Native Born

The Three Most Important Things I Learned While Faking Press Credentials

1.  I’m “the Biased Media”

Remember Zayna, the Egyptian-Syrian hijab wearing woman standing in line?  Well, what I left out of yesterday’s post was that as I “interviewed” her, I asked, “What are your thoughts about the allegation that Obama has tried to distance himself from Islam by having women with their heads covered moved from camera sight lines and the staging area?”

She blankly stared at me.  “What?  I hadn’t heard that.”

“Really?”  I suppose she was too busy participating in voter outreach programs to watch manufactured rumors on television.  Luckily, she had me to offer her this breaking news.

“That would be very disturbing to me if that’s true.”  Note, not just disturbing, very disturbing.

And here’s where I lost all credibility as being remotely connected to the media.  “Oh, well, no, I mean, it’s just a rumor, I don’t think it’s true… I’m pretty sure it was manufactured by rabid conservatives… don’t worry about it.”

Wow.  Way to ask the hard hitting questions and let the chips fall where they may.  I just couldn’t get my brain to stop screaming, What kind of liberal goes to an Obama election and talks people out of voting for him…what the $%#@ is wrong with you?!!

Don’t worry, she voted early.  For Obama.  Despite my media alter ego attempting to talk her out of it.

By the way, I don’t think that rumor is true.  Just in case, you haven’t voted yet.

2.  If You Ever Want to Go Backstage at an Aerosmith Concert (or band of your choice), Take Britt with You.

Miss Britt is an opiate for security guards.  When we got to the event, security all but carried her to the media section in a palanquin.  Don’t get me wrong, she’s fabulous and good looking, even a calendar girl, but the reaction of these men was downright supernatural.

Take our earliest interaction into consideration, for example.  We drove into the parking area for Osceola Heritage and started looking around for a sign that said “media entrance” to no avail.  Then, for reasons of our own, we started panicking.  I panicked because I figured that if, for some reason, security barred us from the media section, we might have to actually get in the “real” line.  The line people had been standing in since 3p.m.  The line whose end might contain people who were not going to get in, at all. (As far as I know, everyone got in, though).

I have no idea why Britt was panicked.  She had a letter from the Huffington Post, a black trench coat on, a big camera bag and was sporting very intellectual looking glasses.  She embodied the media.  I, on the other hand, looked like a liberal elite commie blogger wannabee without a Huffington Post letter.

Anyway, panic permeated the car as we pulled up to a group of mounted police officers and a guy that looked like a Secret Service Agent.  Britt rolled down the window, “Hey, where is the media parking?”

At that exact moment, her GPS device fell off the window and hit an empty Burger King cup, we both yelped and scrambled to catch them, and I think the secret service guy rolled his eyes.  “Do you have credentials?”

She whipped out her Huffington Post letter and handed it to him.  He looked it over a little suspiciously, looked back at me as I awkwardly tried to suppress downright girlish giggling, and then said to her “Do you have any ID?”

“Oh, yeah, yeah,” she fumbled for her wallet, opened it up and handed him her Visa card.  Yes, her Visa card.  As he took the card from her, he looked a little taken aback.

I thought, Oh, man, we are so busted.  Maybe, if I hit the gas right now and drive off we can save face. The only thing that stopped me from doing this was the vision of Britt strangling me when she got her monthly Visa statement laden with charges for 42 pairs of black shades and 25 really boring ties courtesy of the Secret Service agent guy.

“Ummm,” he started to say something but she quickly realized her mistake.

“Oh, that’s not going to do you any good,” she laughed.

And then, something interesting happened as she handed him her driver’s license.  He smiled, his eyes got this funny little look, and he mumbled, “Yeah, okay… that’s better.  I think you need to drive down that road,” he motioned.  Then, he spoke into his little earpiece thing, confirmed exactly where we were supposed to go and let the guy down the road know that we were coming.

Now, I’m pretty sure that the last act was in the form of a warning, and I know it doesn’t sound like a big deal.  You just had to be there.  He could have said, “This is a driver’s license.  Don’t you have one of those laminated thingys that the real press people have hanging around their necks?”

Look, I’m just not accustomed to getting the benefit of the doubt from security persons, so, for me, it was like … magic.

3.  Everybody should try this at least once in their lives.

I am not going to even try to write it better than my fellow infiltrator did in her post yesterday:

This is my Constitutional Right. Our constitutional right. To have open access to the political process based on little more than an honest desire to document it. At a time when the media is constantly berated for it’s bias and lack of objectivity, I am reminded that our access to The Truth is only limited by our willingness to seek it.

Stumble it!

This entry was posted on Friday, October 31st, 2008 at 12:07 pm and is filed under 'Let Them Eat Cake': Liberal Elite Narrowly Avoids Beheading, Call Me an ABCD then Duck For Cover, I've Heard Nuclear Holocausts Can Be Pretty Unpleasant, My American Life, Seriously. I Have No Clue. About Anything.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.