The Fantasy Years

WITH FOX NEWS ON THE AIR, all the bombast and intellect of people associated with Rush moved on to the television screen. Now people were no longer restricted to hearing the outrage in the voices of the hosts; now they could see the foreheads crinkle in expressions of dismay; they could see the eyes squint in daggers of accusation towards the liberals, the elites, the wishy-washy secular relativists, for any pencil-necked geek who found themselves under the hot glare of the studio lights.

The outrage was visible.

The spasms of outrage, vexing, refreshing, gripped Rush listeners, who spoiled for a fight, who spoiled for an opportunity to win.

“America was better in the 1940s!” a voice in Nevada claimed.
“Right, except not to the liberals with their relativist history,” agreed another.
“What could liberals hate about us beating the Nazis?
“You’re forgetting the Japanese.”
“We kicked their asses too!”
“No, the Japanese that were put in camps in America.”
“Oh, of course. How could I forget?”
“Right. And that makes America a bad country to liberals.”
“As if liberals back then cared about the Japanese in camps.”
“As if anyone in wartime can care about foreigners put in camps.”
“As if that’s a normal way of thinking.”
“I guess for the liberals it is.”

The liberals contorted in anguish hearing these arguments. They were driven wild by what they heard. But that was simply more proof to the Dittoheads everything they were saying was true. The rise of the conservatives was so consistent, across so many lines – on the radio, online, in ideas formulated and circulated, on Fox news – that the goalposts of reality themselves had shifted. Together the rhetoric and the rightwing media ratcheted the country rightward.

The liberals retreated from the debates, more sure now than ever, that like silly rhetoric of Rush Limbaugh and the stars of Fox News could be dismissed. Liberals dismissed the right wing views, under pinned by reams of junk scholarship from right wing think tanks, as symptoms of the Dittoheads bad taste. After all, poor right wingers shopped at Wal-Mart. They were inclined to wear a shirt incorporating stars and stripes. They might put a flag sticker on their bumper, alongside a sticker showing Calvin pissing on a Ford or a Chevy. And the bumper might belong to a car parked at a wrestling match.

Anything of these things were symptoms. Symptoms of that part of American society that needn’t really ever be taken seriously. They were unserious people, living uninformed lives, consuming tasteless items. And so they weren’t to be dignified with a response to their endless accusations.

When that wasn’t enough, liberals could contend that politics didn’t matter anymore. As the liberals retreated and vacated the perennial arguments that make up the American political scene, the Dittoheads advanced.

Besides, the spectacle of TV and its explosion of cable choice made it easier for liberals to tune out all the right wing unpleasantness. The explosion in media had crowded out the space allotted in many Americans’ attention for real politics.
Of course, politics were there if you really wanted them. You could watch almost all of it happening on C-Span. Gavel-to-gavel congressional coverage, speeches, rallies, readings, symposia at think tanks. Everything that made up a political discourse.
But visually, men talking about policy could not compare with car chases and fiery explosions on TV. Men talking about policy could not compare with how the stars were dressing for Oscars Night. People talking about policy couldn’t even compare to the graphic-rich news.

Beside, Americans in 1996 were getting caught up in the possibilities of the economy just emerging then as a topic in and of itself. Jenny, Mike, Dennis, Brandon, Don and most everyone else could taste it. They knew wealth was just around the corner even if it wasn’t within their reach. The economy was heating up. The Internet would create a whole new industry of jobs.

That’s why Ben moved to New York, where he was having a bracer with his co-worker Walt. The economy sure was working for Ben. He’d just been granted 2,000 shares of stock at below market prices from the Internet start up he worked at. After a couple panicky, exhilarating weeks of job searching, New York had been a continual whirlwind party for Ben since he arrived in New York.
Tonight was no different.

He picked up the habit of calling drinks ‘bracers’ from Walt. And a bracer was a good swaggering word that matched Ben’s swaggering tone as he bragged to Walt about how in his last job back in Cleveland, he had given advice to the principal of the investment firm. He helped Mr. Towers understand part of prospectus on a dotcom. He left out the fact that after he told Mr. Towers the sentence made no sense, Mr. Towers invested in the company anyway. That didn’t matter. What mattered was the look of Ben talking confidently in a bar for the chicks to see.
Ben was on his second Glenmorangie and had hit the sublime point in the mind of 25-year old man in New York with his life ahead of him when the whole city, and within the whole city, the whole world felt possible.

