When the bums ask what’s happening the question sounds yearningly metaphysical or like a child stirring from a dream. Their need to know, at any rate, is tonally different than that of a big-league journalist. And still we’ve got beaucoup reporters doing their insane pantomime of sincerity in the parking lot. It’s like the Hitler tryouts in that Mel Brooks movie The Producers. None of the TV people have budged from their encampment in the parking lot, and I realize they’re operating under the strictest criterion of relevance—every camera is focused in the same direction—and that their sense of
...more
