Here's a novel idea: Toy Story 3 is making bank because it's the best big-studio movie of the year and audiences have already noticed. Steven Zeitchik of the LA Times is wrong. Audiences are not flocking to family films because of some rebellion against adult pictures. Audiences are flocking to family pictures because the kids-flicks are better than the adult movies at the moment. Audiences want good films, period. Sure, critics and audiences may disagree on what is 'good', and lousy all-ages pictures like Alice in Wonderland or teen-centric movies like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen may be massive hits despite their lack of quality. But at the end of the day, if studios make a good movie and can open the picture through marketing, audiences will usually respond. The Hangover didn't gross six times its opening weekend because it tapped into some kind of zeitgeist. It grossed $277 million off a $44 million opening weekend because it was good. How to Train Your Dragon didn't slowly pull in $215 million from a $43 million opening weekend because audiences suddenly remembered that they had kids. It stuck around because it was a terrific movie, and those that initially saw it fought like hell to make sure their friends and family saw it too.
Early in 1941, Henry Robinson Luce, the founder of Life magazine, spoke in Tulsa, Oklahoma at a dinner hosted by an association of oilmen. Europe was already at war and Japan's attack on America at Pearl Harbor was nearly a year away. Luce, though, had a vision of America's global destiny in a world that seemed bent on destruction. "Ours is the power, ours is the opportunity -- and ours will be the responsibility whether we like it or not," he declared. In February, these remarks became the basis of "The American Century," a still-famous five-page editorial in the pages of Life, in which Luce, as one biographer noted, "equated a happy future with American hegemony."
The American Century, always an inflated notion, can now officially be declared over. Its demise is partly a result of American folly -- like the war in Iraq, which cost the U.S. its credibility with allies all over the world, and the financial crisis, which tarnished the American model of unfettered free-market capitalism and has left the country mired in debt. But even without such missteps, it was never in the cards for America to reign in perpetuity -- while the Chinas and Indias of the world stayed on their knees.
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As the story of General Stanley McChrystal's interview with Rolling Stone started to rock our world, I was at the airport headed for London. When I arrived in the Mutha-land, I was stunned to see that the story's impact was just as massive over there. Indeed, the remarkable tale of McChrystal's journalist-assisted career suicide seemed to dominate the other big news in England, like the World Cup 2010 going on in South Africa or Wimbledon happening just down the road. Personally, I haven't witnessed this much global interest in a Rolling Stone story since my own historic on-the-road piece with New Kids On The Block back in the Nineties. And considering the New Kids' relative lack of impact on military history and connection to the Pat Tillman cover up, this amazing and revealing article by Michael Hastings arguably dwarfs even my own journalistic masterpiece.
So now that that I'm safely back on American soil, I wanted to offer my own loose-lipped playlist for Stan The Man, a dude with a big ego and a very mixed record who finally accomplished the impossible -- actually stealing some of the cultural spotlight away from Lady GaGa. And to General McChrystal, here's some free specific advice from a recovering rock critic: next time you decide to crash and burn in flames in Rolling Stone, at the very least, have your publicists demand the cover.
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"Insofar as Evangelicals have demonized gays and lesbians [they] should repent before God." Was it Jon Stewart who said that? Bill Maher? Barney Frank? No, it was said by an Evangelical pastor of a Southern megachurch -- a conservative who calls Mike Huckabee a friend. We live in a new era, marked by an aging and declining Christian right that is increasingly eclipsed by the Tea Party, a nascent but growing chorus of diverse progressive religious voices, and a broadening of political agendas among many people of faith. Maybe it's time to rethink our assumptions about religious Americans and public policy.
That conviction is the guiding principle of a new paper called Beyond the God Gap, which provides a road map for navigating the complex terrain of religion and public policy in America. Our team brought a diverse set of expertise and experience to this project. One author is a public policy veteran who grew up in a liberal, Jewish, suburban household outside of Philadelphia and was raised to believe that many Christians, especially those in the South, were close-minded reactionaries able to justify abhorrent practices like racism through selective interpretations of the Bible. The other is a scholar of American religion who was raised Southern Baptist in Mississippi, attended church every Sunday, and grew up hearing that the political left was largely opposed to religious values.
