Checking in from "somewhere in Northern Virginia"
Barnett
Dateline: Airlie House, somewhere in NVA, 29 January 2005
Screwed up and didn't bring the right equipment to allow me to hook-up to Internet in my hotel room, but finally today found a public PC here at Airlie House to allow me to post this through my webmaster (since my site is blocked here for some reason), so I check in on day 2 of this trip.
Started yesterday about 0430 with drive to Boston Logan. Plane to Dulles, then car pick-up and drive to PBS's WETA station. There I swap into a nice suit, get make-up and hang out until Tucker Carlson shows up. He is much taller than I expected, roughly 6 feet (always a fascination with me; I'm 6'2"). We chat in the green room for about ten minutes, which was an opportunity I was hoping to have. He's friends with Mark Warren (he's written for Esquire), who really respects him a lot and whomever Mark respects is a big deal to me, so I was glad to meet him F2F outside of the taping.
Carlson is very charming one on one, and clearly a guy with a big brain (something I now realize was completely lost and wasted on "Crossfire"). We talked a lot about Aquidneck Island, where I live in Portsmouth, because he lived in Middletown for 4 years while going to a local religious prep school (the really nice Episcopal one off 2nd Beach). Then we segued into the studio where we just kept on talking about my decision to leave the college. About 10 minutes into that second discussion, which helped me a lot by warming me up and drawing me out of my writing shell, he shifted to the article, which warmed me up further as I started pretending the tape was rolling. Then the floor studio manager clicked us on and Carlson jumps right in by saying that while many magazine articles are called "provocative," this one actually fits the bill.
Carlson's questions are very direct and all good set-ups to getting the info of the piece out. He is amazingly efficient as an interviewer when he's not paired in that weird competition with Paul Begala, which makes me think, as Mark does, that he really has a much better perch with this show (he's still with CNN, I think, on some level). Again, he's a great mind and has all the right attributes of a good journalist, so better to get out of that pundit crap—at least in this venue.
The interview went by in a flash, and when we were done, everyone seemed very jacked, as did I. As soon as the tape stopped, Carlson exclaimed to everyone in the studio that that was one great interview! You can tell when people are just saying that and when they come out of a segment really jazzed, and this was the latter I know, because I felt the same way in a very genuine fashion. Honestly, most times I walk away feeling very frustrated, and when I wrote in PNM about bad talk news shows, I was thinking exactly of "Crossfire," so you can imagine how happy I was to do his separate show and feel like the interaction went so well.
Two things I learned: 1) a great article gives you the chance to have a great 7-8 minute interview, if the interviewer lets you get out the main points, which Carlson did very expertly; and 2) Carlson's a great interviewer when he has someone with real ideas who wants to talk, instead of some political hack spinner who just wants to push his BS (which is when Carlson does come off as a jerk sometimes). So I guess I learned the corollary I always cite on interviews, which is, you're always only as good as the interviewer (and Carlson is really good), but that interviewers can't really rise above the material on their own (which is why I think Carlson was so unhappy on "Crossfire").
Producer of show says it will air next Friday, 4 Feb, with a slight chance of it dropping to 11 Feb. When I thought about it after the taping, it only made sense that Carlson always tapes in advance because he does all his taping on Fridays, because if he did them all for same-day broadcasting, then his sked would be very vulnerable to disruption (like my plane getting delayed, say). So I imagine his show always has 4 segments in the can to make sure the show will always go on.
After the taping I'm driven back to Dulles, where I hang out, eat, and write more of the last section of Chapter 3. I had penned 1600 words on Thursday, another 1k in Logan before the flight, and another k on the flight, so I was 3600 when I reengaged that afternoon. I got it up to 5k by 4pm, when I was supposed to catch the prearranged ride from Dulles to Airlie House (arranged by host MIT), so I typed a bit more in the car and finished it in my hotel room before dinner. I also did a quick interview with a Swiss journalist by phone en route to Airlie.
I came to Airlie House (a government-owned retreat center deep in horse country in NVA) for the weekend to participate as a faculty member in MIT's seminar for about 60 mid-level USG bureaucrats and military officers (one of many seminars they have over a year-long course). I had set this up a long time ago and kept the date despite having to take annual leave, because I was doing it as a favor for a mentor of mine who's supported me over the years, a very wonderful woman named Mitzi Wertheim, who is one of the founders of this mid-career training program at MIT.
After dinner, then, I gave a 1.75 hour version of the brief, which was really fun for me because I haven't given it since mid-December and because it's nice to reacquaint myself with it while I'm in the middle of all this writing. It was a great audience and the discussions afterwards (9:45 and beyond) extended until almost midnight. Long day it was, so I collapse at around 1am.
Up today for sessions by other faculty plus a breakout group I need to help lead. It starts at 9am and goes to 10:30pm! Bad part is big buffet breakfast-lunch-dinner, so temptation to eat your way through day is huge—much like my growing waistline as I write!
Nice part is that I can hang out in back and listen to talks while planning section one of Chapter 4, so I do apply a bit of discipline as day unfolds.
With yesterday's writing, I officially crossed the 75k barrier that we told Putnam would be the size of the book (just like last time). I was 70k at 9 out of 10 sections, and now I'm at 75k at 10 out of 18. So if I keep up the 7.5k pace, then I'm still on that 135k projection. But again, I worry not about that, just getting down good stuff with each section. I was surprised how yesterday's turned out, but I was pleased. To me, that's the great joy of writing. Briefing last night, I realized, this is my basic brief still through the spring, then I pull back over the summer, retool the brief extensively, and then reemerge with the book's release in the fall with a new briefing package, and that excites me a lot. I want to move on with the brief, and yet I want the material to be matched directly with the book, so I'm not pushing ideas that can't be backed up with serious written material.
It will be interesting to see how the second book changes my blog in the future, because it's clear to me that the blog since March has changed the way I'm writing this book. The blog has become my networking archive and my intellectual archive, with the book becoming the polished draft for history that is forced to string everything together in a coherent, accessible package. If I can keep this interaction/dynamic going over the long haul, it's almost like I've become my own columnist and that creative process feeds regular books, just like syndicated columnists do it. If that model holds for me, it will be awfully exciting in terms of creative freedom—like I just took the Internet to create my own dream job!
Also cool last night: realizing how many of these government players regularly read the blog. Because they already know all the chit-chat material from my life, it's like I have strong, familiar relationships with all these strangers so that when we meet, it's like "bang," we're right to the material! That sort of connectivity is like oxygen to someone like me, maximizing my time like never before. It reinforces my sense that the blog was worth leaving the college over. |
