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R K Eids


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TUESDAY, AUGUST 24, 2010


I may be the first dog to get a hole in one at mini-golf! All our features, including Frazz, will return Monday.


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An online guide to events, night life and entertainment


Search Going Out Guide on Facebook twitter.com/goingoutgurus Search Going Out Guide in the App Store


t’s that time of year when parents are excitedly filling their kids’ backpacks as the children grudgingly head off to the bus stop. Even as the days grow shorter, August’s last weekend is shaping up to be full of entertainment. Pull out your flip-flops for a last walk through one of these end-of-summer celebrations. PAINT IT! ELLICOTT CITY Art will take


Fair-minded? We’ve got you covered, and then some I


over Historic Ellicott City as artists join in a plein-air paint-out. If you think pig races are beneath you, you can wander down Main Street while gazing at works inspired by everyday life. A selection of plein-air artists will be on display at Urbanscapes Sunday through Oct. 15. Saturday and Sunday 10 to 7. Historic Ellicott City, Main Street, Ellicott City. 410-313-2787. www.hocoarts.org. Free. MARYLAND STATE FAIR Though the state’s big event takes place a bit far from


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the District, there’s enough going on to make this a day-long trip. Pig races, chainsaw contests, a car show and a costumed animal contest are just the beginning. This year’s fair will also host a jousting tournament along with a bull riding show. As for the fair’s concerts, Justin Bieber has already sold out, but tickets are still available for Bret Michaels and Gretchen Wilson. Friday through Sept. 6. Maryland State Fairgrounds, 2200


York Rd. Timonium. 410-252-0200. www.marylandstatefair.com. $8, $6 for age 62 and older, $3 for ages 6 to 11, younger than 6 free. Additional tickets necessary for concerts. ANNAPOLIS TOMATO FESTIVAL


Homestead Gardens’ cure for the nation’s obesity problem? More lycopenes, which will be in abundance at the Annapolis Tomato Festival. The fair


CITY OF ROCKVILLE


BON APPETIT! Chef Patrice Olivon offers cooking tips at Uncorked.


will celebrate the anti-oxidant-laden tomato with a chili cook-off, salsa competition and pizza-eating contest. Visitors can also learn how tomatoes taste best by sampling them and tomato dishes, all while listening to live music. Saturday noon to 6. Homestead Gardens, 743 W. Central Ave. Davidsonville. 410-798-5000. www. homesteadgardens.com. $10, $25 for a family of four, younger than 10 free. UNCORKED While this event may not be as kid-friendly, it’s certain to offer adults as much fun as any fair. Ten Maryland vineyards bring their wine for visitors to sample before heading to a wine seminar or cooking demonstration. Live music, from jazz to rock, will continue throughout the event, and the first 2,000 samplers get a commemorative wine glass. Saturday noon to 6.


Rockville Town Square between Rockville Pike, East Middle Lane, North Washington Street and Beall Avenue, Rockville. Admission free; $10 for wine tasting.


COLUMBIA HEIGHTS DAY Whether you live there or play there, this neighborhood has a lot to offer, and it plans to show it all off. Music, dance, a petting zoo and food booths from local restaurants and food trucks will introduce you to the neighborhood. Area eateries and bars will also offer specials. If you wish there had been a Columbia Heights issue of the Weekend section’s neighborhood guide, here’s a chance to discover it on your own. Saturday 10 to 6. Harriet Tubman Elementary Field,


11th and Kenyson streets NW. www. columbiaheightsday.org. 979-229-9139. Free.


—Kristen Boghosian PLANNING AN EVENT WE SHOULD KNOW ABOUT ? TELL U S . SEND LISTINGS INFORMA TION TO EVENTS@WASHINGTONP OST.COM Crowley brings layered approach to her talk show crowley from C1


wasn’t for us to count the dozen-plus presidential campaigns she covered, the hundreds of congressional news confer- ences, or innumerable scandals and stump speeches. If we’d stopped to think about it, we might have guessed that she was never just a newsreader like some of the others, but we didn’t stop to think about it. “She’s like the CliffsNotes for all the other reporters,” says Alexandra Pelosi, who covered two presidential races alongside Crowley. “They talk about those things that nobody reads — no- body reads bills. But Candy does. She reads all of that stuff. She reads every- thing. On the bus, everyone would just go to her and ask her, ‘Candy, so what’s this bill about?’ ” Still, Crowley wasn’t a star, and for decades no one seemed much interested in elevating her into one. So she is star- tled to find herself at the helm of a Sun- day talk show, peaking in her career dur- ing her seventh decade of life. A year ago, she wouldn’t have dared to wish for it. “Or even thought of it,” she adds. “People always used to say to me, ‘Don’t you want your own show? That’d be so cool if you had your own show.’ I said, ‘You know, it’s not gonna happen. So — no.’ ” Mind you, this is the woman who hung a sign above her desk — in lettering usu- ally reserved for homespun sayings like “Home Is Where the Heart Is” — that reads: “The Only Difference Between This Place and the Titanic Is That the Ti- tanic Had a Band.”


