Dear friends, in my job as a journalist,particularly when reporting on events in other countries,at times it was necessary to use photographers or editors from other stations. During those times, we often did live shots for CNN and numerous other television stations across the country and the world. I reported from Moscow for instance during the Cold War. Those interviews were used by networks around the world. Since I worked for an Independent station then, we gave our stories to any network requesting them.
Any reference to editors or photographers should not automatically be assumed to be associated with any particular media corporation.
A journalist learns picking questions carefully is one of the most important tenants of the job.
On this particular day, the object of my inquiry was the biggest,
meanest, mood-altered, high maintenance-millionaire- bully around. What
motivates a man like that? And why--during the nightmare of the last 8 years-- did such specimens seem to procreate like a nasty virus in a Petri dish?
We had worked together for years, but having never asked me a question about my life or my family, resignation set in, and I kept my distance.
He began to symbolize a certain segment of men today, many running mass conduits of information (television networks) and what he valued and how he lost his way seems socially relevant today.
Who he was, and why his penultimate included being "BIG," I considered to be theoretically crucial information. Why the hours-long workouts? Why the steroids? Why take a substance that makes your looks and performance a lie, and causes cancer? Why work unrelentingly for the muscles making the outside appear formidable, but the content of the character angry and mean, and the content of the trousers unable to stand up and look around?
So, after confessing my own flop- sweat- fear- on dreaded election nights while figuring voting percentages and numbers of precincts at warp speeds live on the air, perhaps quid pro quo could occur. My curiosity, more powerful than my ability to keep quiet, propelled me forward with a well chosen question hoping it would tell me who he was and how he got that way. Turned out, I already knew.
"What is it YOU fear?" I asked without looking up from my paper work as not to alarm him and create suspicion.
He did not twitch a huge muscle.
"I fear being small."
Bulked up to not only beat the band, but beat UP the band, his honesty gave me a Shakespearean look at his values and the values of many running our steroid nation.
"You mean you fear feeling insignificant?"
"No, I mean I fear being a little man. Little men get pushed around."
After 22 years of observing him, it was the first time I felt his pain.
Bulked up to keep the demons away, he was just another little boy in the playground making sure no one hurt him by hurting anyone else. He could not truly measure up, so he beat others up, especially those who saw through the bully-beef-cake image.
In pursuit of false power and literal self-inflation, he hid behind his stature pushing everyone else and everything else out of the way. But in the dark when no one is looking and character is truly measured, he likely came up short, if he came up at all. He, like his country, reflected a false image of health and security.
The news room monitors told his story over and over in various degrees of separation: from the stock market bullies betting on America's failure, to the mass media's - bipartisanship, to government agencies protecting corporate profiteers while ignoring its duty to American citizens, to a president who ignores laws, compassion and intellect.
Pump the iron, make the threats, be the boom-box without the logic.
I have a dream. Perhaps his noisy, misbehaving days are over. Perhaps the country is tired of his kind. Perhaps the bullies big-bad-self indulgent days are numbered and the muscles that make the man will be sapient in nature--turning the boom box down and resolving conflicts the bullies created.
