The chocolate mints engraved with the U.S. seal were very cool, as was the “Moroccan Oasis” dessert featuring an Arab-style building of white chocolate. Having one’s name announced over a loudspeaker upon entering a room was also a novelty, despite the guests’ absolute indifference. But it was a struggle to figure out what exactly to say to the king of Morocco.
There is no good reason I was invited to last Tuesday’s White House state dinner for the king of Morocco. My ties to the country are not deep — indeed, they’re nonexistent (though I did greatly enjoy the movie “Casablanca”). But there it was in the mail, an invitation from Bill and Hillary “on the occasion of the visit of His Majesty Mohammed VI, King of Morocco.” Before this, I could not have even named the king of Morocco. I can name very few kings, in fact, other than Robert Johnson, “King of the Blues.”
It turns out the Moroccan king is 36, about my age; I can’t even control my desk and he’s running a kingdom. Many Washington insiders (who shall remain nameless, including my editor Vickie) noted that King Mo is very cute.
It’s true that I cover the president, and the White House sometimes tries to do nice things for the press. I think they see us as a sort of venomous snake, one that can swallow a pig (or a president) whole. They figure as long as they feed us, we’ll stay lethargic and won’t bite. On presidential trips, it’s not unusual for the staff to serve us five meals a day, and snacks materialize wherever we go (our newspapers are then billed).
So maybe the dinner invitation was part of this press-control-through-food tactic. All I know is, Tuesday night my wife, Dara, and I pulled up to the White House gate, a dilapidated Honda Accord in a line of gleaming Mercedes and Cadillacs. Our car was “K-9’d,” as the security officer put it — sniffed by a dog to make sure it was not packed with explosives. When we dropped off the car, I felt like apologizing to the parking attendant for its condition; no doubt he was used to better.
Entering the ceremonial rooms of the White House is a dramatic experience — massive chandeliers, busts of the presidents and paintings of the first ladies, uniformed escorts everywhere, string quartets at every turn. One woman’s sole task was to say to everyone, “Welcome to the White House.”
No one seems to know precisely how the guest list for the Morocco dinner materialized, but it was an incredibly strange mix, from sex therapist Ruth Westheimer to singer Paula Abdul to model Carol Alt. I found out later this was the biggest state dinner in history, with more than 435 guests, which explains how we made the cut.
I mentioned to one White House staffer that my invitation seemed random. He looked at me and said, half-jokingly, “Nothing is random,” which I think pretty much sums up the Clinton White House. Everything is staged; all is calculated.
Certainly commentator Matt Drudge, who blasted the state dinner on his Web site the next day, did not think it random. After suggesting that it was hypocritical for the leader of a poor country to have a nice dinner, Drudge singled out a few of the guests, including me, asserting that I was being rewarded by the White House for a recent article they liked. Ouch, dude.
In the East Room, with its life-sized portraits of George and Martha Washington, chutzpah-man Alan Dershowitz jostled with actress Mary Stuart Masterson and filmmaker Ken Burns. When the president invites people to dinner, it seems, they come; Clinton clearly gets a kick out of this and takes advantage of it.
We queued up to shake hands with the Clintons, the king, and the king’s sister Princess Lalla (which seems like a made-up name, but then again, I should talk). An attendant tried to help us figure out how to address the king: “Your highness?” “Your majesty?” “Your royal highness?” And if you say the wrong thing, can the king behead you? I felt like I was getting ready to meet Henry VIII. In the end, I just called him sir.
Little trollies took us to a massive white pavilion on the South Lawn dripping with chandeliers. The king and the president rose to offer toasts, and Clinton said Morocco was the first country to recognize the United States, back in 1777. The trick at these events seems to be to find some unique link between the two countries — “The U.S. and Malaysia, of course, have the longest-lasting cod treaty in the world, paving the way for perpetual closeness between our two peoples, especially in the area of fishery.”
They split up the couples at dinner, sending my wife and me to different tables, the idea being that this way we would actually talk to the other guests. Each table had a centerpiece with a huge number of roses, and each setting had so much silverware — including a plethora of forks and some fairly obscure-looking implements — that it was hard to know what to do with it all.
Each table also had a “host” from the White House staff, whose job was to keep the conversation going, like a facilitator at some business convention. I was not seated with anyone famous, unless you count Steve Ricchetti, the deputy White House chief of staff, who I guess in Washington passes for a celebrity.
The food was very elaborate, including things I had not heard of and did not understand. We had salmon wallowing in yellow gazpacho (“wallowing” was not the term used on the menu, but I believe it’s apt). We had lamb with onions and “chanterelles,” whatever they are. We had a “warm goat cheese tart,” which is not something I would seek out, especially not with “mission fig dressing.”
The highlight, though, was a dessert called “A Moroccan Oasis.” At state dinners the desserts have names, like operas or paintings. I think I’ll begin naming my desserts at home, things like “An American Jell-O” or “The Spirit of Pudding.” The “Oasis” was a Moroccan-looking building with walls of white chocolate, filled with some sort of frozen sherbet.
After-dinner entertainment was provided by that 1970s powerhouse, Earth Wind and Fire. Apparently this is what King Mohammed wanted, though the band’s writhing, scantily clad dancers seemed a bit risque for a Muslim country.
I was told that Lou Reed, formerly of Velvet Underground, performed at one recent state dinner. I would have liked to see that. I wonder if he sang his hit “Heroin,” or “Walk on the Wild Side,” his hymn to sexual experimentation. Or “Good Evening, Mr. Waldheim,” which trashes Rev. Jesse Jackson, now Clinton’s envoy to Africa.
Afterward, Bill and Hillary thanked us for coming, as though we had just dropped by for pizza, all 435 of us. The parking attendants were so efficient that the Honda was ready for us by the time we walked out of the White House. Probably they just wanted to get it off the grounds as quickly as possible.