Optimism is not her forte. When media blogs lit up with specula- tion that the “State of the Union” job would be Crowley’s after John King an- nounced he was leaving the show to take over a prime-time slot in January, what she wondered was: “Who makes this [ex- pletive] up?” If people asked, she’d point out that there was a moment when Hilla- ry Rodham Clinton seemed destined to become Barack Obama’s running mate. “ ‘And then we found out they didn’t even vet her! I just want to remind you of that,’ ” she remembers saying.


Plan A


In the past couple of years, Crowley had been more seriously considering an exit strategy than an anchor desk. “It’s get on the bus, get off the bus. Get on the plane, get off the plane. Get in the hotel room, get out. Eventually, I was like, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore,’ ” she says. “I thought, ‘What do I do after this?’ ” But she should’ve known not to over- think it. That’s the one piece of advice she always offers young people: “Don’t plan too hard, because something much better might be out there.” Crowley didn’t plot out any of what her career has become. Which is not to say that she didn’t have a plan. She did: As she graduated from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in 1970, “I was wildly in love with this guy,” she says. “I thought I would marry him, move to California, have five kids, iron his shirts and write the Great American Novel.”


She recalls those dreams from a stool in the recently remodeled kitchen of her Bethesda rambler. The house is a show- case of family antiques, Asian art and memorabilia collected along her jour- neys with the press pool. Crowley, in chunky rings and a linen jacket, sits fac- ing away from a lushly landscaped back yard, where two young men are doing maintenance on her lap pool. She was up before dawn for a 7 a.m. newscast but is still ebullient at noon. As her friends are quick to gush, the


newswoman is enormously likable — warm, chatty and without pretension. She laughs heartily at her own jokes, throwing her head back and slapping the counter. In every situation she seems to


with explosives in his underwear, Crow- ley carried the live coverage, landing an interview with the Homeland Security secretary, who declared that “the system worked.” It became a catchphrase for criticism of the Obama administration. “I think Candy’s got a disarming ap-


BILL O’LEARY/THE WASHINGTON POST


CHANGES: Crowley has adapted to the rhythms of a live show — learning to tactfully interrupt politicians, for example. “She has a very logical mind, so when


lead with her humor — a sharp wit that produces, as CNN President Jon Klein puts it, “some of the funniest e-mail chains you’d ever want to get hooked into.”


When things went sour with the col-


lege boyfriend, Crowley, the daughter of a St. Louis furniture salesman and a homemaker, moved to Washington with a friend. Neither could “figure out what we could do with a bachelor of arts de- gree,” but eventually Crowley was hired to help put out a newsletter at a chem- icals trade association.


She also began freelancing for the Na- tional Education Association magazine, and at 22 she married a TV producer. He mentioned an opening with the chan- nel’s sister radio station and, thinking that journalism “would be fun,” Crowley signed on to work a split shift producing traffic and crime reports during morning and evening drive times. After a stint with another station,


Crowley was hired by AP Radio Network as a general assignment reporter. But within a few years she became a mother to two young boys, and when her hus- band got a job in Iowa, she became a stay-at-home mom for six years. “I’m not sure you always appreciate those times when you’re in them, but I look back and say to everybody, ‘Take it off — your ca- reer will find you. Trust me, when you go back, it’ll find you.’ ” By the time her youngest started kin-


dergarten, they’d returned to Washing- ton, and AP rehired her. The radio net- work eventually assigned Crowley to cov- er the White House, where she caught the attention of NBC executives. President Ronald Reagan was prepar- ing to deploy warships and had just fin- ished a speech on America’s stature as a peaceful nation when Crowley asked him, “How does a show of force show that we’re against force?” The next day she got a call asking if she’d ever thought about doing television. “I actually hadn’t. I envied the TV peo- ple, but mostly because they didn’t have to carry a lot of crap,” she says. “Every- thing I carried weighed a thousand pounds.”


years later, Crowley was on the chopping block. By then, she and her husband had divorced, and she remem- bers being “terrified because I didn’t know what I was gonna do next. I needed the money.” She latched on as a steady freelancer for CNN, and within two years was made full-time. Amid the rush of a 24-hour news station, Crowley’s work stood out for its thoughtfulness and eloquence.


One screen test later, she was hired. But when the station went through cut- backs 21


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she’s covering a story or an issue, she’s able to cut through all this stuff and get to what’s at the core of it,” says Molly Boyle, a friend and former colleague. “And then, because she’s such an incred- ible writer, she’s able to take that and ex- plain it to you in a way that not only makes sense, but is beautiful to hear.” In the early 1990s, Crowley began cov- ering Capitol Hill, “a puzzle palace of politics,” and after five years she was pro- moted to a national political correspon- dent. There were long days, cross-country assignments and two boys she was rais- ing largely alone because their father had moved out of state. For years, she would feel like she was going to throw up every day around 3 p.m., “because that’s when they come home from school and call you.” She’d pray that no late-breaking as- signment land in her lap, keeping her from dinner, homework and hanging out.


