Donald Trump this past weekend again questioned Kamala Harris’s claim that she once worked at an Oakland area McDonald’s. The legacy media is outraged that Trump would dare question the veracity of Harris’s summer job assertion, which she first made when running for president in 2019. Pardon me for not trusting this story the New York Times published on Sunday quoting Wanda Kagan, Harris’s “close friend” from her high school days in Montreal, saying she recalled that Kamala’s mother told her in 2009 that her daughter worked at McDonald’s.
The Times conveniently left out that Kagan is more than a “close friend” from Harris’s teenage years in Montreal when the Democratic presidential aspirant lived in Canada’s then most affluent suburb. Turns out, Kagan is a Harris campaign surrogate who appeared at the Democratic National Committee’s national convention and shilled for the vice president on MSNBC.
The Times does an impressive job never letting inconvenient details get in the way of its preferred narratives. The Free Press reported yesterday that the Times’s flagship podcast, The Daily, featured “Hussein,” who it characterized as a Palestinian man struggling for survival but shrouded his identity in secrecy. The Free Press outed the mystery Gaza man as Hussein Owda, who spent eight years working as the head of public relations for the Municipality of Gaza, which even I know is controlled by Hamas.
If Harris’s McDonald’s summer job claim is true, it’s noteworthy that Harris has never shared any insights she gained from her brief fast-food industry experience, particularly since it exposed her to a world quite different from her middle-class background she so loves to talk about. Harris has gone through life getting credit just for showing up. She was a controversial prosecutor and an uninspiring senator, which is why when Harris ran for president, she badly trailed her rivals in California’s presidential primary and dropped out early.
As a vice president, the legacy media once unanimously regarded Harris as a failure. Here’s a link to a story the Atlantic published a year ago headlined, “The Kamala Harris Problem,” with the subhead, “Few people seem to think she’s ready to be president.” The Atlantic now thinks Harris would make a swell president.
My taxi driving days
In the summers of 1976 and 1977, I drove a taxi in Toronto during my summer breaks from college. Although it’s been nearly a half century since I drove a hack, unlike Harris, I can prove I had the job. I not only saved my taxi license, but I also framed it because it meant something to me.
The license for many years was my financial security blanket. I always feared I’d screw up my journalism and PR careers, and if ever my professional life took a bad turn, I planned on returning to Toronto and resuming my taxi gig. I quite liked driving a taxi, and one could once make very good money being a Toronto hack jockey. The experience was ultimately responsible for me pursuing a career in journalism and my dream of working at The Toronto Star.
Getting a decent summer job was tough in the summer of ’76, but taxi companies were always looking for drivers. The only requirement was a taxi license, and the certification process was easy peasy. I attended a class in a decrepit building on Eglinton on Toronto’s east side where I recall being the only person whose mother tongue was English. Then I took an exam testing my knowledge of major city streets and asking me the best routes to Toronto’s airport. Having grown up in Toronto and often cycled to the airport to indulge my passion for watching airplanes take off and land, I aced the test.
After getting my license, I hooked up with a garage tied to Diamond Taxi, in those days Toronto’s biggest taxi brokerage and one that provided city-wide service for pickups and drop-offs. Diamond had prestigious and lucrative corporate accounts, including many of the major law firms and the Toronto Star. My garage catered to newbie drivers because it took 45% off recorded meter rides. More experienced taxi drivers preferred to pay an upfront fee to rent a car for a shift and keep all their earnings.
Although the garage randomly assigned cars to its drivers, I schmoozed the dispatcher with a coffee every morning and he made certain I was given my favorite vehicle. It was Car 40, a Chevy Impala that was in reasonably good working order and had brakes that would stop the car when you hit the pedal. My garage kept its vehicles for years, and some of them were pieces of you know what.
Meeting interesting people
I’m a very social person who enjoys engaging people and learning about their backgrounds and interests. It was a great quality to have when driving a taxi because most people appreciated someone taking an interest in them. I met fascinating people from all walks of life. I also knew Toronto like the back of my hand, and my passengers always appreciated my navigation prowess and ability to circumvent traffic tie-ups. There was no GPS in those days.
I did very well on tips.
My daytime taxi shift was from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. In the 70s, it was common for Torontonians to hail cabs on the street, and short runs were more lucrative because of the initial meter drop charge and passengers often tipped generously for short trips. Many taxi drivers preferred to wait in hotel lines hoping to get an airport run, but my business motto was, “An idle taxi is an unprofitable one.” I preferred to keep moving, which better served my ADHD.
