http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2004/05/19/eggers/print.html

To print this page, select "Print" from the File menu of your browser

New Hampshire Is for Lovers

May. 19, 2004 | Two hours later, Victoria Passionately was inside. She was standing at the back of the room, next to a riser supporting a phalanx of TV cameras pointing at the president and Javiar Johnson-Marias very much like weaponry. It makes an easy analogy to say that TV cameras look combative but they really do. Even if they were not attached to an aggressive medium -- the media -- they would still look belligerent.

Victoria Passionately stood still, looking professional and busily so, during the introduction of Johnson-Marias, and through the Spaniard's perfunctory remarks. She held her Reporter's Notebook before her, writing furiously, taking notes quicker and with far greater accuracy than she ever had in any class. There were about 60 reporters and media professionals in the room, a stark conference room in the Nashua Hilton, and all of them, she decided, took her for the real thing. She had her pass around her neck, and she had her pencil, and she wrote things down. She was as real as she needed to be.

Soon she would reveal herself to be more than real. She was soon to be brave. She was soon to be the puncturer of hypocrisies. She was to be a voice of light and truth. This would happen once the Q&A started.

Johnson-Marias spoke for eight minutes about how lovely was his country's partnership with the United States, lovely in so many varied ways, and how much more he wished the two nations could work together in the future -- including, he made sure to stress, in terms of the many Hollywood films that required cheap locations populated by cheap and skilled labor. Johnson-Marias, a very big and vocal fan of all things cinematic, wanted badly to bring more film production to Spain, to divert any productions heading for Romania or Vancouver to his own nation. He would personally oversee any filmic productions that might see fit to shoot their New York street scenes in Madrid, and if they needed an extra, or perhaps someone to play a foreign dignitary upsetting traffic in Midtown...

"I'm here representing the young people of this country!" Victoria Passionately yelped, her voice higher and more desperate than she'd planned.

She found she couldn't wait for the Q&A. History could not, would not, wait!

Immediately there were two Secret Service men upon her, one on either side. They were both watching her hands. Seeing that she was unarmed, they were, for the time being, content to observe her.

Johnson-Marias had stopped talking. The press corps had seethed, as any group would if one of their own were ruining the nice impression they were otherwise making.

Then President J. Junior Inferior II, surprising everyone, answered immediately: "Yes, the young people. We have many of them, and I approve of them. And do you and the young people have a question?"

He seemed utterly unflapped thus far. In her rosiest imaginings of the event, she hoped he would have become extremely angry, or, so flustered by her temerity, would have blurted out something unscripted and damning. For example: "I hate young people; I eat them for brunch, I spread them on my toast!"

Anything like that would have been good. But this was difficult. A question! Did she have a question? What was her question? She burst out again: "Yeah, I just wanna know what you're gonna do about our concerns!"

She had tamed her voice a bit, but still it managed to be at once shaky, shrill, and belonging to someone no more than 11 years old. She recovered quickly, adding to her question a derisive "Mr. President." She was in control.

The reporters and Secret Service men, all expecting the president to move quickly onto the next question from a legitimate member of the media, were disappointed when Inferior kept his attention focused on the young lady in red.

"How old are you, miss?" the president asked.

"Twenty-one!" Victoria Passionately yelled and, a nanosecond too late for it to seem natural, raised her fist.

The room was very quiet, the press conference having given way completely to the dynamic between these two people. No one was quite sure if Victoria Passionately was a lunatic or airhead or somewhere in between.

"Well, I have a son about your age," Inferior said, though his son was 36 and Passionately was 22; he was nearsighted and also unwittingly suffering from acute mercury poisoning. "So I'm pretty in tune with the concerns of your generation. What specifically would you like me to comment on?"

Damn! There he goes again, Victoria Passionately thought. Again, this she hadn't prepared for. She'd been planning this day for six months, running through all the possibilities of what she would say, what the president might say, what the security people would do, how the news would cover it, how she might get her name mentioned in In These Times or the TRUTHTELLER Web site, but never had she imagined that Inferior would give her this kind of attention. Coming up with an appropriate question for the president would require all of her mettle, all of her accumulated knowledge about domestic and world affairs. But just when she began despairing that she wouldn't be able to do it, that she was out of her depth, from deep within her began flowing a fountain -- or perhaps a geyser, given its suddenness -- of incisive and pointed inquiry.

"What would I like you to comment on? Everything, bub!" she blurped, in an effort to stall. The geyser hadn't quite reached her mouth yet. The president waited, still seemingly very interested in what Victoria Passionately wanted to say. But what did she want to say? Soon it came to her. Aha!

"Why are we, Mr. President," she said, her voice finally controlled, "at war now, when there are people starving on our streets, when crime rates are all going through the roof and everything? What are you doing about that? Our brothers and sisters are dying on the streets, fighting over food! And what about the NEA and the goddamned PMRC? How about those things? Censorship!"

Yes! She was impressed with herself. She hadn't faltered at all. Yes! She was going toe to toe, head to head, with the president! But had she been too cruel, too good? Had she delivered not just a knockout punch, but a kick to the head, a bullet to the chest? Had she come on too strong? How could anyone come back from a full-frontal attack like hers? Perhaps she would turn people against her, with how effectively and overwhelmingly she was bullying this poor feeble man.

However, the president, much too quickly, she thought, responded. He not only was still standing, but he also maintained the power of speech.

"Well, I'm happy to address your concerns," he said, "but I have to clear up a few things. First, I'm happy to say that I don't know of a certified case of someone dying of starvation in the United States in the last 29 years. The agencies who track that haven't recorded a case since 1975. That happened in Kentucky, and involved a man who had starved his grandfather as part of some Satanic ritual. Where did you hear about people starving in this country?"

Victoria Passionately couldn't remember where she'd heard this. She was sure it was on the Web, where she got most of her facts -- because the newspapers were just tools of the automobile industry -- but which Web site? It was a blog, she was certain, but...

"Are you sure they were talking about this country?" the president continued. "There's quite a bit of starvation in Sub-Saharan right now. Could it have been somewhere in Africa where people are starving on the streets?"

Victoria Passionately opened her mouth to speak but the president seemed to be speaking still. It was just as well, for she was waiting for something new and better to burst from her geyser. C'mon, goddamned idiot geyser!

"Secondly," Inferior said, "violent crime rates have been declining pretty darn precipitously for 20 years. Are you talking about violent crime?"

Was she? She wasn't sure. Violent crime sounded worse, so she nodded.

"Violent crime," the president said, "is actually down 35 percent over the last 20 years or so. Can I ask where you got those statistics, about crime going up everywhere and everyone dying?"

Victoria Passionately was writing in her Reporter's Notebook. She needed to think. Her face was burning. She could hear snickers from the press corps. This was not going according to plan. She had only one chance now to make the desired impact, to turn this election on its head, to throw a flaming torch of freedom and anarchy and many other desirable and dangerous things into this ... cauldron of hypocrisy.

-- By Dave Eggers