I'm at the ABC World News headquarters in New York. The very name evokes the Daily Planet, a vast information structure spanning the globe. The essence of powerful mainstream media, ABC News' facilities, spread out over much of a couple city blocks on Manhattan's West Side. This is the appropriate setting for what was to be a mystical encounter.
The thing about a book tour is not only that you experience the entire panoply of media - from radio shows broadcasting out of basements to Hollywood studios to sessions with writers for arts magazines who bicycle two hours to interview you - but that you experience them so quickly, sometimes within a few hours.
My last media appearance had been at Citytv in Toronto, where I wandered all over the building for an hour saying pretty much what I wanted, with a cameraman walking backward in front of me, as producers, reporters, and kids wandered in and out of the camera shot. Then - kazaam - it was back to limo-land and Gotham for an interview for World News Tonight. My bald spot was once more getting dusted with powder to keep off the glare.
ABC News has several lobbies, but the one for visitors like me is on West 66th Street, a few doors down from the new Disney Store. Huge pictures of Ted Koppel, Peter Jennings, Diane Sawyer, Barbara Walters, et. al. (who enter someplace else) loom over the lobby.
A giant escalator leads up from the lobby. Gazing up, I was startled to see Roone Arledge, the legendary president of ABC News, sailing down regally toward me. I blinked, thinking I might be imagining this. Nobody actually sees Roone Arledge, always referred to by true media smartypants as "Roone."
The father of the instant replay, wooer of anchor monsters like Diane Sawyer, and builder of the modern ABC News dynasty looked straight ahead as he descended like a magisterial ghost in his blazer, gray slacks, and natty handkerchief sticking out of his jacket pocket. His hair was dyed a reddish tint, carefully blow-dried and sprayed into a stiff sort of nest. As he strode past, he looked straight through me, as if I were a sheet of translucent plastic. Arledge is rarely seen by mortals or employees inside or outside of ABC News, preferring to deal through intermediaries.
"Hey," I said to the news assistant who had come to get me, "I just saw Roone Arledge." "You're kidding!" she yelled. "Where?" I ran with her to the window that faced the street. Arledge was still visible, walking briskly toward a car.
"You sure that's him?," she asked. "Absolutely," I said. I'd just seen him a couple of weeks ago on TV, defending ABC in its legal brawl with the Food Lion supermarket chain in South Carolina. And I'd seen plenty of pictures of him. Didn't she recognize him?
She shrugged. "I've worked here more than a year. I've never seen him." We went into the conference room where I was being interviewed. World News Tonight is doing a series on how media and popular culture imagery contribute to drug use. I was the reigning apologist of the week for filth and degeneracy in new media, the designated crazy denying drug abuse was caused primarily by movies, TV shows, or music. The producer was flabbergasted when I told her earlier on the phone that drug use was ancient and cyclical and didn't have much to do with the cultural offerings of the time. It was as if I'd announce the United States hadn't really declared independence from Britain. She called Random House instantly and arranged for me to be brought to World News HQ so my odd point of view could be incorporated.
But that story paled against my lobby encounter. "There's been a sighting," yelled a technician in the hallway when I got upstairs. "This guy saw Roone." I was surrounded by a cluster of sound technicians, cameramen, and producers. Did I speak with Roone? No, he didn't even look at me, I said. Did I know Roone? No, I said, I'd never met him, just heard stories about him for years. Was I positive it was Roone? Yes, under the skeptical questioning of the news assistant, I'd asked a security guard. He nodded gravely, but said nothing.
How did Roone look? Was he healthy? (Seemed so.) Happy? (I'd guess not.) He seemed a bit foppish to me, overdressed for a news type. "There's been a sighting," one correspondent yelled to somebody down the hall. A researcher patted me on the back. "I saw Roone once," he said. "It was at the Cafe Des Artistes. I was delivering a FedEx there for Diane Sawyer." We compared Roone sightings.
A few minutes later, I was made up, sitting before picturesque shelves of books, and arguing for maybe the thousandth time this month that drug use and violence predated Beavis and Butt-head and will endure long after the two creepy geeks have retired.
I am slow, and at times stubborn and naive. And I have no illusions about my own self-importance. "Dad, you're telling me seriously that people call up radio stations to get your opinion when they could be watching TV or going to movies?" asked my daughter incredulously when I got home from the first leg of the tour.
But in the conference room at that moment, talking to that correspondent, I had a stab of existential doubt: I am talking to a giant cultural and social brick wall, in which I have not and never will make even a nick. Maybe Americans don't want to know the truth about culture and danger. Maybe they don't want to be held accountable for their kids' values. Maybe they want to gorge themselves on TV shows, movies, and dirty pictures on the Net, then scream that the moral psyches of their children are being permanently scarred.
This possibility was momentarily but profoundly depressing. I took a deep breath, and vowed to soldier on.
No matter, I told myself. I will keep at it as long as Random House will chug me around the country and HotWired will give me a column in which to rant and spew. And as long as I get great email offering me arguments, cheering me on, telling me to smile on camera and sit up straight. And it was important to keep some perspective. Cultural wars come and go, but something truly extraordinary had happened to me. I'd seen Roone.
