America, You Sexy Bitch

by Meghan McCain, Michael Black

  Congressman Kucinich wakes up every day with a positive attitude about his life, his wife, politics, this country, and wanting to bridge the divide in Washington, DC. I have been preaching that we have to close this divide in our country right now, and it’s amazing and fantastically serendipitous to meet someone who is actually holding office that preaches a message of even more inclusion than I have been. Not only does Congressman Kucinich say this, but he seems to be living it.

  We wind down the conversation and shake hands goodbye. No one will ever hear me say a negative word about this man. Politics aside, I believe that Dennis Kucinich is a good man who genuinely wants what he believes to be the best things for America. He is a living example of an antidote to the problems in politics right now.

  After we leave his office, both Stephie and Michael look equally stunned.

  “Okay, how fantastic was he?” I ask.

  “I know! I almost started crying!” Stephie says. “I mean, he preaches my language anyway because I am liberal, but how inspiring.”

  Even Michael looks moved. It didn’t really matter that we didn’t get to meet with ten congressmen, because that meeting with Dennis Kucinich was plenty.

  Michael: When we return to Senator McCain’s office to head out for dinner, we tell him that we’ve just been to see Representative Kucinich. A slight smile plays on his face and he says, “Good man.”

  McCain’s office has made reservations at a fancy steak house, the kind of place I always imagined that politicos go to eat. He grouses about the restaurant as we drive there in his (American made) car, but when we arrive, his countenance changes and I see him step into his public self.

  When pundits describe certain politicians as “rock stars,” I always think they’re exaggerating, but here in Washington, DC, with Senator John McCain I honestly feel as if I am with rock ‘n’ roll royalty. People fall over themselves when he approaches. “After you, Senator.” “Right this way, Senator.” “Can I get a picture, Senator?” He’s gracious with everybody, shaking hands, patting backs, taking photos. People love this guy. Seeing him like this, I do too.

  The maître d’ leads us to a private room at the back of the restaurant and deposits us at a table. Meghan apologizes to her dad for having to come to this restaurant. She knows he hates it, but it seemed like the best choice given the timing and location. She doesn’t realize the manager is standing right there.

  When she looks up, her cheeks turn scarlet. Senator McCain chokes back a smile. The manager pretends he didn’t hear anything. I want to hide under the table. But that would be weird because the senator’s feet are right there.

  “Is Lindsey coming?” Meghan asks.

  “Yeah. He should be here,” responds the senator.

  “Lindsey” is Lindsey Graham, Republican senator from South Carolina. He, Senator McCain, and Senator Joe Lieberman are senatorial BFFs, often hanging out together. Senator Graham is supposed to be joining us for dinner, which I think will be good because Senator McCain and I have nothing to talk about.

  We study the menus for a while and listen as he describes some of the senatorial machinations occurring regarding the debt ceiling. To my ears, it sounds like a big clusterfuck. He doesn’t use that word, although in retrospect it would have been awesome if he had.

  Senator Graham arrives a few minutes later, with apologies. I remember him chiefly from his time as Grand Inquisitor during the Clinton impeachment trial. (I’m not sure “Grand Inquisitor” is the correct title, but it was something like that.) As such I am predisposed towards thinking of him as a supercilious right-wing blowhard. I am not prepared, however, for my actual reaction, which is to absolutely love the guy. He is, and I can think of no better way to describe him, a hoot. The guy is just funny: deadpan and sarcastic. Within moments of his arrival, all of us are laughing. Whatever tension existed before evaporates as the senior senator from South Carolina cracks wise about the debt ceiling and Social Security and various political arcana. He asks about the book, about me, and promises to watch my upcoming stand-up special on Comedy Central.

  “You’re not going to watch,” I say.

  “Nah, I won’t,” he agrees.

  The meal turns out to be pretty fun. I just kind of sit back and watch the two senators talk shop. The deeper I get into politics, and the closer I get to politicians, the more I learn something surprising and a little bit startling. I had always assumed that politicians, especially elite politicians like these guys, are operating off different information from everybody else, that the news that we get is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of what is actually happening out there, and that guys like this are making their decisions based not on what is reported in the news, but what isn’t reported in the news. This is, yes, conspiracy minded on my part, but I am a guy who is still undecided about Bigfoot, so I am susceptible to conspiracies.

  But what I am learning is that, for the most part, politicians operate off the same imperfect information everybody has. The first inkling I got of this was when talking to Meghan’s mom back in Arizona. Her arguments to me in private were the same as the ones I hear in public. The same as I hear on Fox and MSNBC. This is also true when I hear Senators McCain and Graham gossiping. Yes, there’s a little inside baseball going on, but for the most part, the stuff they’re talking about is no different from anything you could read in any major newspaper. Even Representative Kucinich threw me for a loop when we asked him about Iraq.

  Why did he think we went there, I asked.

  “Oil,” he said like a true lib.

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  Right out of the pages of Mother Jones.

