I’d met famous people before, from having worked in the film industry, so meeting the son of a notorious president at a swanky party in Austin wasn’t a big deal. I was at the Texas Monthly’s 25th Anniversary party, at the house of the publisher, Mike Levy, because my girlfriend was roommates with one of his daughters, and the roommate had invited both of us. Free food and drinks of very high quality, a swanky location, hob-knobbing with high-status Texans; it would be a far more interesting night than anything we would otherwise had planned.
Walking into Mike Levy’s beautiful modern home, high on a cliff overlooking the Colorado River, the place reminded me of the Hollywood Hills. His daughter, my girlfriend’s roommate, navigated through the crowd, and, spotting governor George W. Bush near the bar, told us “I want you to meet George.” She led my girlfriend and myself to where he stood, talking to some people, and introduced us. As I shook his hand, he did this thing that people often do with me, for some weird reason, a sort of double-take, as if he thought he already knew me but couldn’t quite remember. We engaged in some obligatory smalltalk; he was friendly and we were all polite, and having gotten the formality over with, we stepped away, and proceeded to soak up the vibe, and the drinks, and the food.
Years later, when this same man became President of the United States, and our country experienced the shock of 9/11 under his bewildered, clueless leadership, and he suddenly had mind-boggling levels of power — of life and death, war and revenge, and the making of history — I had moved to Los Angeles, had married a completely different woman, and was living in Los Angeles. As a “yellow dog Democrat” (meaning I’d vote for a yellow dog before I’d vote for a Republican), I despised the fact that Bush was President, that his brother, the governor of Florida, had cheated in Florida and guaranteed the “win”. So when I learned that good old George was coming to my town — and not far away from where I lived — Century City - to give a speech at a swanky Republican fund-raiser for a gubernatorial candidate named Bill Simon — I wanted to get in his face again.
I wasn’t alone; there was a large and well-publicized protest planned. The venue was the Century City Plaza Hotel, a well-known landmark of Century City, which was also the home of the famous Fox Plaza (known as the “Die Hard Building”) and other major well known buildings. I had never actually gone to an organized protest before; I’m not the kind of person who participates in large scale public events unless I’m taking photos or otherwise being simply a witness. But this time I wanted to be a participant. I wanted to make noise for this person I now saw as a a cheater, a fool, an imposter of a president, and, during 9/11 having been sitting on his ass reading a book about a goat, an incompetent moron during a major crisis.
I knew this hotel from close experience. I was working on on film crews for a living, and the Century Plaza Hotel was a common place to shoot. And having been paid to invade the hotel on numerous instances, with our lights, our gear, our electric distribution, and endless rolling carts of film production gear, I knew all the entrances, the hallways, the elevators, the loading docks, most of which would be unfamiliar to guests.
When I arrived to the “protest,” I was surprised — in fact, I was appalled. The participants in this “protest” were all corralled into what had recently been euphemistically called a “free speech zone” — and it wasn’t even on the grounds of the hotel, but all the way way across the four-lane boulevard. Across this busy barrier, at the sweeping main entrance to the big hotel, the wealthy Republican donors were already pulling in and handing the keys to their expensive cars to the valets. Clearly, based the size of the big noisy street, there was no way this protest could have any affect at all — it wouldn’t be in anybody’s way, and with all the traffic noise, would probably not even be heard, or seen, by the donors, or Bush, or anybody.
But having worked in the building, I knew there was no way in hell that George Bush and his people were not going to utilize that main entrance. They would indoubtedly bring him in through the back, where they could have total control of the space. This entrance was about as far away from the “free speech zone” as it could possibly be — the loading zone, th VIP’s VIP entrance, down a hill, around the back the back of the building, down an alleyway, and tucked against the lowest floors of the building where it could easily be secured and completely controlled.
And the protest itself was a disappointment. All the participants were so polite and obedient! As if they were more concerned being perceived as unpleasantly rowdy, or loud, or uncontrollable, that they had utterly castrated themselves, and dutifully, peacefully, quietly, obeyed the police, like those obedient as dogs at a dog show. Nonetheless, the police, with helmets and armor and other riot-control gear appeared to have no respect for the protestors, as I saw them laughing at the protestors, and holding up hand-held video cameras over over their heads, making sure to record facial evidence of every friendly and cooperative citizen attending.
I quickly realized the protest was a joke. A waste of time. Why? Mainly because George W. Bush would never see it. His motorcade wouldn’t be coming in view at all.
I took a closer look at the hotel across the street, and the activity. They had definitely not shut the place down for the event; I could see guests coming and going in addition to the wealthy donors arriving. It seemed like the hotel was open and busy for its usual normal business.
So I decided to see how close I could get, even if I ended up being a one-man protest when the time came. I crossed the big boulevard, and approached the hotel, leaving the “free speech zone,” far behind me, and I found a side door where there was no foot traffic. And I entered.
Now, here’s the deal. I fully expected to be stopped. I truly believed that at any point, Secret Service agents, or local LAPD hired for night (like we get on film shoots) or something — you name it — would have an impenetrable gauntlet to guard the freaking President of the United States! I had my alibi all planned out and had rehearsed in my head what I was going to say when — not if — I was stopped. I simply wanted to see how far I could get before I was stopped. Maybe I’d be able to yell something at him before I got dragged away, or something. It was an experiment.
