Comment In most ways, the hearings of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol are like any hot TV show of the moment: Loyal viewers dissect each episode, go to bed still thinking about it, bite their nails over its latest reveal, yell back at the screen, recap it breathlessly for one another (or let the Rachel Maddows of the world recap it for them), send around links to critical analyses, implore those who haven’t been watching to get with it, catch up, join the program. In other ways, it’s this inexorable, anxiety-producing drag — you know you should tune in, pay attention as democracy dangles off a cliff, but your heart just can’t take it. And so we turn to the superfans: How do they watch? Where do they watch? Why do they watch? We sent three reporters to hang out with a few of these viewers as they absorbed Tuesday’s episode, which focused on President Donald Trump’s role in galvanizing and encouraging his followers to gather in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, and prevent Congress from affirming President Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.
In Georgetown, with poodles Ellen Charles is watching Tuesday’s hearing surrounded by an audience of four: Hazel, a toy poodle and the alpha dog; Harry, a champion standard poodle; Porter, another standard poodle; and Cashew, a toy poodle and Hazel’s son. They’re all in the living room of her Georgetown home, an oasis of understated good taste, comfy chairs and family photos befitting a doyenne of Washington’s social and charitable worlds. There’s iced tea and root beer and snacks served on very fine china. Harry is nuzzling for attention. Chairman Bennie G. Thompson calls the hearing to order. “He’s a wonderful man,” Charles says. “Both he and Liz Cheney are so even-tempered. They always have something interesting to say.” Charles, 85, hasn’t missed a minute of these hearings and believes it’s her civic obligation to stay informed. “As a citizen, I feel I have duty to help our country,” she explains. “I call myself a moderate Democrat. I have one son who thinks I’m very liberal. The other two think I’m perfectly normal.” She watched all the Watergate hearings, too, and thought they were fascinating if somewhat procedural and filled with legalese. On Jan. 6, 2021, she was having lunch at a friend’s house when they got a call to turn on the television and saw the Capitol being breached: “I couldn’t even put my arms around it. It was something I never thought would happen.” The experience of these hearings is more like diving in a well-written mystery: You might think you know the basic plot, but the telling details suddenly put everything in a new light. “You lived through it, but now you’re really seeing,” as Charles puts it. So the extent of the conspiracy and planning around the “big lie” surprises her. The profane screaming match in the Oval Office on Dec. 18, 2020, disgusts her. The violent rhetoric from right-wing groups in the weeks before the Jan. 6 riot shocks her. “It still gives you goose bumps, doesn’t it?” she says. “We’re awfully lucky that they didn’t get away with it. It could have been a bloodbath.” The highlight of the hearings so far? Cassidy Hutchinson. “It was exciting to watch a young woman be that brave.” The usual suspects pop up on the screen, and she has thoughts: Roger Stone is “such a dreadful person,” and so is Stephen Miller and Mark Meadows. Former White House counsel Pat Cipollone testifies that Sidney Powell should have never been appointed to any position; Charles nods in agreement. “She’s crazy,” says Charles as Trump’s former attorney gulps Diet Dr Pepper. The former president is a minor character in this hearing, but he violates all the moral codes drummed into Charles growing up. “Win or lose, you’re a good sport – and you don’t cheat,” she explains. “Trump cheats at golf. This is a man who cheats all the time and has gotten away with it.” Critic’s Notebook: A Trump-shaped monster returns to the Jan. 6 hearings Charles met him a few times at Mar-a-Lago, the Palm Beach mansion once owned by her grandmother, heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post. “I have to say he’s a good steward of the property. His taste may not be mine, but things are well-maintained.” Does that influence how she watches these hearings? “No.” Porter tries to crawl on her lap; Hazel growls at him. Harry takes a swipe at the chocolate chip cookie on the table before the dish is whisked away. The poodles don’t share their opinion of Trump — but would they trust a president who doesn’t like dogs? Repentant rioter Stephen Ayres is testifying, saying that he lost his job and his home after breaching the Capitol because he believed the election had been stolen. Charles watches intently as he warns that this could happen again. She shakes her head: “This is so scary.” By the end of the hearing, she’s unsettled. “This was much heavier going,” she says. “I felt more comfortable after the other ones. I’m concerned again — and rightly so.” — Roxanne Roberts