The scotch was served in large, polished, bottom-heavy rocks glasses. The glasses rested on a scrubbed copper bar top. He and Walt had come to this place, the Gotham Lounge, after a small Friday afternoon party at Apexonline.com, where they both worked. Apexonline had celebrated it’s 5,000th registered customer, which meant the company was on track for 27 percent growth year over year, which meant…big things. It meant they were on the ground floor of something potentially massive.
Walt had worked at Apex for only a few months longer than Ben but he was from Connecticut so he knew the lay of the land. He knew New York, if for no other reason than his Christmas trips to the city as a child. Walt also knew which bars catered to the “bridges and tunnels” crowd and which didn’t. He was also taller.
These factors together impressed Ben and Ben was grateful to have a mentor with whom he could pursue the eternal quest: meeting chicks.

Ben had wanted to go to another bar tonight – McChesney’s – but Walt had assured him that the kind of people who went to McChesney thought Killians Red was a good beer. “The hicks!” Walt exclaimed. Instead, they came here, which boasted a fine selection of single malts.

And Walt was right. After his second Glenmorangie, Ben felt closer to where he wanted to be in life, in work, everything, although he couldn’t say exactly where he wanted to be. He was just closer. That’s all. If nothing else, he was no longer shut up in a room with a jerk of a co-worker in Cleveland. Now, he had a cool co-worker to hang out with in a cool city, where they went to cool bars. And not the bars where people drank Killian’s Red. This was closer to where Ben wanted to be. This was moving in the right direction.

And there were plenty of chicks at this bar too. Healthy, young, freshly graduated chicks, coming down from Bard, from BU, from Vassar, and all these other colleges that elicited in Ben images of impossibly East Coast, impossibly cardigan-clad and busty.
Another girl sat down next to Walt with her cluster of girlfriends.
“Watch this,” Walt said, positively reeking of confidence.

A girl brought a cigarette to her lips. Walt lit it. She glanced at him with irritation, puffed and said thanks. Then she turned back to her friends. Ben suppressed a laugh. Walt was obviously hoping for a warmed response.

“You get points for trying,” Ben said.
Walt laughed a blustery laugh. “Ah, look at her, ordering a margarita.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“What is this? Some kind of South Florida, Jimmy Buffett, college house?”
“I guess you’re right.”
“People are what they consume. And that’s why I go for what’s best for me,” Walt explained. Walt was always explaining something to Ben. “Take this glass of Glenmorangie. The way the Scotch is served says a lot about the kind of place you’re in. And it says a lot about us that we chose to be here.”
“Indubitably,” Ben replied. “It says we like our Scotch served in a good solid highball glass.”
“And that’s the way it’s best enjoyed.”
“I say its best enjoyed in the company of a 3rd year student at Vassar.” Ben asked.
“Better a senior at Smith.”

“Of course, a Baruch graduate goes best with a single malt. Maybe a 12 year Balblair.”
“A Balblair. Of course,” Walt conceded, smiling at Ben’s ironic chitchat. And no men talking about policy anywhere in the world could compare to this entertainment, so pleasing to the senses, so full of possibilities. Walt returned to his faux world-weary talk about how you need to reinvent yourself constantly on the job “Because the online business is constantly reinventing itself.”

“I’m already on my second job there and it’s only been months since I was hired.”

“That’s good. Then they like you. If they didn’t like you, they wouldn’t let you innovate.”
“Glad they like me.”
“’Cause you gotta figure, none of us know where we’ll be in a few years time. Not even Jerry.” Jerry was the start up’s CEO.

A gorgeous young woman, tanned and voluptuous, with hair like combed gold, passed by, “I’d have her with Glenturret,” Walt said. “On the rocks, of course.”

Ben felt a bump on his side. He turned and saw the girl who had stepped up to the bar, facing stock forward. She was about his height. She blinked as Ben glanced at her.

Ben glanced back at Walt made a frantic ‘have at her’ gesture. Ben turned to her and said.

“So my friend and I were saying that every woman corresponds to a kind of single malt scotch. What do you think?”
She turned to him and smiled. “What?”

Tony Bennett’s brassy voice blasted from the sound system.

