Wednesday, June 04, 2003

Too far for me

There were about 45 seconds left in the commercial break, while viewers in Des Moines and Denver and San Diego were seeing a tasteful commercial for a feminine hygiene product, and I was dreading what was coming next. A handsome young production assistant chatted amiably with the host, and both his and her perfectly coiffed images were reflected on a monitor just outside of the range of the cameras.

I had already done my part, 14 minutes, more or less, of statistics, impact statements and practiced soundbites honed over the past two weeks, as the woman seated next to me on the set and I had made the rounds of radio talk shows from coast to coast. In the next segment, the focus would be on her. I just had to nod occasionally, perhaps amplify a point or two, smile for the camera. That didn't concern me a bit. I knew exactly what she would say.

What I didn't know is how she would say it, but I had a pretty good idea. Despite having the benefit of an Ivy League education, despite serving as the head of a major, national advocacy organization, despite being a respected and sought-after speaker, Elaine was a terrible interview subject.

Give her a prepared text, a stack of paper or a TelePrompTer, and she was golden; she could make you laugh, cry, open your wallet, phone your congressman. But ask her to extemporize and within five minutes, your ears were bleeding.

Elaine had an unfortunate speech pattern, one I was pretty sure no one had ever pointed out to her. Even on a subject she knew backwards and forwards, her answer to a question would be interrupted, every three or four words, by "you know?". Every three or four words.

A verbal tic, like nearly everyone has in one form or another. They're usually barely noticeable in casual conversation, becoming part of the rhythm, the background noise of chat. But in an interview situation, they are deadly. Something about the focus provided by a microphone or a camera just draws them right out to the forefront. You can't notice anything but "you know?", "you know?", "you know?".

I'd cringed, winced, grimaced and rolled my eyes dozens of times over the past two weeks but, since we were sequestered on nearly opposite sides of the country in different studios, Elaine and I had never been face to face until that day. After the first few radio gigs, I'd called the communications director of Elaine's organization, an old friend.

"You've got to coach her," I implored, "get her some interview training, something. Or you've got to replace her on this campaign." Joe waffled. It's a hard thing to do, hard but necessary. One of the most difficult tasks for any publicist is to select and groom a spokesperson for your organization. It's harder still when the best person for the job isn't your executive director. And you have to be the one to tell her.

So there we were, having arrived in Atlanta just a few hours before, sitting in comfortable chairs in a too-warm studio. I briefly considered saying something in the few seconds remaining before the red light came back on but immediately dismissed the idea. There was no point making her more nervous than she might already be. That would only make things worse, you know? (Damn! Now I was doing it, if only in my mind.)

As I feared, the show resumed and the very first question to Elaine, a softball, elicited a two-minute monologue punctuated with her unique style. The second question yielded the same. By the third and final query of the segment, I was thinnly smiling with gritted teeth, barely able to restrain myself from leaping up and strangling her, shouting "No! They don't know, Elaine! They don't know! That's why you're here! To tell them!"

But I didn't. I nodded, amplified, smiled and barely broke a sweat. The show ended, the host thanked us both for making the trip and passed us off to the dashing PA, promising a tour of the broadcast facility. And I breathed deeply, satisfied that the message we'd come to deliver had reached an international audience, albeit in a slightly mangled form.

Elaine and I went our separate ways after that. My contract was up and I returned to St. Louis and a regular routine of writing union agit-prop and dry technical manuals. Elaine did one more national TV gig after that, a similiarly befuddling five minutes on Nightline. Ted Koppel never flinched, but I could sense he wanted to throttle her too.

I hadn't thought of that in quite a while. Today, though, I heard Elaine on the radio, chatting with a talk show host casually and with an elan I would never have suspected from her. Her every thought seemed clear, her points were crisp, her answers to questions concise. She said "you know?" exactly once, that I noticed, and it made perfect sense in its context. It was not a tic, it was a challenge.

It took me a few minutes to unearth Joe's number in my Rolodex but I found it and called to find out how he'd finally managed to stand up to Elaine, finally convinced her to take media training or, at least, to practice some dry runs before going on the air.

"What did it take?" I asked.

"I married her," Joe said.

Just so. That may explain why, only occasionally, I'm frustrated in my job, in my ability to completely and professionally project a positive public face for my company. There are just some tactics I'm not willing to employ.