Kitty Kelley
• May 23, 2011

There’s a temptation on my part, sitting in Kitty Kelley’s sun-drenched Georgetown office, to say “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”

?About every half decade or so, we sit down to chat in the stormy aftermath of the publication of one of her books in which she has taken on the mighty, the powerful, the awesomely famous, rich, and legendary, and rendered them very human in her inimitable way, which delights hordes of readers and infuriates not only the subject of her books, but any number of apologists and high-minded critics.

?Inevitably, I ask yet again: So, what’s next? Kelley swears and vows, probably with her fingers a little crossed behind her back, that she’ll never write an expose again, or put herself through the eye of what is a self-created storm.

?This time that storm is “Oprah,” the mega-bucks talk show host, friend to presidents, the nation’s literary guide, magazine publisher and, in some mass-communication way, probably the most influential African-American woman in the world. In other words, another unauthorized biography full of controversial, highly inflammatory and often negative information about a woman who’s mostly revered, adored and admired by millions.

?“I don’t know why I keep doing this,” she says again. “This one was especially difficult to do, maybe the most difficult … maybe you noticed: no CNN, no Larry King, no Walters, not much television. There’s a reason. Everybody is very loyal in this business, and with Oprah, also afraid. They pretty much told me as much.”

?Kelley, a small, stylish, blonde woman who can trade barbs, stories and humor easily, has charm that’s undeniably genuine. But while there are lots of cat figures in the living room of the office, and while there have been cat-and-catty jabs at her from some less-than-kind critics, there’s no question that she can defend herself when necessary. Even a suggestion that some material in her books might be off target draws a heated defense of her work. “I’m a biographer,” she says. “I write unauthorized biographies. It’s not a term I entirely like because the reputation of the word makes it sound like it’s merely sensational. And that’s not true. I’ve never been forced to make a retraction about anything in any of my books. I’m a trained researcher, that’s what I did when I worked in newspapers.”

?Inevitably, she shows me the room containing the nearly 3000 files of interviews, references and material that accumulated during the course of putting the book together. Similar volumes of raw material emerged in writing her previous books.

?“It’s like living in somebody else’s life for, what, five years now,” she says. “And Oprah is endlessly fascinating. I admire her, she’s accomplished so much. But, for one thing, she didn’t come from the dire poverty she’s always talked about. And that’s just one thing.”

?There are stories that emerge in the book that, if they’ve existed at all, came from out there in the dimmest reaches of rumor land, including the assertion that the man she’s always claimed as her father isn’t really her father, and that she had a child out of wedlock as a teenager.

?Part of the problem with a subject like Oprah, and for that matter, Jackie Kennedy, Elizabeth Taylor, Nancy Reagan, Frank Sinatra, the royal family and the Bush family, is that so much is out there already. Kelley’s subjects are the supernovas around which a planetary system of scribes, sycophants, biographers, paparazzi, gophers, family members, and history itself rotates. With Oprah, this is also true, only much more so. She is her own supernova. In her daily talk shows, she has talked so much about herself, her problems and triumphs, her family, her struggles and dissatisfactions with her weight and looks, that it seems her life is an open, tearful and triumphant book of its own.

?Who, then, needs a Kitty Kelley book about Oprah? Well, we do.

?“She’s done enormous good in the world, and I think she’s an influence for good,” Kelley says. “But she’s also hidden a lot of her life, she has a darker side. She’s not a saint.”

?“Oprah” is a terrific read, much in the same way that all of Kelley’s other books work. They have a monumental speed to them, they rush and throw accumulations of detail that in the end give you a big picture. The “tell” stories aren’t as important as they appear at the book’s arrival — it’s the overall weight of material, painstakingly accumulated and acquired, that is telling. In this case, they round out the story, like a very big Paul Harvey “rest of the story.”

?In the long run, all her books are about fame, they’re very American in their focus, even the book about the royal family, which of course included a hefty section on Princess Diana. They’re about fame and its flipside, infamy, about the importance of success and celebrity in American life. One of the telling things about all the books, whether they concern royal Brits, American singing legends, political dynasties, movies stars or billionaire talk show hosts, is how they bring out an essential homegrown vulgarity that seems to be as natural a by-product of fame as breathing itself.

?And every book is a pain, a project fraught with dangers and difficulties. In these efforts, she has a dogged, persistent quality that can only be called courage.

?“None of the people I wrote about ever submitted to interviews,” Kelley says. “Not that I wouldn’t have loved to talk to Oprah, but she, like everybody, gave no interviews.”

?“It was hard to get some interviews,” she says. “You’d be surprised how afraid people are. She has a powerful bully pulpit in that show, she knows so many people. But in some ways, she was my best source, from the shows and the magazine.”

?Sinatra apparently was not amused to be made into a Kelley title, a book that for many people made it less fun to listen to a song like “I Did It My Way.” The Bush family closed ranks, and mounted a negative attack campaign prior to its publication, which just happened to be near election time in 2004. Matt Lauer put Kelley through a grinder in two interviews on the Today Show, which she handled deftly.

