“Ah, he’s offended! There’s hope. He’s still insulted by the idea that he is selling out. Most of your confreres in the press would be flattered to be described as ‘insiders’ who are numbered among the ‘responsible.’ They would be tickled pink. You still have a vestige of shame, which means you are not yet a lost cause. But I have to tell you, O friend of the powerful, that I am giving up on the Establishment Press. You’re all infected. I’ve been conducting my own survey, and the results are in.”

“Infected with what? What are you talking about?”

“I have been contacting representatives of other respectable organs of the Fourth Estate about employment, and they all gave me the same answer you did. ‘Sorry, Rupert. It’s a nonstarter.’ They all have the same aversion to employing a former intelligence officer as you do, even the magazines. You’d think that if they were willing to employ David Gergen, they would hire anyone. But no, sorry. It violates the rules; it offends the sensibilities. That’s the essence of it—your profession is managed by prudes. You have given up the essential mission of journalism: afflict the comfortable and have a fucking good time about it. No, you have decided to be serious, and it’s time for me to take my talents elsewhere—to the unserious.”

There was no point in trying to argue with him. He was way out there in Rupertland, where the powers of ordinary argument could not reach. “So what are you going to do,” I asked, “if you’re giving up on the big newspapers and magazines?”

“The future beckons. You are the past—the dinosaurs. Do you know what they died of, the dinosaurs? They died of respectability. So the hell with all of you. I am planning to offer my services to the organs that still practice journalism in the raw. The Sun. The Star. Geraldo. Inside Edition. Hard Copy.”

“Hard Copy? You’re kidding me.”

“You laugh, Mr. Gergen, but these people have the right stuff. They do not scruple over the rules. They are journo-anarchists, like my own humble self.”

I assumed he was joking. But that was the problem with Rupert, you never really knew what the serious parts were. For the rest of that evening he gave his usual performance of Bohemian Spy, and I laughed and played along.

But that night marked a turning point in our relationship. For all the jokes, he meant what he had said about my profession, and I meant what I said about his. We were mirror images of each other—each frustrated by the limitations of where we were, each seeking a more powerful and personal connection, each racing in the opposite direction from the other.