Deadline (52 page)

“No, sorry. It’s personal. Not for publication.” The moment Jerry heard this, he got up and took a walk. Jake appreciated it.

“Can you talk off the record?” Harmes asked.

“Just between us, right?”
As if there were some other meaning to off the record.
Jake felt a little silly.

“Right.”

“Okay … my daughter was given condoms and what amounted to encouragement to have sex by a school nurse and a teacher. I went down there to … talk to the teacher and find out what was going on. I didn’t like what I saw.”

“And … what about your daughter?”

Jake hesitated, but the guy was in Los Angeles and no one else was going to know. “Again, off the record, she’s pregnant and has the HIV.”

“No kidding?” The voice conveyed a sense of pleasure in having discovered something big.

This guy’s starting to bug me.
“Listen, Frank, I’m pretty busy and to be honest, I don’t feel like talking about this. It’s pretty draining stuff. And I’m still getting lots of grief on my column. I need to go.”

“Just a couple more questions. Why—”

“Sorry, gotta go. Good to talk with you.”

Jake hung up and sat motionless. He was offended at this reporters insensitivity. What did he care about Carly? To him she was only an interesting dynamic, a piece in a puzzle, whose misery had been for him just a source of stimulation. Jake wondered how often he had grabbed hold of people’s tragedies with equal pleasure, using someone else’s pain to fuel a story.

Frank would be frustrated to have to sit on the information. Jake was just glad he understood the business well enough to have stipulated “off the record.” Too many people depended on a journalist’s sense of discretion to leave out what was obviously harmful to innocent people. Jake learned long ago such discretion couldn’t be depended upon. Sometimes it didn’t exist.

Thinking back he remembered several cases where he passed on personal information that had made for a great story, without regard for others’ feelings. When people had been hurt, he was sorry but felt they were overreacting. The news was the news, and people had the right to know. More particularly, the journalist had the right—and the duty—to tell.

Jake spent the afternoon trying to put out fires. Someone had organized a phone campaign to hound him. They were all saying the same things, using the same language, as though reading from a script. There must have been a mailing or a mass fax. People who hadn’t even read the column were referring to someone else’s summary and interpretation of it, but whenever Jake asked where it came from they wouldn’t tell him. Some worked at Planned Parenthood, some were school teachers, several were NEA executives, including Barbara Betcher, who said she and her group couldn’t believe Jake had been used as “a tool of the religious right.” He had done “untold damage” through his “irresponsible” column.

Jake was struck with the sheer arrogance of these responses. Whenever he would ask for any hard evidence or statistics to refute what he’d said, invariably they had none to offer and seemed offended or mystified that he was even asking.

One leader of a local feminist group called and warned him that unless he printed a retraction they would be forced to withdraw their invitation to speak at a businesswomen’s breakfast a week from Saturday. He’d forgotten about the breakfast and didn’t feel like going anyway. Because she was surly, and Jake was weary, he couldn’t resist pulling her chain.

“So you’re threatening me, is that it? I write one column you don’t like, and I’m dog meat? If I don’t parrot your creed, say just what you want, then you break the commitment you made, what … six months ago? How would you distinguish this phone call from intolerance? Or an attempt at censorship?”

She went ballistic. Jake pulled the phone eight inches from his ear. Sandy, eyebrows raised, heard every word, including a few that made her blush. When the caller finally ran out of breath Jake said, “To tell you the truth, I wasn’t looking forward to your breakfast anyway. Josephine’s makes runny omelets, and I’m tired of those flaky little croissants. Besides, I don’t know if I want to identify with a group that throws a tizzy fit when a journalist chooses to exercise the first amendment!”

Just as she was launching a new barrage, Jake hung up, a triumphant smile on his face. He grabbed a black marking pen, opened his appointment book to next Saturday, and put a thick line through the speaking engagement. Then he picked up a pencil and wrote below it, “Ask Carly out to breakfast.”

His mail stacks were three times the usual size. Everyone who generally loved his columns hated this one, and everyone who generally hated them loved this one. He felt somewhat betrayed by those who would turn on him for just one column that he felt was accurate and fair, as if one aberration from the accepted dogma represented a permanent fall from grace unless he recanted.

He was equally amazed at those he’d offended for years who now rallied to his defense and didn’t seem to hold his previous columns against him. Jake felt his world being turned upside down.