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The clerk at my local post office was absolutely apoplectic at the site of the motley group of young African-American political canvassers that had set up their literature table on the sidewalk in front of her station. She raged loudly to me that she would call the police and have them carted away. The trigger for her rage was the big emblazoned photo on the top and side of their table with a picture of President Obama captioned "Impeach Him Now!"
The clerk was African-American and nearly all the patrons in the station were African-American. They nodded their heads in assent at the clerk's loud threat to have the group arrested. Their pitch to other African-Americans to impeach Obama seemed bizarre, if not outright dangerous. But confrontation and danger is nothing new for them. They were members of the Lyndon LaRouche Youth Movement. This is an offshoot of the equally bizarre, Lyndon LaRouche political organization founded by the group's patron guru, Lyndon LaRouche. The LaRouche movement is known and condemned as a clownish collection of kooks, cranks, and oddballs who spout near paranoid, conspiracy theories on globalism, one world domination, and secret mind control manipulation by a cabal of global corporate leaders. LaRouche has also been tagged as anti-Semitic, racist, and sexist. He and his supporters vehemently deny this, but tidbits of dubious statements on race, Jews, and women are sprinkled through his voluminous writings.
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In order to maintain a 250 pound weight loss for nearly a decade I had to dis-illusion myself about myself. To put it simply, I had to stop living with blinders on. I began by observing my thought processes and watching my body reactions. I discovered that whenever I felt I didn't have a real choice in a given situation -- that someone else was "making me" do something -- my stomach would ache, and I would feel stressed. It's probably no accident that by some perverse twist of etymological fate desserts is stressed spelled backwards. What was really going on, however, was that the helpless-powerless button in my irrational thinking was being pressed automatically.
Most people who are binge eaters or who have other addictions have these buttons. I call them their panic buttons. We tell ourselves that we are powerless, rather than acknowledging that we are, in fact, actually choosing the situation and putting ourselves into it. Now before you go off on me about all the people who have lost their jobs or are on the street or other dire circumstances, I am not talking about them. I am talking about those of us with garden variety eating disorders. Those of us who at some point felt threatened as kids or didn't learn healthy coping skills. Those of us who didn't learn that by truly embracing that we had a choice in any given situation, we could regain our power.
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Truth be told, I'm a progressive. Or am I a liberal? Or am I a socialist? I know I'm not a neocon or a conservative, but, on some issues I'm more conservative than others, so am I a progressive neocon or a social democrat or a democratic socialist with conservative leanings or what? Clearly, I'm not a neoliberal nor a libertarian, but I am liberal. So what am I? These labels get me so confused. Is there a slot for people like me? If I wear an American flag lapel pin, what does that make me? Reagan didn't wear one. Neither did Ike. Roosevelt didn't wear one either, but George W did. It's so confusing. Sometimes I wish I lived in Scandinavia which would make things politically a lot easier.
I rarely watch Fox (though their coverage of the Haitian earthquake was fairly well done), but read what they say. I've written too much already on Beck and Limbaugh and Palin and get tired of repeating myself. On the other hand, I watch CSNBC all the time. Matthews and Olberman and Maddow, but sometimes they piss me off. Of course, Matthews doesn't let anyone finish a sentence. It's a bit like not allowing the batter to swing at the hardball after the ball's been caught. You know, the batter is constantly check-swinging as Matthews answers his own question while waiting for the guest to answer the question he's already answered. What's the point? Just walk the batter and move on. It took me a long time before I could appreciate Olbermann as a political analyst and not a sports broadcaster. When that was finally accomplished, what tends to annoy me now is that he constantly brings the same people on his show. The Friends of Countdown. If I hear him pitch Richard Wolffe's book, Renegade: The Making of a President, one more time, I'll puke. Okay, I got it the 35th time and if I want to buy the book, I will. After all, it's been over a year since it came out. Then there's Chris Cillizzi who every time he's introduced gives a rather sheepish smile as if to say, "Look, mom, I'm on TV." Lawrence O'Donnell is more than an adequate replacement for Olbermann, especially when he gets indignant and you can see his jaw tighten as if he has a TMJ problem. I'm a big fan of Eugene Robinson, but I wish they'd quit introducing him as the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist for the Washington Post. It's almost as if they're pronouncing the fact that, "Look African-Americans can win Pulitzer Prizes too." Maddow is terrific except when she morphs into that schoolgirl giggle and declares she doesn't have an agenda (wink, wink, nod, nod) since everyone has an agenda even if they don't have one.
