Former war correspondent Kim Barker got the full-hair-and-makeup treatment for the TV cameras last Saturday in her suite in the Ritz-Carlton in New York City. Barker says she gave 50 TV interviews in her suite last Saturday.
Barker understands that when the pieces air, nothing about Afghanistan is likely to make the cut. Even Barker’s appearance in the stories isn’t a sure thing. Tina Fey was giving interviews at the same time, in another suite down the corridor, and which makes better television: Barker talking about Tina Fey or Tina Fey talking about playing a reckless, hard-drinking war correspondent?
“I’d like to think people will wonder why they never saw Kim Baker on TV,” says Barker, hoping her ciné-me self is credible enough for audiences to buy the facsimile.
“And it’s not,” she assured me. There are even a couple of elements crucial to her that they “nailed.” One is “the whole absurdity of what it’s like to be in this bubble”—by day covering matters that are “deadly serious and tragic and horrible” and then collecting in the hotel bar and getting pounded. The other’s the “dead-on” relationship with her translator, Ghulam Farouq Samim. He was smart, savvy, and fearless—”far and away the most adult guy in the room,” says Barker. “Here’s a guy who would have sacrificed his life for any American journalist—not just me.” Now he’s living in Canada with his wife and four kids. His home and future are in that country, but he’d like to attend next Tuesday’s premiere in New York, and—for whatever reason—the American embassy in Ottawa wouldn’t let him enter this country.
