With the air rife with a sense of history, they lined up two and three deep to hear and see the details of a tragic life drama and a head-turning, brief few months of frenzied activity now known to the whole world.
As the House Judiciary Committee plodded on with its tumultuous labor, Edda McCrearey had gotten up at 4 a.m. to be near the front of the line. An old chum, Solfrid Price, had driven all the way from Gettysburg, Pa.
But, alas, they didn’t give a darn about the impeachment hearings.
No, they were at the front of the line at the National Gallery of Art for the dazzling exhibition “Van Gogh’s Van Goghs: Masterpieces from the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.” It was a reminder that even in the nefarious environ known as The Beltway, few are consumed with President Clinton’s travail.
McCrearey, a German-born retired nurse, had arrived at 5:45 a.m. to line up for free passes that would be distributed at 10 a.m. All the advance passes were snapped up months back and now all that’s left is to show and try to get them on a first-come, first-served daily basis, rain or shine.
“I prefer art to impeachment, it’s far more rewarding,” said McCrearey, who came with a bag of bananas, bagels, cream cheese, German rye bread, coffee in a thermos and plastic spoons. “It nurtures the soul and not the (. . .),” she said, using a noun not quite fit for a family newspaper.
“No cigars, either,” said Alice Vacek-Miller, a Washington paralegal who arrived at 5:15 a.m. and was first in line. “I need to nurture my soul once in a while. The law gets too hectic. Sometimes you have to be good to yourself.”
The Norwegian-born Price, who met McCrearey years ago in Hawaii (“My husband was serving in the military in Korea and I refused to go that far, so I got off in Hawaii”) and struck up a friendship, is a painter and photographer who feels that Clinton “should be left alone, unless this whole thing affects the security of the country.”
The exhibition of 70 van Gogh works is here through the month and later travels to Los Angeles. In this age of razzle-dazzle, well-promoted art extravaganzas, this has been pulling in thousands daily and even prompted big-time scalping.
There are, for example, the homeless who wait in line, then hawk their free pass for as much as $50 to $100 to those desperate to make it inside. But, most of all, there are Americans from all over the land who are a helpful reminder of matters unrelated to politics.
“I think art is very much in this day and age a form of therapy. It’s a calming influence in our lives. It’s being surrounded by beauty,” said Anne Emerson, a painter from Manhattan, Kan., and a former president of the Society of Decorative Painters.
She, too, had arrived before sunrise with a friend, Pat Marler of Boise, Idaho, who works for the state transportation department and conceded that “a lot of people are just tired of hearing about it (impeachment). But we need to appreciate the arts more and rest our minds. We’ve met the coolest people in this line.”
And, as Emerson noted, it was rather notable that the range of ages in line was so disparate. A few feet away was Linda Sersch, 16, a 10th grader from Harrisburg, Pa. She had risen at 4 a.m. to make a three-hour drive and felt exhilarated because van Gogh “is one of my favorites.”
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Then there was Sabrina Pence of Western Springs, Ill., a freshman at nearby Georgetown University who had made a smooth transition from an all-nighter, struggling with a finals paper on women in Iran.
She had left her dorm room at 5:15 a.m. to hustle over to the National Gallery, winding up near the head of the line. She’d been at the Art Institute of Chicago and realized there was a possibility that she’d be looking a gift horse in the mouth. She didn’t want to miss the exhibition.
Of course, living in Washington these days means the impossibility of avoiding coverage of the impeachment mess. She does read The Washington Post, which is necessarily covering each incremental turn with the passion displayed by the Norwegian media toward Olympic cross-country skiing.
“But I just don’t pay much attention” to the rampant dissections, Pence said.
Like most Americans, she had other priorities. In her case, they included finishing up the bibliography and getting her paper in that afternoon, as well as checking out the glorious handiwork of a grand artist.
Those 70 pictures include “Wheatfield With Crows,” a work that suggests at least some connection with Clinton, ominously distressed as they both are.
Generational poster child
Thanks to Americans for Tax Reform for the dumb news release of the week:
“A Question Worth Pondering: WILL SOCIAL SECURITY BE THERE FOR MONICA?”
If your life is so devoid of meaning, please contact Peter Cleary at 202nn-785-0266 “to arrange an interview with an expert on the future of Social Security for Monica and the rest of her generation.”
Makeover in the works?
Jennifer Laszlo, a dogmatic Clinton shill and perhaps the most shameless, self-promoting political consultant here, is breaking new ground and, thus, surely shedding cynical reporters’ perceptions of her ilk. Or maybe she’s shedding something else.
“You are invited to observe firsthand a safe and beautifying liposuction procedure performed by Howard T. Bellin, M.D.” in New York City, the card read.
Huh? Perhaps the doctor is planning a run for president. But call Laszlo quickly as room is said to be quite limited.
Curious freedom at the Press Club
Laszlo apparently did not have any candidates in a peculiar election that consumed some of the media here last week. But, clearly, most of them did not need any assistance.
It was the race for various positions at the National Press Club. It’s a rather tradition-bound (some wags might say moth-eaten) but still useful organization perhaps best known to outsiders for those “newsmaker” lunches it holds and which are carried on C-SPAN. That year’s president has the august duty of introducing the guest, then reading aloud audience questions following the formal address.
The club’s notion of democracy may be somewhat inspired by the traditions of the old Soviet Politburo or perhaps those glorious days of the Mao’s Cultural Revolution in China.
In the race for president, as well as most of the other top posts, there was just one candidate per office.
Mr. Clean
You gotta love Dan Burton.
He has called for universal AIDS testing, stopped using the House gym after Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) came out of the closet, detests the Clintons, urged nuking Iraq before the Persian Gulf war, seems to believe the Clinton-Gore re-election campaign was largely funded by sinister interests in Beijing, and believes the semen found on Vincent Foster’s underwear disputed the consensus that the late White House deputy counsel committed suicide.
Now comes The Hill, a twice-a-week Capitol Hill newspaper that covers legislative doings in exhausting detail, which passed along word that Rep. Burton (R-Ind.) is not only a regular at House Cuts, the House barber shop, but is a customer with a curious routine.
He “arrives for service every two weeks with his private duffel bag of tools–scissors, comb and electric razor.” Hmmm.
We already know his aversion to the gym due to Frank and that he is said to be so worried about AIDS that he tends not to eat soup in restaurants. But he declines to elaborate on why he brings his own barber tools.
Barber Joe Quanttrone says his client is just a unique guy.
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I guess. But tell me: Does that duffel bag include a portable toilet seat too?