The Porkchoppers

9

The television show that Cubbin was scheduled to appear on that night started at twelve in Chicago and was aimed at those insomniacs whose thirst for banality remained unquenched even after an hour and a half of Johnny Carson or Dick Cavett.

The host of the show was an ex-Chicago Tribune police reporter who did his homework, or had it done for him, and who liked to ask his guests depressingly personal questions that had won him the sobriquet of “Mr. Nasty Himself.” At least that’s how he insisted that he be introduced before each program.

The host’s name was Jacob Jobbins and the official title for his program was “Jake’s Night.” It was an hour-and-a-half show and the number of guests varied from one to three. The attraction of the program, of course, lay in Jobbins’ ability to make his guests squirm, which delighted and fascinated his audience at home who couldn’t sleep anyhow and who told themselves, or anybody who was still up and willing to listen, that by God, he’d never get me up there and ask me questions like that, but who really yearned to be up there telling it all.

So the various flacks around the country tried to get their client writers and actors and politicians and flashy criminal lawyers and singers on “Jake’s Night” because Chicago was a big market and it was felt that humiliation paid off at the box office and the bookstores and the record shops.

Jobbins got many of the questions that he asked from the enemies of the people whom he planned to interview. He was always getting scrawled notes that urged him to ask so-and-so things like “why they tossed him in the clink in Santa Monica in April 1961.” And often, after careful checking, Jobbins would ask about it and his guest would either freeze or try some maladroit verbal fencing until Jobbins’ gentle but persistent probing broke through the guest’s defenses and then the entire, often sordid story would tumble out to the delight of those who were lying in bed at home and watching it all through their toes.

If Jobbins knew how to ask questions, he also knew how to listen. In fact, he may have been one of the world’s great listeners, a skillful user of the long silence and the sympathetic, understanding nod that seemed to say, “I know, I know, God, how well I know,” as his guests stripped themselves of their last shred of dignity, reveling, it often seemed to Jobbins, in their self-abasement.

But immolation paid because “Jake’s Night” commanded a large and loyal audience that actually bought the books and records and went to the shows that the writers and singers and actors crucified themselves to tout. As one publicity man put it, “Christ, after you see some poor slob strip himself bare you feel so sorry for him that you go out and buy his record just to cheer him up.”

This would be Donald Cubbin’s third time on “Jake’s Night.” When he had first appeared on the show three years before, Jobbins had been unable to penetrate Cubbin’s formidable dignity and the show had been dull. The next time Cubbin had unbent a little and admitted that yes, he thought that Jimmy Hoffa was a thief and that the late Walter Reuther had been a damned fool to take his auto workers out of the AFL–CIO and besides that Reuther had been a smart aleck who never knew when to shut up. As for the war in Vietnam, George Meany could say whatever he wanted to say, but Cubbin thought it was senseless, tragic waste and Cubbin had said so since sixty-four and would go on saying so even if a cut in defense spending would throw his members out of work. Furthermore, Cubbin felt that if Hubert Humphrey hadn’t sold his soul to be Johnson’s nominee and had come out against the war when he should have, back in sixty-six or even sixty-five, he’d be the most popular man in the nation today instead of a has-been. And no, Cubbin wasn’t worried about becoming an alcoholic although sure, he took a drink every now and then, but who didn’t?

If Jobbins’ second interview with Donald Cubbin hadn’t been too revealing personally, it had at least produced enough pungent remarks to make the wire services move a seven-paragraph story on it. This time Jobbins had a little more material to work with and almost before Cubbin could seat himself, Jobbins began.

“The last time you were here, Don, you called Hubert Humphrey a has-been among other things. Now that’s what a sizable portion of your membership is calling you. They say that you’ve lost touch with them. Why do they say that?”

“The man who wants my job says that, Jake. The members don’t say it.”

“I checked with a couple of Chicago bookmakers this afternoon and they’re willing to lay eight to five that you won’t get reelected.”

