I’ve gotten a lot of questions about why so many on Tuesday failed to make it to the inauguration despite having the coveted purple tickets.
I was really lucky that I finally made it in, but that has a lot to do with my determination. You see, when I have an assignment I get it no matter what. It’s like how some people see red when they get mad — the next thing you know it’s a John Wayne fistifight at the bar. When a determined reporter needs to cover an event woe are the gatekeepers who stand in the way.
Reminds me of when I covered cop protests outside one of rapper/actor Ice-T’s concerts in Chicago back in ’93 or so. Back then Ice-T was in a heavy metal band he called Body Count, which earned an infamous reputation for the song “Cop Killer.” So that week my assignment was to write articles about the planned police protests. Why did I get the gig? Probably because I had long hair and listened to that kind of music. After a week of trying to get in touch with whoever was handling passes for the media, I got someone who told me to just drop by the box office before the show and I’d be on the list.
Yeah, right. Later, when I became a rock critic I learned how truly empty that promise is. Naturally, I was not on any list. And the NBC reporter who tried to pick up his pass at the same time was told the same thing. What was really odd about the situation was that I was told to ask for Charlie Jam. I thought that was a joke. Charlie Jam was a character in a lot of Ice-T raps so I thought he was fictional. He’s not. He was Ice-T’s tour manager. I kept asking for him all night as I covered the cop protests. This went on for hours. Finally, I see a guy with a letterman’s jacket bearing the “Rhyme Syndicate” logo on the back. That’s Ice-T’s publishing company. So I flag him and ask him if he knows how I can get in touch with Charlie Jam.
“I’m Charlie Jam,” he says.
Great. I’m in luck. I tell him my dilemma. He tells me, sorry, it’s sold out — no can do.
“Well, OK. But this story is totally unbalanced right now. It’s all just the cops slamming Ice-T as a cop killer.”
“Man, I don’t know what to tell you.”
So I convinced him that he could speak for Ice-T. He eventually warmed up to that and found my questions apparently thoughtful and informed and he just unloaded. He was a great quote. I dashed over to the phone to call in the latest quotes to rewrite. Then Bob Roberts from the local newsradio station came over just as I was hanging up and told me, “Guess what? Charlie Jam came out and he had two passes. One for you and one for me.” Bob was a big Ice-T fan, too. So we got in. It took several hours, but we made it. Ice-T didn’t say anything too provacative on stage so it didn’t help the story that much, but you have to understand — when I say I’m getting into something, I’m getting in.
So why did so many others fail? I’ve seen a lot of scattered reports about it. Some blame it on the failure of several metal detectors at one gate, forcing authorities to close it. Others cite a stampede of silver ticket holders at another gate, drawing authorities over to that area and shutting down the purple-ticket entrances. Others pointed to too many unticketed people clogging up the avenues hoping to get in and overwhelming the system.
I believe it was a perfect storm of all of the above. But who knows what happened in the so-called Purple Tunnel of Doom.
MSNBC reported:
“Update!: Senate Sergeant At Arms Terry Gainer said he thinks there were a number of problems that led to the chaos.
He said there may have been more tickets issued than they could handle. He said at one point there was a crush of people at the gate, so it had to be shut down for a while. He said one of the metal detectors at the gate didn’t work, so people had to be screened with a hand wand. And he said that because of the cold weather, people wore bulkier clothes, making the screenings more difficult.
Gainer said he has offered to arrange a Capitol tour for those who didn’t get in to try to make amends.”
Now this is some of the most ridiculous logic I’ve heard. Bulkier clothing? Is he kidding? That sounds like an Onion story.
Too many tickets? No way. How the hell could that happen? It’s not like there were counterfeiters out there. Why would the organizers do that? The answer is, they would not. This is classic CYA/fingerpointing.
It’s amazing that there’s already a Facebook group out there for the disaffected Purple people. Reminds me of the wandering comitatus — tribes of vikings who would stagger aimlessly without purpose when their leader was killed in battle.
Wait, did they offer a Capitol tour as compensation? Uh, didn’t we get that on Tuesday — in super slow motion?
Oh well, now they’re talking about at least giving out some Inaugural-related goodies –that’s a good first step.