1994
UP, SIMBA
Seven Days on the Trail of an Anticandidate
OPTIONAL FOREWORD
FROM THE AD 2000 INTRODUCTION TO THE ELECTRONIC EDITION OF “UP, SIMBA,” MANDATED AND OVERSEEN BY THE (NOW-DEFUNCT) “I-PUBLISH” DIVISION OF LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY, INC.
Dear Person Reading This: Evidently I’m supposed to say something about what the following document is and where it came from.From what I understand, in autumn 1999 the powers that be at Rolling Stone magazine decided they wanted to get four writers who were not political journalists to do articles on the four big presidential candidates and their day-to-day campaigns in the early primaries. My own résumé happens to have “NOT A POLITICAL JOURNALIST” right there at the very top, and Rolling Stone magazine called, and pitched the idea, and furthermore said I could pick whichever candidate I wanted (which of course was flattering, although in retrospect they probably told the other three writers the same thing — magazines are always very flattering and carte blancheish when they’re trying to get you to do something). The only candidate I could see trying to write about was Senator John McCain (R-AZ), whom I’d seen a recent tape of on Charlie Rose and had decided was either incredibly honest and forthright or else just insane. There were other reasons for wanting to write about McCain and party politics, too, all of which are explored in considerable detail in the document itself and so I don’t see any reason to inflict them on you here. The Electronic Editor (actual title, like on his office letterhead and everything) says I should insert here that I, the author, am not a Republican, and that actually I ended up voting for Sen. Bill Bradley (D-NJ) in the Illinois primary. I don’t personally see how my own politics are anybody’s business, but I’m guessing the point of the insertion is to make clear that there are no partisan motives or conservative agenda behind the article even though parts of it (i.e., of the upcoming article) might appear to be pro-McCain. It’s not, though neither is it anti-; it’s just meant to be the truth as one person saw it. What else to tell you. At first I was supposed to follow McCain around in New Hampshire as he campaigned for 1 February’s big primary there. Then, around Christmastime,
Rolling Stone decided that they wanted to abort the assignment because Governor Bush was way ahead in the polls and outspending McCain ten to one and they thought McCain was going to get flattened in New Hampshire and that his campaign would be over by the time anything could come out in Rolling Stone and that they’d look stupid. Then on 1 February, when the early NH returns had McCain ahead, the magazine suddenly turned around and called again and said the article was a Go again but that now they wanted me to fly out to NH and start that very night, which (because I happen to have dogs with professionally diagnosed emotional problems who require special care, and it always takes me several days to recruit, interview, select, instruct, and field-test a dogsitter) was out of the question. Some of this is probably not too germane, but the point is that I ended up flying out the following week and riding with the McCain2000 traveling press corps from 7 to 13 February, which in retrospect was probably the most interesting and complicated week of the whole 2000 GOP race. Especially the complicated part. For it turned out that the more interesting a campaign-related person or occurrence or intrigue or strategy or happenstance was, the more time and page-space it took to make sense of it, or, if it made no sense, to describe what it was and explain why it didn’t make sense but was interesting anyway if viewed in a certain context that then itself had to be described, and so on. With the end result being that the actual document delivered per contract to Rolling Stone magazine turned out to be longer and more complicated than they’d asked for. Quite a bit longer, actually. In fact the article’s editor pointed out that running the whole thing would take up most of Rolling Stone’s text-space and might even cut into the percentage of the magazine reserved for advertisements, which obviously would not do. * And so at least half the article got cut out, plus some of the more complicated stuff got way compressed and simplified, which was especially disappointing because, as previously mentioned, the most complicated stuff also tended to be the most interesting. The point here is that what you’ve just now purchased the ability to download or have e-mailed to you or whatever (it’s been explained to me several times, but I still don’t totally understand it) is the original uncut document, the as it were director’s cut, verbally complete and unoccluded by any lush photos of puffy-lipped girls with their Diesels half unzipped, etc. There are only a couple changes. All typos and factual boners have now (hopefully) been fixed, for one thing. There were also certain places where the original article talked about the fact that it was appearing in Rolling Stone magazine and that whoever was reading it was sitting there actually holding a copy of Rolling Stone, etc., and many of these got changed because it just seemed too weird to keep telling you you were reading this in an actual 10" ¥ 12" magazine when you now quite clearly are not. (Again, this was the Electronic Editor’s suggestion.) You will note, though, that the author is usually still referred to in the document as “Rolling Stone” or “RS.” I’m sorry if this looks strange to you, but I have declined to change it. Part of the reason is that I was absurdly proud of my Rolling Stone press badge and of the fact that most of the pencils and campaign staff referred to me as “the guy from Rolling Stone.” I will confess that I even borrowed a friend’s battered old black leather jacket to wear on the Trail so I’d better project the kind of edgy, vaguely dangerous vibe I imagined an RS reporter ought to give off. (You have to understand that I hadn’t read Rolling Stone in quite some time.) Plus, journalistically, my covering the campaign for this particular organ turned out to have a big effect on what I got to see and how various people conducted themselves when I was around. For example, it was the main reason why the McCain2000 High Command pretty much refused to have anything to do with me * but why the network techs were so friendly and forthcoming and let me hang around with them (the sound techs, in particular, were Rolling Stone fans from way back). Finally, the document itself is sort of rhetorically directed at voters of a particular age-range and attitude, and I’m figuring that the occasional Rolling Stone reference might help keep the reasons for some of this rhetoric clear. The other thing I’d note is simply what the article’s about, which turned out to be not so much the campaign of one impressive guy, but rather what McCain’s candidacy and the brief weird excitement it generated might reveal about how millennial politics and all its packaging and marketing and strategy and media and spin and general sepsis actually makes us US voters feel, inside, and whether anyone running for anything can even be “real” anymore — whether what we actually want is something real or something else. Whether it works on your screen or Palm or not, for me the whole thing ended up relevant in ways far beyond any one man or magazine. If you don’t agree, I imagine you’ll have only to press a button or two to make it all go away.