Table of Contents
For my beautiful family,
thank you for your never-ending love and support.
MEGHAN
For my dad,
Robert Michael Schwartz
MICHAEL
Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride
Michael: This is stupid. Im in an airplane flying across the country to go spend a month driving back across the country in an RV with Meghan McCain, a woman I barely know, with the vague purpose of talking to people. About what? Politics, their lives, how they want the government to function, all of it with the idea that we will somehow gather enough material to write a book together and save the country. I mean, that is just pure stupid.
The thing is, I dont like talking to people. I barely talk to my wife and two kids. Why am I leaving them for a month to do this? I was perfectly happy to complain about America from my home in Connecticut. Thats what Id been doing, and it seemed to be working fine. Why did I agree to take my bitching and moaning on the road with this bubbly twenty-seven-year-old blond-haired, rich Republican chick Ive only met twice? How did this even happen?
The answer: Twitter and Ambien.
During Obamas first presidential campaign, I got invited to appear on MSNBC to make jokes. Youve seen these segments on cable news where a comedian comes on and makes a few lame jokes about whatevers in the headlines that day, and the host pretends to laugh while viewers think to themselves, That guys not funny. My job that evening was to be the guy who wasnt funny.
I dont remember the context, but Meghan McCains name somehow came up during the broadcast. Shed done or said something that flew in the face of Republican orthodoxy, as she often does, and I said to Lawrence ODonnell that Meghan was my favorite Republican.
A couple of years later, I was doing a talk show pilot for E! and I needed a guest. Meghan agreed to do the show via satellite as a favor to her agent, whose good friend is my agent. Meghan was vivacious, charming, and she sported a new less Republican haircut; afterwards my extremely liberal friend Joe asked if it would be all right with me if he married her. I gave my blessing. I figured Republicans are into arranged marriages, so it would probably be fine.
Meghan: The entire project, from idea to execution, happened in only a little over a month. Michael and I sold the book before we actually met in person. I know it may seem a little impulsive and extreme to agree to write a book with essentially a perfect stranger, but I have a tendency to be impulsive and make extreme decisions. I also believe in seizing the day and making the most of every single opportunity that ever crosses my path. One of the mantras I live by is Hunter S. Thompsons Buy the ticket, take the ride. I am a Hunter S. Thompson groupie, and if this particular scenario didnt encompass seizing the day, then I dont know what does. Besides, it sounded like a lot of fun, and I love combining anything that includes politics and having fun.
Michael: Right after E! decided they didnt need my talk show hosting services, I was up late one night nursing the onset of an existential crisis. Swirling in my brain were the facts that I would be turning forty in a few months, I didnt have a steady income, I didnt know what I was doing with my life, and I had a family to support, with no immediate prospects for employment. When I am feeling like this, I have one friend I turn to for support: Ambien.
The purpose of Ambien is to ease restless souls like mine into a deep and dreamless sleep. But Ambien is also great fun if you just want to get on the Internet and mess around for a few hours, which was my main intention. This is, of course, a mistake, the electronic equivalent of drinking and driving. Ambien relaxes the mind in such a way that you may find yourself saying or doing surprising things under its influence. For me, this normally involves writing nonsensical postings on my Twitter account while eating junk food. As a soon-to-be-forty married father of two, this is what passes for a crazy night.
Half an hour after taking the Ambien, I am elbow deep into a bag of Tostitos and cruising my Twitter account (1.7 million followers. Not bragging. Just saying. Okay, bragging. Follow me: @michaelianblack) when I notice that Meghan McCain has just posted something. I respond to her. She responds to me. Then the Ambien seizes my fingers and types the following: We should write a book together.
After a few moments, she writes back: Sure!
The exclamation mark makes me think she isnt serious because exclamation marks are rarely the sign of a serious thought. I write back: Im serious.
Around dawn, I wake up on the couch, covered in Tostitos crumbs, and stumble upstairs to join my wife, Martha, in bed. Something is troubling me, though, something I had perhaps done under the influence of a powerful sleeping agent. Just before falling back to sleep, I realize what it is: I think I have just proposed writing a book with a womana Republican womanI have never actually met, based on the dubious facts that I once said something nice about her on TV, she seems cool, and my friend Joe liked her new haircut. The woman in question is also the daughter of the other guy in the last presidential election. Moreover, Im pretty sure she said, Sure!
Shit.
Meghan: When Michael first popped the question on Twitter, I thought that this project could be a significant endeavorto try and showcase two entirely different perspectives and backgrounds in a civil and funny manner, while attempting to tackle the bigger-picture problems and issues currently facing this country. All of it was right up my alley and it was an easy decision to make. Attempting to fuse two different perspectives and worlds is pretty much what I spend my life attempting to do, so thats why I said yes so quickly.
I loved the notion of teaming up with someone I barely knew and probably would not have gotten a chance to work with or really know in any significant way if we had not elected to embark on this project. We wanted to use ourselves as guinea pigs in order to look at what is going on in Americapolitically and culturally. Our country is going through unbelievably difficult and tenuous times, and it sometimes feels like we are becoming more polarized and angry at each other than ever before. There had to be a way to make a connection between divergent points of view, and to then take that unity out on the road as a way to hear Americans through fresh ears.
More than anything, I was enticed by the spontaneity of this plan. Ever since the election, I have had a jones to be back out on the road, so the chance to go where no one has gone before while using our fledgling relationship as an experiment in bipartisan mixology was a golden and bizarre opportunity to try something new and unique. I needed no convincing. It really was as simple as, Sure!
Michael: So here I am, about a month later, crammed into a coach seat somewhere above the checkerboard squares of the American heartland. From up here, the country looks vast and peaceful. I cannot see any foreclosure notices, no methamphetamine labs. There arent any televisions on this plane, so I cant watch Left screaming at Right on cable news. No Internet. No Drudge, no