The next day Jake had been at his desk almost three hours when Clarence wandered over to him, holding masthead down what Jake assumed was the morning
Trib.

“How’s my man doin’ today?” He slapped a greeting on Jake’s hand.

“I’m surviving. Barely.” Jake heard the battle fatigue in his own voice.

“I came to ask if I can take my hero to lunch. Writing that column makes anything you did in Vietnam pale in comparison. Plus, I’ve done some reconnaissance, and my sources say you could use a body guard. The word is, there’s some snipers setting up right in this newsroom. I don’t mean to worry you, but I’ve seen some M-14s and a 40-millimeter grenade launcher aimed at your cubicle. And radar has picked up enemy aircraft from the NEA, ACLU, NOW, and NARAL. Just stay close to me, man. They wouldn’t dare hit a black man. From a distance they’d assume I was a liberal!”

Clarence’s warm smile and hearty slap on the back were truly welcome.

“Lunch sounds great, Clarence.”

“Good. They’ll expect us to take the elevator, but we’ll double back and duck down the stairs. Seriously, Jake, I figured you could use some company.” Clarence was suddenly solemn. “And this isn’t going to help things.”

He flipped over the newspaper in his hand and flopped it on Jake’s desk. It was the
Los Angeles Times.

“D3,” Clarence said.

Jake hadn’t given another thought to the call from the
Times.
“The guy didn’t portray me as a hero, huh? It was a three-minute interview, with a minute and a half off the record. I didn’t think I gave him enough ammo to do me much damage.

Clarence gave a blank look. He obviously wanted to be there when Jake read it. Jake’s heart raced.
What did this guy say? He was nice enough, knew Leonard—he didn’t sound antagonistic.

Even as he thought it, Jake kicked himself for being so naive. How many people had he won over with a congenial voice and agreeable interview style, only to crucify them in print?

There it was. “Columnist’s Family Problems Cause Belief Shift.”

No. No, he didn’t. He couldn’t have.

Popular
Oregon Tribune
columnist Jake Woods, syndicated in forty western newspapers, including the
Los Angeles Times
, surprised his readers two days ago with a column attacking Planned Parenthood.

“It was mean-spirited and totally false,” Vicki Noonan of California Planned Parenthood said. “It’s amazing a journalist could just repeat this right-wing propaganda as if it were true.”

When I asked Mr. Woods to explain his position, he said he now believes it is “morally wrong to pass out condoms, even if doing so saves the lives of young people.” His explanation was simply “they shouldn’t be sexually active.” He also said, “I believe public schools are acting irresponsibly by giving attention to sex education.” In the interview he referred to some sort of personal “conversion” that has influenced his thinking.

Woods has been a firm supporter of schools teaching young people how to avoid pregnancy and STDs, but in his controversial column he said, “recent events have helped me to see how wrong I was.”

What were these recent events, which are not specified in the column? Woods says they involve his teenager daughter, who became sexually active, got pregnant, and contracted the HIV. Woods believes the public school and its teachers, as well as Planned Parenthood, are to blame for what happened to his daughter.

Another Planned Parenthood spokesperson, Maria Krueger, said, “I’m genuinely sorry for this personal tragedy in Mr. Woods’ family. But instead of attacking those who are doing the most to help, I hope Mr. Woods will use his influence to help other children avoid the hazards of unsafe sex.”

Jake sat in perplexed silence. After ten seconds he said in a shaky voice, “Clarence. All that about my daughter? It was all off the record, every word. I clarified that two or three times, and he agreed to it. He lied to me. He betrayed my confidence … and I’ve betrayed my daughter. My God, Clarence, she was suicidal about this thing. Now it’s all out in the
Times.
What am I going to do?”

His anger toward the
Times
reporter burned hot, but for the first time he could remember his broken heart laid a stronger hold on him than his anger.

Clarence knelt down, there was no place to sit, and looked at him sympathetically.

“And he twisted the rest of what I said. The words, most of them, were mine, but they’re completely out of context. Conversion was his word, not mine. How could anyone with a conscience do this? He set me up, talking about Leonard, made me feel like he wasn’t going to trash me. Why didn’t I tape it? I should have taped it, then I could call the
Times’s
publisher and play it for him and get this jerk fired.”

Even as he said it, he knew there was no chance of that. The reporter would say he didn’t remember or didn’t understand. He’d be sorry, but say Jake should have been more clear. It would be the word of one reporter on the wrong side of a position against another on the right side—or rather, “just doing his job.” This was a reporter who would never need anything from Jake again. He’d gotten his story, scored his points. He didn’t need Jake to like him.

