Little Green Men Read Online Free

who had seen him on television, the little ah of recognition by a maitre d' when he arrived at the restaurant. Peg Bainbridge. the Post's editorial-page editor, invited him to contribute an article to her Op-Ed page. She liked what she saw and asked for more. He resigned from Senator Delph's staff - or, as he put it a bit pompously, let it be known that he was "allowing himself to be lured back into the private sector" - and set up shop as a print-and-pixel pundit, with a syndicated column in the Post and a regular slot on Washington Weekend.
    He stood out on Washington Weekend, though, to be frank, anyone with a pulse would have, considering the other regulars: a gassy, perpetually indignant columnist who had once been ambassador to Lesotho; a woman who had been covering Washington for one of the wire services since the Truman administration, and whose favorite phrase was "on the other hand"; a woman TV reporter who was having an affair with an ancient Supreme Court justice; and an obese, lisping think tanker who had published a book passionately arguing that Shakespeare's plays had been written by Queen Elizabeth. When Roger Panter, the Australian press baron, bought the television station that owned Weekend, Banion made his move. He wrote him a memo proposing certain changes, beginning with making him the show's host. Panter promptly sacked the other regulars and gave the show to Banion with orders to "juice it up" and a budget to do just that.
    Banion changed the format to a live, Sunday-morning one-on-one interview, introduced with a crisp taped investigative piece, and concluding with a one-minute parting thought by Banion. It certainly beat watching a bunch of self-important talking heads sucking their thumbs and regurgitating thoughts stolen from that morning's papers, all in order to drive up their already inflated lecture fees. In a medium glutted with sound bites, people were happy to come on and have twenty minutes of national TV exposure all to themselves, even if Banion sometimes extracted an admission price by flaying them alive, on air.
    His audience built steadily. His first big ratings coup came when former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara went on the show to reveal that he had been addicted to mind-altering hair-restorative drugs the whole time he was escalating the war in Vietnam. Suddenly Sunday became the show to be on.
    Ample Ampere, the giant electric company, signed on as sole sponsor. Banion signed a lucrative multiyear contract. The salary was nice, but the real money came from lecture fees, astronomical, bordering on intergalactic. It was amazing how much corporations were willing to pay to hear in person the same stuff they could get on TV but such is the nature of celebrity. The historian Daniel Boorstin defined it as "being known for being known." He might have added, "being paid for being known." Banion's youthful visage was now a fixture in the media firmament. Amazonian villagers with satellite TV would recognize his face if it went floating up their tributary. Maitre d's now saved tables for him on the chance that he might show up. His caricature was duly painted on the walls of the Frond restaurant, where big feet dined on briefcase-sized steaks and four-pound lobsters (despite the fact that younger, smaller lobsters have more tender flesh). He had to allow extra time in airports for signing autographs on his way to the gate. That is, in the event he was even traveling by commercial airline. His lecture agent, Sid Mint, now hinted strongly to his clients that their chances of getting John O . Banion to speak at their special event would be greatly improved by sending the corporate jet to fetch and return him.
    And here he stood, in Val Dalhousie's Rigaud-candle-scented parlor, preparing to have his posterior caressed by the very people who ran the country. Life was good. And it had all been so effortless.
    Ah, here came Bitsey and Tyler. Tyler, curator of the Fripps Gallery, was looking