Yesterday I interviewed a two star Army General. I will admit I was nervous, seeing as he’s a big shot and all. I kept thinking “I should being saying ‘Sir’ more,” but he was quite nice, and easy to talk to.
The thing that struck me was the strategic level at which this individual thinks. He was smart, well spoken, totally understood what I was going for in the piece and gave me great material to work with. I wish all my interviews were so easy.
I don’t mean to sound surprised that he was such an interesting and intelligent individual. I guess it’s just that growing up with an ex-Marine father, I’ve been trained to think that all other branches of the military are inferior. Just kidding. Kind of.
The more likely source of my bias is that my main experience with military men is in one of two contexts: dating grunts from Camp Pendleton as an undergrad, and my dad’s buddies all drinking and telling wild stories about the crazy sh*t they used to get into in Vietnam. Either way, I guess I never connected the military with the people who actually run the country.
Turns out they do. And I’ll tell you what, not only did I get what I needed for my interview, I also got a teeny tiny glimpse of the efforts the government is making to be more efficient. You know, that giant budget deficit we’ve all been hearing so much about? Folks on the inside are actually working on that.
Anyhow, I wrapped up the piece today, and it came out quite well, if I do say so myself.
In other news, it’s looking like I will, in fact, get to help write the pro and con sheet for Prop 37. The work is for the League of Women Voters, which, not surprisingly, has double and triple layers of review for this sort of thing so that no one can slip their own biases into the work (not that I would ever do such a thing). I’m not even the sole writer on the initial draft, so rest assured, the arguments will be thorough.
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