At Howard, with student activists Channing Hill bought an HDMI cable just for this occasion; that’s how juicy the Jan. 6 hearings have been. Like any 21-year-old, Hill, who’s prelaw and a rising senior at Howard University, has been watching the drama play out on YouTube rather than her dorm’s common room TV. But for Tuesday’s seventh session, she’s gathered with five other politically minded seniors, plus several who are beaming in on Zoom, on an array of couches abutting a pingpong table so they can debate the Capitol riot that took place just two miles from their school’s campus. That is, if she can get this dumb cable to connect her laptop to the TV. “Ugh, I accidentally shut off the Zoom!” she groans, sending out a flurry of apologetic texts. Hill, who’s wearing a T-shirt that reads “All We Ever Did Was Be Black” and “Black By Popular Demand,” may not be a tech expert, but she is a campus legend. In November, she led a 34-day sit-in to protest Howard’s housing conditions, which earned her a 2022 NAACP Image Award for Youth Activist of the Year. (She’s also president of the group’s Howard chapter.) The hearings have her riveted out of perverse curiosity, mixed with a dash of hope. Could Trump actually face consequences? Probably not. Stay tuned! “It’s like watching ‘Dateline’! Fact, fact, fact!” Hill says. That’s both a compliment of the fast-paced reality-TV-style editing of the hearings, and a bit of an eye roll. “I like it and I don’t like it. Why is it so dramatic?,” she says. “What happened is very simple.” Trump broke the law “in front of our faces,” she says. “These are the same people who were calling peaceful [Black Lives Matter] protesters, who were peaceful protesters, criminals, thugs, rioters,” says Dream Bryant, 21, a political science major who’s also vice president of DC College Democrats. “They literally looted the Capitol! You broke in and assaulted public service workers!” “Yo, people died,” Hill says. Critic’s Notebook: The Jan. 6 hearings and the spectacle of comeptency Getting Hill’s crew of busy, powerhouse Howard women together in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon is about as easy as, well, scheduling a congressional hearing. Some arrive still dressed in slacks and flats for their internships at political consultancy or public interest firms. Bryant, 21, is gearing up to start an internship for Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). Jada Bourne, 20, who’s from suburban Dallas and majoring in legal communications, is juggling two internships. Isis Alexander, 21, went from interning for Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) right after the Jan 6. insurrection to interning for Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) when Roe v. Wade was overturned. None of them watched the entirety of Hutchinson’s bombshell testimony. Who has time? Besides, none of them think Hutchinson, a top aide to Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, deserves the praise that’s been heaped on her. “I don’t think they should be considered heroes …” says Alexander, a political science major and a charter member of Howard’s chapter of Black Girls Vote. “ … for doing what they’re supposed to do …” says Kierstyn Heaven, a pre-dental student from North Carolina. “ … and they should have done earlier,” says Hill, finishing up. “It’s kind of like you tell someone over and over again, ‘Don’t do this. Don’t touch that.’ And they keep doing it. And then one time they don’t touch that hot stove, then you’re like, ‘Good job!’ ” Bryant says. “Yeah, my dad used to say you don’t get rewarded for doing what you’re supposed to do,” says Hill. “That’s such a Black people phrase!” says Bourne, laughing. The mood is jovial, like a debate that might happen over bowls of free cereal in a college cafeteria, or like the ones Hill says always break out at night clubs if too many Howard students wind up in the bathroom. They throw out theories about who the hearings are trying to reach: Trump supporters who need video evidence? Reluctant witnesses the committee is trying to convince to testify? There are sidebars over what color Telfar bag to buy (Hill and Bourne are carrying the tan and cream versions) and the NBA draft. They laugh recalling Hutchinson’s testimony about Trump being so angry after his attorney general, William P. Barr, publicly denied there was widespread voter fraud that he threw a plate, leaving the wall streaked with ketchup. “I wasn’t even surprised by that,” says Bryant. “I pictured him eating McDonald’s.” There’s also a heaviness, a feeling of being witnesses to history and not in a good way. Is this their generation’s Watergate, or maybe their Monica Lewinsky hearing? For these Howard seniors, their entire adult lives, so…
