Admit The Horse

by P. G. Abeles

  What McCracken crystallized for these women was that society’s expectations for women were incredibly complicated. Careful and committed mother, supportive and attractive wife, conscientious and helpful employee—these were the standards most reasonable women sought to meet. Every day! So many obligations to so many people! If anyone wondered if women had achieved a valued voice in society, they had only to observe how woman acted—seeking approval, subject to another’s decision-making, constantly worrying about how to make themselves as skinny, as small, as possible.

  McCracken was not small, physically or otherwise. She had the kind of physiology that didn’t respond obligingly to caloric restrictions or sweaty workouts. And she had tried to appear quiet and submissive, but it just never really came off. She wisely gave it up at about the time in a woman’s life that she was allowed to be a little more out-spoken. Claire McCracken was permitted to be in her sixties, the woman she’d pretended she wasn’t in her forties—smart, self-assured, remarkable.

  And women got it. Not at first, but little by little, until they really got it. They got it hugely—and it filled them up with pride in spaces they never knew before were empty. At the beginning, the press in its constant forecasting (which in retrospect is always so completely wrong they reasonably ought to just self-censor themselves and not engage in it at all) had declared “President Claire” inevitable. Foolishly, McCracken’s supporters thought in retrospect, they had believed the contest would be fair. But they could see now, or believed they saw (which amounted to much the same thing), that someone’s thumb had been on the scale the entire time—that their votes were subject to a kind of censitary suffrage—not fully counted because of their lower status.

  Suddenly it became apparent that a whole lot of women—maybe even a generation of women—women with jobs and families, living apparently comfortable, middle-class lives—women who’d never thought of themselves as disadvantaged, realized for the first time that they were second-class citizens. When doctors and lawyers had reported what went on in the primaries and caucuses, no one believed them. No one cared, except other women. They had thought their professional or academic accomplishments had earned them respect. But they heard the way the pundits referred to McCracken (sly, ambitious, mercenary, calculating, bitchy). Now, those same pundits were attacking them (those progressive, conscientious card-carrying women of Nice!) as losers, dead-enders, even racists—because they refused to fall in line behind the bully Okono.

  And they got pissed. All of a sudden, they weren’t buying the whole “stand aside for the greater good” bit anymore. Not interested in being loyal to a party machinery that promoted its bright, shiny male toy over the more experienced and harder working woman. No way. Not this time!

  What rankled with all of them was the cheating. How could you support someone as chief executive, someone responsible for upholding the laws—when he seemed to have a pretty cavalier approach to “one person/one vote?”

  For Lacey, there was another consideration. A group had gathered the night before the rally to paint signs. By 2 a.m., only three of them were still at it. Connor, Jackie, and Lacey were mostly just talking to keep themselves awake. Inevitably, they had spoken of the most recent defection. In a surprise move, Democratic candidate Chet Williams, who had recently dropped out of the race, had just endorsed Okono. There was widespread wonder at what had prompted his sudden support for Okono. They knew that privately Williams had repeatedly criticized Okono for his lack of experience, his hubris. He’d even accused him of intellectual laziness in not providing concrete plans to back up his rhetoric. On a personal level, it was no secret Chet Williams considered Okono a huge asshole. On the other hand, Williams might be willing to go after Claire McCracken hammer and tongs under the klieg lights, but in private conversations it was obvious he respected her, even liked her. It was a stumper.

  Sitting cross-legged on the carpet, paintbrush in hand, Lacey speculated aloud that Okono had promised Williams the vice presidential slot.

  “Oh, no…” Jackie said calmly. “He can’t accept.” She said it simply, a statement of fact. Lacey and Connor were completely surprised.

  “Why not?” Connor asked.

  Jackie never pulled any punches. “Because he has a love child with one of his staffers and everybody in the press knows about it,” she said simply.

  Lacey and Connor’s eyes popped like over-heated corn, their mouths wide O’s of wonder, their chins on their chests. Jackie had connections, she was an unimpeachable source. If she said it—said it as fact—it was true.

