Today I was invited to speak on a panel about freelancing as a television reporter. It wasn't the first time I was asked to pontificate about my chosen profession in that capacity but it was the first time anyone paid me for it. It's one thing to give up your time, possibly even pass up an assignment, to speak to budding journalists but to be financially compensated for it adds a lot of pressure. Even though I'm often accused of being self-absorbed (hello, I have a blog about myself), it felt so self-aggrandizing to talk about being a "successful freelancer." The dean of the graduate school of journalism where I spoke told me afterwards that the students were "riveted" but I think they were actually staring at my fabulous new Gucci bag sitting next to me.I felt like a big fraud next to the print journalists who were on the panel. All of them were published authors who wrote for The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and Vogue to name a few. But for some reason they kept deferring questions to me with, "How does it work in the broadcast world?" or "How did you pitch that story to CNN?" Don't get me wrong, I was totally flattered but it was a bit disconcerting to have a Pulitzer-caliber journalist listen earnestly to my musings about broadcast news. At one point a fellow panelist had the following observation, "It's a lot easier to get freelance work after you get your first book published." Everyone nodded in agreement. Everyone except me. I just stared in awe. And if that wasn't strange enough, I was asked if I would be interested in becoming an adjunct professor. Can you imagine me teaching a class? Actually, I can imagine that. I'd have to wear my librarian glasses so that I could appear more intellectual (read: serious journalist).
So things with the Chiropractor are moving along smoothly. Yesterday I didn't hear from him all day and I started to board the crazy train but then he IM'ed me and told me he was on his death bed. We had a short conversation during which I became preoccupied by a story on AC360 about the fallout from Saddam's botched execution. I said as much and he asked me if I thought the U.S. strategy was to "divide and conquer Iraq." This comment didn't set well with me because I thought it was ignorant and reminded me of stupid things Mo used to say. He once told me that the reasons Hindus are cremated is because the earth won't accept them. When I asked his dumb ass where he had picked up that gold nugget of wisdom he conceded that a fundamentalist Muslim told him that.
So when the chiro made the remark, it was like deja vu all over again. "They have no strategy in Iraq. That's the problem," I bristled. He made a joke but I wasn't letting it go. I reminded him that the sectarian violence was responsible for more American troops dying than the initial invasion and asked him how anyone could think that creating a civil war was a neat exit strategy. He tried to defend his premise with the European news reports he had heard but I wasn't buying it. Finally he wrote this:
"Listen..you have to be able to settle with the fact that we both do not have adequate data to make a complete argument...I am just stating what I heard on Canadian and European news..now..If I thought you would want the data I would have taken notes..."
At this point, I felt sorry for him and decided that he wasn't an ignorant dumb ass so I finally gave him a break.
I leave for the left coast on Friday. I haven't even arrived in Southern California and I'm already worried about how fat I'm going to feel around all those plastic people. I find the east coast and its clad-in-black, bohemian chic, or "I commute from Jersey/Long Island/Connecticut and don't-give-a-shit" fashion renegades so much more palatable.