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Model Agyness Deyn and journalist Fiona Byrne have launched a lifestyle website called Naag. Named for its founders ("Na" from Fiona, "Ag" from Agyness), the site gives readers the inside scoop on fashion, beauty, music and movies, and the hottest new hangouts.
The sites' articles are personality-driven, making it seem as if you are with Aggy and Fiona, talking face-to-face. Perhaps most endearing is the girls' love of food! A blurb on Minetta Tavern's famed Black Label Burger reads, "You see some burgers and they're just like, massive and ridiculous. Anyway, this one didn't leave us with the "food-baby" feeling and it was officially the juiciest burger we've ever had in New York." In another article, Fiona implores readers to head over to Doughnut Plant for "the most delicious doughnuts we at Naag have ever tasted." She describes her favorites in a mouthwatering fashion ("...the Creme Brulee, a small, doughy puff filled with custard and a caramelized golden crunchy topping"), making it hard not to crave one...or two or three!
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Pauly Shore is back at it and, as with his previous mockumentary, Pauly Shore is Dead, still on a quest to see if there's life after the Weasel. In the similarly self-directed Adopted -- which is being released on home video on June 15th -- Pauly follows in the footsteps of Angelina Jolie and Madonna, travelling to South Africa to snag himself one of those highly coveted, third-world orphans. If that doesn't sound to you like a particularly good idea, well, you'd be right: The film puts the comedian on a fast-track to international incident, showing him blundering through the adoption process by, amongst other faux pas, greeting one kid Jacko-style in facemask and rubber gloves, abandoning another on a mountaintop in order to chase after a hot local and, most death-defying of all, baiting the most fearsome of world powers by trying to crash the Oprah school.
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As a thirty-seven year old Governor of South Carolina in 1959 we had the same problem that the United States has nationally - jobs! I knew no CEO in New York would listen to a young Governor from a State that was operating in the red. My first task was to raise taxes and balance our budget. Fortunately, I didn't know any economists. But I heard the same objections from the Chamber of Commerce: "You had to have strong economic growth before you could raise taxes."
Be that as it may, I had breakfast after breakfast at the Governor's Mansion for the members of the State Legislature, who finally voted a tax increase in a state with no industry, no economy. Then with Jeff Bates, the State Treasurer, we went to New York and secured a "Triple A" credit rating from Moody's and Standard & Poor. In 1959 South Carolina was the first state in the South to receive this rating, and the "Triple A" rating was my calling card to get in the door of the CEOs in New York. We brought five GEs to South Carolina, four Westinghouses, and three DuPonts. We traveled to Europe, and today we have over one hundred German plants in South Carolina. Now, fifty-one years later, I'm hearing the same economics in Washington that I heard in South Carolina.
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Brazil and Turkey's recent alliance with Iran on uranium enrichment is not quite a stake in the heart of post-war American foreign policy, but epitomizes the post-globalization realities that are in the process of transforming U.S. foreign policy assumptions, planning, and actions. Two of the pillar concepts of post-war U.S. foreign policy -- George Kennan's Containment theory and Mutual Assured Destruction -- seem ancient and irrelevant in a world where rogue nations deftly manipulate global powers, information zips across the world in a nanosecond, and suicide bombers travel with impunity across borders. Taken together, Brazil and Turkey's action, North Korea and Iran's failure to fall into line, and the West's inability to declare victory in the War on Terror all represent the failure of American foreign policy, and the inability of policy makers to grasp the harsh new realities.
The bold, assertive foreign policy that emerged from 9/11 became synonymous with pre-emptive action that knew no boundaries and smug self-righteousness that turned many allies against the U.S. The combination of unilateral action and interventionism that have prevailed since 2001 have prompted countries such as Brazil, China, Turkey and Russia to believe that it is America that needs to be contained. To them, America's foreign policy has lost a sense of balance and has become desiccated into so many conflicting strands that it is more reactive, wanton, and reckless than proactive, purposeful or prudent.
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Four Democratic leaders, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, West Virginia Sen. John D. Rockefeller, Virginia Rep. Rick Boucher, and California Rep. Henry Waxman are taking aim this month at what I like to call Public Enemy Number One: the 1996 Telecommunications Act. It took that Act of Congress to allow the right wing's lies and vitriol to dominate every radio market in this country, and it will take another Act of Congress to restore facts to our public airwaves and true debate to our kitchen tables.
