the town bowling alley. Over the din of the mower’s engine I could faintly hear the honk of a horn.
“Hey, Mike!” shouted Jan Kittel from the car that had just pulled up to the curb. With her was another girl from our class. I had known Jan since fifth grade in Catholic school. In the past year she and I were partners on the debate team. I loved her. She was smart and pretty and very funny. I waved.
“Hey, c’mere! We heard about what you did at Boys State!” she said excitedly. “Man, that was something! You rocked it! I’m so proud of you.”
I was ill equipped to handle the range of feelings and body temperature I was experiencing. I had absolutely no clue where to go with this other than to stutter out a “thanks.” They got out of the car and she made me tell them the whole story, complete with the near riot I caused, which resulted in a lot of “right-ons!” and “farm outs!”—and, yes, a big hug for my efforts. They were running an errand and had to get going, but not before she said she hoped to see me again that summer.
“You and I will kick ass in debate this year,” she offered, as I glanced in relief at the EMS unit parked in front of the fire station. “It’ll be fun.”
They drove off and I finished the lawn. It dawned on me that doing something political had brought me both a lot of grief and a girl who stopped by to see me. Maybe I was too harsh on the class officer types who populated Boys State with their geeklike love of all things political. Maybe they knew a certain secret. Or maybe they would all just grow up to populate Congress with their slick, smarmy selves, selling the rest of us out at the drop of a dime. Maybe.
The following year was not a good one for the Elks Clubs of America. Many states denied them their liquor licenses (the