A Debt to Stephen Colbert, A Package from Restoration Hardware and Soccer-Mania

I’m indebted to Stephen Colbert, actually we all are, for putting into context the ascension of Josh Earnest to White House press secretary this week. Speaking last Thursday with Earnest’s predecessor, Jay Carney, Colbert noted that Josh Earnest had the perfect name for the job. “His name literally means ‘just kidding, but seriously,’” said Colbert.

I’ve been to Washington dozens of times but stepped inside the White House only once. I enjoyed a visit most do not experience. As a graduate journalism student in pre-Watergate early 1972, I gained entry to the West Wing and the press office as part of my research for a paper on pack journalism.  I interviewed several White House correspondents including Peter Lisagor of the Chicago Daily News and Robert Pierpoint of CBS. I had hoped to meet with Richard Nixon’s press secretary, Ron Ziegler, but he passed me off to one of his assistants whose name is lost to me and history. Years later Ziegler’s and my paths crossed again—Ziegler was head of the chain drug store association and I attended conferences he presented. 

The White House press room was rather drab back then. The offices of Ziegler’s staff also did not compare favorably to the more elaborate Hollywood versions we’ve grown accustomed to seeing on The West Wing and other portrayals of the seat of power of our government. 

I doubt I’ll ever gain entry to the press room again but it’s nice to recall walking through the gate on Pennsylvania Avenue up the circular driveway to the White House and going where relatively few have gone before and after. As I wrote once before, I even had the “pleasure” of getting a presidential wave from none other than Nixon himself. As I was leaving the White House Nixon was walking back from the next door Executive Office Building. He waved to me, and only me, as I was the only person on the White House grounds at the time. I waved back.

I wasn’t home when UPS dropped by, but we were overwhelmed by Restoration Hardware’s latest marketing effort. Nine, count ‘em, nine beautifully photographed and printed catalogs, a 3,300-page deluge of style and sophistication weighing a combined 11 pounds, 2 ounces. 

In case your home was spared, each catalog was themed: Furniture, Leather, Interiors, Small Spaces, Upholstery, Rugs, Linens, Bath and Lighting. In the past, the books arrived separately. Restoration Hardware claims sending the catalogs out in one batch was more environmentally friendly than separate shipments. 

Sorry to say, they’ll be recycled on Friday.

Soccer-mania, I’m also sorry to say, has not inhabited my being.  

Almost 30 years ago when Dan started playing youth soccer, and then matriculated to an all-star traveling team and then his high school varsity, there were predictions real football would sweep the nation and United States citizenry would come to appreciate the sport the rest of the world did. I didn’t buy it then and still don’t, except that with immigration bringing more foreigners, legal and illegal, to our shores there is bound to be more enthusiasm for soccer. 

American football has all those concussions to scare parents away, but heading a soccer ball or an opponent when both go up for a ball also produces concussions, so there’s no safety factor to sway allegiance to one sport over the other. 

Soccer, I’m afraid, will have no wider draw than hockey, which, I believe, is a much more exciting game and, to my knowledge, not tainted by allegations of game-fixing. 

Enjoy the World Cup while the frenzy lasts, and let’s hope the U.S. team beats or at least ties Germany Thursday. 

Presidential Wave

Helen Thomas, the now retired-in-disgrace White House correspondent, spent 50 years in the White House press room. I spent half a day there, at the end of which I was rewarded with a presidential wave intended for me and me alone.

While in graduate school at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications, I did a paper on pack journalism. Prompted by coverage of the recent inmate uprising at Attica State Prison in upstate New York, the general thesis was that too often reporters pursued the same storyline en masse, usually at the expense of doing individual legwork on different angles of a story. A secondary aspect of the paper was research on whether the presence of a large press contingent altered events, inducing participants to play to the camera.

I chose to focus on presidential press coverage. This was pre-Watergate. February 1972. I secured visitor’s privileges from the White House press secretary’s office, traveled down to Washington through a snowstorm, stayed overnight with my brother and his wife in Silver Spring, Md., and arrived at the White House gate on Pennsylvania Avenue around noon. The West Wing of the White House contains the press room and the executive offices. When approached from Pennsylvania Avenue, the West Wing is on the right side of the White House.

Inside the press room, at the time a pretty dingy ground floor location with cramped desk space, I interviewed Peter Lisagor of the Chicago Daily News, Robert Pierpoint of CBS Radio and a few other names known to me then, but a distant memory now. Press Secretary Ron Ziegler pawned me off to one of his assistants, though he did stop by for a “nice-to-meet-you” chat (I reminded him of our casual first meeting some 20 years later when he was head of the chain drug store association and I was associate publisher and editor of a retail industry magazine).

My interviews complete, I left the White House the way I came in, walking along the circular driveway towards Pennsylvania Avenue. It was around 4 pm, I was the only one in the area when I heard running footsteps to my left, coming from the space between the White House and the Executive Office Building. There he was, Richard Nixon, wearing just a suit, no overcoat on this wintry day, walking back to the White House from the EOB, his Secret Service escort jogging alongside him.

Most people I knew back then, even before Watergate, loathed him. As did I. As our paths crossed some 30 yards apart, he waved to me.

I waved back, a full five-finger wave.