I covered the
dedication ceremony because all of our good reporters had gone home for the
night. In the journalism hierarchy, the better you are, the more sunlight
you’re allowed to see. The assignment didn’t call for me to actually interview
Armstrong, who would rather shove glass up his urethra than talk to a
journalist. Instead, I was supposed to snag quotes from his acceptance speech to
share with the other newspapers in our corporation. There was company-wide
interest in this story because it involved Neil Freaking Armstrong, which is
actually how his name appears on his birth certificate. People figured he must
have something worthwhile to say after spending so many years out of sight.
Maybe he’d tell everyone the moon landing was a hoax. Maybe he’d fail to see
his shadow and we’d have six more weeks of winter. Whatever went down, my
editors could rest easy knowing I was there to capture it all with my usual
piss-poor attention to detail.
 |
| Back when I was still a reporter, I secretly hoped someone would subpoena my notes. I would have turned them over without a fight, but all they would have been able to decipher were the penis doodles in the margins. |
The event
began with a reception packed full of alumni astronauts who came to honor Armstrong
and take advantage of the open bar. This particular university pumped out space
travelers like Catholics pump out babies. I squeezed my way through the room and
interviewed as many VIPs as I could while also trying to grab a free drink. I
remained disappointingly sober throughout the evening, but I did manage to interview
Eugene Cernan, the last man to walk on the lunar surface. It was his job to
lock up the place after everybody headed back to earth. Unlike Armstrong, who
had a team of bodyguards to protect him, Cernan hung out in the crowd sipping a
beer. I guess if you’re the twelfth man to the moon, you’re expendable.
I still don’t
understand why Armstrong needed protection. Yes, the world is a dangerous
place, but it’s not like they were holding this soirée in downtown Kabul. I’d
like to think he had bodyguards to shield him from my hard-hitting questions:
“Mr. Armstrong, you were the first man to walk on the moon. What’s your opinion
on the flat tax and abortion?” The spaceman’s security detail wasn’t as
airtight as it at first appeared. One of our newspaper interns managed to meet
Armstrong by putting away her notebook and posing as a student. He was polite
and engaging with her, but only because he didn’t know her sinister career
aspirations. Armstrong always made time for young learners, but the only thing
he ever taught a journalist is what it feels like to be punched in the throat.
The intern
wasn’t the brightest girl in the world – she was going to college to be a
reporter, after all – but she did manage to pull one over on NASA’s finest. I figured
I could do the same. In case you’re questioning my professionalism, I assure
you my motives were strictly selfish. I just wanted a story I could tell my
grandkids.
Me: “I once shook
hands with Neil Armstrong.”
My future grandkids:
“Shut the hell up and go back to the nursing home.”
When the reception
ended, the crowd made its way out into the freezing rain to trudge across
campus to the formal banquet room. In the process, the security detail managed
to lose Neil Armstrong. I found him standing by himself just inside the
entrance of the dinning hall. This was my chance to casually offer him my hand,
congratulate him, and be on my way. I’m amazingly smooth in my own mind. In
reality, by the time I made my move an unseen bodyguard was all over me.
“Are you a
reporter?” he asked. It was more of an accusation than a question.
“Yeah, but
barely,” I wanted to reply.
Instead, I explained
I didn’t want to ask Armstrong any questions. I simply wanted to meet him, just
like our intern did without ill effect a few minutes earlier. The guard looked
at me intently and heard absolutely nothing I said. He couldn’t. He had one of
those Secret Service-style earpieces that are scientifically designed to block out
reason. In the same way that animals have bright colors to scare off predators,
security types wear communicators with incredibly obvious wires to warn the
world that abusing authority is part of their job description.
True to form,
the guy demanded to see my media pass. I didn’t have one. Nobody gave me one
when I arrived at the reception an hour earlier. In fact, nobody had ever given
me one for anything I’d covered at the university. The purpose of public
relations is to get a message to the public, a function best performed by a
class of professionals known as reporters who relay information to the masses
on a daily basis. Inviting journalists to your event is a great way to get the word
out; expelling them is not. The university’s public relations staff understood
this, but that’s because they didn’t wear Secret Service earpieces. The bodyguard
didn’t have that advantage. He threw me out and sent the intern with me for
good measure. He didn’t physically drag us to the door, but only because I gave
up easily. It wasn’t worth getting beaten up for my poverty-level salary.
Shortly before
the evening’s formal program was set to begin, I found myself standing outside in
the freezing rain staring hopelessly at a locked door. My only job that night
was to be in the room when Armstrong gave his speech, and I still found a way
to screw it up. I called the university’s public relations director to see if
she could get us back in, but she was too busy hobnobbing with tipsy astronauts
to answer. I also called my editor, but she didn’t pickup either. I finally
gave up trying to contact a higher power and trudged across campus to the
building where the reception was held. Apparently there really were media
passes this time. They were lying on a table in a corner that an hour early had
been hidden behind five hundred mingling people. Any security function the credentials
served was defeated, though, because they didn’t have our pictures on them and
they were left unattended. Anyone could have walked out of there with an official
media badge, which is exactly what I did. I got back into the dining hall as
Anderson Cooper.
I made it
back to the banquet room just in time for Armstrong’s brief remarks. The
bodyguard who threw me out made a halfhearted apology as I came in. To prove I
was the bigger man, I glared at him angrily as I stormed by. Armstrong’s
remarks weren’t worth all the trouble I went through to hear them. He said he
was incredibly fortunate because all his life he had done only what he wanted to
do. This described the exact opposite of my own life on that night and every other
in which I worked for the paper. Afterward, I drove back to the newsroom and banged
out my usual low-quality article. Nobody else in our chain ended up using any
quotes from it. I think they pulled their information from an Associate Press
reporter who had his media pass the entire time.
I’m sure
Armstrong was an upstanding human being, but I wasn’t there for his whole life.
I can only judge him by the thirty second incident in which he watched his bodyguard
jerk me around and didn’t intervene. That’s the disadvantage of being famous.
If you let down your public persona for even a second, people will assume that momentary
lapse represents the real you. That’s why when I become a celebrity, I won’t
even bother pretending to be nice. If my security team smashes your camera and
pees in your face, please be aware this is not a misunderstanding.
