Booknotes

Ms. JANE ALEXANDER (Author, "Command Performance: An Actress in the Theater of Politics"): When I was in my second year, 1994, and there was a huge change when the 104th Congress came in and Newt Gingrich was speaker, and the Endowment was slated for elimination, all the shenanigans that were going on I thought were so bizarre that I thought the American public should really know how inside Washington works.

Ms. ALEXANDER: No. I had two directives from the White House when I first took the job in '93, and the first was to stay out of the headlines; the second was to keep a diary. Now you may remember that Senator Bob Packwood's diaries really incriminated him shortly thereafter, and everybody was ditching their diaries, but I kept scribbling, and I ended up with about 14 of them.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Yes.

Ms. ALEXANDER: I did, indeed. In fact, a New York Times journalist wanted to do this story with me and encouraged me, but then the publisher I chose to go with simply didn't have the funds to pay for the two of us. So I said, `Well, all right. I'm going to do it on my own.' And--and the publisher said, `If you need help, we'll give it to you down the line.' But I so enjoyed it, I didn't feel I needed the help.

Ms. ALEXANDER: I'm writing essentially a memoir of my four years in Washington, 1993 to 1997, as chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. But I had been in Washington as a member of the company of Arena Stage in the 1960s for three years, and then I had been off and on at the Kennedy Center as a leading lady under the Roger Stevens administration of the Kennedy Center all through the '70s and early '80s. So I go back and forth in time and talk about my career and my early life and everything to try to inform people who read it about who I am, where I'm coming from and what I saw when I came to Washington as a pol.

Ms. ALEXANDER: $174.5 million in 1993.

Ms. ALEXANDER: $99 million.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Under $98 million.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Well, the 104th Congress, under Gingrich, cut the budget by over 40 percent during my chairmanship, and under my successor's, Bill Ivey, it's just been a matter of recisions cut and nothing dramatic, as it was under my chairmanship.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Its mission is to expand the appreciation and participation of the arts in all communities of Amer--of America. It's a public investment in the arts and communities.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Well, it's everything from a folk and traditional arts program, where we could have an apprenticeship in Alaskan soapstone carving by Inuit peoples to the symphony in Pittsburgh.

Ms. ALEXANDER: I--I--I f--I mean, coming from the world of acting, what I do is observe human behavior, and I'm also a birder, so I tend to look at people and think of them as birds. I didn't include that in the book very much, thank God, but I did start to have very strong opinions about--about the way people were and acted.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Yeah. Well--well...

Ms. ALEXANDER: I just don't think he's very swift upstairs.

Ms. ALEXANDER: No. No. And--and, see, that's another reason why I wanted the book--write the book. Not be--I didn't want to trash people per se, but I didn't have to worry about censoring my own tongue or my thoughts about people when I characterized them because I don't have an investment in politics, except as a citizen.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Sure.

Ms. ALEXANDER: You have to. I mean, politics is all about compromise. You never know who's going to be on top tomorrow. It's very much like Hollywood in that regard, you know? In--in--in Hollywood, you wouldn't dare trash the head of a studio because you'll never work again.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Yeah, he is. He's a wily codger.

Ms. ALEXANDER: He's--there--there's something charming about codgerism and codgers, and Jesse is that way personally. He's a courtly Southern gentleman. We got along just fine. I mean, we just disagree on just about everything, but he's civil in person. And, you know, that--that was fine. But he's wily, and he doesn't miss a trick, as far as I'm concerned.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Well, that was my very first introduction to Jesse Helms--was in the halls of Congress and--and the Capitol Building. And Senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming, who had become an early friend of mine on--on the Hill, said, `Oh, there's Jesse. Come on, let's go over and meet him.' And--and Alan said, `Senator, I'd like you to meet Jane Alexander, the new chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.' He looked straight in my eyes, and then he said, `You can come to my office and feel my horns anytime.' I mean, it was lewd and funny at the same time.

