nancynall.com » E-Day.
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E-Day.

Yesterday’s most inter­est­ing robo-call: The voice of a young African Amer­i­can woman tells me Jen­nifer Granholm “takes our money and gives it to the sub­urbs.” She doesn’t care about “us.” “We” can’t trust her.

It’s like the old punch­line of the Lone Ranger joke: What do you mean “we,” white man?

This is inter­est­ing on sev­eral lev­els, start­ing with the assump­tion that, because I live in the 313 area code, I’m black. If you saw “8 Mile,” you remem­ber that last rap bat­tle scene, where Rab­bit asks every­one in the crowd to th’ow it up for the 313. Like every­thing here, it’s a racial code, as well as tele­phonic. Wayne County, where Detroit is located, is the 313. Oak­land and Macomb Coun­ties, where most of the sub­ur­ban com­mu­ni­ties known as “metro Detroit” are located, are the 248 and 586, respec­tively, although there may be some 734s over there in west­ern Oak­land. How­ever, Grosse Pointe, over­whelm­ingly white, is in Wayne County, too, so if I’d been at that rap bat­tle in a pink cash­mere cardi­gan, pearls and a cute madras head­band, I’d have been enti­tled to th’ow my hands in the air for the 313, too. (I’ve always found this image amus­ing, yo.)

How­ever, if you robo-bomb 313 phone num­bers with a coded mes­sage aimed at African Amer­i­cans, chances are you’ll get more hits than misses. Detroit is some­thing like 82 per­cent black, after all.

The other level upon which this is inter­est­ing? Um, con­sider the alternative.

Ah, but it all ends today. Elec­tion Day. I was a news­pa­per reporter long enough that I feel like its rhythms are part of me. Reporters get to sleep in on Elec­tion Day; tra­di­tion­ally, if you’re cov­er­ing a race, you don’t come to work until polls close. So it’s a day to catch up on your errands and watch “The View” or what­ever. If you’re not cov­er­ing the race, your job is to vote on your way in to work and ask the poll work­ers how early turnout looks, then report it to the city desk when you arrive. Either way, the long stretch of vot­ing is, shall we say, down time.

If you’re a copy edi­tor, at least for a p.m. news­pa­per — and I may be the last jour­nal­ist left in Amer­i­can who never worked for an a.m., and how the hell did that hap­pen — you come to work extra early on Wednes­day. Fre­quently you greet the reporters leav­ing in the wee small hours of the morning.

The reward for both shifts is food, which the com­pany springs for. Reporters get pizza, edi­tors get donuts. If you like salty things for break­fast, there’s usu­ally a cold pizza left to chew on.

(If this sounds pathetic, it is. Small-market jour­nal­ism is a study in self-debasement. Hey, free pizza!)

In between, though, my but it’s fun. You go to cam­paign head­quar­ters, where some­one writes the incom­ing results on a black­board. There’s liquor, which means some of your inter­views will be with peo­ple half in the bag, which means you have half a chance of get­ting a quote that doesn’t sound like it came from a robot. Although don’t count on it, because there’s always spin­ning galore.

I was never a polit­i­cal writer, but I did my share. Two vivid memories:

In 1984, shortly after I’d been hired in Fort Wayne but before my col­umn started, I was drafted to cover the election-night fes­tiv­i­ties of the third par­ties — at the time the Lib­er­tar­i­ans and a weird splin­ter called (I think) the Amer­i­can Party. Both were wan, cheer­less affairs, but the Amer­i­can Party vigil was the Island of Mis­fit Toys. I think they were meet­ing in an Eagles hall or some­thing, with a few 2-liter bot­tles of pop and potluck snacks. The folks were right out of Diane Arbus, and the offi­cial spokesman was turned out in a vivid poly­ester leisure suit with con­trast­ing top­stitch­ing, the sort of thing that Herb Tar­lek used to wear on “WKRP in Cincin­nati.” I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I remem­ber that evening as my first expo­sure to the can’t-catch-a-break, pissed-off, para­noid demo­graphic that would fuel the cra­zier fre­quen­cies on talk radio. And that leisure suit. It belonged in a museum.

The other was one night in Colum­bus. The publisher’s dad liked to go over to GOP head­quar­ters and tip a few, then come back to the news­room to soak up the atmos­phere. What the hell, he owned the place. One elec­tion night, late, he was try­ing to leave the park­ing lot, only couldn’t get out of his park­ing space. He would pull for­ward and tap the bumper of the car ahead, then back up and tap the bumper of the car behind, up and back, up and back, tap tap tap, never mak­ing any progress. A reporter was leav­ing work at the same time and saw this, and said, “Sir, why don’t you let me help you? Step out a minute and I’ll get you out of this spot.” So he did, and the reporter had his car out in half a minute, and even though the old man was prob­a­bly too drunk to drive, the reporter let him get back behind the wheel.

As he climbed back in, the ex-publisher pressed a fiver into his hand. The reporter still believes, I’m sure, that the old man thought he was the park­ing attendant.