“My friend and I…Oh, never mind. What do you do?”
Her face lit up with her lipstick smile. The bartender took her order. And she asked again, amid the barking happy hour clamor, “I didn’t hear you. Can you say it again?”
“What do you do?”
“Student.”
“From here?”
“Boston.”
“Oh, yeah. Go to college there?”
“Sarah Lawrence.”
“Nice to meet you, Sarah.”
She burst out laughing. “I go to Sarah Lawrence College. My name is Megan.” And she looked as Irish-blooded, tan and as all-American and as healthy as they came.
“Sorry, it so loud in here.”
She peeled a ten out of her little wallet when the bartender put her gimlet down before her. Ben raised a hand to the bartender, pointing to her drink, “On my tab, please.”
Ben loved saying those words.
“Thanks,” she said, turning to Ben and raising the glass to her mouth to suck through the stirrer. “What’s your name?”

BUT RUSH’S OUTRAGE, UNDERSTOOD SO VISCERALLY and completely his fans the Dittoheads, certainly didn’t resound with everyone. Most who disagreed tuned him out. That was part of freedom too: the freedom to tune out. Occasionally, however, a special someone tuned in to Rush because they disagreed with him. One of those special someones was Don Atwood.

Don listened to Rush and Don answered back as he drove the wide highways and access roads of Dallas and Fort Worth.
“I don’t know what you’re saying,” Don said, over his steering wheel to the world beyond his cracked and contracting plastic dashboard. To the bumpers of racists pick-up trucks and gigantic tractor trailers that threatened to merge into his Ford Taurus unless he leaned on the horn. Don spoke to the racist billboard signs with their images of beautiful idealized whiteness portrayed everywhere.

Don drove and he said to Rush’s voice on the radio: “Don’t know what world you’re living in Mr. Limbaugh. Rush. What kind of name is Rush? Don’t know where you’re living, Rush, where you see the world like that. No, I don’t trust people like you. White people coming at me with a bunch of answers to a bunch of questions I haven’t asked. Nope. Don’t trust the white talk radio hosts.”

The customer has to be educated, Jenny thought. That was part of her job. And that’s something she could bring, as a mother, as a valued employee, to the position. No different than explaining something to Jakob and Joshua. Except of course, if her boys ever talked to her the way the customers sometimes did, she would throw them over her knee and spank them before marching them to the sink and washing their mouths out with a bar of soup. But aside from that, it was the same thing. Education. Instruction. Showing the way. Walking them through the process. Enlightening them.

This is what Jenny told the trainee Jody, who sat, wedged into to Jenny’s cube, close enough to make out the terminal and the phone console.

Once the customer understood what the process was, Jenny said, they were less likely to get upset. After all, it was a matter of enabling the customer. Of giving them the tools to make the decisions about their magazine subscriptions, or the car insurance policy, or their health insurance or the 100 Country Hits or the doggie step stool or whatever the product Four Seasons was contracted to provide customer service on.

“How do you we know what to say to the customer?” Jody asked, leaning closer as she readjusted her pony-tail. All eyes. Attentive, serious hazel eyes.

“It depends on the product,” Jenny said. Jody sat with her in her cube, listening to but not taking part in, a call from a client. “If it’s a call for insurance, don’t worry, you get prompts on the screen. For the magazine subscriptions, it’s more cut and dry.”

“That customer sounded kind of upset,” Jody said.

“It’s because he had to wait so long. The queue is always ten minutes. You get thick skin from working this job. You’ll see,” she smiled. Jenny hoped whoever was listening in could hear her smile. Smiles the customer could hear were part of the job.
Of course, Jenny wasn’t sure if her conversation with Jody was being recorded or if they – who exactly they were Jenny was never entirely sure – would listen to CSRs when doing training.
The call ended with an icy ‘thank you’ from the customer.
“Do you ever get upset with the customer?” Jody asked.
“Well, that’s a very interesting question. Well…The test of a good CSR for Four Season’s is how well you can handle your most difficult customers.”

Don kept talking today. Rush had long since signed off. But Don kept talking. Mostly to help keep himself awake on the monotonous drive back from Longview. The sun set like a burning bruise in the night’s sky.

“No, I don’t trust the white property managers of the shopping centers,” Don said. “I don’t trust white landlords. Or the white politicians. Or white bosses. Mr. Stern is okay. But most other white bosses.” Don amended, listening to the silence of his drive.
There was nothing on the radio.