Ms. ALEXANDER: No. I think that what he thought he was doing was, `I'm characterized as the devil. Look at me.' But the gesture was lewd.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Yeah. Well, that just irritated me because, I mean, politicians should be briefed on who's coming to see them. And...

Ms. ALEXANDER: No. He said, `I hear you've done some acting.' I--it's ju--it was just a matter of, `OK, why isn't the senator briefed on who I am, what my--my past history as an artist has been at least by their aides?' I encountered this again and again, not that people didn't know who I was, but that they weren't up on the issues. They did not know what the National Endowment for the Arts did, and they were ignorant, and they continued to be ignorant.

Ms. ALEXANDER: I didn't say that. Well, I did say that, you're right. I thought that JFK Jr. was thinking that when I was railing against the fact that the politicians I had visited in their offices very often would say, `Well, I support you. I'm going to be there for you,' and then get up on the House floor or the Senate floor and vote against the NEA. So JFK Jr. just kind of looked at me, with that wonderful, cocky little smirk of his, as if he's saying--saying, `Oh, come on. Wise up. Wh--why are you expecting more of--of politicians than you do of used car salesmen?'

Ms. ALEXANDER: Well, yes, I think so because...

Ms. ALEXANDER: Yeah, she's not there anymore. But she--she--she shocked me by saying, `Well, I'm going to vote against the NEA because of grants you give.' And I say, `Well, what are the specific grants you're talking about?' She said, `Oh, you know, that Mapplethorpe and Serano.' I said, `That was over five years ago.' And she said, `It doesn't matter. It's the perception that counts.' And I--I thought, `Oh, my gosh, here we are. If perception is all that counts and not the truth, what is happening at the top levels of our government?' I really was alarmed by it.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Andre Serano, yeah.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Both photographers. Andre Serano did a really luscious photograph of a crucifix. It looked like it--it's got fire all around it. I had not seen it at the time; I've seen it since, the--the--the photograph. He named it "Piss Christ."

Ms. ALEXANDER: Yeah. You don't really see the jar so much, but you see this little crucifix surrounded by, it looks like, fire and bubbles and sunlight. It's--it--as a photograph, it's quite striking and beautiful. But when he named it "Piss Christ," he--the ire of many, many Christians became apparent and...

Ms. ALEXANDER: Only through an exhibition to a museum. It was not a direct grant to the photographer.

Ms. ALEXANDER: That was like 1989.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Mapplethorpe, again, was a--an exhibition, a retrospective of his work in which there were--again, I did not see it, that--that particular exhibit, but as I understand it, there maybe were five or six homo-erotic photographs. And, again, not a direct grant to the artist. It was a museum grant.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Well, I had just been confirmed or was just about to be confirmed as NEA chair, and--and I hadn't been around the Washington scene, and I didn't know how--what to expect. So I was at this reception dinner party, and I was sitting at a very low coffee table on a silly little footstool, and David Gergen looming--big fellow--looming to my right, and little Meg Greenfield, who has since departed this planet--lovely woman--was...

Ms. ALEXANDER: Exactly--was sitting on my left, and Jack Valenti opposite on the sofa with three high-powered Washington lawyers. And right away, Gergen says, `What's your defin--definition of art?' I can't even remember what I said, but I was so taken aback, and I--I still don't know how to define what art is, and there's very few people who really can. So I came out with a relatively academic response, which was so boring. I mean, I was boring myself while I was saying it. And Gergen kept shooting down my arguments, and finally--and Meg Greenfield said nothing. I wanted the support of this woman. Nothing.

And, finally, Valenti says, `Well, my definition of art is that which endures,' and all I thought was, `Poor dancers.' How do dancers or even actors--our art is very ephemeral, except if you're on celluloid. So I sat there totally shot down. They--they all rose and walked like as one into the dining room, and I was left there. And a fellow, who was about--a little bit further away than you are from me right now, got up, came over and said, `Welcome to Washington.' And it was Tom Lovejoy, who's this famous biologist who is in biodiversity at the Smithsonian. And he said, `Let me take you to lunch.'