“Jake, have you ever violated someone’s confidence to make a good story?”

“Maybe if it wasn’t completely clear, or if it was really necessary, but not like this.”

“Difference in degree, but not in kind?”

Jake shrugged and nodded lamely. He did understand, and it bothered him that he did. There was a built-in protection in the shared values and politics of his profession. Once he’d stepped outside those shared values, he’d become fair game. That was his problem, and he’d have to live with it. What he couldn’t handle was Carly suffering for his naiveté.

Clarence was sympathetic. “Even the bad ones don’t usually pull that on other journalists—sort of honor among thieves, I guess. Usually it’s just done to mortals, not fellow members of the pantheon. You don’t want to cross someone in a position to throw lightning bolts hack at you. I had it happen once myself—the off the record thing, I mean. The twisting and out of context stuff, well, that’s par for the course. That goes without saying, given my political incorrectness. I guess you haven’t been on this side of things enough to be on guard, have you? Well, it could be worse. Remember that hospital chaplain that got fired when Jamiesen printed his off the record support of the ’no special rights for homosexuals’ ballot measure? At least you’ve still got your job.”

Jake didn’t answer, and right now having his job was no consolation. He just sat there staring, thinking of Carly’s fifth-grade flub-up in the Christmas play and wondering how he was going to explain this to her. And to Janet.

“Journalism’s like fishing, Jake. It’s a lot of fun as long as you’re holding the pole. The fish’s point of view is a bit different, isn’t it? Come on. Let’s go for a walk.”

Clarence’s coal-black hand made a striking impression on the shoulder of Jake’s off-white sweater.

“It’s times like this when you need to get as far away from a newspaper as possible, just so you can breathe some clean air.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

T
he holiday music from the Mustang’s stereo and the bell ringers along the sidewalk gave way to the business-as-usual sounds of the newsroom, which didn’t change for any holiday season, other than an occasional card or wreath taped to the side of someone’s terminal.

Jake had gone to Carly and apologized profusely about the fiasco with the
Times
story. She was embarrassed, but said, “I don’t really know anyone in Los Angeles. I guess it doesn’t matter that much what they think about me.”

To Jake it mattered and he had groveled, but Carly was surprisingly quick to forgive him. If only he could forgive himself. If only he had it to do over, he swore he’d never violate his daughter’s trust again.

Jake pawed through his huge pile of mail, sorting all the materials from manila envelopes he’d received the last two weeks. The first batch was all from the Pacific Northwest in response to the original
Tribune
printing of the “condom” column. The second batch was from all over the west, from Colorado, Wyoming, Arizona, New Mexico, and lots from California. Those had started coming in a week later, after syndication prints. The response was phenomenal. While an inner voice said “don’t be a fool; leave it alone,” he felt compelled to come back to this subject that had buried him in reader responses.

He jotted down a rough outline of items he wanted to address, then hunkered down in his chair and rattled off a lot of words quickly, as if firing from a bunker. Twenty minutes later he stopped. He pressed the “home” key, popping the cursor back to the beginning of the column, and eagerly started reading.

An interesting thing happened after my recent column about condom distribution being a poor solution to teen pregnancy and STDs. I received many supportive letters, and innumerable copies of studies and reports validating my points. But I also received the largest number of name-calling letters I’ve ever seen. Some of these names intrigued me. One was “religious bigot.” This struck me as strange, since I’m not a religious person, and there was nothing religious in the column.

Another was “homophobe.” I reread my column, since I didn’t remember saying anything about homosexuality. In fact, I hadn’t! Given this level of interest and agitation, I’ve decided to put on my flak jacket and tackle this subject again.

Several years ago our surgeon general made a classic statement. (I’m embarrassed to say that at the time I defended her for it.) She said, “Driver education tells kids what to do in the front of the car, and we should be telling them what to do in the back of the car.”

She referred, of course, not to abstaining from sex, but to using condoms when having sex. (It wasn’t too much later the president’s AIDS czar blamed our problems on “Victorian morality.” Huh?)

What doctors know and our children should too is that wearing a condom takes a few bullets out of the gun’s cylinder. But when you’re playing Russian roulette, eventually the one or two bullets left in the chamber will kill you. The solution is not to better the odds in Russian roulette. It is to stop playing it. That means sexual abstinence, as curiously offensive as that concept seems to be.

