Press polyptych
Christopher Hitchens
Washington mailer than a man's hand, they say, this L./little polyp in Ronald Reagan's derriere. But already, we know more about it than perhaps we want to. In 1983, the President was so insouciant as to skip his annual `physical'; the doctors joshingly agreeing with one another that such a sprightly man could easily afford such a holiday from care. This year, the China jaunt necessitated a 'physical', and the Chief Ex- ecutive quit the clinic while cameras whir- red; his privy leeches gave out that he had the constitution of a marine. There was, they said even as he waved to reporters, a polyp in there somewhere. But for a man of his age... all vied to say that they had seen nothing like it since Shangri-La.
Now, the polyp has become a tumour (benign, as what tumour so situated would not be?) and the euphemisms of the trade are being deployed. There is, it goes without saying, `no cause for alarm'. In the case of ever such a slight alarm, the virtual- ly non-existent polyp is, as must be clear to anybody, 'operable'. No sweat. No pro- blem. Nothing we can't handle. So it goes.
It was not always so. When President Roosevelt — the second one — was confin- ed to his wheelchair by polio, every newspaper in America agreed not to print his photograph unless it was edited out from the waist down. When President Eisenhower, in the year 1956, had a pretty hefty stroke, the White House press office lied itself stupid for days with talk of a digestive problem. In fact, it was so anxious to mislead that — as so often — it succeed- ed in embarrassing. A key physician was brought on to stress that Eisenhower had had 'a normal bowel movement'. This is such difficult territory that I must let another take up the story:
There was a lot of soul-searching before this development was printed. The 1950s were prerevolutionary. Bodily functions had not been invented. At the Associated Press, Marvin Arrowsmith remembers, the bowel movement pro- duced a crisis. But Dr White had an- nounced it — as a matter of fact, he had emphasised it. So it must be important. With a mixture of trepidation and dismay, editors put the bowel movement on the front pages of family newspapers across the nation.
I quote here from James Deakin's book Straight Stuff, quite effortlessly the best book written on the White House press of- fice and the White House press. Mr Deakin was for decades the correspondent of the estimable St Louis Post-Dispatch, and has felt the breath of official displeasure.
He noticed in a long and illustrious career that nothing brought on the lying impulse more than a question about the emperor's health. In the Nixon years there were demented efforts to block inquiries about mental stability. With other Presidents, questions (and answers) were more earthy. (Under the open government of Jimmy Carter, the press was told far more than it could ever have wanted to hear about the President's piles.) Mr Deakin points out and ridicules one of the worst-kept secrets in Washington, and one of the best-kept secrets in the United States, which is that presidential press conferences are simply rigged. Before his beaming entrance, the Commander-in- Chief has been rehearsed, and he has in front of him a seating plan of all those pre- sent (seats being allotted rather than chosen). When he indicates by pointing, he knows what he is doing. And it does not suit any reporter in attendance to complain. It could be his or her turn next, and editors and networks smile on the chosen.
The best story here concerns Jerry Boyd, also a reporter for the St Louis Post- Dispatch. Mr Boyd is black which, I can tell you, would make him conspicuous enough at a White House press conference. But he never seemed to get any attention until, in early 1982, Ronald Reagan was under fire for giving tax exemption to segregated private schools. On the very morning of a presidential press briefing, Mr Boyd receiv-
ed a telephone call from the White House. Did he propose to attend the evening bun- fight? He replied that such was his inten- tion. Upon arrival in the East Room, he was ushered to a front-row stall — a privilege that neither he nor his newspaper normally rated. The President arrived. 'Hi, Jerry', he called as he went to the podium. Since they had never met, Mr Boyd could hardly not notice the familiarity. But the evening had just begun. The Reagan finger pointed in Mr Boyd's direction quite early, and when another reporter assumed that the digit was for him, Reagan put him right sharpish. Jerry first, he said — 'then I'll get to you'. Viewers must have been impressed by this easy intimacy between a President with a seating plan and a black reporter who had never before held up his hand to any purpose. Next time he appeared, Mr Boyd drew a seat in the fifth row. Up went his hand, but he had reverted to the tradi- tional invisibility. As James Deakin com- ments: 'The segregated school issue had diminished in importance... The heat, it comes on. Then it goes off.'
No power of patronage or manipulation will convince any President that he is not the object of snide and malicious comment by the press. In 1971, Richard Nixon told the right-wing interviewer Allen Drury that have won all my political battles with 80 or 90 per cent of the press against me', which was rather ungracious when one recalls that his 1968 candidacy was endors- ed by 80 per cent of American newspapers. President Ford complained that the media made game of his frequent falls and tumbles, but the fact is that he wanted the cameras with him wherever he went.
There is dark muttering to be heard about the liberal bias of the American press, but Mr Deakin, who knew Washington in more liberal days, has no time for this. Two recent surveys have presented a minute study of the Washingto'n hack. This creature is noticeably less liberal than he was two generations ago. Ninety-six point four per cent are white (which leaves Mr Boyd where we left him) and 79.4 are male. Their backgrounds are generally prosperous and, although they tend to be liberal on matters like sex, religion and (rather unevenly) 'the environment', 88 per cent are against public ownership and 63 per cent favour less regulation of business.
It's my impression that even among liberals there is a reluctance to bring up, against the President, what is sometimes rather horribly termed 'the age factor.' It seems indecent, when faced with an ap- parently clear popular mandate for Reagan as against any feasible Democrat, to change the subject and to talk about a growth in the least attractive part of this most attrac- tive man. Still, it was Reagan who summon- ed the press to his medical invigilation and Reagan who summoned them to his equestrian and other physical triumphs. If now, there is a murmur about his fitness, he will not be able to blame it on the scrib- blers. But he will, he will.
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