Ms. ALEXANDER: He meant that he had to tell me the ropes a little bit about how things worked in Washington and how you're expected to behave and conduct. In other words, I probably should never have answered that question or tried to.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Very excited. I'd grown up in Boston. I mean, I grew up revering the Founders of our nation as the great--and I love the Constitution. In the late '70s, I predated Sandra Day O'Connor by playing the first woman Supreme Court justice opposite Hank Fonda in a play called "First Monday in October." I knew the Constitution backwards and forwards back then, and I loved it. I revered it. I thought it was a great, great document. When I came to Washington and people were trying to subvert the Constitution, I was really taken aback. So I was idealistic, maybe I was naive--probably, but I haven't lost my ideals, but I'm cynical.

Ms. ALEXANDER: I think he was. I mean, he's known as Maddog Dar--Dornan, and he--it did seem like he was foaming at the mouth sometimes when he'd get up and get on railing in the House about any issue he took exception to, particularly the NEA.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Never had to deal with him one on one, except when I went to a--an arts caucus luncheon. He came up to me, all sweetness and light, and said, `You know, I'm an actor, too. That's what I used to do.' I thought, `Well, you'd better go back to it. You'd be better off out of politics.'

Ms. ALEXANDER: I think so, yeah.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Well, I met with a lot of rampant homophobia in Congress. We know about Jesse Helms. It's not as readily apparent about other senators and congressmen, but in the privacy of their offices, they would say to me, you know, `It's--it's the ga--it's the grants that--that go to art that i--has a homosexual nature or two homosexuals that's getting the Endowment in trouble.' I tried to point out that, you know, they're taxpayers, too, and 10 per--fully 10 percent in any given survey or--of--of the American public are homosexuals.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Yeah.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Well, I--of course, Robert Byrd at that time was chairman of the Appropriations Committee, and he had a huge staff, and he was a very, very busy man. But I do think that he does play a game--a little power game and--and doesn't get back. But other--I--I could usually get right to senators, and I could usually get right to Cabinet secretaries, department heads. The vice president would return my calls. The vice president was terrific. I mean, he'd return them in--within one day. But with the exception of the president and Bob Byrd, I wouldn't usually get a call back.

Ms. ALEXANDER: He was angry at--at one particular grant, really, what he felt was a continuing egregiousness on the part of the Endowment to fund controversial work. I tried to explain that, again, these were grants to institutions for seasonal work or for exhibitions. And it was one in particular that bothered him, and he was threatening to cut the theater program, the visual arts program and our presenting program by 5 percent, which was an enormous amount of money back then in 1994. It was about 10--more than $10 million. And it--it really could have made--wreaked havoc with those programs. So I had to go and sit down and talk with him about it.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Melanne Verveer was the woman I most admired in Washington; continues to be the woman I most admire. She was the adviser to the president and the first lady on the arts and the first lady on other issues, as well as the arts, and has since become Hillary Rodham Clinton's chief of staff. After I left the Endowment, she became chief of staff. Melanne shepherded me through the confirmation process, and she continued to be my adviser on the arts from the administration side. And she's a loyal, bright, remarkable woman.

Ms. ALEXANDER: I don't think that there was a doubt that I'd become it after the president nominated me. It was whether I would be unanimously confirmed, which I finally was.

Ms. ALEXANDER: You pay courtesy calls on the Hill...

Ms. ALEXANDER: ...right away. Well, you--you have to get to know the senators, and the senators have to get to know you right away, and es--especially the ones that are sitting on the committee because they don't have time, really, to--to come in and have--have me make my presentation, my--have the hearing and then know what to vote on. So...

Ms. ALEXANDER: Oh, at least a dozen I made, maybe more.