“I don’t trust white sports played by white people. I don’t trust lacrosse players, I don’t trust polo players, I don’t trust golfers, I don’t trust white swimmers and I don’t trust skeet shooters or figure skaters or speed skaters or curlers.”

Now he was just keeping himself awake. But he found rage worked better than caffeine for him.

“I don’t trust hockey players or hockey fans or hockey coaches. Or those weird skier shooters that compete at the Olympics. What kind of white sport is that where they ski and then shoot? Only white people could think of that,” Don said to the road before him. Then thinking of the biathlon some more he realized, even the snow is white.

Mike sneezed so forcefully he almost jerked his foot off the brake. The voices clamored on the radio. Mike’s rig was too big to maneuver for the small parking lot. Of course, that was probably why they gave him the job. They were happy to find a sucker with a commercial driver’s license who could maneuver these parking lots. He spent a good chunk of his day backing into narrow parking lots to the satisfaction of whoever happened to be standing there watching him. Always under their eyes. Oh, and when I’m parked, I personally get to find the delivery and cart it out on the hand truck, under the watchful eyes of a bunch of Mexicans prep cooks. This was no kind of life at all. And the allergies. Back when he was a trucker allergies meant he was home. But back then he always got to leave his watery eyes and runny nose and constant sneezing if it got too bad. These days, it was like he had a c-clamp screwed into his forehead. What was it? He wondered? The radio clamored, “They say they’re gonna acquit OJ,” said a caller.

“There will be riots if they don’t,” said the host.
“Thanks to Rodney King.”
“Thanks to the liberal media.”
“What’s become of this country?”
“Liberalism: “That’s what’s become of it.”
“Political Correctness: That’s what’s become of it.”
“Liberalism is PC.”
“And PC means judging people not by their acts of murder or mayhem but by the color of their skin.”
“Even the judge is PC.”
“The whole case is PC. It wouldn’t be politically correct for the rich black man to be found guilty of actually murdering his wife.”
“It’s outrageous.”
“It’s damnable.”

Mike jumped out of the cab, clipboard in hand. The radio, through the open door’s speaker yammered out broadly to the day. The voices exploded across the country’s airwaves, across the blazing pavement of the parking lot.

The clamor and drum of the news both compounded Mike’s headache with noise and gave it release with a subject to direct his fury towards. Mike went to the back of the trailer, turned the handle of the latch and heaved the door upward, revealing the stacked boxes of White Swan cooking supplies. Something about the air tickled his nose, he pulled down the ramp and walked up, and there, in the darkness of the truck, he sneezed, spraying mist in an explosion through his gloved hand.

THE HOWLING REVOLUTION in talk radio masked another, quieter one unfolding in rightwing think tanks in Washington in those days. The think tanks had been established throughout the 1970s and 1980s to give a home to the minds of the conservative movement, to cultivate their message and their media savvy. The think tanks churned out paper after paper advocating deregulation, market-based solutions, a strong defense.

But really, the think tanks’ answers weren’t as important as the questions they asked. The think tanks decided on the best explanations, the best descriptions of their ideas. They decided, most of all, on the language.

The think tanks didn’t just seek to change people’s minds by presenting their ideas to the public. They sought to change the public by circulating their ideas directly to the powerful in Washington, in the media, wherever the powerful could be found.

This revolution wasn’t a movement on the streets. Not at all. This movement didn’t stand outside in the rain, its cardboard signs going floppy and blurry while jackbooted policemen pepper sprayed them. No, this movement unfolded on paper, in abstract discussions, in calm, quiet rooms with breakfast buffets of pastries and orange juice. This movement was populated by determined young men and women, scribbling away in unpretentious offices in Foggy Bottom and K Street. Reagan came and Reagan left the scene, but the network of think tanks stayed on. The network grew.

The AM radio hosts popularized the same messages the think tanks proffered. But the radio hosts made the message feelable, speakable, utterable to anyone who happened to tune in.

Rightwing radio hosts learned that the more outrage they could howl into the airwaves, the more dependably the studio’s switchboard lit up with the voices of aggrieved listeners. The hosts led the listeners, pointing out why to be indignant, pointing out the chief offenders in society, accusing those in power in a way newspapers never did.

