Gregoire
The woman who would be king. Of Washington. Whatever.
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--Christine Gregoire, Oui magazine interview, 1986
Sipping catered coffee in the crowded drab of an aesthetically tragic, '70s-stinking conference room tucked deep within one of the old downtown Westin Hotel towers, I listen to the orations of would-be Washington State Governor Christine Gregoire, and I reflect. It's been a weird and meandery road to the Washington State Whitehouse or whatever for Christine Gregoire, and my personal role in the Gregoire story has been even weirder, and just as meandery.
Stranger Personals
The Woman Who Would Rule Olympia stands, as I sit sipping, behind a lectern, and she extrapolates with fierce eloquence. She speaks of the ethical and scientific ramifications of cell-stem research. Christine (or, as I've come to call her over the years, "Christine") seems to tower, figuratively, above me--above, indeed, all of us--her rapt and captive court of cell-stem enthusiasts (or "stemmies") and general liberal well-wishers (mad doctors, communists, and Al Gore, mostly) gathered here in the bowels of the creaking Westin to hear her speak on this allegedly hot-button topic. Her presence is sincere, her demeanor is commanding, her topic is icky.
That's Christine. A woman with a lectern and some speeches; never afraid of icky.
"Stem cell research is vital," Christine asserts in that determined-but-redheaded way that's sort of become her trademark. "My friends Chris Reeve and Mikey Fox, for example, are very interested in stem cell research. And I think we can all agree that it's very important for people in their difficult situations to have hobbies like researching stem cells, you know, to keep their minds off of things," she says. "And the issue will create 250,000 new jobs for Washingtonians in four years and hold big tobacco companies accountable for stuff somehow." Christine concludes her speech in the usual way--she stops talking suddenly and gets the dreamy, faraway look that's become her other trademark. The room bursts into appropriately nerdy applause. A nasty heckle cackles up from a couple of really Christiany-looking old bitches who seem as if they could really use a good stiff infusion of stem cell research. Al Gore looks waxy, and pleased. The coffee is delicious. Better than usual, for catered.
Less than two weeks after this speech, Christopher Reeve died tragically at the age of 52, punctuating Christine's point rather dramatically, his mind permanently taken off things. Christine has always been lucky like that.
Like most people, my love affair with Christine Gregoire began at the drive-in. She was on the screen, rousing the ill-treated workers of the mostly women border town into a feverish rebellion against the corrupt labor bosses. It was her breakthrough performance as the eccentric half- breed Mexican/Hebrew knife-master "Josephina Maria Cornblatt-Santana" in the GLAMMY-nominated pseudo-feminist cult film "Sweatshop Gnosh" (1984). (She kicked the holy shizzen out of those sweatshop bastardos.) Some critics say she wore tons of make up in that film, and looked like a whore. (Her critics' critics counter that she's Irish--whiter than an anxious Mormon's man-panties, by God--and didn't have any choice.) But even then, on-screen, yipping in Yiddish and hucking home-carved daggers in the name of freedom and paid maternity leave, a singular greatness burned in Gregiore's eyes. Unmistakable. Ferocious. Gregoirish.
Christine's critics (Katie Couric, her mom, and the British, mostly) have snottily maintained that her career in politics began when her career in show business, a business that there is no business like, began to wane. (Or is it wax?) Politics, of course, is often described as an ugly business for show people. (Or is it show business for ugly people?) Whatever. Christine's career in both ugly businesses began when she was a wee 6-year-old. Her uncle, Patrick O'Hara Tara O'Blarney O'Grady (a drunk), hired her part time to perform short comedy sketches and tap dancing routines intended to hawk Bailey and Crude's Extra Refined Motor Oil and bulk oats in the small garage and livery he ran to support his extended family. "Christine sold many cans of motor oil, and many, many oats," an interested party recalls fondly. "Soon, she became something of an attraction 'round these parts."
"My uncle used to work me pretty hard. But I loved him. I guess I always understood on some level that I was the little tap-dancing, wisecracking Irish sales girl he always wanted to be. He was sort of tragic in that way," Christine wrote much later, in her unauthorized autobiography, I'm Not Marion Ross, God Dammit! which spent no time on the New York Times bestseller list. "Yes, people often mistake me for the mother on Happy Days. But I tell them there is a difference. I can kick their goddamn ASSES!" she explains in her book. She continued working at the garage until she was 28 years old.
Did I mention that her mother was a fry cook or something? Yeah. Well.
After the triumphant final-curtain performance of her 22-year run at her uncle's fill-n-feed, Christine moved to New York City where she worked her way through a few minor off-Broadway roles and telemarketing gigs. It wasn't long after that she won the title role of "Shazama Jones, Universal She-Cop" in the successful musical action film franchise by the same name. (Volumes: 1, 3, and 4.) "I enjoy playing powerful, confident women who can dance," she said in a 1993 interview tied to the release of the third film in the Shazama Jones series, Tobacco Smokes You. I finally feel like my action-fantasy-adventure musicals have given me the confidence and can-do moxy required to run an entire state. Or at least be attorney general for a while. Personally, I like Iowa. I'm ready."
In time, that statement turned out to be 99 percent accurate.
I began personally following the Gregoire gubernatorial campaign during an intense and volatile moment--not necessarily because I supported Gregoire, but because I spelled the word gubernatorial incorrectly at the Scrabble 2004 World Championship and my editors won't let me live it down. I hadn't seen Christine in years--not since she kissed me in the cloakroom at former Washington State Governor Booth Gardner's youngest son's gay bris in 1992. (It was the first time we ever actually met, and she remains the only woman I've ever kissed--although I did rub her shoulders at a fetish party in Olympia in 1998 while she flogged then-gubernor Gary Locke.) In the time I have been observing her campaign, I have seen mud slung and reslung in a hateful fusillade of excessively slung metaphorical mud.
It had been alleged that Christine had, during college, pledged to an evil sorority for white bitches only. (As opposed to what other kind of sorority has never been clarified.) "This is a distortion," Christine claimed, responding to the charge in an emotional and never-circulated press release someone probably found in the trash. "There was no discrimination policy in Kappa Delta--there were no black women allowed, but there were no black men allowed either. So it's clear that the policy was to treat all blacks equally. Besides, I was a Delta Sig." Whatever, it remains true that Christine's Democratic opponent Ron Sims, who is not a white bitch and is therefore just bitter about not being allowed to pledge in Kappa Delta or Delta Sig or whatever, went down in the primaries harder than a burning two-dollar man-hooker.
And between that moment and this, is history. And some guy named Dino.
When attempting to paint an accurate portrait of Christine O'Grady Gregoire, it's crucial to use oranges, umbers, and shades of sunny butter yellow. It's also crucial to understand that, in a greater context, the Christine Gregoire I once knew, and knew well (but much like a Florida presidential vote, failed to recall appropriately one time), is, and perhaps always was, destined to lead this great state to its destiny, and a destiny to this great state. Or whatever.
And her mother was a fry cook or something. Did I mention that? Yes. Well.
Vote Gregoire. ·
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