Matt Labash - Fly Fishing with Darth Vader: And Other Adventures with Evangelical Wrestlers, Political Hitmen, and Jewish Cowboys

And Other Adventures with Evangelical Wrestlers,
Political Hitmen, and Jewish Cowboys

MATT LABASH

SIMON & SCHUSTER
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Copyright 2010 by Matt Labash

All pieces previously appeared in The Weekly Standard except
End of the Rogue, which was first published by Salon .

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First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition February 2010

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Designed by Esther Paradelo

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Labash, Matt.

Fly fishing with Darth Vader : and other adventures with evangelical wrestlers, political hitmen, and Jewish cowboys / Matt Labash.

p. cm.

1. United StatesCivilization1970Anecdotes. 2. United StatesPolitics and government20012009Anecdotes. 3. United StatesPolitics and government19932001Anecdotes. 4. United StatesSocial conditions1980Anecdotes. 5. PoliticiansUnited StatesAnecdotes. 6. CelebritiesUnited StatesAnecdotes. 7. Political corruptionUnited StatesAnecdotes. 8. Political cultureUnited StatesAnecdotes. 9. Labash, MattAnecdotes. 10. JournalistsUnited StatesBiographyAnecdotes. I. Weekly standard (New York, N.Y.) II. Title.

E169.12.L25 2010

973.9dc22 2009033330

ISBN 978-1-4391-5997-2

ISBN 978-1-4391-7010-6(ebook)

To Alana

No one likes a fellow who is all rogue, but well forgive him almost anything if there is warmth of human sympathy underneath his rogueries. The immortal types of comedy are just such men.

W.C. Fields

I will be a model prisoner, as I have been a model citizen.

Edwin Edwards

Detroit
The City Where the Sirens Never Sleep

Yippie Kay Oy Vey
Kinky Friedman Runs for Governor

Dodgeball, the New Phys Ed,
and the Wussification of America

End of the Rogue
The Pirate Kingfish Savors His Last Taste of Freedom

Arnold ber Alles
The Wild, Final Days of the Schwarzenegger Campaign

A Rakes Progress
Marion Barry Bares (Almost) All

Goodbye Babylon
Jesus Bleeds on Satans Music

Hitting Heathens with Chairs
George South, Evangelical Wrestler

A Year of Firsts and Lasts
Edlene LaFrance Remembers Her
Husband, Murdered by Mohamed Atta

Making It
A Run for the Iraqi Border with Christopher Hitchens

Riding with the Kossacks
The Daily Kos Celebrates Someone It LovesItself

Rev Gotta Eat
Al Sharptons Hungry for a Place at the Table

Forced Funtivities
The Infantilization of Corporate America

Hunting Bubba
Bagging White Men and Eating
Deer Turds with Mudcat Saunders

And the Band Plays On
The Music of New Orleans Is Still
Alive, but Will the City Ever Recover?

Within minutes of finishing reading this book, I predict youll be writing a check ($19.95, plus S&H) for your charter membership in the Matt Labash Fan Club. The writing is that good. But lets say youre short on time and instead of actually reading every chapter, you simply want to know what the author is like. Fair enough. Let me sum him up for you:

Midway through 2003, the voters of California tired of their drab, inept governor and decided to trade him for an entertaining and inept version. For journalists, the idea of Arnold Schwarzenegger running a state was too much to resist, so Matt and I flew to Los Angeles to cover the story. On election night, we headed to the ballroom of the Century Plaza Hotel to watch Arnold declare victory.

Like most political events, it was a disappointment. The room was cavernous and hot, packed shoulder to shoulder with frustrated reporters and camera crews, none of whom could get within six sheriffs deputies of the new governor. I shifted from foot to foot, sweating and scribbling in my notebook, desperately trying to find some color in a surprisingly colorless night.

Schwarzenegger was doing the winners dance at the front of the room. Behind him stood a set of risers populated with what appeared to be his wifes entire extended family, rows and rows of Kennedys, each with the same chin and teeth, an Irish Catholic version of the Boys from Brazil. In the middle of this sea of familiar jawlines stood a lone man in an Italian suit with a glass of bourbon in his hand. It was Matt Labash. He was staring down at Arnolds bald spot and grinning. A purloined Secret Service pin glittered in his lapel.

To this day I have no idea where he got the pin or how he wound up on stage. (Trade secrets.) But I wasnt surprised that he did. Nobody gets closer to the story than Matt Labash. And nobody has a better time doing it.

Matt doesnt write for the most widely read publication in America; hes unlikely to win a Pulitzer Prize for a nine-part series on congressional earmark reform. He doesnt care, and its not his beat. His subject is the individual, and thats what he writes about, more deeply than anyone I know.

To see him report is to watch a man in a kind of purposeful trance. Nothing distracts him from the goal of knowing more. I once saw him walk alone, without hesitation or even a flashlight, into the darkened, fetid, and dangerous New Orleans Convention Center after Hurricane Katrina, something cops with riot guns were unwilling to do. (In fairness to the police, I didnt follow him in, either.) When the second war in Iraq broke out, some journalists embedded with the military and many others covered the action from their camera positions in Qatar. Matt entered the country overland by Jeep, armed only with a half-drunk Christopher Hitchens.

Ill never forget walking past Matts office at the Weekly Standard one afternoon in the late 1990s. He was on the phone with a reluctant source, an old friend of Bill Clintons from Arkansas, as I remember. Matts side of the conversation went like this:

Look, youre uncomfortable talking. I understand. No shame in that. But I think you know its the right thing to do. Dont take my word for it. Lets bring this to a higher authority. Lets pray about it.

At this point, phone to his ear, he fell to his knees on the floor of his office.

By the time I returned with a cup of coffee from the break room, he had the story.

It dawns on me that what I just wrote might make Matt sound like an ordinary sleazeball reporter, someone willing to say anything to make the sale. Not so. In order to be slick you have to be shallow. Matt, by contrast, immerses himself so completely in the worlds of his subjects that he almost always winds up empathetic. Anyone can write the Al-Sharpton-is-a-pudgy-race-baiting-phony piece, for instance, and many have. But the caricature is only partly accurate. No man is the sum of his press conferences. Theres more, and its almost always fascinating. Matt has the tenacity to capture all dimensions.