?She’s one of those people who’s proud of some of the enemies she’s acquired — they’re a kind of validation of the work. No amount of attacks, criticism, charges of sloppiness or inaccuracy deter Kelley or her readers. “We’re debuting number one on the New York Times bestseller list,” she says, indicating that being number one makes for a good Sunday morning.

?She and her husband, Dr. Jonathan Zucker, still live in Georgetown, where she just held a book signing at St. John’s Episcopal Church on O Street, the proceeds of which went to charity.

?“It’s my home,” she says. “I love Peacock Café, I like the gym at GU, the streets, the old homes, the shops, the people. What’s not to love?”

?Listening to her talk about her work, over the years, is to recognize that while she may complain about the mountainous work involved, she’s also driven by keen curiosity, and a pride of profession. She doesn’t much rely on decorative style or literary allusion, just stories, anecdotes, dug-up facts, cross-references. Gossip and rumors, the daily diet bread of our lives, are the spice in that mountain of stuff, not its essence.

?She has no plans for her next book, and says she won’t do another. We’ve heard that one before.

Signed copies of Oprah’s book are available at Proper Topper (Georgetown, 3213 P St., Dupont Circle, 1350 Connecticut Ave. and online at www.propertopper.com). All proceeds will go to the D.C. Public Library for the Peabody Collection — and matching funds from a generous donor. [gallery ids="99126,102655,102649" nav="thumbs"]

“King Lear” at Synetic Theater
• April 20, 2011

Can you get the full measure of Shakespeare’s “King Lear” without hearing Lear’s verbal rage against the Gods?

You bet you can—and without any of the words for that matter—in Synetic Theater’s “silent Shakespeare” series, now through April 24 at the Lansburgh and April 29 – May 9 at Synetic’s home base in Rosslyn.

This is a Lear with more than one fool, more than one clown, and one true mime who is the fool. This is the Paata Tsikurishvilli version of Lear, where all the characters wear painted faces, like some mad, violent circus troupe, damned and doomed to hell and gone. It’s also a full expression of just what’s made the troupe from Russia—head by Tsikurishvilli and his wife choreographer Irina—almost universally acclaimed by critics and rewarded almost routinely with Helen Hayes awards.

This production with its high, athletic and murderous energy, works almost like a bookend to the Bard’s “Lear” in the sense that it lays on the emotional content through movement, visceral visual vistas and the words that can seep out of and echo through silence. You’re reminded a little of Kurasawa’s “Ran,” a cinematic Japanese version of “Lear,” in which the last image is that of a blinded fool dancing on the edge of a cliff.

It doesn’t quite explain why Tsikurishvilli decided to make Cordelia a son instead of a daughter, and why Lear’s love and loss don’t quite get their full measure as a result.

Still, this production is an opportunity for DC city dwellers to catch the horrible, beautiful magic of Synetic, which is in a theatrical category by itself.

Enda Walsh and “The Walworth Farce”
•

New and fresh Irish playwright Enda Walsh is currently getting a full-blown festival exposure at the Studio Theater, with “Penelope,” his contemporary version of the story of Ulysses and his wife, having already been performed.

Now its “The Walworth Face” and “The New Electric Ballroom,” starring some of DC’s finest veteran actors and actresses, being performed simultaneously in the Milton and at the Mead theaters, respectively.

In “The Walworth Farce” you get to see Walsh’s work, his furious passion for words embedded. There’s something brazenly revolting, revolutionary and rash about this play, which builds from confusion to clarity and madness, while blasting away just about all traces of fondness for Irish sentimentality and tropes.

Here’s the trip: three Irish men living in London, a father and two sons, act out the recurring and changing history and farce of their lives in their disjointed up-high city flat. It’s a cross-dressing, sometimes dangerous, violent sorting out of their own history, of murder, death, displacement and identity, plus there’s a prize for best actor each time out. When the youngest son brings in an interloper, things go straight to the inevitable hell, with no pit stop for purgatory.

Ted Van Griethuysen shows again his gift for going from classical, Shakespeare and Shaw to the crude poetics of contemporary Irish plays. He’s a mad, sly, bully-boy ringmaster here. The acting, including Aubrey Deeker and Alex Morf as the sons, is superb all around, and the tensions and foreboding is electric.

“The New Electric Ballroom” stars Jennifer Mendenhall and Nancy Robinette as two Irish sisters lost in the memories of their small-town youth, trying to find the truth.