Ms. ALEXANDER: I th--I think it is the only way, yes, in the beginning, although I felt that the--to be confirmed as chairman of the NEA on such a laborious process, which involves FBI vetting, complete financial disclosure going back to all my employment since the age of 16 was a little over the top for peacetime for the chair of the National Endowment for the Arts. But, listen, we're having problems with security and espionage today, so maybe anybody could be suspect.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Jim Powers was my husband's and my accountant for 23 years, dating back to the beginning of the '70s, and he embezzled us of virtually everything we owned over a process of five years. And he embezzled much of--of--of the assets of eight other clients. We first found this out at the same time that the FBI was doing their vetting of me, and the New York County attorney general's office called me down to Lower Manhattan, Ed and me, one day, and said, `I don't know how to tell you this, but you have nothing.' And they had been investigating him for the better part of a year, and--and she was right. We didn't--I mean, I--we had our house left because he was not able to refinance that.

Ms. ALEXANDER: No. We had nothing. I had...

Ms. ALEXANDER: Oh, yeah. He didn't pay our taxes for five years. That was the killer.

Ms. ALEXANDER: You know, when you're in show business, you very often hand over a lot of what you do, your accounts and everything, to a manager because I was--during the '70s and '80s and even the early part of the '90s, I'd be making movies or going to perform in theaters, not only around the United States, but abroad, too, as well: Hungary, Germany, Spain, you know. And--and this is very common in the entertainment world.

And so we had just given over too much to him. We got quarterly reports, but he was a criminal. He ha--he--he had forged my name a number of times. He would whiteout the actual numbers, put them through a copy machine and then that was what we received, so it looked--put his own numbers in, you know. And he had also cleverly allowed--allowed every single bit of correspondence with the IRS and everything to go back to him. So we never got any of the notices or anything.

Ms. ALEXANDER: He was sentenced to 12 years in prison, but because of white-collar crime and crowded New York prisons, he was out after three. He's--he's in the streets of New York, I s--I presume, on a work release.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Our loss, we estimate, was about a million and a half, but that was with real estate and other things. Total, with all the nine victims, was about $5 million.

Ms. ALEXANDER: I learned it in the middle of my vetting process with the FBI in 1993, in the spring of '93.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Oh, those are--that's my family. My husband's next to me, and John Sherin, my youngest stepson.

Ms. ALEXANDER: John Sherin is over here.

Ms. ALEXANDER: And right next to me is my son, Jace Alexander; my husband, Ed, on the other side of me; our stepson, Jeff, who's since passed away in the back; and Tony Sherin, my eldest stepson in the front.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Ed Sherin. And...

Ms. ALEXANDER: He has been producing the TV series "Law & Order" for the past seven years, and he's just stepped down from that.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Well, Dick Wolf, who was the creator of "Law & Order," called up Ed immediately when he heard 'cause it was in the papers, and he called Ed up and he said, `Ed, your loss is my gain. I want you to produce "Law & Order."' And Ed had always been a free-lance director, but this was our saving grace, and we thank Dick to this day because Ed was receiving a good, regular salary. And within five years, we were back in the black again.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Mm-hmm. He died suddenly of a heart attack, skiing, at the age of 33. There were no symptoms prior to that. And it was just one of those awful, tragic things that happen.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Yeah.

Ms. ALEXANDER: That meeting, I believe, is in '95. Yeah.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Yeah, first and only in the Oval Office. I--I saw him at numerous social events. And--oh, well, there is a signing in the Oval Office and a--another time for the Kennedy Center bill, but my only one on one, what they call face time, with the president was--was the one at the top.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Well, I--he's--he was always very supportive of the agencies, and the administration was always very supportive. But, again, I--I don't know how to say it. I think that I wanted more from politicians in terms of an understanding of what the arts and the federal role in arts funding means to society at large. I wanted clear support of the First Amendment, which, by the way, the Supreme Court has given us in their 1998 decision on the Finley Four--I mean, The NEA Four, Karen Finley, et al.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Yeah.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Yeah. But I was wising up about politicians in general. And the denouement of the whole arc of my story really is an understanding that politicians are in it for the game and the game to win. And nobody plays that game better than Bill Clinton, to my mind. And it means if he--I think he looks at it if he wins, then he's able to get some legislation passed. In such a partisan atmosphere that we have now, you could get no legislation passed if you didn't try to win points here and there. So that's what he was doing. I--I just play a different game in life. I mean, people who come from the world of arts play a different game. It's not win--win or, you know, you--some people are in it to make money, but most artists in the non-profit arts world are in it for the love of the thing.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Yeah.

