Nathan Naylor, press spokesman for US Vice-President Al Gore, was giving staff from the American television networks an advance briefing during last week's trip to Honduras by Mr Gore's wife, Tipper."She's gonna be shovellin' mud," Naylor told the crews. "Then she'll wipe the sweat from her brow, like this. Make sure you get that shot, all right?"
Naylor even did the gestures, pretending to shovel with an imaginary spade then running his right hand along his forehead to brush off imaginary sweat.
Pause.
According to a report by Phil Davison in the Independent newspaper of London, Tipper Gore was playing for the camera as she was praying for the camera during her recent visit to El Chile, Honduras, where she viewed damaged caused by Hellstorm Mitch.
"When Mrs Gore arrived, the choreography went perfectly," Davison, who has been covering the damage nightmare in daily dispatches, reports.
"Well, almost. Residents did not really know who she was. Some thought she was Diana, Princess of Wales. News arrives slowly in these parts, even before the hurricane."
"As she tramped down narrow street in the slums of this barrio near Tegucigalpa, badly hit by Hurricane Mitch, she spotted an old lady shovelling thick, dark mud from the front door of her simple stone home.
"'Does she need some help. Is this where I'm supposed to shovel?'
America's 'Second Lady' asked Mr Naylor. 'No, no, it's further down,' he replied."
Tipper Gore's Hurricane Mitch relief mission continued.
The second lady finally arrived at the scene of her photo opportunity, a 6-foot pile of hardened mud in a narrow street.
"It was a strange pile, squarish and flattened, and it seemed odd that it had been left to block the street and hamper rescue efforts," Davison details. "But to everything there is a purpose."
Lights! Camera! Action! The wife of the vice president of the United States was ready to attack her mud pile with a spade: "I counted eight shovelfuls and, sure enough, up came the glove to flick away the sweat," Davison writes.
"As Mrs. Gore approached, Naylor skillfully helped a television crew clamber up the pile for the perfect shot."
"Mr Naylor spun round to look at the cameras. The stills were whirring, the videos' red lights were on. His face took on the look of a man by a peat fire sipping a cognac and smoking a pipe. Mission accomplished."
[According to the report, there was a temporary distraction when a young girl sank up to her waist in soft mud nearby, which required an emergency rescue by the police and soldiers escorting the second lady.]
Gore Press Secretary Naylor promised reporters that the second lady would be spending the night in a tent. There would be a photo-op, of course.
Davison explains: "Mrs. Gore did what is known in Latin America as a 'bano de pueblo', or 'people bath,' living in local conditions as a sign of solidarity...The only trouble was the victims were not sleeping in tents but in a school building. Not to worry. Her aides had brought a tent along. They had, of course, also rented a room in a local luxury hotel, so she nipped back there, her police escorts' sirens blaring, to freshen up before returning to her tent to sleep."
"How well she slept nobody knows. But she was up at 4.30am, long before the refugees. That enabled her to appear live on a US television breakfast show."
A few days later, Tipper Gore joined President Bill Clinton in Washington during his weekly radio address.
Mrs. Gore: "Thank you, Mr. President. In Honduras we visited a neighborhood devastated by the storm. We joined the effort to clean up the school that will become a medical facility... That night I slept in a tent outside a shelter with homeless families..."
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