“The Color Purple” at the National Theater
•

This Oprah Winfrey-backed musical theater version of Alice Walker’s powerful novel packs more emotional punch than your everyday Broadway musical. The road company, now at the National Theater through April 24, talks and sings the story of Celie, a much put upon young black woman who rises above abuse, ignorance and suffering to become the cornerstone of life for many people. The film version, which starred Whoopee Goldberg, Danny Glover and Oprah Winfrey herself, was directed by Steve Spielberg with great intensity, if a little too much sentiment, and was nominated for 11 Oscars (but won none). The musical is a powerful surprise and moves with flair and power to tell an emotionally affecting story.

Trying Times for Mayor Gray, Washington
• March 17, 2011

Just around three months into his four-year terms, District of Columbia Mayor Vincent Gray is in trouble. Big trouble.

Sulaimon Brown, a fringe candidate during last year’s mayoral campaign who often attacked incumbent Mayor Adrian Fenty and urged people to vote for Gray if not for him, claimed that he had made a deal with the Gray campaign to continue his attacks on Fenty in exchange for a job in the administration and money. All this broke like a flood in a front page Washington Post story on Sunday.

Brown charged that he had received money “in the thousands” from Gray campaign officials Lorraine Green, the Gray campaign chairman, and campaign consultant Howard Brooks by way of cash tucked into envelopes. The Post said it could not verify the payments of the money, which Brown said he had spent.

The story is rife with all the elements of a major scandal—envelopes of cash, cell phone records (although not their contents) between Brown and Gray, Green and Brooks, and text messages from Brown talking about “agreements.” It also had one salient fact: Brown did get a job in the Gray Administration as a special assistant with the Department of Health Care Finance, from which he was fired after the vetting process. He is now on paid administrative leave.

Gray in a press conference did two things: he denied any wrongdoing, but admitted “missteps had been made” in the vetting process. He also indicated he had never promised Brown a job or position, only a job interview.

He also called for an independent investigation of the matter, at first by the interim DC District Attorney and the DC Council. Later he indicated that he would be happy for the DC Inspector General, as suggested by Council Chairman Kwame Brown, to investigate the matter. Ward 2 Councilman Jack Evans wants the U.S. Attorney’s Office to do the investigation. The DC Office of Campaign Finance has already begun a probe.

The whole thing seems shocking and unseemly. And it comes on the heels of hiring practices by Gray that have been roundly criticized for smacking of cronyism.

In fact, Gray seems to be strangely diffident in his reactions, as if this was not a term-threatening or direct attack by Brown. He’s already called Gray, “an organized criminal.”

Told about that charge by WRC4 reporter Tom Sherwood, Gray said, “he said that, did he?” He then laughed quietly and got into his car.

But this is no laughing matter; it has the making of a political tragedy. Brown, with a dubious employment and political record, ran for mayor anyway. He claims his attacks—which included saying that Fenty did not respect his parents—gave Gray the election. At the Georgetowner Candidate Forum just prior to the election, Brown created a ruckus by insisting he had been invited to participate when he had not.

When a reporter pointed out to him that his charges also made him a criminal, Brown insists that he’s willing to pay for what he did, although he hadn’t said a word about it until being forcibly removed from his short-lived office.

The tragedy, of course, is how this will affect Gray, his administration, his agenda and the city as a whole. In two lengthy talks with Gray during and after the campaign, Gray gave the impression of a man who was proud to be a true city native, a son of Washington, growing up in its largely black communities, graduating from Dunbar High School, getting a degree from George Washington University. He’s a man who clearly values family and friendship. He was widely seen as an honest, good man of integrity, and his term as city council chairman was widely seen as successful, handling the hard-charging Fenty’s wide-ranging agenda and the controversies that ensued.

That reputation has taken a hit with this political firestorm. It’s not that Brown’s charges should be believed at face value, especially those involving cash payments. More than one person has described Brown as a loose cannon, and that’s evidenced in these attacks and charges, and his previous behavior at forums. He received a little over 200 votes in the Democratic Party, so his claim that he swung the election for Gray is not very credible. Politically speaking, you can’t trust him. The surprising thing is that there was any sort of contact between the Gray camp and Brown at all.

Here’s one thing to consider. Gray came to politics late in his life, and, and he’s not a natural by any means. He and his friends don’t appear to understand that in an economic climate where you’re asking people to make sacrifices, you don’t hire your friends at big salaries, or their children. The mayor is Caesar, but he has to be Caesar’s wife too, beyond reproach—especially if you ran on a platform of integrity.

More than once, and from those who said it throughout the campaign, I’ve heard people sayit’s like the (Marion) Barry days. It’s not, but you can see why people feel at ease saying it.

For many of his supporters this is a kick in the gut, and the effects will linger. “There are a lot of people who are kind of heartsick, beyond buyers remorse”, one Adams Morgan resident said.

There can’t be a rush to judgment, but there must be a rush to honesty. I believe without any hesitation that Mayor Gray is a man of integrity, but a politician who gets elected can often lose his bearings under this kind of pressure. The mayor ought to be laying down the facts as he knows them, emphatically—with emotion and anger if appropriate—on the table to the public, and instituting the help of colleagues and friends. Trust is not like a credit card or a cell phone. You can’t get a new one if you lose it.