  What they all knew was that Williams had been bleeding votes from McCracken since Iowa. So why was the press pretending he was a viable candidate all that time, if they had information that was so explosive—so completely dispositive? Williams’ whole shtick was that he was a good guy, an honorable guy. And his wife was no political spouse/Kewpie doll, either. She gave Williams enough gravitas to offset his personal-injury-lawyer pomade hair and porcelain veneers. Jackie seemed unfazed by the revelation. But Lacey and Connor were naïve enough to be shocked. If the press wasn’t reporting a story this huge, this salacious, they had to want to keep Williams in the race. From the point of view of a McCracken supporter, the only reason to keep Williams in, was to help Okono.

  A consensus had been steadily growing among the McCracken supporters that they didn’t owe the Democratic Party anything; they thought Okono was little better than a crook. Voting for him had become anathema to them. As the primary calendar started to wind down, Okono supporters had been given instructions to woo the McCracken supporters online—and good foot soldiers that they were, they accepted their orders without hesitation or demur. What they didn’t realize was that it was too late, they’d burned all their bridges. These efforts at conciliation all had a discernible sameness. They would start out making noises about party unity, but when it became clear that the McCracken supporters weren’t planning to obediently get right behind Okono—the vitriol came tripping off their tongues. The Okono disciples were furious that these froward, recalcitrant, contrary women wouldn’t simply buckle under to their demands. No, their obligation to support Okono!

  So Lacey made a fateful decision. After the rally, when it became clear that the fix was in, she called the national campaign headquarters for the presumptive Republican nominee, Governor Joe Malloy, in Arlington, Virginia. Since Lacey didn’t know anyone on the campaign, she just called the general number. She explained she’d organized a large group of McCracken supporters who were disgusted with the Okono campaign. They weren’t Republicans, but Governor Malloy, the Republican nominee, was known for his moderate views on social issues. Could they meet with someone in the campaign?

  The response was immediate. How many McCracken supporters might be involved? Lacey had no idea. The suggestion was made for a conference call. Malloy’s campaign explained that an almost unlimited number of people could be accommodated, with perhaps eighty or so able to meet the candidate in person at the Republican’s glass-walled Crystal City headquarters. There was no commitment given or required. This was an exploratory meeting for the McCracken supporters to get a sense of Malloy. There was less than a week to make the arrangements.

  Immediately, Lacey and the other McCracken supporters started having problems with their email. Messages were suddenly returned as undeliverable. Other messages were inexplicably delayed for 36 hours. Leaders of the McCracken groups, reading their email over their morning coffee, received messages from their ISP providers informing them that their email accounts were in lock-down—that they’d already exceeded their daily maximum—before they’d even sent one email. Whether it was the volume of messages, user error or faulty equipment, no one knew. Some suggested darkly that it was the Okono campaign, but this was laughed at as improbable in the extreme. Why would the Okono campaign trouble themselves about them? And how would they do it anyway? Ridiculous.

  At last, the day arrived. The eighty people present on Saturday afternoon
went through a brief security check before being admitted to the downstairs meeting room. Many of the long-time Democrats admitted to being nonplussed by the professionalism of the Republican offices on a lazy summer afternoon. At Malloy’s headquarters, clean-shaven twenty-year-old volunteers wore navy blazers and ties. By contrast, at McCracken’s headquarters, weekend volunteers were scruffy forty-year-olds wearing jeans and message T’s. It was definitely a cultural shift.

  Governor Joe Malloy was just as he appeared on television. Bright, straightforward, sincere, not one to dissemble or parse words. He told them frankly that they would disagree on abortion—he was pro-life, but he promised to appoint justices based on qualifications not ideology. Physically, he was very stiff, but he overcame it with a kind of puppy-like eagerness to shake everyone’s hands and make a connection. Lacey, who expected perhaps a hundred people on the conference call, was staggered when she was told almost 6,000 McCracken supporters had called in.

