Given my affection for the man,
the least I could do was to show up to cover Clinton's first quadruple bypass
WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY
By Gersh Kuntzman
Newsweek
Updated: 12:17 p.m. ET Sept. 7, 2004
Sept. 7 - My day on Bill Clinton death watch went from
the ridiculous to the even more ridiculous.
It started on Monday morning,
when I joined the media encampment outside of the New York-Presbyterian Hospital
building where the 42nd president would shortly have his chest cut open, his
heart stopped, arteries ripped from his chest and legs and sewn onto his ticker,
be respirated through a breathing tube and, hopefully, be available for
questions before Happy Hour.
Most of my media colleagues were there
because they had to be there, even though there was apparently nothing
out-of-the-ordinary about Bill Clinton's quadruple bypass (an ABC News reporter
was heard asking his producer "What do you want me to talk about for a minute
and 10 seconds? Nothing's happening yet"). But I was there because I wanted to
be there, to witness history (would Clinton's heart come back on? Could he
actually listen to the doctor's orders to refrain from fast food and
sex?).
Full disclosure: I've always had an affection for the former
president. After all, I remember having a good job throughout his tenure (with
regular annual raises, even), only to get laid off about a month before he left
office. I remained unemployed for the first two years of the Bush administration
before finally taking a job that doesn't fully utilize my skills. (I'm the
economy in microcosm.) I also admired Clinton for how he democratized the office
of the president. Before Clinton, you pretty much needed to serve two tours in
combat, get wounded three times in battle and then spend 20 years in the Senate
before you could even be considered for president. Now, any draft-dodging,
lying, glad-handing Baby Boomer can do it.
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So
given my affection for the man, the least I could do was to show up to cover
Clinton's first quadruple bypass.
I knew it was a big event, because
there were 10 satellite trucks idling in front of the hospital all day long
(makes sense, I guess: I'm covering heart surgery and I'm getting lung disease).
Part of the interest, I think, was the timing. That was, after all, one hell of
a Republican convention: The day after President Bush accepted his party's
nomination, Clinton checked into a hospital with chest pains. The day after
that Teresa Heinz Kerry checked into a hospital with stomach pains.
Clearly, I wasn't the only liberal in the country suffering Zell de
mer.
After standing around griping with the other reporters (this is
pretty much standard operating procedure when reporters are thrust en masse—and
probably explains why news coverage is so damn negative), I started doing what
reporters do when they're bored: I interviewed the man on the street.
The
first man on the street turned out to be another reporter (I didn't recognize
him because he had been reading an actual book). But the second man on the
street turned out to be Debbie David, who was a reporter's dream. Without even
being asked, she paused in front of the hospital, crossed herself and screamed,
"Mr. Clinton, please get better! God loves you. I love you!"
David later
told me that God wants Clinton to fully recover from the heart surgery so that
he can get back on the campaign trail and help Sen. John Kerry, whom, according
to David, God prefers in this election because he's "for the
people."
David said she knew this because "I see things."
I asked
her what she saw in me and she said, "You have to take better care of yourself.
I see things in you." Things, I gulped. What things? "Never mind," she said.
"Just drink more water."
We stood around for a few more hours (yes, this
is what reporters do 80 percent of the time) until finally, a hospital
administrator told us that the hero doctors would answer a few of our pathetic
little questions in a few more hours.
Finally, the media was led into a
conference room where we were once again reminded of why we're low-paid,
ink-stained wretches and why doctors are really really respected, make lots of
money and can act as condescending as they want.
A doctor named Craig
Smith was instantly dislikable, even though he'd saved the president's
life.
Smith
had the kind of bedside manner that would measure perfectly well on the doctor
scale, but not even reach the human scale. He kept saying condescending,
Master-of-the-Universe, "I'm God"-like things such as, "This was just routine
quadruple bypass surgery" or "I don't think there's any reason to go into it. It
was routine heart surgery." (We know. We know. It's not rocket science.
Except...it is rocket science to stop a human heart for 73
minutes!)
One reporter asked why it was necessary to stop the president's
heart, and Smith sneered that Clinton's "anatomical idiosyncrasies made it much
more simple to do it with his heart stopped." Touche. And he even mocked the
media when one well-read health reporter asked him about possible mental side
effects of the heart-stopping procedure.
"Look," Smith sneered. "The
neurocognitive effects of cardio-pulmonary bypass goes far beyond what you want
to discuss here today." (Yes, we have short attention spans, but do you have to
be such a jerk? I mean, your epidermis is showing. Ha ha!)
And Smith
confirmed that he wasn't a human being when a reporter asked if Clinton would
need nursing help in the post-operative phase of his recovery. "A nurse?" Smith
asked. "There's no reason for him to need a nurse." Did it ever occur to the
good doctor that Bill Clinton might want a nurse?
Meanwhile, one
of my colleagues kept screaming, "Does this mean his fast food days are over?
Does this mean his fast-food days are OVER?" Clearly, she was trying to get a
cute sound-bite out of the boring doctors, but they weren't playing.
Too
bad, because of all the endless coverage of Clinton's surgery, very little will
be written or said about the role that junk food played in landing him—or the
estimated 300,000 other Americans who annually require coronary bypass
operations—on the surgeon's table. Yet even as they prescribe a low-fat,
low-salt diet for the ex-president, the doctors kept dodging her
question.
And then they walked out, their white lab-coats flapping behind
them. I ran out onto the street, still hearing Debbie David's prognosis, and got
myself a bottle of water and drank to the president's good health.
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Gersh Kuntzman is also a
reporter for The New York Post. His Web site is at http://www.gersh.tv