Two Weeks In a Nutshell…Or a Bombshell
• March 7, 2011

When the world teems with upheaval, oddities get overlooked. The revolution in Cairo has been an uprising to unnerve every man in the Middle East holding the title of king, ruler, president [for life], or prime minister. Still, even amidst the revolution, I noticed a few other things that puzzled me, ticked me off, or seemed worthy of comment So here ‘goes:

I read Sally Jenkins’ column about the wretched excess of the Super Bowl in Dallas and didn’t feel so alone any more, just even more appalled. $900 for a parking spot? $20 for a margarita made in Dallas? This must be a Texan version of hard times, by way of Marie Antoinette.

There was a perfectly terrific football game buried in a horrible half-time show and an all-day television extravaganza, which included Fox News roughneck Bill O’Reilly interviewing President Obama. I guess I haven’t been watching: when did this get to be a tradition?

There was way too much pontificating going on in the commercials, the commentary, and all the mouths churning a mile a minute. More than a football game? Really? This was America? Really?

Would it be too much to ask for pop star Christina Aguilera to remember the lyrics to the Star Spangle Banner? Sure you love your country, yadda yadda yadda. But if you can remember to add a pelvic bump to every song lyric you ever sang, you can surely do the Spangled.

On the other hand, there were the Black Eyed Peas and a few thousand radioactive extras, reminding us again of the mystery of Fergie, who, unlike Christina, did remember her lyrics. But on the other hand, she can’t sing. How much did this little party cost?

I don’t care about the commercials, or the little Darth Vader kid, and so on. Commercials are the times in my life when I go to the bathroom, even if I don’t have to.

Speaking of Dallas, as in “only in Dallas”: A Dallas city councilman who had heard Michael Vick, the renewed, re-invented, redeemed MVP of the NFL, speak to a group of youngsters, was so moved that he offered Vick the key to the city. One cowboy fan apparently complained that you shouldn’t be giving a key to the city to an Eagle.

I could care less about that. Just one thing, you strange people of Dallas: if you want to give Michael Vick the key to the city that’s fine. Just don’t give him the key to the kennel.

Speaking of football, we have a little freedom of the press issue becoming very pressing in our own fair city. Dan Snyder, the owner of the Washington Redskins, got all bent out of shape about a City Paper cover story which basically, but factually, ridiculed the owner of the Skins, a team which he’s managed to mess up so thoroughly that naming all the coaches and free agents of the Snyder era could become a difficult trivia question.

Snyder is so mad that he’s threatening to sue the paper, asking for an apology and demanding that the writer be fired. Whoa, Nellie. He’s made wild accusations of anti-Semitism, picking on his wife, and so on. No doubt the details have been on the local talk shows, so we won’t go into them.

We have just one thing to say: Are you kidding me?

Snyder’s attorney basically has suggested that since the victimized Snyder has such deep pockets he can practically bankrupt the City Paper, which is not the Washington Post.

I’ve got an idea. There must be some lawyer with time on his hands in this city of lawyers who can take this case on pro bono. The publicity value alone would be priceless. And the case is bound to be a slam-dunk. Nobody has yet won a libel suit for suggesting that an idiot is, well, an idiot.
And if you don’t like this, Mr. Snyder, sue me. Please.

Moving on to Cairo: I have no advice to offer Mr. Obama. I think he’s done the best that can be done in a painfully tricky diplomatic situation, while probably biting his tongue so that he won’t blurt out “don’t let the door hit your butt on the way out!” to Mr. Mubarak.

So far, most of his political foes in this country have kept quiet, realizing that it is the President’s job to conduct foreign policy, not the Tea Party.

Everyone except, of course, for Sarah Palin, who shoots and knits at the same time. She said that she was not happy with Obama’s handling of the crisis, and said that it was one of those 3 a.m. calls that went straight to the answering machine. Other than that, she said a few words—freedom, liberty, Bristol—and offered no suggestions on what to do, since she cannot see Cairo from her back yard.

Speaking of Palin, she is apparently, according to some reports, attempting to trademark her name. A similar effort was conducted by her daughter Bristol. Ah, the eternal conflict between self-interest and self-interest.
Every time I start writing about Palin, I can’t stop. Time to go to rehab.

Against the Fenty Write-In: A Rebuttal
• December 1, 2010

 

-Georgetown resident John Hlinko, founder of the Adrian Fenty write-in-campaign for mayor on Facebook, offered an objection to my take on the write-in campaign, including my opinion that the effort appeared to be “peculiarly un-democratic” (“The Fenty Write-in: A Democratic Success Story,” from the November 16 issue).

I don’t mind people objecting to my analysis and opinion—it’s an opinion page after all. And I only mildly mind that opinion being called “Orwellian” or that I saw the write-in as some sort of attempted coup complete with tanks.

