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Friday: What it's like
posted at 2008-03-21 23:20 | Last modified 2008-03-21 23:31
Sitting in a line of standstill traffic at Bond Park in Cary this afternoon, it suddenly came back to me: this is why I hate covering political celebrities. Because it’s a royal pain.
You sit in traffic forever, you argue with the guy minding the media lot, and eventually you get parked somewhere (preferably in the same area code, but no promises). You sherpa your gear in. And then you wait.
First, there’s the outside wait while the bomb dogs clear the building and you, too. (I actually like the dogs – they’re hands-down the most charming members of the security detail.) Meantime, FBI guys in bad sunglasses walk back and forth a lot and claim to know nothing about why they’re running a half hour late. Pleasant but hapless local intermediaries run interference for them.
Once inside, you scramble for a square foot of space and a socket in the sound box (which, like the media parking lot, is always about half the size needed). Then you wait. And wait some more. If you're lucky and it isn’t the president, it’s maybe two or three hours. If it’s a sitting president, that’s at least six hours of your life you’ll never get back.
If the media handlers are nice, they’ve brought in bottles of water for you. If not, you ask for directions to the closest coke machine. Sooner or later, you’ll be standing in line for the bathroom, praying that no one takes your square foot of space before you get back.
Meantime, the Personality is late, as they always are. You look for a normal person or two to interview. The audience gets bored and starts taking pictures of the reporters taking pictures of them. The music playlist starts over. You start trading jokes with photographers you don’t know. Your feet hurt. Your batteries are running low.
And then the Personality's Car pulls up. Everyone in the press pen starts turning on gadgets and muttering bitterly about the sound quality.
The crowd surges to its feet. There’s a palpable wave of energy just before the Personality steps onto stage. It feels like an indrawn breath. Hundreds of cell phones get lifted high, waiting for the elements of the picture to converge. The volume is tremendous.
That’s when you forget about your sore feet.
How could you not want to cover that?
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