Jessica Siegal's fingers were gliding around a goblet of white wine that she held in her left hand. She was dressed in a black, hugging ball gown, fringed at the wrists and hemline in smooth fur. Without my soliciting, she whispered into my ear the right questions to be asked to the guests at the black-tie Committee to Protect Journalists dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria.
"I teach interviewing at NYU," she said as she slid into the conversation I was having with an uninhibited Clarence Page, who also held a goblet of white wine.
Page knew who Jessica was and in his jovial way said, "Ask her what you are asking me. He is asking is there a New York media elite establishment. He is from Columbia Journalism School."
Jessica offered a few thoughts, but as I took my writing pad out she warily said, "Don't quote me," and then began to coach this poor third-world reporter. And I enjoyed it.
She remained standing, listening to our conversation as Page gave his take on the media elite.
"I tend to subscribe to 'don't tell what to think, tell what to think about,'" he said. "I came into journalism in the sixties, during Vietnam and the race riots. There were 300 riots then and they needed someone to go there and report without getting hurt.
"Now," he continued, "the media are catering to entertainment. I'm not opposed to what people want. You can't have broccoli news always. Everyone needs ice cream. But they need to eat broccoli too. For example, the health-care issue."
Jessica crooned over my left ear: "Ask him for specifics."
As she spoke, I couldn't help noticing that she smelled like a rare version of lavender flowers.
"Sir," I asked turning to Page, "you spoke about issues being trivialized. Are there any issues you feel that are not on the agenda?"
"Go outside the corporate debate," he said. "You just had the Clinton plan and the Congress plan. Where was the Canadian health plan? You had thirty votes in Congress [in favor of discussing the Canadian plan] but those votes don't get the press."
Jessica again wanted to help. She took my shoulder and again gently whispered.
"There's Andy Rooney," she said. "Go ask him."
Page introduced me to Rooney. "He is a Columbia journalism student and he wants to ask you something."
Rooney stared at my chest.
"Sir, do you feel there is a New York media elite establishment?" I inquired.
"What?" he shot back.
I obviously didn't phrase my question well.
"Is there a media elite centered in New York that creates an agenda, an agenda that Washington takes up?"
"Well, a capital has to exist. There has to be a center. It's not bad. It's not a conspiracy. It brings lots of people together. And," he said, "it's like telling the truth as close as we can."
Earlier in the evening, the TV producer Harry Moses, shouldering his way through the human maze, had dismissed the premise of my question.
"It's a silly issue. It boggles the mind that you are doing this," he said. "I don't think they set the agenda. Tell me who is the elite? Anchors? People like you? That's not New York. B-u-l-l-shit. People network. That's all," he said. "Who is your professor?"
"Um, Navasky and Laventhol."
"Doesn't Navasky have anything to do? For that you're doing this, paying forty t-h-o-u-sand dollars in tuition?" he said.
I walked to the wine bar and asked for a refill.
And there he was: Mike Wallace!
It took me several minutes before I got to him.
"Sir, would you spend three minutes with a fan of yours from India?" I said after he pricked up his ears.
"Yes, yes." He nodded. He too had his palm around a wine goblet.
"I'm from Columbia Journalism Review. My editors asked me to come today and find out from here whether a New York media elite exists. Is it an illusion or . . . does it really exist?"
"B-u-l-l-shit," he said.
Harry Moses walked up and joined the conversation.
"Are you not in the elite?" he kiddingly asked Wallace. Wallace guffawed. "There used to be people who were paid attention to. Cronkite."
"But then why would Vladimir Putin attend Tom Brokaw's dinner?" I asked him. (See "Dinner with Vladimir," page 35.)
"Because, I'd imagine, Vladimir saw Brokaw as a figure. He is a figure in the U.S. media," Wallace said.
"Which means he is an elite?" I asked. "Why should Putin attend his dinner?"
"That showed his naïveté. He is a new boy on the block. His aides will tell him, 'He is Tom Brokaw.' And Putin will say, 'Hi, hello,'" said Wallace, imitating the stiff carriage of Vladimir Putin.
"Brokaw gets more out of it than the president does," Wallace said, then imitated Tom Brokaw: "'The president of Russia came to my party.'"
"He didn't go to Dan Rather; he didn't come to me," Wallace added.
Soon the mass moved into the main room. Before I sat down at table 81 in the back, I looked around for my helpful guide.
Jessica was right up in the front row along with Page. I asked, "Jessica. Jessica, could you tell me who are the people sitting in the front row in this hall?" But she said she was tired after "all this" (she lifted her wine goblet). So I returned to table 81.
I kept my eye on the tables of Harper's magazine and George Soros's Open Society Institute for about an hour into the proceedings. They were all there, I suspected, to have a good time, like me. My eavesdropping near their tables did not really reveal anything substantial.
But the couple at a table in the middle of the room were most interesting. Two hours into the proceedings, they were cooing like pigeons in love. They practiced kissing, and permutations of kissing, on each other. I overheard him asking for her telephone number, or room number. But just as I walked closer from behind the pillar to see what she was writing, the gentleman became suspicious and I had to retreat.
I approached U.N. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke near the front entrance and he asked me to wait. Just then Mike Wallace appeared and shook Holbrooke's hand like an equal and walked out. Harry Moses also emerged, shook Holbrooke's hand unlike an equal and walked out.
Holbrooke's wife, Kati Marton, had to remind him that I was still waiting. "Two of you have already spoken to me," he said in a measured tone. I backed off.
The evening concluded. The hall was silent and empty. I picked up books and literature from the floor. It struck me as odd that the people who sat at these tables could throw these things away.
From one of the entrances to the hall, I saw the kissing couple emerge. He was drunk. She was, well, whatever. He came up to me and mumbled, "Merrill Lynch."
I had noticed earlier in the evening that Jessica came without an escort. Toward the end, just as I tried to wriggle out of the room to get to her, cjr's executive editor, Michael Hoyt, walked up. He wanted to talk. So we did. And I never saw Jessica again.
Vikram Sura is a student at Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism.