But there’s one hyperbolic description too many in his rebuttal: that’s the claim that “it’s hard to see how this was anything but profoundly democratic” (His words).

Let’s also admit that while the primary was not the final or general election, it was indeed a democratically conducted election, meant to choose the Democratic Party’s standard-bearer in the general election, and the principal candidates were Mayor Fenty and Chairman Gray. The fact that DC is a heavily Democratic city has historically made the primary winner the winner of the general election. To use a fine democratic American phrase, Mr. Gray won fair and square, for a variety of reasons, most of which were documented in the Washington Post and other media, and they were born out in the result. The election was not a verdict on education reform. It was a verdict on Mr. Fenty’s political and leadership style, and the autocratic way that education reform was processed.

That’s what primaries are: an electoral method to choose candidates to represent political parties in a larger election.

I don’t have an objection to people offering up write-in candidates, or candidates unhappy with the results of primaries attempting to do the same. Nobody likes to lose, by twenty votes or by thousands. It’s been done before. Up in Alaska, one candidate lost the Republican primary for a senate race, took on the Tea Party-backed candidate in a write-in and won in the end. Joe Lieberman, ousted in a Democratic Party primary in Connecticut by an anti-war candidate, ran as an independent and won. And several years ago, Mayor Anthony Williams was forced to run as a write-in candidate due to a technical foul up by his campaign. Two years ago, Carol Schwartz, the lone Republican on the DC City Council, was undone in the primary by a young GOP candidate backed by the local business community and ran a write-in campaign and lost. Michael Brown—the one on the council—ran as an Independent, even though he’s been a heart-and-soul Democrat from practically his first breath, and he won.

But write-in campaigns are usually run by candidates themselves, not their supporters. Mr. Fenty repeatedly said he was backing Mr. Gray in the general election, even if those assertions were not made with any great passion. It is not productive or very reasonable to vote for someone who is not even running.

The write-in supporters often claimed that while they liked Mr. Gray, they feared he would not continue the education reform efforts begun in dramatic fashion by Mr. Fenty and School Chancellor Michelle Rhee, who resigned before the general election.

In effect they, like Mr. Fenty and Chancellor Rhee and national media types, were claiming that Mr. Fenty was a victim of an anti-school reform effort, and they were trying to save reform, which apparently only Mr. Fenty would pursue with enough rigor, energy and vigor.

This was, to begin with, a misreading of Mr. Gray, who has repeatedly insisted he will continue reform, that there would be no going back.

What was undemocratic about the write-in, to my reading of it, is that it cavalierly disrespected the primary vote results and those voters who supported Mr. Gray. If the primary election and the Washington Post polls that preceded it showed anything, it was that DC was a city dramatically divided by race, class and wealth.

What exactly did the write-in accomplish? The write-in effort proved to be very effective indeed, racking up solid numbers in the very same white and affluent Wards 3 and 2 which had given Mr. Fenty a solid advantage in the primary. In short, the write-in exposed again the racial and economic divides in the city.

But there was never a chance that the effort would actually succeed in coming up with a win for Mr. Fenty. That was always a fantasy. Elections are about consequences, winners and losers, as well as risks. This write-in accomplished nothing that was constructive, or anything resembling clarity. It muddied the outcome, suggested that the primary result was somehow illegitimate or beside the point. Far from being “profoundly democratic,” it ended up being an exercise in electoral peevishness.

Closing the Book on Michelle Rhee, and Other Capital Tales
• November 3, 2010

The Democratic Primary election has been done and over since mid-September, but somehow, the past week still felt like election mode.

Especially if you were Vincent Gray, the still-Chairman of the City Council who won the primary. Especially if you were District of Columbia School System Chancellor Michelle Rhee. Especially if you were Mayor Adrian Fenty, who lost the primary election.

Gray, faced with what he himself identified as a deeply divided city along class and racial lines, was already in the midst of a series of town hall meetings in all eight wards of the city, when the most suspenseful issue on his plate as presumptive mayor seemed to solve itself almost as if by a magic.

That thumping noise you might have heard during Wednesday night of last week? It was just the other shoe dropping in the great back-and-forth saga of the fate of Rhee in the aftermath of the election. You know the one—will she or won’t she? Will HE or won’t he?

She won’t….be staying. And he didn’t…fire her.

Word leaked Wednesday that Michelle Rhee would be resigning from her job as chancellor. This, apparently after a number of telephone conversations between Rhee and Gray, following a lengthy meeting between the two at which both claimed not to have discussed the issue, but rather exchange views on educational philosophy and policy.

Gray, who had said that the possibility of Rhee staying was still on the table right up until the point that it wasn’t, did not fire Rhee, according to both. And Rhee did not resign abruptly, as Gray would say repeatedly. It was all a mutual decision, as both of them labored to tell the press at a conference called by Gray at the Mayflower Hotel.

“It was a mutual decision arrived at over several phone conversations,” said Gray.