Ms. ALEXANDER: I think the American public is way ahead of--of a lot of politicians. It's--it became very clear to me and as ovul--clear to a lot of political writers--that politicians are led by the nose by the special interests that back their campaigns. And it's--who can blame them? I mean, any--you get elected to the House, you have to pay off your campaign debts and start raising more money for the next race.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Yeah. I think it may never be fixed.

Ms. ALEXANDER: I think it's always been corrupt in certain respects, and you can live with a certain amount of corruption, but we don't have a lot of statesmen anymore. We have more money than ever. And our campaigns are longer than ever. I mean, Canada campaigns a couple of months. Why can't we do that?

Ms. ALEXANDER: Because I think special interests control our Congress now.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Because they have all the money.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Karen Finley was a performance artist. She still is, sh--a very serious performance artist in the United States. And she was vilified and ridiculed by Jesse Helms in particular back in the early '90s and--late '80s, early '90s. Karen Finley and three other performance artists brought suit against the National Endowment for the Arts when my predecessor, John Frohnmayer, decided not to advance the recommendation of the panel of the NEA to give them grants to the National Council on the Arts. They brought suit against the agency, saying the content of their work was why he refused to do that and they finally, ultimately, took that suit all the way to the Supreme Court, which came down with a decision in their favor in 1998.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Mm-hmm.

Ms. ALEXANDER: The decency clause was put into the Endowment's legislation by well-meaning senators--Ted Kennedy, Claiborne Pell, I think it was, Kassebaum and Hatch--thinking that if they said the de--that--well, there were two di--different decency clauses. One was a decency--what they call a--a decency oath that--that artists, given grants, had to sign. And that was shot down in the courts when Bella Lewitzky brought suit against that in the late '80s and early '90s.

The second was the one I just mentioned, where the decency clause was put into the legislation saying the panelists had to take decency into consideration when awarding grants. The Supreme Court has also said that that legislation in the same decision in '98 can hold ca--is--Congress can have it in there. But meanwhile, decency has been considered unconstitutionally vague language for a very long time. And I suspect there may be another suit someday down the line in court about it.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Well, I think the American taxpayer should support the arts at a federal level. Let's talk about that...

Ms. ALEXANDER: ...not the state level. Yeah. Because we're talking about celebrating the genius of our nation, if you will, and all great nations in--in Earth, the industrialized ones, support the arts at a national level that then filters down to the local level. We--we also need to have a national recognition of what artists mean to our nation. And that's what the--the grant gives them. It's wonderful to have a state grant, it's great to have a local grant, but a national grant is very, very special.

We don't have national treasures like other nations. But an NEA grant gives an--an artist a sense that a--the jury of his peers brought together from racially, ethnically, even aesthetically diverse peoples, private citizens, rul--you know, judging their application is really a standard of excellence and merit that it can't get any better in this country.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Well, it began under Lyndon Johnson. It was a dream of John F. Kennedy's, and Johnson, in 1965, was the one who finally signed off on it.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Richard Nixon. And that's why I say it should not be a partisan issue. I mean, our cultural institutions in the United States are--are supported in great measure by the private donations of Republicans. So this should not be a partisan issue.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Mm-hmm.

Ms. ALEXANDER: I played the bookkeeper of the slush fund under Mitchell.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Oh, goodness, yes.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Not very much. I mean, we were so opposed, my friends and myself, to the Vietnam War, even though my brother was over there back in the '60s and early '70s, that I didn't think highly of Richard Nixon at all. I didn't think highly of LBJ back then. But I feel a lot better about LBJ these days.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Brookline, Massachusetts. Boston, I was born in Boston.

