A journalist learns picking questions carefully is one of the most important tenants of the job.
On this particular day, the object of my inquiry was the biggest, meanest, mood-altered, high maintenance-billionaire- bully around. What motivates a man like that? And why did such specimens seem to be procreating like a bad virus in a Petri dish?
We had worked together for years, but having never asked me a question about my life or my family, resignation set in, and I kept my distance. But without communication, truth gets trumped by titillation every time. He began to symbolize a certain segment of men today, many running mass conduits of information (television networks) and what he valued and how he lost his way seems socially relevant today.
Who he was, and why his penultimate included being "BIG" I considered to be theoretically crucial information. Why the hours-long workouts? Why the steroids? Why take a substance that makes your looks and performance a lie, and causes cancer? Why did he work unrelentingly for the muscles that make the outside formidable, but the contents of the trousers unable to stand up and look around?
So, after confessing my own flop- sweat- fear- on dreaded election nights while figuring voting percentages and numbers of precincts at warp speeds live on the air, perhaps quid pro quo could occur. My curiosity, more powerful than my ability to keep quiet, propelled me forward with a well chosen question hoping it would tell me who he was. Turned out, I already knew.
"What is it you fear?" I asked the question without looking up from my paper work so as to not alarm him and create suspicion.
He did not twitch a muscle.
"I fear being small."
Bulked up to not only beat the band, but beat UP the band, his honesty not only gave me a Shakespearean look at his values, but those of our steroid nation today.
"You mean you fear feeling insignificant?"
"No, I mean I fear being a little man."
After 22 years of knowing him, it was the first time I felt his pain.
Bulked up to keep the demons away, his answer gave me what I considered to be invaluable insight into these bullying, buffed up, times. In pursuit of false power and literal self-inflation, he hid behind his stature. But in the dark where character is truly measured, he likely came up short. He, like many of America's most powerful, reflected a false image of health and security.
The news room monitors told his story over and over in various degrees of separation: from the stock market, to the mass media's bullying, bipartisanship, to government agencies protecting corporate profiteers while ignoring its duty to American citizens, to a president who ignores laws, compassion and intellect.
Pump the iron, make the threats, be the boom-box without the logic.
But when no one is looking and the lights are out, the life force is gone from the groin and the end justifies the means. America I miss you.