The press conference was notable for its strangely muted and controlled tone, and for the debut of newly named interim chancellor Kaya Henderson, Rhee’s right-hand person at DCPS, and a leading force in school reform.

Gray’s choice of Henderson was a signal to the many voters—most of them in the predominantly white Wards 3 and 2, who had voted strongly for Fenty—that he would continue apace with school reform, which had been energetically, dramatically and often controversially conducted by Rhee. Rhee accomplished a lot, and she did it swiftly. She closed schools, fired support staff and a swath of teachers, one during a controversial RIF and the other after a series of Impact evaluations. She eventually forged a dramatic contract agreement with the teachers union, one that emphasized teacher evaluation, some merit pay and a forceful dilution of tenure. Under Rhee, test scores improved in some areas, school enrollment and graduation rates went up, and the infrastructure
improved. She also became a national figure and something of a poster child for reform, first after a cover story in Time Magazine in which she was pictured wielding a broom, and then, most recently as part of the documentary “Waiting for Superman.”

Amid the praise, there was strong criticism for perceived deteriorating relationships with the district’s poorer wards and black residents—one that mirrored Fenty’s similar problems. Those residents, especially parents, felt left out of the process. Rhee was all but attached at the hip to Fenty, for whom she made campaign appearances as a “private citizen.” She also publicly criticized Gray for not having a strong enough commitment to reform.

The dust has settled. The shoe dropped. And the official announcement came, accompanied by a show of bonhomie and mutual support. In fact, Fenty, Rhee and Gray used the word “mutual” so much that you expected a bell to ring and signal the end of trading for the day.

Rhee contended, as she does with most things, that the decision was “heart-breaking,” and that it came about because continued speculation about her future was not best for the children. “It was best for this reformer to step aside,” she said.

Gray’s choice of Henderson, who is a veteran African American educator and reform proponent, also meant that most of the top echelon of Rhee’s team would stay, giving him further bonafides as a reformer. “We cannot and will not return to the days of incrementalism,” he said.

A local television reporter asked who wanted out. “Was it that you didn’t want him anymore or he didn’t want you anymore,” he asked Rhee. Mutual decision, Rhee said.

A national television reporter asked Fenty if Rhee had been forced out by pressure from the teacher’s union. Guess what? “It was a mutual decision,” Fenty said.

There was a lot of hugging going on here. Rhee hugged Henderson, Rhee and Gray hugged, Fenty and Gray hugged. Rhee and Fenty hugged. No one hugged members of the media.

Oddly enough, the question of Rhee and reform hardly came up the following night at Foundry Methodist Church in Ward 2, one of those wards which had voted overwhelmingly for Fenty in the primary. Maybe it was because Henderson was part of the VIP audience.

While Gray made a lengthy exhortation about his reform commitment, the audience moved on to other things: the presence of a noisy pizza parlor in Georgetown, the makeup and power of the many commissions and boards who often make key policy decisions; raising taxes (or not); the looming budget crisis; statehood. Gray impressed many with a command of the issues, seemingly calling
up statistics, examples and understanding of how this city functions and works, not so much as a politician showing off but as a man who seems to have made a study of the subject of bureaucracy and government at work.

Gray also showed a certain benign kind of opportunism, in the sense that he used every question as a way to not only invite, but urge people to take part in the process of government. Asked about how grants are received by aging programs. “This isn’t just an issue about which organization gets what grants,” he said. “This is about protecting some of our most vulnerable citizens, the elderly and others. You have to want to take part here. You can do that. Work as a volunteer, work with those groups that give seniors an opportunity to come together in groups.”

Per talking about the looming budget crisis ($175 or more million deficit coming right up): “We need your input and cooperation in this. We are all in this together. It’s not the government’s problem, it’s not the city council’s problem or the mayor’s or some agency’s, and it’s ours. Tough decisions are going to be made; I’m not going to sugarcoat this. Cuts will have to be made. Don’t’ say, ‘cut this one or that one, but not the one that we don’t want cut.’ It’s about all of us. We need your input.”

Talking about statehood really jazzed him up. “Yeah, I’m going to be going up to the hill on this and in my capacity as mayor. But on statehood, I don’t want to go up there alone. I don’t just want to have somebody right behind me, another person on the right and the left. I want hundreds, no, thousand of people behind me, and if we get thrown in jail, so be it.” They hooted and hollered and whistled then.

A homeless person asked about the prospect of homes for everyone and then appeared to disapprove of the right to marriage law passed by the district, allowing gay couples to marry. Gray took on both. “Housing for everyone sounds nice,” he said. “Who wouldn’t want it? But it doesn’t work that way. It’s impossible to be truthful. Because it’s not going to solve the problem of homelessness in this city. Everybody will come here and you increase the problem. As for the other, I fought for the legislation on right to marriage legislation. I believe in it with all my heart.”