Go vote if you haven’t. I’m headed for the show­ers and the polls, in that order.

Posted on Tuesday, November 7th, 2006 at 10:23 am
in Current events, Media.

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24 responses to
“E-Day.”

  1. Jim said on November 7th, 2006 at 11:42 am

    “Small-market jour­nal­ism is a study in self-debasement.”

    Truer words were never writ­ten. I will be keep­ing this one. How many places will let you work 80 hours a week and pay you barely enough to feed your­self for the priv­i­lege of stroking your ego with an occa­sional byline?

  2. Marcia said on November 7th, 2006 at 12:12 pm

    Speak­ing of drink­ing and/or vot­ing, Nance, have you seen this?

    Kind of funny, kind of sad.

  3. ashley said on November 7th, 2006 at 12:32 pm

    “Small-market jour­nal­ism is a study in self-debasement.�? Kinda sounds to me like grad school.

    Oh, and thanks for men­tion­ing Herb Tar­lek. By asso­ci­a­tion, I will now have Bai­ley Quar­ters danc­ing in my head for the next 24 hours. Thanks a lot.

  4. alex said on November 7th, 2006 at 12:32 pm

    Well, Mar­cia, I’ll smoke to that!

  5. Jim said on November 7th, 2006 at 1:22 pm

    Mmmm, that Bai­ley was a hot­tie … much more so than Jen­nifer. But I always liked Maryann over Gin­ger and Betty over Veronica …

  6. Connie said on November 7th, 2006 at 1:55 pm

    All of my calls in the last week have been Repub­li­can get out the vote calls. Which just goes to show they didn’t do their research, since in Indi­ana your pri­mary party choice is pub­lic infor­ma­tion. I was voter num­ber 184 at Sugar Grove Church this morning.

  7. John said on November 7th, 2006 at 2:04 pm

    Velma over Daphne too?

    I got two calls (albeit recorded ones) last night from Repub­li­cans advis­ing me that a vote for any­one other than Joe Lieber­man is a wasted vote. I guess the Eleventh Com­mand­ment doesn’t apply to Repub­li­can card counters.

    I heard from Laura Bush, Mitt Rom­ney, Rudy Guliani, and Gov. Ridge. My wife’s friend heard from Bill Clin­ton but we just got the sec­ond stringers.

  8. Dorothy said on November 7th, 2006 at 2:05 pm

    I was num­ber 38 at lunch time. Does this mean I was 1,038? When do they run out of num­bers and start over? I’m sure there were tons of peo­ple there ahead of me this morn­ing cause I passed the polling place on my way to work and saw the crowd.

  9. Connie said on November 7th, 2006 at 2:14 pm

    And a Chocola gotv per­son just rang my door­bell while I am home for lunch. I hear hubby say, “we’ve already voted.” Chocola per­son says “may I ask who you voted for?” Hubby: “No.” Door closes.

  10. Lex said on November 7th, 2006 at 2:29 pm

    By asso­ci­a­tion, I will now have Bai­ley Quar­ters danc­ing in my head for the next 24 hours. Thanks a lot.

    Could be worse. You could have, say, war with Iran danc­ing in your head. Bai­ley was Teh Hot.

    Nance is right about the company-bought pizza, except for the poor bas­tards like me who must cover a marathon City Coun­cil (elected in odd-numbered years) meet­ing tonight, chock-full o’ rezon­ing pub­lic hear­ings, which begins at Pizza Minus 3 Hours and likely will not end before 11. I’ve offered a bounty of free soda to any­one on the city desk who will save me four slices of Meat Lovers. The only response I got was from the govt. edi­tor, who’s run­ning a marathon on Sun­day and said he’d fight me for ‘em. I said I’d rip his arm off and beat him over the head with it to get those slices, and that because he’d be lighter and be get­ting blood trans­fu­sions and IV flu­ids between now and Sun­day as a result, his time should improve and so we’re all winners.

    Con­trol of the gov­ern­ment is at stake and I’m gonna be in a room with no wire­less, lis­ten­ing to the same six devel­op­ers and lawyers argu­ing the mer­its of Office-Institutional vs. Commercial.

    Speak­ing of Teh Hot and all.

  11. Kirk said on November 7th, 2006 at 4:43 pm

    the thing that always pisses me off about election-night food is that they buy it for peo­ple who work one night a year but don’t do any­thing for those have to work every night. for the one-night-a-year crowd, it’s a pic­nic. write one story, chow down free food, then start quack­ing about what the elec­tion really means while edi­tors, copy edi­tors and oth­ers do sev­eral hours more work. i’ve given loud, yakking reporters the heave-ho more than once on elec­tion night. and as soon as they put the food out, i call the sports desk to make sure that all those guys can come up and par­take, espe­cially the agate clerks.

