The Political Education of the Self

Wide-eyed:

Because I couldn't be bothered to pay attention in school, pretty much everything I know about the way Washington, D.C., works comes from Joan Didion's essay "Insider Baseball," a few key numbers from Schoolhouse Rock, and seasons one through four of The West Wing. Which is the same thing as saying I don't know anything about the way Washington, D.C., works.

But raging ignorance and deep ambivalence didn't stop me from doing a day's lobbying work last week, in actual Senate and House office buildings, concerning an actual bill that's actually before the first session of the actual 111th Congress and that actually affects me and most musicians I know. And of course, by "affects me" I mean "promises to earn me more money." The lobbying organization musicFIRST (Fairness in Radio Starting Today), which is funded by the Recording Industry Association of America, among other organizations not necessarily associated with what you might call grassroots activism, paid for me and more than 100 fellow musicians—including Sam Moore (of Sam & Dave), Suzanne Vega, Cynthia Johnson (best known as the singer of "Funkytown"), and at least one of the Four Tops (Abdul "Duke" Fakir)—to travel to Washington. They put us up in reasonably nice hotel rooms, briefed us, furnished us with just-in-case talking points, and guided us to our meetings with the relevant aides to the relevant senators and representatives. In my group's case, that meant stopping by the offices of Democratic senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, Democratic representative Jay Inslee, and Republican representative Dean Heller of Nevada.