Of course the boys, Webster and Jona- than, now 31 and 30 and a neurosurgeon and rock musician, respectively, remem- ber little of that. They remember that takeout dinners were just fine and that their mom made it to every football


game, once insisting that CNN provide a car to chauffeur her to the stadium on a layover between campaign events. She refused to be away from her sons for lon- ger than five days at a stretch, but when the youngest left for college, Crowley re- alized she could take the “Mom, I need money” calls from any hotel room in America.


She was on the campaign trail for months at a time after that, covering Bob Dole, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, John Kerry and Obama. Along the way, she made fans out of competitors and sourc- es.


“I think everyone enjoyed her. She has


that great laugh and is just a lot of fun,” says Karen Hughes, former political ad- viser to George W. Bush. “And some of the interviews I’ve done with her are some of the best interviews that I can re- member doing. She’s probing and diffi- cult and tough . . . but there’s not the air of confrontation that you get from some interviewers.”


But by the end of 2008, after almost 18 months on the road, Crowley was ex- hausted. Campaign life doesn’t lend itself to healthy living or serenity. She prom- ised herself she’d spend all of 2009 dedi- cated to making changes: working out with a trainer, eating more nutritiously. “I just wanted to be a better person. I wanted to feel better,” she says. “And if at the end of the year I just hated it, then I’d go do whatever I want.” A doctor friend suggested she also take up meditation, so for four mornings she trained with a Transcendental Medita- tion teacher in Rockville. The practice stuck and she continues to sit for 20 min- utes every morning and every night. “It’s a hard thing to describe, but I find that my thought is clearer,” she says. “I still get mad. I still get upset. But I let it go more quickly.”


She began thinking about what would come next — “which I thought might be out.” She wondered if it was time to at- tempt that Great American Novel.


‘A disarming approach’ When “State of the Union” came open


CNN


VARIETY: Crowley, above in 2004, worked in radio before moving to TV.


in January, Crowley felt sure she didn’t have a real shot, but a friend convinced her that “if you don’t ask them for it, they’re never going to know you want it.” And just as Crowley returned from a trip to New Zealand with her boys, Jon Klein called her to his office to offer her the job. Crowley’s thick Rolodex and deep po- litical knowledge made her a contender, Klein says, but it was a Christmas Day in- terview with Janet Napolitano that cinched the deal. When an al-Qaeda op- erative boarded a Detroit-bound plane


proach,” Klein says. “She’s never looking to snooker anybody. She’s just talking to you. And I think that because she is so real in the conversations, the people she’s interviewing become very real, too, and that led directly to the news that was made that day.” After the “State of the Union” an- nouncement was made, a cheer went up in the CNN newsroom, and Crowley was deluged with notes congratulating her on being the first woman to anchor a Sunday morning public affairs show since Cokie Roberts co-hosted “This Week” with Sam Donaldson. Now Chris- tiane Amanpour joins Crowley, hosting the ABC News program. It has taken a while for Crowley to adapt to the rhythms of a live weekly show — setting her alarm for 3 a.m. every Sunday and learning to tactfully in- terrupt politicians, rather than abbrevi- ate their soliloquies in the cutting room, as she’d done for decades. CNN hired veteran producer Tom Bet- tag to remake the show for Crowley, soft- ening the set and cameras angles to cre- ate the impression of intimacy. Bettag, who worked extensively with Ted Koppel and Dan Rather, places Crowley “in the same class as those two people.” “What she brings is a real humanity,”


he says. “She’s got that mix of, ‘You would absolutely believe her and go to her in a crisis, but you would also enjoy having dinner with her.’ ”


But there is still a question of whether


we’re willing to spend an hour with our attention fixed on the kind of substantive discussions she conducts — even if they’re with big-name guests such as Hil- lary Rodham Clinton, Nancy Pelosi or Mitch McConnell, who have all appeared on the show in recent months. Robert Thompson, a communications professor at Syracuse University, thinks there could be a certain advantage in Crowley differentiating herself from the “adversarial and aggressive talk and opinion” we’ve come to expect from so much cable news. For a Sunday morning show targeted at political junkies, he says, viewers still “expect a more serious kind of presentation.” Since her debut in February, though, the program’s ratings have dropped — the July numbers were down 22 percent compared to the previous year. All of the Sunday morning talk shows have seen their viewerships decline, so a slow polit- ical news cycle may have contributed, but CNN’s numbers slipped more than its competitors. Klein says the network remains com-


mitted — “we’re convinced that there is an avid audience out there hungry for surprising insights expressed well,” he wrote in an e-mail. It will take months to reveal whether


Crowley’s show can find its footing and build a bigger audience. But for this moment, at least, its an- chor is having a ball. “I sometimes look around that studio in the middle of commercials and think, ‘Really?’ ” she says. “I can’t quite believe I’m doing this, but it’s a kick.” Every once in a while a Garth Brooks song — the one about how some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers — plays in Crowley’s mind. There was no California and no five kids. But there was so much else, including this, a show in which she finally plays the lead. mccarthye@washpost.com


View a photo gallery of the nation’s top Sunday talk shows and vote for your


favorite at washingtonpost.com/style.


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