The Impeachment Files
The first time one meets Maggie Haberman, one is immediately struck by the question of how a pipe-smoking lady, of just the right age, can hold so much wisdom inside such a small head. But after a short time it becomes clear that there is more to her than meets the eye.
“The story is not about me,” she says, admiring her stately nostrils reflected in her peppermint tea, “I never put myself into the story. A story is the story, and I’m not part of it. Too many journalists make the story about them, but not me. I tell other people’s truths. I am not the whistle-blower, I am the whistle: the trumpet if you will. Some say I am the clarion, the ear-pierce, the foghorn: but that would be too much about me, and I try not to make the story about me. I think I has no place in journalism, and I always try to keep myself out of the story: even if it is something very personal to me.”
For a woman of just the right age, with an attractive aroma of cherry-rubbed shag, she is honest about her failings.
“When I say, it’s not about me, too many people think it is about me: my opinions, my prejudices, my bias. But what they don’t see, and I do, is that the unnamed sources and ‘people close to the matter’ are in fact real, and not just stuff I made up. I know, I am sometimes accused of fantasy. But, I am not self-centred, verbose, partisan, I am me, and I can only write what I see: how I feel: and those Pentagon sources aren’t just my reflection in Gucci’s window, as I wonder what I can write in another column.”
Watching her puffing on her pipe. My eye falls on her heavily tattooed arms, the carefully woven intricate Celtic designs now stretched and faded, the sign of a woman who likes to work out, and bulk up. Not all woman can carry off the 1980’s wife-beater look, but Ms Haberman (an ex-Navy Diver), manages it with a certain feminine charm: helped by the numerous facial piercings, and the Mursi lip plate.
Only when the subject of Trump is broached does her visage flame, “that damned man,” she spits: literally spits: a flob of cherry brown gob that puddles, bubbling between her iron ex-Navy diving boots, “that damned man can’t never stick to the script.”
“To right sister.” This supportive call comes from Don Lemon, a person of colour, sitting some tables away. Until now Mr Lemon had remained chameleon-like at this unnamed location, by an unnamed lake, in an unnamed town. Ms Haberman recognises Mr Lemon immediately: certainly before I do: and suggests we move to another table.
She mutters something about Mr Lemon being a good argument for the Corona-virus. The point isn’t pressed. Instead we gather up the otter pelts she has trapped that morning, to supplement her meager earnings from journalism, and make our way to the table farthest away from the aforesaid Mr Lemon. Who by now is yucking it up with some Black Hebrew Israelites, and trying to book them to come on his show to discuss Trump’s racism.
Asked to explain her Trump reference she continues, “that damned man can’t stick to the script. He’s a joke. All that nonsense about him being dominant and the big Cheeto. It’s not true. Go listen to the tape. The tape of the conversation with Ukranian president. They had been coaching him for days, my insiders tell me, but he was too busy watching Archie Bunker reruns, and bitching that a blue collar union guy in the fifties, who held Archie Bunker’s views, would have been a Democrat. So when the call happens, and the subject comes up, what does Trump: the alpha-male: the big I am: what does he do? He gives the feed line, and then gets side tracked, trying to be mister nice guy. And, doesn’t say the damned line required for impeachment.”
Our waiter brings the food. He has a familiar look, a thin chap with staring eyes, pencil neck, the tanned leathery complexion of a Californian beach-bum. In different times one might suspect he is the type to take money from the sort of person who drugs up black men to have sex with them. But this is a more enlightened age, where people no longer make such judgements: thank goodness.
Maggie tucks into her T-bone whale steak, the Trump revelation hanging in the air, just as the waiter hangs around the table. Something about his smile is unnerving, not so unnerving as to be distasteful, more creepy. It is he that asks if Ms Haberman has the manuscript. She wipes blood from her chin with the back of her hairy hand and laughs: a manly laugh, like Bea Arthur on intravenous testosterone. “The manuscript is useless now,” she scoffs, “can you believe it? Three days they trained that idiot to stop saying, “I want you to agree to a squid Go-Pro”. Three days, and for what? For nothing that’s what. He is such an idiot that he never even delivered the line. It was all set up. We had the manuscript, I had the columns, we had everything.” She uses the T-bone from her steak to scratch an itch under her armpit.
It begins to rain.
We agree to do it again sometime, but I know she is only saying it to be nice. As she squeezes my pert buttock and calls me sweetie, I laugh in a girlish way, knowing that Ms Haberman has all the power I lack.
When the waiter does the same, I punch his lights out.