The Vacant Chair

Somebody will always speak for A.A., because the public asks and the question does not go away. A journalist needs a comment. A committee wants a submission. A conference wants a panellist. Where no authorized voice exists, the vacancy fills itself — with whoever is nearest, most confident, or most quotable, and that person will be sincere and will get some of it wrong. A.A.'s answer to this is structural rather than moral. Its board includes non-alcoholic members, and their whole function turns on a single fact (A.A. Service Manual): "since they need not maintain anonymity, they are available to appear in public on behalf of A.A." Friends of A.A., owing nothing to its anonymity, standing in the one place where the public's questions land. That is a deliberately narrow door, and narrow is the point. The capture here is not that outsiders seize a microphone. It is that a fellowship which declines to appoint a spokesman gets assigned one anyway — by an editor on deadline, choosing whoever picked up the telephone.