Atlantica - 01.09.2007, Side 30

28 a t l a n t i c a
Walking down the steps of the tem-
ple-like Lincoln Memorial on a
muggy July day in DC, I find Newt
Gingrich. The former Speaker of the House
and poster boy for conservative Republicans
is standing in front of the reflecting pool with
the mighty Washington Monument obelisk in
the background. He is sweating like a stuck pig
under the sun and hot lights of a movie crew,
which is filming the gray-haired grandstander
read the same lackluster words over and again
from a large cue card.
“Winning the future! Defending God!
Reconnecting with America!” As he underscores
each line with a firm nod, the sweat rains down
off his brow. The makeup artist covers her face
with her hands. There’s not enough powder in
the world….
A heavyset black woman in orthopedic shoes
and oversized sunglasses saunters by the gaggle
of onlookers. “Asshole!” she shouts in Gingrich’s
general direction. He doesn’t blink. Neither does
his wife, who stands diligently by his side with a
strained smile stretched across her face.
The director calls cut. “That was a perfect
take, people, but we had some… audio difficul-
ties.” The black woman chortles, shakes her
head, and moves along.
Father Abraham, the deified patriarch of
American equality, looks down on us from his
marble throne and beams with a knowing smile.
Washington, DC is home to the US fed-
eral government, the Smithsonian Institute
and hundreds of other big-league national
and international organizations. Why the
founding fathers selected this small swatch
of marshland, just over 60 square kilometers
(160 square miles) in size, as the seat of the
nation’s government is incomprehensible to
me. But as a compromise between the “bar-
baric” South and the “freewheeling” North
in 1790, Washington was carved out of what
US President Thomas Jefferson fondly dubbed
“that Indian swamp in the wilderness.” Like
most things Washingtonian, conflict is the
city’s birthright.
Even today, Washington is saddled with a
tug-o-war between federal and civic rights (DC
has no voting delegate in either chamber of
congress—their license plate reads “Taxation
without Representation”), between Northern
practicality and Southern gentility, and most
palpably between the elite rich in the city’s
core and to the west, and the neighborhoods of
destitute poor in the east. This incessant strife
between the haves and the have-nots is glaring-
ly obvious, from the bougainvillea-lined streets
of Georgetown to the Salvadorian machete
gangs of Columbia Heights. But it’s these dis-
parate and sometimes warring tribes that give
the district its character as the dynamo of the
Eastern seaboard.
Finding America’s heart in the nation’s head, Washington,
DC, is no easy task. If one can crest Capitol Hill,
crammed with hardboiled politicos, flagrant flesh-
pressers, and haughty up-and-comers, the
district’s true delight comes into view:
the ethnic mix of the world’s
foremost global village.