It’s winter in Amsterdam at Eastern Market, where director Ridley Scott has taken over to shoot “Body of Lies,” a major motion picture based on the recent novel by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius.

D.C. is Hollywood for ugly people, they say. That means District residents make perfect background extras. Scott hired scores of them last week to mill around Eastern Market dressed as contemporary Dutch citizens. A woman in a beret fled, literally, when asked to be interviewed for Hillscape. A man in a turtleneck did the same. Apparently, D.C.’s uglies care more about making blurry background cameos in movies than playing supporting roles at their jobs.

Dozens of neighbors spent last Wednesday at the Market waiting for a car bomb scene, watching from a distance as the District government provided fire trucks, ambulances and police. The whole affair was eerily similar to that night in April when a three-alarm fire gutted the Market. This flashback registered with several people present, but nobody thought it objectionable.

Movie hands told neighbors the explosion would happen as soon as the helicopter arrived, and that the blast would be “super loud.”

“For the explosion, you definitely want to cover your ears,” a techie instructed. But most people ignored this instruction, instead holding up their cameras to capture the moment.

“We’re all suckers for violence,” explained Matt Wixon, who works at nearby Capitol Hill Books. People cheered excitedly when the helicopter finally appeared.

“Three … two … one …” Kaboom! Two cars flipped into the air, accompanied by a big orange fireball. The background extras ducked in mock terror; the neighbors cheered in unabashed glee — despite techies’ demands that everybody remain quiet.
“This is the reason I’ve been waiting here off and on for three hours,” Wixon said. “I was also here for the Market fire.”

The D.C. Council holds its own among our nation’s middling fascists and petty tyrants, earning decent billing in Denver Post columnist David Harsanyi’s new book, Nanny State: How Food Fascists, Do-Gooders, Priggish Moralists, and Other Boneheaded Bureaucrats Are Turning America into a Nation of Children, due in stores Sept. 18. 

Harsanyi tells Hillscape that the D.C. Council ranks “pretty high” among nannyish legislatures across the country. In other words, he says, “they’re awful.”

Nanny State is an aggregation of dozens of instances of parental policymaking across the country, always in the name of promoting the common good. Harsanyi characterizes these disparate cases — from bans on playing tag in Oregon schools to prohibitions against dancing in New York clubs — as a “concerted movement” down a slippery slope, always with pernicious consequences for civil liberties.

“When you take them one at a time, they’re sort of not very important, but when you really take all this stuff, I think it really is a movement,” he says. “It’s a movement of paternalism that both parties partake in.”

In his book, Harsanyi laments a “dramatic about-face from our traditional attitudes toward overreaching government … When exactly did we lose our right to be unhealthy, unsafe, immoral and politically incorrect?”

In the District, our forfeiture of that right is in mid-process. Just in the last year, D.C. Council members have pushed a smoking ban, a trans-fat ban, a single-beer ban, a noise ban and a fireworks ban, to name a few. The smoking ban alone is what lands the council in Nanny State.

Harsanyi lauds Republican council member Carol Schwartz for being one of “the few big-city politicians who has had the guts to challenge paternalistic encroachments of government.” Schwartz was the only council member to oppose the smoking ban. In 2005, her final act of resistance was to offer a satirical bill to prohibit alcohol in the District. When introducing it, she borrowed the language of the anti-smoking crowd:

“We all know that bartenders and wait-staff are constantly harassed by drinking customers. Bouncers are even beaten up by drunks. I care about these workers and their safety,” she said. “I’m also now looking at some other legal choices to ban — like driving or sex — for they, too, can be dangerous to your health and the health of others.”

(Schwartz quickly removed her bill, having made her point.)

One section of the book is headed “Smoking is healthier than fascism.” Harsanyi writes that he adopted the motto after seeing it on a T-shirt in a D.C. bar. 

The Capitol Police have installed new barriers on two parts of Independence Avenue in Southeast and Southwest. The barriers pop out of the street, and according to one witness, they can flip a vehicle over.

Last summer, the Capitol Police closed off portions of Independence Avenue at night, providing no notice to the public and giving no warning to motorists. Metrobus drivers would have to go on mini-detours around the Capitol campus, occasionally missing stops. When queried, the Capitol Police said it was just routine maintenance.

In fact, it was the barriers. These are the latest in the Capitol Police’s longstanding obsession with preventing car bombs. In 2004, they installed roadblocks on several streets throughout the neighborhood, and every vehicle passing through was subject to search. In 2005, they installed a high-tech surveillance network to monitor truck movements. Thousands of green bollards surround every building on the Capitol campus.

On June 9, the Capitol Police banned commercial buses from using roads near the Capitol. Metrobuses are still allowed, but officers board nearly every one as it approaches the Capitol area on Independence Avenue from either direction. A bus must slow down and stop where the Capitol Police are posted in their cruisers. An officer then steps on the bus, glances at the passengers, and asks the driver if everything’s OK, which it always is, and then the passengers giggle. The process takes about 20 seconds.

“I don’t know what the point of it is,” said one bus driver in a casual conversation last week. He said he thought it strange that the police seem to expect candid communication between a bus driver and any terrorist who might have boarded. But the consequences for not cooperating are pretty serious: The bus driver claimed to have witnessed a car getting flipped over by a barrier on the Southwest side one night.

Capitol Police spokeswoman Sgt. Kimberly Schneider declined to discuss how the barriers work, citing security concerns.