“You should have bet five; you’d make yourself some money.”

“Let’s get back to this charge that you’re losing touch with your membership. You belong to some rather exclusive clubs around the country, don’t you?”

“I belong to some clubs; I don’t know how exclusive they are.”

“But not everyone can join them, right?”

“Not everybody would want to.”

“You belong to one in Washington called the Federalists Club, don’t you?”

“Yes, I belong to that.”

“And hasn’t it been called the most exclusive club in Washington?”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Well, not many of your members belong, do they?”

“No, I don’t think they do.”

“Could they join, if they wanted to?”

“If they were invited and if they could afford the dues. I sometimes think that I can’t.”

“If they were invited, you say?”

“Yes.”

“Who belongs to the Federalists Club?”

“Mostly men who have an interest in politics and government, and in the arts and sciences.”

“And in business?”

“Yes, certainly. Business.”

“Big business, you mean.”

“All right. Big business.”

“And one has to be invited?”

“Yes.”

“And you were invited?”

“Yes, I was invited.”

“Isn’t it true that you asked to be invited?”

“No, that isn’t true.”

“It isn’t?”

“No.”

“I have a copy here of a letter from you to a Mr. A. Richard Gammage. Mr. Gammage is president of Gammage International. You’ve heard of Mr. Gammage and Gammage International?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, I suppose you would have since Gammage International owns about half of Cleveland and some thirty thousand of your members work for that concern.”

“I know Mr. Gammage.”

“Yes, apparently you do. In fact, you seem to know him well enough to call him by his first name.”

“I call a lot of people by their first names.”

“Of course, Don, we all do. Well, in this letter you call Mr. Gammage ‘Dear Dick.’”

“So?”

“So I’m just going to read a paragraph. Just one. This is a letter from you to A. Richard Gammage whom you call ‘Dear Dick.’”

“Yes.”

“Before I read it, I suppose it should be mentioned that Mr. Gammage is one of the principal negotiators when you conduct your industry-wide bargaining, isn’t he?”

“Yes, he’s one of them anyhow.”

“In fact, he might be called the chief negotiator, mightn’t he?”

“I said he was one of them.”

“Well, he’s sort of your counterpart in industry, isn’t he, Don? I mean you’re the principal negotiator for your union and Mr. Gammage is the principal negotiator for industry, isn’t that roughly it?”

“Roughly.”

“In other words, just to simplify things, it’s Mr. Gammage and you who finally decided just how much your members are going to get in take-home pay?”

“That’s a gross oversimplification.”

“But there’s an element of truth in it, right?”

“Just barely.”

“Well, in this Dear Dick letter which is signed by you, you say, ‘I have done some checking around and if you and Arthur could resubmit my name, I am sure it would go through this time. I certainly do not want to embarrass you and Arthur again, but from what I have been able to learn, there should be no objection to my membership this time around and you know what it would mean to me.’ Does that sound like you, Don?”

“I don’t remember writing it.”

“No? Well, on September third, 1965, according to the records of the Federalists Club, your name was submitted for membership on the recommendation of Mr. A. Richard Gammage and Mr. Arthur Bolton. It received only one blackball at a general membership meeting and so on September fourth, 1965, a letter inviting you to join was sent by the club’s membership secretary. I should add here that Mr. Arthur Bolton is the general counsel to Gammage International. I should also add that the records of the Federalists Club show that on January ninth, 1965, your name was submitted for the first time by these same two gentlemen and it received three blackballs, which was one more than enough to keep you from being invited to join. Would you like to make any comment?”

“No, I don’t think it deserves any.”

“Well, do you have any idea of why you were black balled the first time?”

“Apparently someone didn’t like me. Not everyone does.”

“But why did you want to join a club that didn’t want you?”

“There were only three members who didn’t.”

“So you asked Mr. Gammage and Mr. Bolton to try to get you in again?”

