I Speak for Democracy

Brian Herrera, from his website storyworking.com

How quaint, how naive that expression sounds today when we know too much about the limits and failures of our democracy and are uneasy with revelations about the role of its sponsor, the Voice of America, during the Cold War.

Yet I, along with thousands of other teenagers, did “speak for democracy” in a laboriously fashioned essay, presented on the radio, and winning me a prize—a black and white TV set my parents insisted that I return. They didn’t want a TV, that enemy of reading, in the house, a decision that finally broke down a few years later.

I was perhaps fifteen at the time and had given little thought to the subject of democracy, but my father wanted me to enter this competition and I couldn’t think of a reason to refuse.

I’d long since forgotten my speech but hearing the distinguished author and Princeton Associate Professor of Theater, Brian Herrera’s monologue, “I was the voice of democracy,” on KUNM brought it all back to me.

Herrera, a New Mexico native, went much further than I did in the 1986 competition, winning locally, given a trip to Washington to receive a medal with the other state winners, and granted an interview with a senator whose name sounded like “gobblegobblegobble.” This august presence turned out to be Strom Thurmond, the segregationist who represented South Carolina in Congress for 48 years and conducted the longest actual filibuster to date, 24 hours and 18 minutes to oppose the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Always claiming that he was not a racist but simply a supporter of States Rights, the now-forgotten senator set the tone for the Republican party (he was originally a Democrat) as it exists today. The current attempt to eliminate the filibuster would succeed if the filibuster were required to actually speak his piece for hours before a large empty Chamber.

Like me, Brian Herrera didn’t know much about the “I Speak for Democracy” competition, but even without knowing the identity of the senator he was meeting, he felt a qualm when the man said, “We could use a writer like you in our office.” Later he understood why.

Herrera makes the most of his long-ago award, following his young, bemused self through a meeting with the actress Olivia de Haviland (who died recently at 104, one of three surviving actors in the film, Gone With the Wind)and imitating her smoky voice when she told him he had very much to be proud. He ended his monologue with a list of suggestions that contains bits of wisdom for anyone ever anointed with a dubious award:

1. You might win.
2. When a door opens, you don’t have to walk through it.
3. Awards arrive in clusters—he received three.
4. Don’t really smile repeatedly for the camera or you will injure your face muscles.
5. Be nice even if you have to fake it.

I’m not sure I Iearned as much from my long-ago talk, although it may have been the beginning of my education in the misuse of patriotic cliches.

[Brian’s hour long monologe is available online for listening via PRX.]

In Art kunm