I'm no Dana Perino, but...

Today was a bit weird. I've already talked about Summer's reluctance to go after her opponent, then she kind of did with the campaign finance thing. We have a press release written and ready to go, but she didn't want to send it out. So it sits.

We tossed around the idea of finding a reporter who would be sympathetic and would try to take the story without saying it came from us. (OK Heather, if you're reading this, be nice. You know the game as well as I do.) So we put out a few feelers to activists we trust and one name came back - Kate Bradshaw. Never heard of her. I don't know every reporter on the island, but there's not that many and if someone I know recommended her then I would have thought I'd recognize the name.

Well, I e-mailed her and told her who I was and we set up a time to meet for coffee at a cafe that is right across the street from the newspaper's office - Jill works there and I actually like the place.

As I'm walking towards the place, Rob Parson's is coming out of the building where the paper's office is. Rob is a freelance reporter for the paper, but it's kind of like how colleges abuse adjuncts. He writes at least one thing every week (sometimes more) but they get to pay him shit with no benefits. And he's not a cub reporter either, but that's Maui and Alternative Journalism. Rob and I also have other connections - he does a lot of environmental activism. Ironically, he was the facilitator at a community forum at which two of my students participated in. (And wowed the crowd and made me look ridiculously good, by the way...oh, and one of whom was the Jewish student from the previous post.) He also was the interviewee of one of my students who did a project on global warming last year...hmmmm...which student was that??? The Jew. (OK, I'll get off it.)

So I asked Rob about this reporter, I never heard of her...what's the deal? Can I trust her? Basically, his response was: I don't know her. She's young. That's pretty much all he could give me.

OK. She's young. That doesn't mean she's not a shark. I remember this young reporter back in the day who took me to town over my sordid past as an aspiring, old, white, rap star. I learned the hard way. They may act all nice, but at the first chance - BLAMMO!

So I went into the cafe and picked a table as it was pretty empty. Ordered an iced tea (foreshadow warning). Kate came in a few minutes later. She wasn't young. She was YOUNG! Well, not 12, but like, just out of college - young. I later found out that this is her first reporting job that wasn't an internship.

Now Heather can chime in in the comment section, but I think I've always been pretty straight with reporters. Some friends have said that I was TOO straight. But I admit, I had an agenda here and I'm not slick enough to do it the politician way and I haven't been keeping up with my Jedi Mind Trick skills so I had to improvise what I was going to do. If I was paranoid, her fumbling and uneasiness would have been an act to me, but...did I mention that she was young?

The conversation was cool. I didn't just come out and say, "I want you to write this story about Kyle Yamashita and not mention that I came to you." But I think I was pretty obvious...on purpose. I did say, on the record that Summer had no knowledge of what I was doing - and that is true. She had no idea that I had taken it past the feeler stage of getting a name. So if a story comes out and my name is in it, I've got some 'splanin to do, Lucy.

Here's the weird/funny part. We pretty much talked about everything we could about the subject and she was obviously having a tough time figuring out what to do - if she should just tell me to fuck off, just tell me what I wanted to hear or if there was a real story here. And we needed to pay for our beverages - my iced tea and her coffee...and the waitress would just not come. It really wasn't that long of a time period, but seeing as where we were in the conversation, it seemed like forever. Now, if she wasn't a reporter I would have offered to just pay for her coffee and she could have left (she did have another appointment). But a grizzled, veteran reporter once told me that reporters don't accept even a cup of coffee. So we sat there...and made chit-chat about national politics...and third-party politics...and we may have looked at carpet swatches, I'm not sure. So finally, our waitress comes and asks if we'd like to pay. YES!

So I get out a 20...it was all I had. She gets out some kind of credit/debit card. Whatever. By now I think we're comparing Impressionist painters...which is not good because I don't know dick about Impressionist painters...or any other painters. Let me put it this way...to me an impressionist painter is Rich Little redecorating his guest bathroom...you know what I'm sayin?

Sorry.

So the waitress comes back with the check and Kate gives her the credit/debit card and the waitress leaves without my cash. Now, the check was literally $3.50, but it was drilled into me that reporters can't accept a stick of gum. I was seriously confused. I had no idea what to do. It was almost like we were on a date or something.

"I...uh...she...money." (I'm very eloquent around reporters.)

"Oh, it was only a buck. No worries."

"But...uh...I...uh..."

I swear, my inner voice was saying, "Heather! The reporter paid for my beverage. What do I do?" My brain needed a ctrl-alt-delete as I could not compute this. So I tried to use humor to deal with this...or I guess I should say "humor".

"Uh, thanks. Well, after the election, I'll buy you a beer then."

"Cool!"

Wha? No...you're talking Gorgonzola and it's clearly Brie time, baby! I can't buy you a beer. Heather!!?!?!!

So we parted ways and I have no idea what just happened. Will there be a story? I have no idea. Maybe I should have given her a Whitee CD.

[I know this was a long post, but that Rich Little joke was money!]