Ms. ALEXANDER: North Platte, Nebraska.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Oh, Dad lived there, I think, until he went off to Omaha Central High School at the age of--he went to Omaha Central High at about 14 because he went to Harvard at 16. He skipped a lot of grades. And on a scholarship, he went to Harvard and Harvard Med School, and he stayed in--in the Boston area.

Ms. ALEXANDER: In 1938 in a residency in New York City.

Ms. ALEXANDER: She was a nurse to--scrub nurse to a neurosurgeon.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Oh, when I was a little kid.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Oh, my dad took me to a performance. My dad had been away in the Second World War for a long time, about five years. That's little Jane, yeah.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Yeah. And there's my--my grandmother holding my dad with Buffalo Bill there because my grandfather was Buffalo Bill's doctor out in o--in--in Nebraska, North Platte.

My dad came back from the war in late '45 and a couple of years later--I was very estranged from him. He'd been away all my life and my--my mom was very important to me and my brother, and he took me to the ballet one day. I'll never forget it. I mean, it's so vivid in my mind. He was very handsome. And it was just me and him and we sat there, and I'd never seen anything like it in my life. I said, `That's it.' In my little seven-year-old mind, `I'm going to--I'm going on the stage.' And I did.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Yeah.

Ms. ALEXANDER: That's "Testament" up there where you just pointed.

Ms. ALEXANDER: That's the--the nuclear holocaust movie. It's about a family dying of radiation poisoning. And then on the lower left is Wendy Wasserstein's play "The Sisters Rosensweig," which was such a hit on Broadway for a year and more with Madeline Kahn, who's since passed away on the--to my left. Then up in the--up there is Ellen--the young Eleanor Roosevelt all dressed in her wedding clothes for the TV miniseries of "Eleanor and Franklin," based on Joe Lash's book. And then to the right there, holding my rifle, I'm Calamity Jane, CBS special movie. And then down in the lower left is James Earl Jones and I, a shot from the movie of "The Great White Hope," which had come from the play which we had been in, which began with an NEA grant.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Well, white bigots really hated it. It was at the height of the Black Power movement in the '60s, and there was--there was a lot of polarization in the country about race relations. As you may remember, civil rights movement and everything had been going on. Martin Luther King was about to be assassinated. And James Earl and myself were the first interracial couple to lie in a bed on stage together in a play. We had our clothes on. And the scene closed with a kiss. I got a lot of hate mail, and I had a couple of death threats through the years. So I understood what it meant I--to be in a controversial piece.

Ms. ALEXANDER: The year of the play was 1968.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Mm-hmm.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Well, the miniseries was seven hours long. It was put into two movies. So I played her as the young Eleanor and through the beginning--through the polio epidemic--I mean, polio of FDR to--then the second half was the White House years. So I played her twice and then I've--I reprise it once in a while by reading her letters hither--here or there or...

Ms. ALEXANDER: Yes. When I was NEA chairman, the first lady's office asked if I would play it in the East Room with Ed Herman playing FDR Jr. And we read some letters.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Oh, gosh. Eleanor was--what a--what a blessing to be able to play somebody like that, to kind of get--try to get under her skin. And I played her from the age of 16 up until 63. And she meant a lot to me. I mean, she was the ugly duckling who became a swan.

She was always trying to combat injustice and unfairness, and I had learned that--(speaking as Roosevelt) I mean, she spoke with such a strange voice for such a big woman. There were very little dri--diaphragmatic action.

And I found that she was very shy about public speaking until Louis Howe said--you know, FDR's right-hand man and campaign manager--Louis Howe said, `You--you've got to get out there, Eleanor, and--and be the--the legs of your husband.' So she accepted ev--every single speaking engagement one year that she was offered. And this was in the ear--'20s--early '20s. And she overcame her shyness. And so I did the same thing in the '70s and I overcame my shyness.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Well, in '93--yeah, it was--it was probably November of '93. I don't know the exact date, but I--or in October. I had--I went to do a call-in radio show on C-SPAN and 9 out of 10 of the calls were totally negative against the agency. And I was cer--shocked by the number, but I thought I was dealing with them pretty well. And then they had--it was Bachus of...

