In the fall of 1972, I saw my first American president. It was four years after my mom and I had gone to the local Democratic campaign office to stuff envelopes for his opponent. Alas, our hard work went for naught; Hubert Humphrey lost and Richard Nixon won. And as a family, we were pissed.
Four years later, when Nixon was on the campaign trail again trying to secure a second term that none of us wanted him to have, I got to see him in the flesh. I was 14 years old and part of a small group of teenagers, maybe 15 to 20 of us, who had been brought into the Nassau Coliseum by an even smaller group of 20-somethings who worked for the county, pretending to be Republicans. Back then, you could NOT work for the county of Nassau in New York unless you were registered on the right. My sister, a fierce liberal to this day, registered as a Republican so she could secure a job as a probation officer. When she retired 10 years ago, one of the first things she did was switch that check mark to Democrat.
But as a young worker for the county she had access to tickets to Richard Nixon’s fundraiser speech at the local arena and she grabbed as many as she could. So did her friend and fellow liberal in wolf’s clothing, a smart young man whose name escapes me. Together they rounded us up, gave us each a yellow youth ticket and escorted us in. Security just assumed we were members of the Young Republicans and placed us on the floor, as close to the stage as possible.
We tried not to giggle and give ourselves away as the opening speakers came and went. We had our instructions and we definitely didn’t want to blow the whole plan. My sister and her friend left the vicinity and waited outside so they wouldn’t be blamed and lose their jobs. It’s important to have people on the inside of any movement so they told us where to meet them and stepped away, confident that as a group of concerned teenagers, we would play our part. And of course, we did.
As soon as Tricky Dick approached the microphone to begin his speech, we all started shouting, in unison, “What about Watergate? What about Watergate?” And because of where security had placed us, up close to the stage, they had to wade through a sea of people to get to us and kick us out. So for about 5 minutes we were able to continuously chant our chant and stop Nixon from speaking. We were booted to the parking lot where we were handed chips and soda and driven home. I’m not sure what happened to my sister’s friend but my sister had a very long and successful career, making it to supervisor in a short time. Over the years, more liberals infiltrated the probation department ranks and became friends with my sister and each other. Many of them are still good friends to this day.
The next president I saw was Jimmy Carter, about 20 years after he left the Oval Office. I think he was a pretty decent president. Incredibly smart but with a the heart of an humanitarian; not a bad mix for the supposed leader of the “free” world. I voted for him twice, in 1976 and 1980. The guy who beat him out of a chance for a second term is the guy I still blame for a lot of what’s wrong in this country now, from almost comical tax cuts for the rich to the severe weakening of unions and guilds. He threw a party for his buddies all those years ago and we, the people, are still paying the tab today. But fuck him, I never saw him and if I had I would have tried to puke on him.
No, we’re talking about Jimmy Carter here, and his lovely wife Rosslyn. They were up in Harlem helping to restore a brownstone building, wearing work gloves and tool belts and hard hats and boots. I was sent from CBS with Bob Villa of This Old House fame to cover the event for The Early Show. And there they were, the president and his wife, in their 70s, working right alongside all the other volunteers to fix up a house and make it livable for some families who couldn’t afford to do so themselves. It was a beautiful thing. The work stopped only briefly for the interview and then everybody, everybody went right back at it, tools in hand. I managed to introduce myself and get my picture taken with President and Mrs. Carter but that Polaroid eludes me currently. It’s one of two pictures of me with celebrities that I am heartbroken to have lost, the other being of me with Maya Angelou.
In 2004 I was sent to Boston to stage manage the early morning coverage of the Democratic National Convention, again for CBS. The host who was with us was Hannah Storm, who I happen to think was as good at news as she was/is at sports. She could keep it light but she could also ask the tough questions and not let people off the hook. Our producer was Kevin Coffey, a seasoned veteran with hundreds of remote shoots under his belt. He was also very tall, which saved our asses that summer day 15 years ago.
If you know anything about the news business, you know that when every network is in the same spot to interview the same person, ratings often come into play. And though CBS This Morning is doing fairly well right now, back then when it was called The Early Show it was at the bottom of the pile, earning ratings below even a scary right-wing show called Fox And Friends. So on our last day there, the Thursday of the convention, the morning of the evening when the keynote speaker was to take the stage, everyone wanted an interview with the junior senator from Illinois, Barack Obama. And because we were so low on the totem pole of ratings, we were scheduled to get him last, after Today, Good Morning America, and that ridiculous show on Fox. We were set up facing the stage, on the floor of what was then called the Fleet Center, as far towards stage right as was allowed. Next to us was Today; next to them was GMA. I knew the other stage managers and we’d been sharing morning coffees very early before air time each day. We all knew the proper protocol; that if you had to get somewhere to the right or left of your position, you would walk near the seats, behind the cameras, because we were all on different schedules and you could never tell when the shows in New York would toss to their remote coverage in Boston. We were professionals on competing networks, but professionals follow the unwritten rules. Except in cases of extreme emergency….