Four days ago I watched the television program “Prime Time Live.” It featured schools that arrange for female students to have Norplant (a five-year birth control device) surgically implanted beneath their skin, without parental permission. What caught my attention was that they interviewed three eighth-grade girls who were sexually active. The interviewer asked if they would do anything different if they could start over. All three said they would wait until they were married to have sex. They were all very sorry they hadn’t.

Amazingly, the interviewer did not follow up on the girls’ deep regrets at their lost virginity. It was the perfect opportunity—totally missed because of the program’s focus—to feature the concept some call “secondary virginity.” If sexual activity for teens is psychologically harmful and physically dangerous, and studies confirm it is, we must offer them a chance to go back, to start over with new values and commitments. We should offer them help in developing their self-control, help them to “just say no” to sex as we help them to “just say no” to drugs. And to realize that even if you said “yes” before, you can say “no” from now on.

Recently Hollywood has gotten behind the Russian roulette “safe sex” programs. Yes, the same Hollywood which routinely shows teenagers hopping in the sack with each other. The same Hollywood which makes millions on teen sex and violence films. Given its track record, when Hollywood supports one side in this debate, perhaps it should be enough to convince us to throw our lot with the other side. (Why is it so politically fashionable to be concerned about polluting rivers but so unfashionable to be concerned about polluting minds?)

Various abstinence centered programs have sprung up across the country, and a number of readers sent me copies of the curricula. Much of it looks very good. And it gives students a real choice. If they want to, they can still choose the Hollywood way, the Planned Parenthood way. But if they do, at least they should know what they’re choosing. They should know the profound physical and psychological risks. They should also know there’s a better way. They should understand the advantages of “saved sex” over “safe sex.”

Alley cats and rodents engage in sex with any available partner and no thought of consequences. What raises us above animals is our capacity for understanding, insight and foresight. We understand how life works, that there are long-range consequences of our decisions. There is not only today. There is tomorrow. Perhaps it’s time more of us—both parents and children—learn to live not just for today, but for tomorrow.

Jake sat back, curious at what he’d read. He’d written instinctively, without much pause for thought. The thought was there all right, but it had formulated on its own, simmering beneath the surface. The full shape and intensity of it hadn’t been clear until Jake read the words that emerged from him. For some reason, they frightened him.

He pressed the word count button. 750. Good. Now he could go back and edit, polish it up, add a few lines. Maybe make it sound a little less … whatever. He’d better make it good. Winston and Jess weren’t going to be happy he was addressing this subject again, even though it got a huge response before, which was normally what editors wanted from a column.

For the next hour he whittled away At 11:46 he pressed the save and send buttons, and the column whipped through the network wires to wait briefly for Winston.

At 12:10 Jake relaxed, surprised Winston hadn’t called him in. He glanced down the aisle to his office, and his heart skipped a beat as he saw Jess standing across the desk from Winston. There could be any number of reasons, Jake realized. Why did he think they were discussing him?

Suddenly he felt a hand on his right shoulder and heard a voice saying, “Is this the Reverend Jake Woods?” Jake knew what the face would look like before he turned and saw it.

“CLABERN!” Jake called Clarence by his computer handle. “What’s up? And what’s with the Reverend? Come to confess your sins?”

“Neither of us has time for that. Actually, I just read your column.” Clarence whistled. “Man, you got everybody talkin’. I heard somebody say you must have had an out of body experience after the accident or something. Like you met God and now you’re trying to make him like you. Reverend Woods, that’s what they’re calling you.” Clarence was clearly enjoying this.

“Why? Just for talking common sense? What’s that got to do with being religious?”

“Hey, don’t get chaffed with me, Rev. You’re preachin’ to the choir. I’m on your team, remember? I just wish I’d written that piece. I’ve been trying to figure out how to work that kind of stuff into a sports column. Got a few ideas to bounce off you. How about we talk over lunch?”

“Great.” Jake looked down to see Jess and Winston still talking intently. “I feel like a drive. Ever been to Lou’s Diner?”

“Lou’s Diner? Never heard of it. Which makes me a little suspicious.”

“You’re in for a treat. It’s on me.”

