Looking back from a barstool in DuPont Circle, remembering the part of Zaitchik's book where Beck is sniffing coke in his DeLorean, I can't help but think that my dreamy romp with his flag-clad minions was similar to when Marty McFly tells Doc Brown in Back to the Future that the Gipper is president of the United States in 1985. "Ronald Reagan — the actor?" the inventor laughs, retiring his geodesic headgear. "Then who's vice-president? Jerry Lewis? ... I've had enough jokes for one evening. Good night, Future Boy."
It's dismayingly surreal to escape my modern Boston bubble and discover that Beck is not merely a "fabulist thespian," as I once painted him, but rather a full-fledged Biff Tannen cult leader pining for Hill Valley nostalgia. As for the vice-president of his movement, which filled and spilled beyond the National Mall for "Restoring Honor" — let's just say she's no Jerry Lewis.
Chris Faraone can be reached at cfaraone[a]phx.com.
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