* * * *
For a moment, I give serious consideration to calling for a cab, or an Uber or something, to drive me over to the park, and arriving separately from the rest of our crew.
But I don’t.
I’d asked the network to book our rooms in the same hotel Evans and her entourage are staying in. Unfortunately,since Taylor and Evans always use the same fricking hotel for their election night parties, rooms tend to get booked way in advance. Since we’re not Taylor and Evans’ favorite network, I’m sure that was taken into account.
Off the record, one hotel employee told me this morning that they are usually full on election nights when Taylor and Evans are running, due one-hundred percent to their electionreturn parties.
I text James that I will meet him downstairs at the front entrance of our hotel in forty-five minutes. That’ll give everyone in our crew time to locate breakfast, or coffee, or use the bathroom, or grab a smoke, or whatever they need to do to find some sanity in this schedule. We’ve been going almost non-stop the past several weeks because of the elections. I still haven’t madeit to the bathroom, thanks to the interruption by my father, so I head there now.
I can’t totally ditch my tie and jacket yet, because of the on-air spots I need to film. By the time tonight rolls around and I’m filming my show, I’ll be wearing a maroon, short-sleeved pullover with the FNB logo embroidered on it. The irony doesn’t escape me that what I thought I wanted most—to be a well-respectedTV political commentator—is now my prison. The only time I’m covering anything other than politics is when there’s a natural disaster or some other large-scale, tragic event of such a broad scope that it’s an all-hands situation.
Which…is depressing as hell.
Because remember how people used to joke about a storm not being anything to worry about unless Jim Cantore from The Weather Channel showedup in your town?
I now have a similar morbid portent attached to my name when I’m sent out in the field to cover any story that doesn’t relate to politics or government.
Elections are now death marches, even midterms, and it didn’t used to be like this. The 24/7/365 news cycle, combined with tribal partisan politics and dark money, has allowed it to replace professional wrestling as the public’sfavorite blood sport.
I think the media is more like wrestling promoters than we are serious journalists anymore. Tossing shit out there we know is nothing more than kayfabe. We’re busy behind the scenes whipping up a good storyline, pretending we journalists are faces, and the politicians are heels, when the truth is, we’re all in on the bit.
It’s the voters who are the marks. On both sidesof the aisle. They rarely, if ever, see behind the masks of the people who are truly in control of all of us and the message we’re sending.
I’m not exactly thrilled with this arrangement, but it’s a living, and it’s in my contract that I have to toe the line the network tells me to.
Since my mortgage company and the utilities won’t accept dignity and integrity as a valid form of payment everymonth, I guess I’m stuck with what I’m doing, for now.