“I came here and to all the other town hall meetings so that you can get to know me better,” he said. “Lots of people know little about me. I think maybe I wouldn’t vote for me if I knew as little as all that.”

“I want us to work together,” he said. “And that’s a concrete thing. I want people from all the wards to work together, to get to know each other. We are facing tremendous challenges but also a great future. We did that on the council, and I have to say I think we have and had a tremendously talented
council. I have to say, in all honesty, that I’m feeling a little separation anxiety starting to seep in. I’ve developed friendships in this council. We all have.” [gallery ids="99250,104244" nav="thumbs"]

Fenty and Gray Forge Ahead
• October 6, 2010

There’s no question that education is probably the most important issue in this 2010 Democratic Primary election campaign—it resonates not only for the top slots, but all the way down the line.

In the mayoral race, it’s the issue – or should be – because it’s reflective of the apparently second biggest issue of the campaign, which is Mayor Adrian Fenty’s aggressive style of governing. Here’s where the education thing comes in: Fenty’s choice to be school chancellor Michelle Rhee performs her job very much the same way, often with a tin ear, instituting massive, disruptive and sometimes hurtful changes in the name of the children and school reform, knowing that the mayor has her back.

The Fenty-Rhee style has resulted in nearly irreversible changes in the school system, improvement in test scores (although, to paraphrase, school is still out on the long-term validity of the scores), increased graduation and enrollment – not to mention infrastructure. But it has also brought about a lot of bitterness over both leaders’ refusal to play well with others, which is to say in Rhee’s case that she does not consult or work with parents, and in Fenty’s case, his refusal to work with the city council and others.

One forum on education was already held early this summer, a forum at which Fenty proved a no show. Another was held recently at Sumner School, sponsored by DC Voice and CEO (Communities for Education Organizing), a coalition of DC-based organizations that are working towards improving public education.

The forum invited all candidates at all levels to participate, but this time neither Fenty nor Gray came. But City Council Chair candidates Kwame Brown and Vincent Orange made it, as did both Democratic candidates for an at large seat, incumbent Phil Mendelson and his young challenger Clark Ray. So did all sorts of other candidates including second rung mayoral candidates, Statehood and Green Party Candidates and the undaunted Faith, with a horn that might have been fit for an emperor’s arrival. (Faith, an advocate for the arts, in previous mayoral runs, tended to blow a few notes on a trumpet at candidate forums.)

Given the large number of candidates on hand, and a standing-room only audience, it all made for an unwieldy, but lively evening, with organization members throwing questions at candidates who chose to answer them, and broadening to audience members which tended towards parents.
Because several questions were about parent participation in the education process—everyone wanted more and many felt more than a little bitter about actions taken without parent consultation—the evening spent a lot of time on the topic. The general approach seemed to be that most candidates and even more members of the audience thought there weren’t nearly enough parental roles in the decision-making process. In fact, there was a general agreement that a holistic approach—this from David Schwartzman—that makes neighborhood schools a center for community activities, to be used not only by students and teachers, but parents, would work wonders.

One parent was still bitter about the chancellor’s transferring of the very popular Hardy School principal. “We had no input in this,” she said. “Nobody called us, nobody asked us. There was absolutely no reason to do this. She never informed or consulted with us.”

Some candidates—at large council candidate Darryl Moch—suggested that while a mayoral takeover of the school was in general was a good idea, it didn’t work in Fenty’s case. “The form needs to be restructured to eliminate the dictatorial potential of the Mayor’s office.”

It was the non-traditional candidates who don’t usually get too much attention in the media who were not pleased with the council, the Mayor, or Rhee. “I want to see the council have real oversight of the chancellor,” Calvin Gurley, a write-in candidate for council chair said. “The Council has been an inept partner in oversight of the schools.”

Vincent Orange, in referring to the mayoral takeover, said, “I support anybody that delivers results.
Meanwhile, the campaign moved inexorably towards its climax on September 14, with an air of almost complete uncertainty. People were anxiously awaiting news of polls, amid rumors of poll results. A small sampling-poll by something called the Clarus Research Group (501 Registered Democrats were polled) found that Gray held a dead-heat lead of 39% to 36% over Fenty among all voters and an improved 41-36 percent lead over likely-to-vote voters. The media poured over this little-chicken sized poll as if it was a Chicken Little pronouncement, until every possible feather of possibility was plucked.

The big number was likely the 20% undecided—or more—that are still out there. Talk to your neighbor and you’re likely to find that many folks haven’t made up their minds, and the radio debate between Fenty and Gray probably didn’t solidify things much. Gray often gave his talking points and Fenty, having to defend himself again, snapped at Tom Sherwood that he had interrupted him.

At Arena Stage, where Fenty showed up late for a 60th anniversary celebration, Fenty managed to use the occasion to lay claim to credit for the ongoing refurbishment of the Southwest waterfront. Inside, reporters cornered him for a little-reported controversy about the Washington Marathon. An exasperated Fenty said “I can’t answer some of these things. I’m not very good at having to defend myself from stuff I don’t know anything about,” he said.