But to my amazement, I wasn’t stopped. Soon, I was wandering around one end of the hotel, completely alone, and without anyone even eyeing me from around a corner. Nothing. It quickly got boring, and was time to try harder. I decided that instead of walking straight intto the big central lobby, where the entrance to the auditorium was, and where — undoubtedly — they would have security personnel keeping out riff-raff like myself, I could instead go up a few floors, then come down on an elevator right into the middle of the lobby, and appear like a guest of the hotel coming down, unwittingly, into the midst of the event. So I went into a stairwell — unguarded and empty — and climbed up a few flights to the third floor. Still expecting somebody to stop me. But, to my shock, nobody did.
On the third floor I strolled casually down to the big, main group of elevators which descended to the lobby. I called an elevator, and its door opened. I was expecting some kind of security, but nothing. Nobody was inside. I rode the elevator down to the ground floor, where the entrance to the auditorium, and the main entrance, was. The elevator doors opened, and I expected some sort of security there as well, to stop people like me from simply walking out of the elevator and into the venue. But no. The place was busy with extremely well-dressed wealthy Republican donors, and their jewelry-bedecked wives. I milled around, astounded, wondering if I should go to the bar and get a drink, but nobody was even looking at me; I seemed invisible. So I wandered outside, to the main front entrance where an endless cavalcade of wildly expensive cars were continuing to pull up and disgorge their smug and showy passengers. To my surprise, the protest was in full view of the arriving guests, as was some of their chants. Many of these donors climbed out of their cars and looked across the boulevard at the “protest” and scoffed. And joked with each other. And rolled their eyes in of mocking disgust, like the villains I considered them to be. Some of the faces were familiar — actors I’d seen before, but couldn’t name, and a few once-beautiful but now hard-eyed actresses who had clearly married into some serious wealth as their retirement from Hollywood.
Still amazed that nobody had so much as asked me for any kind of identification, and realizing that Bush wouldn’t be speaking for a while, I took a seat in the lounge and ordered a beverage. It wasn’t long before the crowd had settled into the auditorium and the huge lobby quieted down. Soon, I could hear someone giving a speech to the crowd in the auditorium.
I walked toward the big, open double doors which opened to the auditorium, again fully expecting to be stopped, and gazed into the dark auditorium. Nobody even looked my way. The doors were still wide open, open to anybody, like myself, and there was some older white guy at the podium, giving some kind of speech, but it wasn’t Bush yet.
I stepped into the relative darkness of the auditorium, ignored. STILL EXPECTING that someone would would probably step out of the shadows, stop me, and, at the very least, want to check to see if I was on the guest list, or even politely kick me out for not being invited. But no. I stood there, in the shadows, looking around, utterly perplexed at how I was able to do what I had just done. I realized I could just take a seat, if I could find one.
By this time, I was actually bored. Realizing I didn’t want to see Bush. I’d already met him once. I didn’t want to be around these people who were there as donors to the party I saw as evil, who radiated a physically palpable vibe of hatred, privilege, racism, and vanity. Granted, I’m a tall white male with blond hair and blue eyes, so I’m not exactly what most people here would see as a threat, but still — I had sneaked inside, I had infilitrated a space where the President of the United States was about to speak, a few yards in front of me, and I wasn’t even dressed for the occasion.
I could have been anybody. I could have been there for any reason.
And the vaunted Secret Service, the FBI, private security, hotel cops, bomb-sniffing dogs, and whoever and whatever else we have always been taught to believe would have an impenetrable lock on the security of our President, was nowhere to be seen.
Here’s the thing — after this, when I’d tell people my story about meeting Bush at the party in Austin, Texas, they would often laugh, and on more than one occasion tell me “you could have stopped him! And changed history!” And we’d joke around about how, yeah, I could have followed him to the men’s room in Mike Levy’s big multi-level house overlooking the Colorado River in Texas, where the designated men’s room for that affair was downstairs in a quiet, dimly lit and carpeted part of the house, and I could have quietly and secretly done him in. Strangled him while he was taking a piss, and escaped before anybody knew. And the world would have been different: he never would have become President, 9/11 MIGHT never have happened, and the invasion of Afghanistan, and the Rape of Iraq, and the enormous loss of life from all those things, might never have happened.
I could have changed the world. It’s funny to joke about.
And if I’d chickened out that time, I had been given a second chance in the auditorium of the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles on April 29, 2002.
If I was a different kind of person ….
The biggest thing I took away from the Century City event was the pathetic vibe of the protest. Polite protests don’t do shit, and the participants are treated like bunch of harmless children. They are mocked by the authorities. They have zero effect on anything. The idea of a “free speech zone” is an insult that should infuriate every living American regardless of political views. Every square foot of our nation is a “free speech zone” for god’s sake.
And the truly powerful people in our world don’t give a crap about what anybody else thinks. They do whatever they want. We’re seeing that everywhere now, especially in Gaza. And the perptrators in Gaza will continue to commit whatever horrific crimes they want to commit until somebody stops them. And the only way to stop evil is through force. Actual physical force. But that almost never happens. Why? Because evil people are more than willing to use force, constantly; but good people almost never want to use force. Good people are horrified by force. Because it’s evil. So guess who wins? Who gets their way? The evil people. Over and over again.
It’s the human condition. The oldest story of humanity. Evil people get what they want, and the only true enemies they actually have are each other.
However, goodness quietly remains.