Ms. ALEXANDER: Yeah. Spencer Bachus on after me, who then trashed the Endowment and at the--in almost the same breath said, `And our poor symphony is going under in--in Birmingham.' And I thought, `Now wait a minute, can't you put those two things together, that the NEA can help the Birmingham Symphony?' By the way, it had already. Because of a few controversial grants? It was the thinking. And I--and I--I was angry at the--at C-SPAN for not putting him on first and--so that I could rebut or point out that this was--and I wasn't going to let that happen again. And I think in the future, it--it--it didn't.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Four.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Yeah.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Not all of them, but a lot of them. Yeah.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Knowing what I know now, I would probably do it again and be much better at it.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Well, I--you know--remember I quote Alan Simpson, whose advice to me was amazing. He said, `Follow your gut and don't take any crap from anyone.' Well, I was too shy not to take crap from a lot of people, but I did try to follow my gut. And I--I would have stood up more and be more forceful and--I also knew the arguments better. You know, hindsight is terrific because you can--you can say what you--what you would have done, but I had--I have now been around to all 50 states and some of the territories, 200 cities and towns. I know how important the arts are. I know how to speak about it now forcefully.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Mm-hmm.

Ms. ALEXANDER: No, he was still in the Senate. He's...

Ms. ALEXANDER: Yeah.

Ms. ALEXANDER: I was. It's--it's only because--I'm--I mean, I'm--I'm sure people are evil, but from an actor's point of view, you don't characterize people like that. That's a result term. I don't think people, except very, very weird people, characterize themselves as evil. So I was surprised that George Mitchell talked of him that way. But I--I thought that they must have had really horrendous battles together which I didn't even know about.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Yeah.

Ms. ALEXANDER: I think what Mitchell was saying--it was that--at the time of--Packwood's diaries had--had come out and all--all the shenanigans he had been going through. And--and Mitchell was talking about Packwood had not, at that time, resigned yet. And he felt that the Senate, as a body, needed to be preserved from those people who were--were not up to the job of being a senator and representing the greatest ideals of the Senate. And I think he's right about that. I mean, now, you know, people don't--don't leave. I mean, some people have, like Gingrich, Livingston and so on, but there--there is some--we should maintain the integrity of the body--of the body of--so that our ideals and what the Constitution stands for can be upheld and the American public can have some faith and trust in our leaders.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Mmm. Yeah. I mean, I was sh...

Ms. ALEXANDER: Well, I meant--wasn't I talking about the cheek-by-jowl relationship of...

Ms. ALEXANDER: Oh, the media. I thought you--I was talking about as well the--the juxtaposition of immense pockets of poverty next to these well-scrubbed mausoleums.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Yeah. Yeah.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Yeah.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Well, the people who--who live and work in the media here in Washington are sitting next to the politicians at dinner and--and everything. The town itself is extremely insular, and you only realize that when you go outside. And that's why I say that most people in the country said--sa--say, `Who cares?' But it's--it's like the only game of the media to--to report what's happening on a daily basis in politics. But I think politicians might be surprised how little attention is really paid to them by those people outside.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Yeah. It was.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Oh, letting off steam. Just like frat houses have beer parties on the weekends. Everybody is so--you know, they're--they're pretty civil in their--in here. And--and even--they try to maintain--or they used to try to maintain some civility when they were up on the House floor and the Senate floor. That seems to be di--diminishing a--a bit more in the past decade. But it's letting off steam. That's all. Just saying, `OK. This is all in fun. You are an SOB. Ha, ha, ha,' you know. But they're--they're really pretty dumb jokes.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Oh, there's lots of good people. I--I don't mean to--to deride all of Washington because there are some great people. I mean, I loved Sidney Yates, congressman from Chicago, who has since retired, in his mid-80s; was the champion of the arts and humanities endowment. Loved them. Could speak eloquently of them. So he was my--my--my best buddy. Louise Slaughter, congresswoman from upstate New York, a chair of the Congressional Arts Caucus, was another person that I thought was just terrific. She--she took no guff from anybody. And Ted Kennedy, of course, in the Senate. Nancy Kassebaum-Baker, senator from Kansas. I...