Apparently, the Fenty camp is now taking people’s problems with the mayor’s governing style seriously enough that Fenty is on a kind of apology tour, saying he’s sorry for his admitted distancing from regular people, about not listening and so on. It’s something of a sackcloth tactic, like a king lashing himself so that he stays out of trouble with the pope.

The atmosphere is unsettled probably because some things haven’t been settled. There’s been very little talk on the campaign trail about the last batch of teacher firings and very real debate about the evaluation system that caused them. Nothing much has been made of the generational gap between Fenty and Gray. Both candidates have tended to be more active when it comes to negativity, especially Fenty.

Something similar is happening on the chairman’s level. According to that one poll, Kwame Brown has a significant lead, but Orange nabbed the Washington Post endorsement, something he can hang his hat on, considering its effusive endorsement of Fenty. Neither candidate appears so far to have engendered much enthusiasm.

But in many ways it’s hard to predict. Maybe, like Becket’s bums, we’re just waiting. Not for Godot, but the Post poll.

9/11 Remembered
•

 

-What people remembered about that morning was how incredibly blue the sky was — the kind of gorgeous day it was, making you feel grateful how heart-breakingly beautiful it was.

We had skies like that this Labor Day weekend, a break from the oppressive bouts of heat. Blue as a baby, a Dutch painting.

On the Tuesday that became a simple number — 9/11 — I hadn’t yet made it a habit to turn on my computer first thing after brushing my teeth. Instead, I headed out the door to take a 42 bus downtown near the White House, on my way to a photography exhibition opening at the Corcoran Gallery. I didn’t bring my camera, and I didn’t have a cell phone. I didn’t have a clue.

As the bus neared the Farragut stop, you began to see a large number of people on the sidewalks, most of them on their cell phones, which was not yet a common sight. Many of them appeared agitated. More and more people started to pour out of office buildings and the Executive Office Building.

At Pennsylvania Avenue, with the White House as a backdrop, I walked up to a policeman and asked him what was going on. “Oh, not much,” he said. “Two planes were hijacked and rammed into the World Trade Center in New York. Another one just hit the Pentagon. There’s one that’s supposed to be coming here.”

He nodded toward the White House. My first thought was why the hell are we standing here? But I didn’t say anything except maybe “Jesus” or “Oh my God”. I couldn’t say. I decided to stay and see what happened.

That was the start 9/11 for me. I saw a group of Christian stockbrokers fall to their knees outside an office building where they were convening and they prayed. I saw people start the long walks home to Bethesda, Chevy Chase, and the Maryland border. I saw people gathered around a television set in the Mayflower Hotel, and I saw the real-time collapse of the second tower. It looked unreal. A nurse who was here for a medical convention said “I’m going home to a different world.”

Somewhere in a place called Shanksville, Pennsylvania, a fourth plane had crashed in a field near this small town outside Pittsburgh, after passengers had stormed the cockpit and fought the hijackers. On Thanksgiving two years later, we visited the site: there was a big memorial full of flags and angels there and a huge indentation in a field a distance away. The town was small, and it had a football field. It snowed into the quiet
land.

I remember the days afterward: the president’s speech, his stand on the rocks, the awful images from New York, the rubble, the many dead, and the pictures of falling bodies. I remember a girl, late at night, sitting on the steps, holding a lit candle. I remember being among a group of people in Adams Morgan, who had gathered to hold candles and sing folk songs from our youth — “We Shall Overcome.”

I remember two survivors of the attacks — one from the Pentagon and a blonde office worker from the World Trade Center, who came to the Corcoran where an exhibition of photographs from 9/11 was opening. They told personal stories of their trials and still mourned those lost. The fact that the stories were plain-spoken and true made them seem like incantations.

I remember that The Georgetowner ran something like five cover stories continuously after 9/11 on 9/11. The streak did not stop until the death of Beatle George Harrison, which seemed in a strange way oddly celebratory and sad at once.

I know this much: wars came and continue, American soldiers continue to serve and die, and we and the rest of the world have an enemy that appears implacable in its devotion to destruction, violence, bombings, and war as a way of showing their hatred of cultures and nations that are different from them. This seems never ending — the carnage and that contrary idea of a holy war. This is the world we live in. They call themselves by many names — Jihadists, Taliban, al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas. Here we call them terrorists. There the entire region seems in turmoil — Iraq after us, Afghanistan, Pakistan, flooded and bombed at once. It is a cauldron of suffering.

That blue-sky day prevails in my memory. I saw the Oberammergau Passion Play in Bavaria this summer, in which the man playing Jesus — a dentist — wailed at Gethsemane, crying out to God that “you have thrown me into the dust of death.”

That’s what we saw that day: the dust of death. It blotted out the perfect blue sky.