Business slowed considerably between 10 and 3, and much of Diamond’s downtown business involved package deliveries. Toronto’s major law firms were mostly located in the downtown financial district in and around the Toronto-Dominion Centre, and they were always sending documents to each other. Delivery services weren’t common then, and front desk receptionists would summon a taxi when they needed documents delivered. Sometimes the delivery address was literally across the street, so there was no driving involved but it took considerable time to find parking and run up and get the package.
Fortunately, the receptionists gave me a blank Diamond Taxi voucher to fill out after I delivered the package. As I resented being turned into a delivery service, I instituted the “Eric Starkman, don’t waste my f—-ing time surcharge,” which was determined by how emboldened I was feeling. Initially, I recall it being $10 – a lot of money in those days – but I gradually increased my fee as I realized that law firms neither noticed nor cared about the Starkman delivery markup. No doubt the charge was passed on to a client and wasn’t even a rounding error when attached to an accompanying legal bill.
Advantages to working nights
My preference was to work nights, when Toronto’s summer oppressive humidity wasn’t as intense. Near 10 pm, I made my way to the taxi stand near an unmarked downtown Bell Canada office building. In the 70s, Toronto had a law requiring businesses to provide transportation for their female employees working past 10 pm, and Bell Canada employed an army of operators whose shifts ended at that time or later. The company’s practice was to send its operators home in a taxi, usually three or four in a vehicle. These runs were lucrative because some of the employees lived way out in the boonies.
Bell Telephone trusted drivers to fill out the company’s vouchers. Yours truly never ripped off the phone company, a consideration I never felt was reciprocated.
Around 1 a.m. was when Toronto’s then ubiquitous sensual massage parlors began closing, and the women who worked at the places typically lived further out than the Bell Canada operators. Transporting these women required a specialized skill and knowledge. The women had no interest in talking, and they would reward you handsomely if you kept your mouth shut for the entire duration of their trips. My shift typically ended with a massage run because of the distance involved.
The Toronto Star was Diamond Taxi’s most prestigious account. The Star was far and away Canada’s biggest newspaper and in the 70s the publication’s parent company was so profitable it was printing money along with its newspaper. Star reporters took taxis when they were sent on assignment, and because they were often chasing breaking news stories, the publication demanded immediate service. Diamond taxis were often lined up in front of One Yonge Street, the waterfront building bearing the Star’s name where the newspaper was located.
The Star’s reporters were often extremely generous. They would typically add a few dollars to their newsroom vouchers, which included an automatic ten percent tip. I always delighted speaking with the reporters and learning about the stories they were pursuing. It was exciting taking reporters to various locations, and then reading in the newspaper about what brought them there.
My most memorable Toronto Star experience was taking Stasia Evasuk, the newspaper’s famed fashion writer, to the airport one early Sunday morning.
I had arrived late nearly 30 minutes late to Evasuk’s Rosedale home early one Sunday morning because I violated Diamond Taxi’s rules and booked myself into an area where I was headed but hadn’t yet reached. Evasuk was livid because she was headed overseas for a critical fashion show and thanks to my tardiness it was far from certain she’d make her flight. Evasuk berated me the entire trip, vowing that if she missed her flight, she’d make it her personal mission to ensure that Diamond Taxi lost the Star account. Fortunately, I got Evasuk to the airport in time to make her flight, and she never filed her complaint.
A life changing moment during my taxi era happened when I dropped off a fare at the airport and ran inside to use the bathroom. Passing by a newsstand I noticed that day’s New York Times was on sale, and I bought the newspaper. I read it religiously every day for several decades, which fueled my interest in journalism.
When I returned to college, I began reading the Columbia Journalism Review, which in those days was aggressive calling out media wrongdoing. My diligent reading of the Times and CJR was responsible for me scoring high on an entrance test that gained me admission to Boston University’s graduate journalism program. I wrote a freelance piece for the Star when I was in graduate school, and eventually landed a job there. Imagine my feelings of accomplishment the first time I rode in a Diamond taxi as a Star reporter.
I drove a taxi for two summers, and I learned a lot from other college summer jobs working in an industrial warehouse and as a bartender in a strip joint. That’s why I find it so telling that Kamala Harris, who was raised by two well off academics, has shared no lessons or insights she gained supposedly working briefly at McDonald’s.
Perhaps Harris really did work at McDonald’s, but it hardly matters. The best even her supporters can argue it was just another job for which she simply showed up.