Truth - Al Franken [8]
The tears streaming down her face told me that I wouldn’t be going solo after all. At least not yet.
I decided to re-up with Air America for another two years. Not only that, but I would honor my book contract with Dutton, and not merely by slapping together a collection of show transcripts as Bill O’Reilly had done in his number one bestseller The O’Reilly Factor. No. I would work tirelessly on two tracks. By day I would present the first draft of history, in the form of broadcast journalism. By night I would labor over the second draft of history: this book. (I would leave the third draft to the historians. And the fourth draft to the revisionists.)
I knew we needed a fresh direction. But to understand where we might be going, we had to understand where we had been.
In the early nineties, American politics had been defined by competing views on the American economy. In the late nineties, politics had coalesced around one man’s penis. But after 9/11, George Bush had made a decision. The country was as united as it had ever been. The world was at our side. Bush could have challenged us all to live up to our highest ideals, in a spirit of mutual purpose and mutual sacrifice. That might have won him reelection, the way it did for FDR. But Bush and Cheney and Rove decided that the clearest path to victory ran not to the City on a Hill but rather through a cemetery and past a haunted house. Instead of telling us that we had nothing to fear but fear itself, they would tell us that it was just a matter of time before the terrorists would strike again. There was a new ghost haunting the American political landscape. A terrifying ghost.
A ghost called Fear.
2 How Bush Won:
Fear
Most of you probably know me first as an author of immensely popular political satire. Others of you are no doubt devoted fans of my Air America Radio show, which has succeeded against all odds. There are still others who, when they hear “Al Franken,” think “best speaker I’ve ever heard at a high-end corporate event.” And, of course, there are millions who know me from my work in the salad days of Saturday Night Live. But the place I feel I’ve had the most impact is on the silver screen.
A great actor can communicate more humanity in a few moments on-screen than a corporate speaker can at a thousand industry conventions. In my roles as Baggage Handler #2 in Trading Places and Reporter #2 in the remake of The Manchurian Candidate, I drew upon every tool at an actor’s disposal to maximize the impact of my performance.
You’re probably familiar with such tools as “line memorization” and “not looking into the camera.” But true actors, from Sir Laurence Olivier to Dame Judi Dench, know that these tools are mere child’s play as compared to “sense memory,” in which an actor digs deep to summon up an experience from his past, reliving the powerful emotions of that moment in order to communicate a truth so personal it’s universal.
This is a book, not a film. But in order to write this chapter on fear, I feel it necessary to retrieve the most terrifying moment in my own life.
This is a true story.
The year was 1974. Tony Orlando & Dawn were hot. Nixon was on his way out. And “being gay” meant “being happy,” not “being homosexual.” They were innocent times. As a struggling comedian, I lived in what was considered a “shitty” neighborhood in Los Angeles. And late one night, after hanging out with some “gay” friends of mine, who by chance were also homosexual, I bid my pals good-bye and walked out into the warm and inky darkness of East Hollywood, heading home.
I was alone. I could hear my footfalls and my heartbeat. Turning a corner, a mere block from the relative safety of my shitty apartment, I came face to muzzle with a pack of wild dogs.
Shit.