They small-talked till they got to Lou’s and ordered. Rory was delighted to see Jake. When he heard Clarence was a sports columnist he told him all about Cecily’s soccer and Robert’s water polo, and how he and Maria loved to watch their kids’ games, and how the whole family was going to be together all day for Christmas and it was his favorite time of year. In turn, Clarence told Rory all about his wife and kids. Jake had never asked Clarence much about them. Finally, the demands of work pulled Rory from the much-preferred socializing. He left to cook the order, but only after he brought over a cappuccino and latté, on the house.

“Refreshing guy. I like him.” Clarence said. “This place is like a throwback to the past.”

“The diner time forgot.”

“Yeah, exactly. It reminds me of a conversation with Jess just the other day. We were discussing my goal to get out of sports columns into political or general or any place I could talk about some serious stuff. He told me nobody doubts my skills, but they question some of my beliefs and politics, though he said it differently—I forget how—so it would still sound open-minded.

“Anyway, Jess looked at me and said, ’Aren’t you afraid of these religious right groups and all their political goals?’ I replied—and this probably seals my professional fate at the
Trib
—’No, why should I be?’

“He looked at me like I was crazy and said, ’They’re convinced their way is the right way, they’re so dogmatic, and they’re so … intolerant.’ First, I pointed out that those holding the opposite positions are just as convinced they’re right and just as dogmatic. I asked him, ’So is dogmatism and intolerance made better just because you don’t believe in God, or made worse because you do?’ Then I said something that never occurred to me till that moment.”

“What? If it’s good, I’ll steal it from you.”

“You’re welcome to it. I said, I’ve read through the letters from Focus on the Family that lay out all the values they support. I’ve read through the political goals and proposed legislation the conservative Christian groups have come up with. And the truth is, if they got their way on every single thing they want—and of course they never will—but if they did, then you know what the bottom line would be? America would just look a lot more like the country I was born in than the country it’s become.’ So I told Jess, ’If you’re asking me which country I prefer, the answer is, the one I was born in.”

“Never thought of it that way.”

“Me neither. Of course, the America I grew up in was far from perfect, and the religious conservatives aren’t right about everything. But when you compare their agenda and the country it gave us to the country the secular liberals have given us the last thirty years, well, which would your children be safer in? Which did they get a better education in? Which one did more families stay together in, spend time together, communicate and become close knit? Which let the black community pull itself up by its bootstraps and compete and get good jobs, like my daddy and uncles did, and which has lulled so many blacks into a permanent underclass? Sure, there was a lot of racism, but there still is. We’re being treated differently, and our children are in gangs, killing each other, because they’ve got no incentives, no direction, no role models. No fathers. And they won’t even let us use our tax money to send our children to decent schools.”

Clarence had talked like this before, but for the first time Jake felt that much of what he was saying was right on target.

“That’s what I mean about sitting in this place, Jake. It’s like it brings back the values of days past, when we were growing up. The days of Ozzie and Harriet and Ward and June Cleaver and Donna Reed. You know, before Freddy Kruegger, Madonna, and Howard Stern. It’s a world I wish my kids could grow up in, instead of walking through weapons detectors at school and getting inundated with R-rated movies and being fitted for birth control devices when half of them can’t even read by the time they graduate.”

“Does all this relate to your column idea?”

“Yeah, it does. It’s the whole sports role model thing. The best athletes are black, let’s face it.” Jake smiled at Clarence’s directness.

“Ten percent of the population and eighty percent of the NBA, with an occasional white guy who beats the genetic odds. Meanwhile the schools these guys went to are passing out condoms and Norplant and you name it with no parental permission, just like you said in your column. Not many credible people are showing the alternative of responsibility, abstinence, saving yourself for marriage. Well, the guys in sports are the role models. Nobody’s more credible than they are. Every boy wants to be like them. And make no mistake, if these boys aren’t taught something radically different than what they’re growing up with now, they’re going to be dead or in jail, and they’re going to take down a lot of women and children and other young men with them. I want to challenge these athletes to bring this message back to the ’hood.”

“Are enough athletes living that way themselves to convince kids to do the same?”

“More and more. You don’t have as much Wilt Chamberlain and Magic Johnson stuff going on now. More out of fear than anything, for some of the guys, but fear’s better than nothing. It’s a start. And you’ve got guys like A. C. Green and some others. But we need three or four in every city, with every pro team. Do you realize what that could do for boys, black and white? Anyway, I’m thinking of raising up that challenge in my Sunday column after Christmas. Maybe the family aspect of Christmas will grease the skids. What do you think?”