Barack Obama was scheduled to be interviewed by our Hannah Storm straight up at 7:30, after he’d already visited the other networks. Except that by 7:24 he was nowhere to be seen. The director in New York was yelling for us to find him, because our interview was to lead the second half hour. We all scanned the crowd, Hannah on her mark and the A2 ready with a microphone for the senator when finally, at about 7:27:30, tall Kevin yelled out, “There he is!” He was pointing all the way across the floor to the extreme other side of the camera setup. And because we were on remote I was on a hardwired headset, not a wireless like we used in the studio. So I ripped it off my head, said “hold this” to Kevin and took off, on the quickest route available, which was in front of the other networks’ cameras. To this day I don’t know if they were broadcasting from Boston at the time but if they were, well, there I was, running from camera left to right, upstage of their spots, as fast as I could. I’m sorry. It was an emergency.
I ran, breathless, up to Barack Obama, who was having his mic removed from his lapel by a FOX tech I didn’t recognize, and holding out my hand for him to shake, said, “Senator Obama, I’m Kim from CBS and you’re due on our show in a little more than a minute.” He reached for and shook my hand while asking, “Where?” I turned and pointed to the exact other end of the arena and said, “All the way over there” and without letting go of my hand, in fact instead squeezing it more tightly, he said, “Let’s run, Kim!” So we did, me leading the way, once again in front of the other network setups, his hand in mine, and we made it to where Hannah, the A2 and Kevin were waiting. Our camera men were set. The A2 threw the guest mic on in a flash, I put the senator on his mark and jammed my headset on in time to hear the AD in New York say 5, 4, 3, 2…. And boom, we were on, just like that. Later that night, from home, we all watched his keynote speech, singing the praises of John Kerry and thinking to ourselves, now THAT guy seems presidential.
A few years later, while freelancing for NBC and working a televised shindig in the Rainbow Room, my only responsibilities were to tell the host when to start and, before that, go around the room with a list of celebrities and tell each of them what to expect. There was a part of the production where, one by one, they would take a handheld microphone and say something short to the crowd. The list in my hand had the order in which they were to do this, so I had to tell each one which star would be speaking directly before them and would then hand them the mic, and which star went after them so they would know where to send the mic once they were finished speaking. There was a cocktail hour before the broadcast began so I quietly crept around the room in my fancy (for me) black clothes and politely told each celebrity what to expect. “Good evening, Mayor Bloomberg. Paul Newman will hand the microphone to you and then you will hand it to Susan Sarandon. Hello Ms Sarandon, the mayor will hand the microphone to you and then you will hand it to Matt Lauer.” Like that. Easy peasy. They were all very cooperative and thankful for the information. Except for one guy, who I’d been circling the whole time, waiting for a break in his conversation so I could approach him with his instructions. Finally, there was no one left on my list. All I needed to tell him was to take the mic from Joanne Woodward and hand it to Dick Ebersol. So I approached slowly and said, “Excuse me Mr. Trump…” and he looked down at me, saw a frumpy, middle-aged, short-haired, small-breasted dyke with no makeup and no cleavage to speak of and waived me away, saying, “Not now.” But there was no later. The show was about to start but he turned back to his conversation and ignored me. And, as a New Yorker, I knew full well what an asshole he was so I thought, okay, and I walked away to tell the host he was on in 30 seconds. The show started, the bit with the traveling microphone came and everyone did great. Except for Donald Trump, who correctly took the mic from Joanne Woodward, because she had listened to me and knew to hand it to him, said his piece, but then stood there waving it like the dumb jerk that he is, saying, “And now I don’t know what to do.” Ebersol saved him by asking for the mic. Asshat. All he had to do was listen to the of-no-use-to-him woman with the list and everything would’ve been fine, clean, smooth. If you had told me back then that this clown would someday occupy the White House I would have choked on the appetizer olives I had been sneaking from the fancy buffet table.
Still, it’s pretty cool to see presidents. I’ve worked with Hillary Clinton many times and thought she would have done an okay job. And now I’ve seen Elizabeth Warren give a speech and I think she’d be amazing. And hopefully, in the months to come, I’ll be able to brag and say that yes, I have laid eyes upon BOTH American presidents who were forced to resign.