  In a way, I am heartened to learn that the information I have as a citizen is largely similar to the information our representatives are using to determine policy, but in a way it’s also scary because it implies that there is no fundamental truth out there, that oftentimes both sides have equal claims to their positions, that people are making the best judgment calls they can, and that nobody knows what the hell is actually going on.

  A young man sticks his head into the doorway of our dining room.

  “Senator McCain?” he says.

  Meghan’s dad looks up at him.

  Our waiter tries to usher the young man out, but the senator tells him to let him enter. The young man says he’s a soldier, back from Iraq, and he wanted to say hello and thank the senator for supporting the military. Senator McCain rises and thanks the young man in turn for his service. They shake hands. The waiter takes their picture and the young soldier departs. Before he does, though, Senator McCain wishes him well and thanks him again. It’s not platitudes with him. He means it. One look at him is all you need to know that he means it. I am reminded once again of Meghan’s passion for the military, for military culture, for her family’s long history of service to the country. Cynicism is not possible in moments like these.

  Meghan: For most of the dinner, we talk politics, or really, Dad and Lindsey start talking heavy politics about the debt ceiling. The most entertaining part of the entire thing is the look on Michael’s face: he is absolutely mesmerized. It makes me happy to see that Michael is interested and seems to be enjoying himself. It’s easy for me to sometimes forget how fascinating politicians are—I mean the debt ceiling crisis is going on and Lindsey and my father are discussing the future of what is going to happen and their roles in it. It doesn’t get much more inside baseball than this moment, right here. It feels strange to be having dinner with my father, Lindsey, Michael, and Stephie, and a part of me just wants to get it over with since . . . well, my father and Michael don’t seem to be exactly bonding. I have a moment where I think, This is it, Michael, this is a lot of what my life has been like.

  When we finish dinner, my father is absolutely mobbed on our way out of the restaurant. We say our goodbyes, my father gives me a big hug, and says goodbye to Michael and Stephie.

  Right as we are leaving, Stephie says, “It’s
an honor having dinner with you, Senator, and thank you for your daughter. I love her.”

  Michael immediately interjects with, “Yes, me too.”

  Michael: Meghan gives her dad a big hug. It’s clear she idolizes him, and his affection for her is obvious too, never more so than when she blurted out her faux pas about the restaurant. He looked so mischievous in that moment, like a kid with his hand in the cookie jar. As they say goodbye I am filled with affection for them both, father and daughter bidding each other good night. The car comes and he shakes my hand, wishing us well with our project. As he drives away, I am positive he still has no idea who I am.

  We’ve got one more meeting tonight, an after-dinner get-together with the Log Cabin Republicans. If there is one group in Washington who gets zero respect from anybody, it’s them. The Democrats can’t understand why any group of homosexuals would align themselves with the Republican Party, the party of (among others) Rick “If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual [gay] sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest” Santorum and Michele “If you’re involved in the gay and lesbian lifestyle, it’s bondage; it is personal bondage, personal despair and personal enslavement” Bachmann. As for Republicans, many of them won’t even accept campaign contributions from the Log Cabin Republicans, which is the equivalent of Bill Clinton refusing a blow job.

  And yet they persist. Meghan, of course, has connections to them because she is one of the few outspoken prominent Republicans advocating for gay marriage. In fact, she might be the only one. As I’ve mentioned, I grew up in a lesbian household, so this issue is personal for me.

  We assemble at some out-of-the-way restaurant-bar, and it doesn’t occur to me until much later that perhaps the reason we met at this dead spot is because they do not want to be seen together. I really hope I am wrong about this, but DC is filled with hip and happening nightspots where people come to see and be seen, and this empty, backwater bar is not one of them.

  There are maybe a dozen people there, ten men and a woman. We take a private room in the back and assemble chairs into a circle. Every member here is successful, young, Republican, and gay. One person works on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, another works for Citizens Against Government Waste, several are congressional staffers. These are serious people. It seems like such a shame to me that I even have to make the point that they are serious people, but to outsiders like me, it’s difficult to imagine how they reconcile their sexuality with their political affiliation. It’s a question they’re used to, the “self-loathing question,” as Meghan puts it.

  One guy says people who think they must be self-loathing because they are Republican gays have it exactly backwards. “My Republican friends are a lot better with me being gay than my gay friends are with me being a Republican.”

  Many of the others agree. They say that their Republican colleagues don’t care about their sexuality, that it’s other gays and Democrats who give them the most grief. Another guy acknowledges that DC may be an aberration. He says he was basically “driven out” of his hometown in Florida because of his sexuality, that nobody in politics “on either side of the aisle” would hire him after he came out. He’s wearing tight white denim pants, and when talking about the difficulties he had finding a job and says, “There are certain offices you walk in where you can just feel the flames coming off of people” I respond that, to be honest, I can feel the flames coming off him. It gets a laugh.