  12. deb said on November 7th, 2006 at 6:33 pm

    one sports edi­tor i used to work with fondly called those clerks AG-otts. he was the only guy i knew who ever gave them any respect at all. i occa­sion­ally helped with agate when we were short-handed on fri­day nights, and it was ten times worse than writ­ing obits.

    my favorite election-food mem­ory: at the p.m. where i worked, the news edi­tor and i hung out in the news­room until 1 a.m. or so, grabbed a cou­ple hours’ sleep, then met at the local greasy spoon about 4 a.m. for car­ry­out to take back to work — mas­sive corned beef and cheese omelets. won­der what one of those would do to me now, at 51.

  13. Peris said on November 7th, 2006 at 6:37 pm

    I too show­ered first, then went to the polls, which of course neces­si­tated a 2nd shower.

  14. nancy said on November 7th, 2006 at 6:43 pm

    Kirk points out the a.m. cycle prob­lem — reporters are done and kickin’ back while edi­tors go into hyper­drive, try­ing to get every­thing done by some point before dawn. In tight races, it can be nerve-wracking, I’m sure.

    Turnout at my precinct was heavy, with a governor’s race, a lop­sided Sen­ate con­test and other heavy-duty stakes on the line. I balked at a few of the judi­cial con­tests; one said, on the bal­lot, “Vote for not more than NINETEEN.” I counted the names in the list. Nine­teen. Left it blank.

  15. Kirk said on November 7th, 2006 at 7:27 pm

    i knew about most of the judge can­di­dates here. i def­i­nitely did not vote for the guy who we found out was mar­ried to two women at the same time (a tech­ni­cal over­sight, he essen­tially said).

  16. Lynne said on November 7th, 2006 at 7:44 pm

    Howdy from the copy desk at an a.m. paper back East. The polls haven’t closed yet. We’ve already swarmed over the free food — sand­wiches, chips, cook­ies, soda, cof­fee. Let the games begin!

  17. Kirk said on November 7th, 2006 at 9:13 pm

    hi, lynne. being as this is ohio, cuya­hoga county got a judge to keep 16 polling places open until 9 o’clock, and the sec­re­tary of state has for­bid­den the release of any vote conts until then, so we’re hav­ing a fine time twid­dling our thumbs

  18. nancy said on November 7th, 2006 at 9:17 pm

    Black­well wants to keep us in sus­pense about his polit­i­cal death for a cou­ple more hours, I guess.

    I love thumb-twiddling on the desk. It’s like work­ing on the slime line of a trawler — just wait­ing for the next load of cod to come down the chutes.

  19. Kirk said on November 7th, 2006 at 9:34 pm

    of course, cnn, ap and a few oth­ers already have called it for black­well any­way. the desk, actu­ally, does have some non-election junk to fill in the back pages. we impor­tant types who came in to work the elec­tion, though, are reduced to read­ing blogs and such, which beats work­ing. the first story i have to edit prob­a­bly won’t come along for a cou­ple of hours yet.

  20. Kirk said on November 7th, 2006 at 9:35 pm

    that is, they’ve called it for strick­land. of course

  21. alex said on November 8th, 2006 at 1:40 am

    aggots! aggots! uckin’ odfor­saken aggots!

  22. Emma said on November 8th, 2006 at 2:07 pm

    Re: Elec­tion night food. This year, The Palace (for­merly “Bill’s Palace”) catered our elec­tion night fes­tiv­i­ties. Chicken on a stick. Beef on a stick. Pasta and spinach cheese dip. This may sound pathetic, but I was impressed.

  23. John said on November 8th, 2006 at 7:31 pm

    I had the good for­tune of cov­er­ing sev­eral elec­tions in Chicago, for the Sun-Times. When your story was done and signed off on, you’d grab the freight ele­va­tor down to the base­ment, walk out through the load­ing dock and into lower Michi­gan Avenue, and into the leg­endary Billy Goat Tav­ern. At first it would be Sun Time­sers on one side and Trib folk on the other, with a few polit­i­cal types mixed in. Grad­u­ally every­one would get together, swap­ping elec­tion night sto­ries. And drink­ing. Then peo­ple would start show­ing up with first edi­tions and we all pored over each oth­ers sto­ries, siz­ing them up.
    Great stuff. I’m no longer in the news­pa­per busi­ness full time. And elec­tion night is the night, more than any other, when I miss it the most.
    (A side mem­ory for any Chicagoans: I recall stand­ing at the Goat chat­ting with Cam Simp­son, a bull­dog of an inves­tiga­tive reporter. George Ryan had just been elected gov­er­nor, and Cam was giddy, and cocky, sug­gest­ing Ryan was going to be a field day for guys like him. I recall think­ing he was over­stat­ing the case a bit. And I recalled recall­ing that a month or so ago, when Ryan was sen­tenced to prison!)
    (A side, side mem­ory: There is a won­der­ful new book out about the Billy Goat. It’s called “A Chicago Tav­ern: A goat, a curse and the Amer­i­can Dream.)
    I’ll stop now.

  24. Bob said on November 8th, 2006 at 8:32 pm

    I don’t know if this will even work, but I’m gonna’ try to link a photo of the Billy Goat:

    If it doesn’t work, you’re wel­come to stop by my web site and check out some of the pho­tos from the sur­round­ing area.

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