  On Monday morning, she’d just finished getting the kids breakfast when the phone rang. It was Bill Flowers. He ran one of the other McCracken groups and they’d become friendly, although they’d met for the first time at the Malloy event over the weekend. Very good guy.

  “Lacey—I just got an email from Josh Stein from the Political Insider,” he said.

  She’d gotten an email from Stein herself. After he’d written in his column that no serious McCracken supporters were in attendance at the meeting with Malloy, she’d sent him a polite email letting him know that three delegates and four major fundraisers were in attendance, in addition to one of McCracken’s national campaign reps. Anyone could see that the fact that these people—Democratic stalwarts—had attended an event for the Republican Malloy was a huge story. Stein had asked Lacey her name, which she verified, but that had been his only question.

  Flowers continued, his voice stressed. “He wouldn’t tell me what it was about—but he says it’s going to be in his column in twenty minutes.”

  Lacey was only half paying attention, trying to minimize the incredible adhesive ability of breakfast cereal by quickly scraping and rinsing the kids’ breakfast bowls.

  “Uh, huh,” Lacey said

  Flowers spoke quickly, obviously sorry to be the bearer of bad news:

  “Lacey, he’s going to say you’re not supporting Okono because you’re a racist.”

  “Oh my God.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Washington, DC

  TO OUTSIDERS, THE NATIONAL PRESS CLUB existed as a kind of sanctum sanctorum—an ivory tower of journalistic rectitude and professionalism smack in the middle of downtown D.C. As such, it was assumed to be dominated by the eminence grises of the journalistic establishment—the tanned and gorgeous news anchors, the quick-with-a-quip pundits, the Jack Russell-like investigators, and wordsmiths otherwise favored by nature or society. But most low-level journalists were not so favored, and for them, the Press Club had an even more potent allure. In the most basic terms, the idea of belonging to a social club was outside the ken of the lowly average reporter. Their high-flying TV counterparts dismissed them as didactic and humorless, and joked to each other that most beat reporters’ clothes hadn’t matched since their mothers stopped color coordinating their Garanimals. And, of course, unlike their spray-tanned and veneered colleagues on television, print reporters were famously underpaid; none of them had any money. So the Press Club—their club, assumed an importance somewhat out of proportion to its facilities or benefits, precisely because for many of its members, it was probably the only club they would ever be invited to join.

  But still, the Press Club’s aura of linguistic gravitas was unmistakable and carried immeasurable cachet for credibility and integrity. It was for precisely this reason that Fairfax Custis had arranged the press conference in the Holeman Lounge. The backdrop of its elegant dark wood paneling lent dignity to even the most incredible of stories, and Lenny Sinkowski had an incredible story.

  Lenny Sinkowski wouldn’t be anyone’s idea of a credible witness. Convicted of forgery and fraud in multiple states, he had used at least thirteen aliases—that he admitted to. An acknowledged drug user and criminal, he’d lived an itinerant life of small-time cons, and was now receiving a social security check based on a somewhat dubious claim that an on-the-job spinal injury had left him permanently disabled. If you were going to choose someone to make allegations against a popular presidential candidate, no one would choose Lenny Sinkowski.

  Of course, if you were going to choose a lawyer to represent Sinkowski, you wouldn’t choose the mercurial and eccentric Fairfax Custis. Custis was a notorious Don Quixote drawn to improbable (or at least unwinnable) social justice cases. His reputation had been further damaged when courts in North Carolina had censured him as a “vexatious litigant” during a messy and acrimonious divorce, for filing complaints against everyone from his own lawyer to the state supreme court. He had also been (briefly) charged with assault for nearly throttling his wife’s process server—an exigency that’s been known to happen in lawyerly circles, but is still generally considered poor form.

  The substance of Sinkowski’s allegations against Okono were these: Sinkowski claimed that in November of 1997, he and then State Senator Okono had done drugs together—specifically crack cocaine. The purpose of Sinkowski coming forward, he claimed, was to dispute Okono’s claim that he had never done drugs after high school. Sinkowski claimed not to have realized who Okono was until he saw now-Congressman Okono via satellite (Sinkowski was hiding out in Mexico at the time—presumably to escape prosecution) making a nationally televised speech.