  As liberal as I like to think my own industry is, one guy mentions that he was dating somebody in the media, a reporter for one of the networks, who could not come out because “in the media world it’s not an asset.” This troubles me because he’s right. Hollywood has an image as the most socially liberal city in the world, but it’s true that when their money is threatened, as they fear it might be if big stars start coming out of the closet, they get a lot more conservative. Who are the huge gay movie stars? There are none. Everybody knows that the arts attract homosexuals in greater numbers than other professions, and yet when it comes to actors and actresses, the image is almost uniformly that of beautiful straight people. This just isn’t reality. In every other aspect of society, we have a word for beautiful men with perfect skin, amazing clothes, and an incredible figure. That word is “gay.”

  The Log Cabin Republicans make their case to us: that they are conservatives first and gays second, that they are more interested in tax policy than marriage equality, that they can do more good working from the inside than the out. Their earnestness is compelling, but it also bums me out.

  I’m sure it’s true when they tell me that, behind closed doors, the various congresspeople they work for support gay rights. I’m sure it’s true that they catch no grief about their sexuality in Washington, DC. But it’s also true that their party is known for being almost stridently anti-gay, a party in which nearly all of its presidential candidates favor amending the Constitution to prohibit gays and lesbians from marrying. This is a party that routinely equates homosexuality with deviant sexual behavior such as bestiality and incest. The party of small government and freedom wants to leave everybody alone until they decide who to love. Then they want to legislate.

  Why?

  Money. Like all things, it comes back to money. The Republican Party has so closely aligned itself with the religious Right and has become so dependent on their money and support that most Republican candidates cannot stray from evangelical orthodoxy if they want to get elected and stay in office. Perhaps they think, like all these sincere people sitting in front of me, that they can do more good by being inside than out, but I don’t believe it. The way they can do the most good is by speaking up, even if it costs them votes. Even if it costs them their jobs. The status quo is definitely changing regarding gay-rights issues. Eventually gays will be able to marry in every state. Eventually we will wonder why there was ever a fuss about this to begin with. But the change is not occurring because of brave Republicans like these guys; it is happening in spite of Republicans.

  So when I hear Ann Coulter (who once called John Edwards “a faggot”) telling GOProud, a conservative gay group that is rival to the Log Cabin Republicans, that “marriage isn’t a civil right—you’re not black,” I get angry. Because the issue of gay marriage, or gay rights in general, is a question of civil rights. In fact, it is the definition of civil rights: “the rights of citizens to political and social freedom and equality.” Incidentally, Ann Coulter is now serving on GOProud’s advisory council as “Honorary Chair.”

  Self-loathing, anyone?

  Back at Larry and Ellie’s, I keep thinking about the Log Cabin Republicans and the seeming futility of their organization. But the more I think about them, the more I realize something: yes, they are a small, largely ineffective group who spend their days running around trying to change an entrenched majority to their point of view, but isn’t that Washington as a whole? Isn’t that exactly the way our entire country works? A few people decide something’s a good idea, get together, and make it so. That’s America, from the Revolution on out. I’m not comparing the guy tonight in tight white denim pants to Sam Adams, but I do find myself feeling moderately better.

  Every issue has its own Log Cabin Republicans, from our misguided “war on drugs” to American military intervention. There’s a group in Washington who spend all their time trying to move Election Day from Tuesday to the weekend. Everybody here has their own little passion. Even Meghan and me. After all, what have we been doing out on the road for the last month, if not that? Here we are, driving around in our own smelly log cabin, and we know we’re not going to change anything by doing this. Yet here we are, trying. We’re our own tiny special-interest group.

  One of the surprising things I discover about Washingtonians is their optimism. Everywhere else in the country, people we’ve met have berated Washington lethargy and partisanship. Here, though, people seem curiously upbeat. Even Joe Don
oghue, despite his slumped shoulders, spoke to us about moments of possibility that still exist, moments when actual change occurs.

  Change comes too slowly for most of us, but it comes. Depending on your point of view, it doesn’t always come for the better, but it comes. The fallacy of American thinking, I’m starting to suspect, is when people look to Washington to effect that change. Washington is a reactive city. The people here aren’t the ones banging pots and pans in the streets; when there’s a march here, it’s because people from outside came in.

  The weird thing about Washington is how cynical it makes me feel about our government as a whole and yet how optimistic it makes me feel about the individuals within it. Dennis Kucinich and John McCain could not be more different, yet they both work here, doing the same job, both of them, I think, trying to make the best decisions for the people they were elected to represent. That’s not to say they don’t both also make political calculations for their own lesser good as opposed to the greater good, but isn’t that true of all of us? Don’t we all do that? The people here in Washington are no better or worse than Americans as a whole. And, as a whole, I’ve spent the past month interviewing Americans and finding them to be pretty good.

  Yeah, our country’s screwed up. Yeah, we’re probably more divided than we’ve been in a long time. Yeah, there’s a lot to be worried about and a lot of reasons to be pessimistic. But we’re also resilient, and the people I’ve met here and everywhere else have surprised me with their knowledge and energy. People are engaged. That’s the main thing. If our government is ever going to get its shit together, we’ve got to have that above all else.