Jerry in the Kitchen

I told Jerry Brown once he ought to smile more. He said, “What do you mean?” I smiled widely, ear to ear, a glorious, glowing, megawatt grin, and, speaking tightly through the glow, said, “That’s what I mean.”

He seemed to understand, but it was during his Mother Teresa Phase and happiness wasn’t appropriate. He just nodded and went back to meditating and apologizing to God for world poverty and hunger.

That’s the last advice I ever gave him, and anyone who watches television knows he hasn’t taken it. The man always looks like he’s in the middle of a colonoscopy, which can make you very grim indeed.

The reason I mention it is because I swung by Brown’s campaign headquarters the other day in Santa Monica. Well, drifted by would be a better term.

I had nothing else to do and Brown was winning in Connecticut so I figured what the hell. It was either go there or gather with the masses around that North Hollywood tree where worshipers think they can see the weeping Virgin of Guadalupe in the bark.

I decided against that because I’ve been getting a lot of heat lately from those who resent my conversations with God columns. The press agent for the Pope of L.A., which is to say Cardinal Roger Mahony, indicated after my last column that I might burn in hell for it.

Burning in hell may mean just another summer in L.A. to some, but I’m not taking any chances.

Anyhow, I stopped by Jerry Brown’s Cosmic Headquarters, appropriately next to a place called Ting’s Healing Center, and asked national campaign manager Jodie Evans why Brown was always so grim.

She said, “Oh, he isn’t. You ought to see Jerry in the kitchen.”

I don’t think I’ve ever seen Jerry in the kitchen. I followed him around the country when he was running for President in ’76 and ’80 but we were mostly on buses and airplanes and at functions that did not include kitchens.

I suppose that’s why I remember him as always taking himself pretty seriously. An example of that occurred in Baltimore and is imprinted on my memory as permanently as a rancher’s brand on a cow’s behind.

It was on a balmy summer evening at an al fresco reception attended by wealthy Maryland people from whom the candidate wanted to extract large sums of money.

Those were in the days before he discovered evil. Like Adam with a fig leaf, he reacted to the knowledge by covering his greed with a $100 bill--the most he will accept these days in campaign contributions.

The reception was at an estate surrounded by acres of lawn. Everyone waited for Brown to light the night with eloquence. As it turned out, his pitch to the millionaires was to boast that as governor he had successfully fought to limit the amount of toilet water used per flush in California.

After he said that there was a long moment of silence until one of his aides, never quite sure what to do, applauded. He was the only one.

An elderly matron standing next to me, her mouth agape as she waited for some sort of scatological punch line, finally turned and said, “Is the young man serious?”

I said, “Yes, ma’am, the young man is very serious.”

Later, Brown actually wanted to know how the toilet water comment went over and, in response, the campaign aide clapped very, very sloooooooowly.

It was shortly thereafter that Brown declared himself an exponent of spiritual politics and everyone began calling him Governor Moonbeam.

By the way, I didn’t mean to imply that Jodie Evans spends a lot of time in the kitchen with Brown. Her reference was to a segment on CNN in which they apparently interviewed him in the cooking room, during which, to use her phrase, he was a blast.

Unfortunately, he cannot spend the rest of his campaign in the kitchen, which is bound to limit his emotional image to that of Angry Man. He’s like Peter Finch in “Network,” hollering out a window that he’s madder than hell and not going to take it anymore.

It was pointed out to me at his campaign headquarters that the people are hungry for someone like Brown, the way we were hungry for peace and sex during the 1960s. Now we are hungry for honesty and morality and for saying no to women like Gennifer Flowers who are after our precious bodily fluids.

Maybe so, but I don’t think Jerry Brown has a chance in hell of becoming President. But you can’t fault the Connecticut-greased momentum of his campaign or the enthusiasm of his volunteers.

I sat in on a staff meeting in Santa Monica that ended with a football-like cheer. If not now, when, if not now, when, if not now, when, Governor Brown, Governor Brown, PRESIDENT Brown in ‘92!

It must have had impact. Later I was leaning against an oak tree in Topanga and was amazed to see a holy image of Jerry Brown in the bark. Damned if he wasn’t smiling.