  The salacious part of the allegation was that Sinkowski, who was gay, and was visiting Chicago for a family wedding, claimed to have given Okono a blow job in the backseat of a chauffeured limousine, and then again the following day in his hotel room. He reported that when he had originally contacted the Okono campaign, he had spoken to a Mr. Antwone Green, who identified himself as a friend of Congressman Okono. Mr. Sinkowski claimed that Mr. Green had himself acknowledged a homosexual relationship with Okono. According to Sinkowski, Antwone Green later died under suspicious circumstances. His death was still being investigated by the Chicago Police Department, Sinkowski said.

  Without any documentary evidence, no major news organizations gave any space to Sinkowski’s allegations, but they persisted on the internet—partly because Sinkowski made no attempt to hide his unsavoury past (which under the circumstances seemed sort of impressive)—and partly because there was just something about the story that had that strange element of truthiness, or weirdness, that gave it a longer than usual half-life.

  The reporters attending the press conference expected to find Sinkowski laughable, ridiculous—a fey little man with a high-pitched voice—and in a certain way he was. The reporters reminded themselves not to be taken in. The appearance of sincerity was the con man’s stock-in-trade, after all. But despite the reporters’ obvious skepticism, Sinkowski persisted in making his case. He ended the press conference by noting that he didn’t expect the reporters to believe him, but he hoped they would investigate the story and establish the truth for themselves.

  In spite of themselves, the reporters found themselves strangely impressed. If Sinkowski was getting anything out of subjecting himself to this level of public exposure and ridicule, it wasn’t clear what it was. Those who had dismissed him as a grifter involved in a new scam, who pointed to his tessellated career of forgery and petty crime—were suddenly less sure. There was…something…

  And that’s when something truly strange happened. Two U.S. marshals accompanied by two D.C. police officers showed up to arrest Sinkowski on what they claimed was an outstanding warrant from Delaware. To anyone familiar with the D.C. criminal justice system—many of whose convicted criminals unconcernedly wander the streets for years before D.C. issues a warrant for his or her arrest—this would be curious enough. In fact, Sinkowski’s arrest was completely inexplicable—except for the fact th
at the mayor of D.C. was a well-known supporter of Okono.

  Held for four days at D.C.’s First District Station on 4th Street, S.W., without being charged, Sinkowski was then extradited to Delaware—a state in which he denied ever having had dealings. After a further few days in custody, he was quietly released, no warrant for his arrest ever having been produced. Of course, the fact that the attorney general of Delaware was the son of Okono’s choice for vice president, might have been considered germane to any reporters who followed the story of how a political critic of a U.S. presidential candidate had been silenced and arrested in the nation’s capitol, but it wasn’t. None did.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Washington, DC

  THE POLITICAL INSIDER’S JOSH STEIN was not managing editor John Tweed’s favorite reporter. Partly it was the issue of personal hygiene—or really the lack thereof. For the fastidious Tweed, it started with Stein’s yellow fingernails, which he habitually gnawed almost to the cuticle. His clothes were wrinkled, even stained. He rarely shaved, or washed his greasy hair. Reporters sharing a cubicle with him complained that he left his dirty, smelly laundry near his desk.

  Foulmouthed and suspicious, even by newsroom standards, he prided himself on his rudeness—and wore his New York City roots like a badge of honor. At 35, he had developed a soft, womanly roundness, and was so out of shape, he habitually panted when he walked. It all combined to give him the look of a malevolent rabbit, fattened for the stew.

  The other reporters referred to Stein as a “DFK” or Dork Face Killa—according to the urban dictionary, an “extremely unattractive person married to an attractive person.” The other reporters noted that, in truth, he wasn’t much of a writer, his popular posts seldom longer than a paragraph or two.