“Yes, I suppose I did.”

“Why did you ask them?”

“Because they were members.”

“Are they friends of yours?”

“Well, yes, I suppose they are.”

“In other words, you negotiate the contracts for your union members’ income with your friends. Isn’t that all rather cozy?”

“Friendship has nothing to do with the negotiations.”

“Nothing at all?”

“Nothing at all.”

“I see. So when you go up for the final negotiations on your new contract, which I believe begin next month and you see Mr. Gammage and Mr. Bolton sitting across the table from you, they’ll be just another couple of company men and not two close personal friends that you’re indebted to for having risked embarrassing themselves by putting your name up for membership in a club that rejected you the first time.”

“They’ll be just a couple of men.”

“You’re still a member of the Federalists Club, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve never thought of resigning?”

“No.”

“I see. What percentage of the membership of your union, Don, would you say is black?”

“I don’t know what the percentage is. We don’t ask our members what color they are.”

“But it’s a sizable percentage?”

“Yes.”

“Possibly fifty percent?”

“I don’t know; possibly.”

“How many black members does the Federalists Club have?”

“I don’t know.”

“Isn’t it true that it has none?”

“I don’t know.”

“Have you ever seen a black member in the club?”

“Well, I don’t go there a lot. I never noticed.”

“Isn’t it true that the bylaws of the club prohibit the membership of anyone who is of African or Oriental descent, as they so delicately put it?”

“I’ve never read the bylaws.”

“Well, that’s what they say. Do you remember a man called Austin Davies?”

“No, the name doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Well, he’s a black man. He used to be an Assistant Secretary of Commerce.”

“I recall his name now, but I don’t think I know him.”

“Well, perhaps you remember in March of 1966, five months after you joined the Federalists Club, when several of its members approached you about supporting the membership of Austin Davies.”

“Yes, I remember now that you mention it. I agreed to support him. Of course I did.”

“Yes, I think you did. There were eleven members who sponsored Mr. Davies and you made the twelfth, right?”

“Yes, I believe so.”

“Then what happened?”

“As I remember, Mr. Davies’ membership application was rejected.”

“By how many blackballs?”

“I don’t know the exact number.”

“But it was a large number, wasn’t it?”

“I think so.”

“There were fifteen blackballs, Don.”

“If you say so.”

“The committee of twelve who had sponsored Mr. Davies had discussed this possibility, hadn’t it?”

“Yes, we’d talked about it.”

“And what had you planned to do?”

“I don’t think we planned to do anything except maybe resubmit Mr. Davies’ name at some later time.”

“You planned more than that, Don.”

“I don’t recall.”

“You planned to resign as a body — in protest against the Federalists Club’s discriminatory practices. You remember it now, don’t you, Don?”

“Well, there might have been some talk of it.”

“There wasn’t just talk of it, you all made a solemn pact to resign in protest if Davies was blackballed. Well?”

“It might have been like that. Like you said.”

“And eleven of the twelve members on the committee did actually resign, didn’t they?”

“It was... well... it was a matter of individual choice, I mean—”

“Don.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you resign?”

“Well, it seemed a pretty drastic step and... uh... I thought I could do more good by staying where I was and trying to change the rules from within you know.”

“Don, have the rules been changed?”

“No, not yet. At least I don’t think so.”

“And you’re still a member?”

“Well, yes.”

“You’re still a member of a lily-white club made up of politicians and big-business types who refuse membership to any black. Now am I right?”

“Well, yes, but—”

“That’s all, Don. We’ve got to break for a commercial.”

In the studio waiting room Oscar Imber and Charles Guyan watched the show with a kind of horrified fascination. Over and over Guyan kept saying, “Well, it’s not network, at least it’s not network.”

Fred Mure watched the show with them. As the two men sank deeper into their despondency, Mure said, “I don’t know what you guys are pissing and moaning about. I think old Don looks pretty good in there.”