An ex-sports radio announcer named Rush Limbaugh was the first among them. And the biggest in both popularity and physical size. He raged and he attacked, he bellowed and he mocked, he excoriated and chastised. And even if his listeners didn’t follow every point; even if his listeners didn’t agree with every argument, they understood the tone.

Rush’s listeners understood the outrage perfectly. He growled and his listeners growled. He gloated and they gloated right back. He preened and they preened. He mewled and they mewled. And soon, they were calling themselves “Dittoheads” because their views could be summed up as a ‘ditto’! of his.

“Forget Paula Jones. Whitewater will Clinton’s his downfall,” called a voice in Minnesota.
“Whitewater will be like Clinton’s Watergate,” said another.
“And Watergate, when you really think about it, was like a Republican Tammany Hall,” said still another in Texas.
“And Tammany Hall was how the Democrats came to power.”
“Tammany Hall and Joe Kennedy’s rum running.”
“Joe Kennedy’s rum running and Mayor Daly’s Chicago machine.”
“And Daly’s Chicago machine was like Al Capone’s crime family.”
“And the mafia is how the unions became powerful.”
“And the unions are how the Democrats have stayed in power.”
“They have a grip on power.”
“How else do you explain the liberal media?” asked a listener in Kentucky.
“And who does the liberal media support?”
“Not guys like us, that’s for sure. The liberal media looks down on regular guys like us.”
“The liberal media backs criminals…”
“Guys like Rodney King and OJ Simpson.”
“Because they’re PC.”
“Because they’re black.”

Rush spat. His listeners grumbled. Rush hissed. His listeners booed. Rush rocked. His listeners rattled. And a conversation in Phoenix went this way:

“Ronald Reagan was like the FDR of our time,” said one voice.
“FDR saw us through World War II and Reagan saw us through the Cold War,” said another.
“And both were out of office for the conclusion,” said the one.
“And both couldn’t enjoy the fruits of their labor,” said the other.
“And both were reelected.”
“And reelected.”
“It’s the same.”
“It is the same.”
“And the fireside chats were the same as Reagan’s press conferences in the Rose Garden.”
“And the ranch in California is the same as FDR’s estate wherever that was.”
“And FDR’s polio was the same as Reagan’s Alzheimer’s.”
“And they were both widely popular.”
“And people crossed party lines to vote for them both.”
“The country was in crisis when they took over.”
“That makes Carter the same as Herbert Hoover.”
“And the 1970s the same as the 1930s “
“And the Recession the same as the Depression.”
The others replied: “And let’s face it: they were the same. Different only in their severity.”

Brandon looked back in wonder at the few months since he met Carolyn. How quickly his life had changed. How briskly life unbent itself from whatever direction his had been caroming towards. No wonder life before meeting her felt like a dream: he was drunk or high most of the time. Always waking up hung over on other people’s couches. Finding his car ticketed or parked drunkenly in the morning, hoping it would start when he put the key in the ignition because he didn’t know what he’d do if it didn’t.

And yet, even in the stumbling drunken highness, even then he knew there must be something better to life. He knew there must be.

But how? Brandon wondered, driving his freshly tuned up Cutlass to Blockbuster. How? He’d gotten into a wayward lifestyle pretty hard in high school. He was pretty young when he started getting messed up for fun. So what was it that told him things would be better? That he would meet Carolyn? Or a girl like Carolyn?

Yet deep inside Brandon, he knew there would be a Carolyn to help him find his way, to give him just the slightest encouragement, the slightest nudge he needed so he could do better.

Brandon could have ended up hooked on hard drugs. He could have moved down from weed to pills and pills to blow and blow to heroin and heroin to whatever. He could have at least ended up a real alcoholic, if he wasn’t secretly one already.

It’s a miracle he never wrecked his car for all the times he drove it under the influence. Or ended up with a DWI.

And yet, now as he looked around the tidy, one-bedroom apartment of the new life he and Carolyn shared, he couldn’t believe he lived like that. Only months ago. So recklessly. So slovenly.

Back when he partied hard, working at Denny’s had been just fine. Getting out of work reeking of eggs and cigarette ashes. Thinking tomorrow would take care of itself. Tomorrow wouldn’t take care of itself. Only he would take care of himself. And looking
back now, it was as if his whole adolescence, from fifteen to a few months ago, was a dream. And he was no longer in adolescence. No longer in that lost, stumbling, helpless dream. But how did he know through it all? How? He wondered.