Ms. ALEXANDER: No. No. I grew up in a totally Republican environment. My father, my brother, all my parents' friends. I--I have no beef against Republicans, per se, except I don't like special interests telling them only what to do and that they don't have any sense of noblesse oblige anymore. I mean, that--that was what the Republicans were wonderful at, in my--when I grew up. You know, even my own father--if somebody needed a helping hand or a hand up, he was the first to give it. So the Republicans, per se, have never been against the National Endowment for the Arts and have supported it. It was just a new breed of politician that seemed to come in with the 104th Congress. And...

Ms. ALEXANDER: My birding?

Ms. ALEXANDER: Well, it's what I do. I discovered that to go bird watching back when I was on location in a distant land or a new city or--was an occupation I could do with just a pair of binoculars. And so it became a passion and it's what I do now virtually every single day. I--I walk for a mile or two or three or four and I look at the birds.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Mm-hmm.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Well, because I--I feel like I'm a pretty forthright and honest person. And I didn't want people to think that I was one of the--I was go--out there going to church all the time and praying for the salvation of the nation. It--it--that just wasn't me. I mean, I find my spiritual nature totally satisfied in trying to be a decent person and in birding every day.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Yeah. As a young person.

Ms. ALEXANDER: I think we all go on a spiritual quest in life.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Yeah, I think we can. I think that it's inevitable that our society, which has been dominated by a white Christian male ethic for so long, is going to have a lot of friction. And it's going to get worse before it gets better.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Because we're a pluralistic society now. We have more religions rising in the United States than ever before. We have more cultures, people from different backgrounds, and they're all bringing something to this mix, but they're going to clash. They're going to bump heads. And one of the first places that they--this becomes apparent is in the arts. And it becomes apparent in the visual arts. You know, it's only a matter of time before some of the Muslims in our country take exception to the fact that most of the mu--the paintings in the great museums are Christian. It's only a matter of time. So we're going to see more and more of this. And what I try to say is, `Look, let's--let's understand that we're going to see more of this and try to deal with it by talking with each other and educate and inform and even trying to embrace some of these other cultures a little bit more.' Doesn't mean to take anything away from our own.

Ms. ALEXANDER: I wrote it at my home.

Ms. ALEXANDER: On my computer.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Oh, in--up north of New York City, about 60 miles.

Ms. ALEXANDER: About a year.

Ms. ALEXANDER: I loved it.

Ms. ALEXANDER: I love the bubble of my mind. I love people. I like to be with people, so--I still always love the theater and the company of players, but that--that little--being inside your own mind for six hours a day is a very interesting place to be.

Ms. ALEXANDER: That was a wonderful cartoonist in--I think it's St. Louis who did this Venus de Milo cartoon of me with my arms chopped off. And underneath it, he's put the NEA.

Ms. ALEXANDER: I haven't seen the postings on Amazon.com yet, but people tell me that the reader comments are terrific. There haven't been many reviews that have come out yet, but I--I--so far, the people that I know that have read it have enjoyed it immensely because it's entertaining as well, which is what I wanted to--to do.

Ms. ALEXANDER: No, I just finished doing "The Cherry Orchard" at McCarter Theater in Princeton, which was a joy. Doing Chekhov is always the piece de resistance for actors.

Ms. ALEXANDER: To do a few more classic plays. Maybe...

Ms. ALEXANDER: Yeah, one or two good film roles, but I'm not interested in most of the fare.

Ms. ALEXANDER: Thank you, Brian. It's been a pleasure.