The Most Dramatic Moment in Presidential History (For Me Personally)

This isn't what I expected as an intern. Plus recs for Terryn Hall on doing the work, Liz Glazer on airport t-shirts, and Tavi Gevinson on Taylor Swift.

This has been a huge week for presidential news. Actually, it’s been a huge few months. A public meltdown at a debate! An assassination attempt! A last minute dropout! A new, younger candidate who is mobilizing historic levels of support and enthusiasm! This has to be one of the most dramatic presidential news cycles that any of us have lived through.

Except for me.

Publicly, sure, this is wild. It’s filled with twists and turns. But as far as the most dramatic presidential news that affected me personally? Not even close. I’ll tell you the story of the presidential moment that will forever be my personal Mount Everest right now.

The summer after my junior year of college, I got an internship working at a former president’s foundation. I’m not going to say which one, because I have a vague idea that I might get in trouble if I use names, but there aren’t that many former presidents so you can try your best to guess. I’ll just say that getting to say I was this particular president’s intern felt slightly scandalous in a way that interning for other former leaders might not.

Anyway, I was excited and proud to have gotten this job. It was my first time ever having to wear a suit to work! I dusted off the slightly too large suit I had worn to my high school graduation (optimistically, I believed that I would continue to grow in college. That didn’t happen.)

Once I got to the job, I realized that my actual work was significantly less glamorous or important than I had expected. My job almost exclusively consisted of opening mail and then replying with one of several hundred pre-written form letters. The most exciting part of a typical day was if I got to be the one who opened that day’s letter from an older woman who, every single day, sent in a new drawing of this former president’s head on a different animal’s body. Former President Parrot or Former President Elephant or Former President Porcupine. She was kind of talented! And who am I to judge how a person wants to spend their time? She had an art practice with a dedicated audience of young people in uncomfortable business attire.

One day, things were proceeding as normal, when a woman in the cubicle next to me opened up an envelope and white powder fell out on her desk. Supposedly, all the letters we were opening had been pre-screened through some sort of security machine, but apparently this envelope had slipped through the cracks.

Almost instantaneously, our area was surrounded by Secret Service agents and blocked off with yellow caution tape. This was at the height of anthrax anxiety, so they were taking no chances. The rest of the office was completely evacuated. The only people left was our little cluster of cubicles. That’s not a good sign, I thought to myself.

My fears were confirmed when the next person who spoke with us was a man wearing a full hazmat suit. It was straight out of that scene in E.T.

Through his respirator, the man told us that substance from the envelope was currently being tested. He also added that, if it did turn out to be a hazardous substance, we would need to take “a communal decontamination shower.”

Everyone else took in this man’s instructions silently. But I was really fixated on the word “communal.” Why did our decontamination shower need to be a GROUP activity???

I looked around at the people who I was doing my summer internship with. I looked to my left and I looked to my right. In that moment, I decided that I would rather die of anthrax than take a communal shower.

Luckily, the Secret Service returned a few minutes later to tell us that it was just Borax powder that had apparently slipped into the envelope while the person was doing their laundry. No need to hose us down naked.

I breathed an enormous sigh of relief and decided that politics was not the career for me.

But yeah, for the rest of my life, that’s probably going to be the most dramatic moment in presidential history for me personally.

My projects and upcoming events:

PODCAST: How to Be a Better Human (TED/PRX) - This week’s podcast episode is a compilation of some of the best advice from the past four seasons about how to get out into nature (and out of your head). Listen here (or wherever you get your podcasts)

AUDIOBOOK: Let's Hang Out: Making (and Keeping) Friends, Acquaintances, and Other Nonromantic Relationships - You can listen or read my new audiobook / e-book on Everand. You have to create an account to listen or read, but you can get a 60-day free trial with promo code ChrisDuffy60 or if you click this link it should automatically fill out that code.

PODCAST: Care and Feeding (Slate) - I’m a guest co-host on the next few episodes of Slate’s parenting podcast. I joined regular hosts Lucy Lopez and Zak Rosen on this first episode to answer a listener question about whether the artwork hanging on her walls is inappropriate for kid visitors. You can hear our conversation about that (and other parenting stuff) here

LIVE IN NYC: Wrong Answers Only at Symphony Space - Thursday, September 19th at 7 p.m. Tickets are on sale now for this show where an expert on computer security gets interviewed by a panel of comics that includes me and Phoebe Robinson! Details and tickets here

This week’s list

GREAT:

I’m always a fan of Terryn Hall’s writing. This week, she wrote a piece about volunteering at her local food pantry. She touches on some themes I’ve been thinking about a lot myself. What does it take to actually make a difference? What if the work that needs to get done isn’t fun or glamorous or even interesting? Who steps up to the plate? In a year (and a long series of years) where there’s so much work to be done, Terryn hits the nail on the head. Doing the Unsexy Stuff

FUNNY:

My pal Liz Glazer is one of the hardest working (and smartest) standup comedians in the country. She’s also one of the smartest. Not many comics can say they left a career as a law professor to pursue their passion of telling jokes. But Liz not only chose the more uncertain path, she’s also thriving at it. Her new special came out this week and it’s extremely funny and clever. My only note is that she has so many more great jokes that didn’t make the cut, so I’m very excited for her album which is coming soon. But you’ve got to watch this, especially for the joke about Liz’s airplane fiasco. Don’t Tell Comedy presents Liz Glazer

INTERESTING:

This is very niche, but you know what? It’s my newsletter and I can go as niche as I want. Here is a semi-autobiographical / semi-fictional zine by Tavi Gevinson about her friendship with Taylor Swift that’s labeled “a satire” but feels extremely real. Regardless of the facts, it’s one of the best pieces of cultural criticism about Taylor Swift’s work and fame that I’ve read. I’m a fan of her music and I think there’s something very interesting in the public imagination about who Taylor Swift is and who she’s allowed to be. Gevinson articulates all that and so much more. Fan Fiction: A Satire (h/t Daniella Balarezo)

BONUS FOR PAYING SUBSCRIBERS:

Paying subscribers make Bright Spots possible! Subscribers get access to special features as well as all posts in the archive. This week, as a special feature, here is a photo of me standing awkwardly next to a former president. Paying subscribers also get my undying gratitude (which never dies). It’s never too late to join them!

That's it for this week. Thanks for reading! Please share Bright Spots with anyone you think might enjoy it.

I wasn’t told about this possibility when I applied for the internship,

Chris Duffy

This has been Bright Spots, a newsletter.

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…wait, who are you?

I'm Chris Duffy, a comedian, TV writer, podcast host, and both a former fifth grade teacher and a former fifth grade student. I’m currently writing a nonfiction book about humor for Doubleday.