True, much of the coming debate will center on new media issues of who can access high speed internet (broadband) and who can or cannot control access to content on the web (net neutrality). As digital television and the internet will merge into the same thing over the next several years, it is critical for either the FCC or Congress to build a regulatory framework now. The FCC is facing legal hurdles over its authority to regulate the internet, so it looks like Congress is stepping in.
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To most people who follow developments in Afghanistan, it was clear that building a viable Afghan state would take more troops, more money, and more patience than the United States and its international partners could ever commit. These long-standing reservations were only intensified last November, when U.S. President Barack Obama announced plans for a 30,000-troop surge that would not only pacify population centers and train Afghan security forces, but also begin to wind down by July 2011--within 18 months of escalation.
But at a Senate hearing on Tuesday (before U.S. CENTCOM commander General David Petraeus passed out from dehydration), it became glaringly obvious that "success," if it's even still achievable, will take far longer than July 2011. Under intense questioning from both Sens. Carl Levin and John McCain, Gen. Petraeus explained that the drawdown would be based on conditions at the time, adding, "In a perfect world, Mr. Chairman, we have to be very careful with timelines." (It's not as if Gen. Petraeus promised the president that he can "train and hand over" the fight to Afghan security forces before next summer... Oh wait, he did.)
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Yesterday Blue America's cable ads started running in Utah's 2nd Congressional District. I called every gay millionaire I know to help with funding the inexpensive spots (which we made ourselves at NO COST, not even a dime). And every gay millionaire I know called their Inside the Beltway contacts, and they all got the same answer: "Who? Never heard of her. Don't waste your money." And all those gay millionaires gave me exactly zero dollars and zero cents. So... we quickly put up this ActBlue page and sold 216 ads for $4,072, an average of less than $20 each. And we did it in three days, mostly via Twitter! It was more productive than listening to some know-it-all battle-weary "progressive" in DC tell me she's a great candidate but she couldn't win because she didn't have any professional photographs taken. (Yes, it's different in DC than in America.)
Unseating an entrenched incumbent in a primary is a thankless and nearly impossible task. The Inside the Beltway (gay and otherwise) organizations that gave Claudia the big thumbs-down-- just because they don't know her and she's not part of their cloying and claustrophobic little world-- may be proven correct on Tuesday. In fact, odds favor their negative approach. Meanwhile, though, the previously homophobic Blue Dog, the ultra-entitled Jim Matheson, scared of his first-ever primary, voted to abolish Don't Ask Don't Tell two weeks ago, and on Tuesday, shockingly, was one of the Blue Dogs who refused to join any of Boehner's maneuvering to rescind healthcare reform, which Matheson had originally joined Boehner to vote against. That's the magic of a vigorous primary.
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Is it possible to be addicted to a movie? I've watched "I Am Love" by Luca Guadagnino three times, once in a theater, twice on a VCR, and I can feel an urge coming on for a fourth fix. Emma Recchi (Tilda Swinton), a Milanese matron from the mega-rich Recchi family, becomes involved with her grown son's best friend, a chef. A commoner, this guy -- which brings to mind the gamekeeper in "Lady Chatterley's Lover" and Julien Sorel in Stendhal's "The Red and the Black." The damage sustained by the Recchi family and business also references Thomas Mann's "Buddenbrooks." The film's melodramatic tone, with love presented as an absolute, a religion or calling that must be honored, even as it wrecks lives, suggests director Douglas Sirk, along with opera giants Verdi and Puccini.
It scarcely matters whether you factor in these homages, since this rapturously beautiful film , a high point of the 2009 Toronto Film Festival, works simply as superb cinematic storytelling. It opens with monochromatic images of a wintry Milan, sorrowful, snow-encrusted sculptures which may be mortuary figures foreshadowing a tragic denouement. On the soundtrack is the urgent, driving score of John Adams, arguably America's greatest living composer. So magical and unexpected is the opening sequence, you sense you're in the hands of a master.
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The reception that Representative Frank Kratovil Jr., a Democrat, received here one night last week as he faced a small group of constituents was far more pleasant than his encounters during a Congressional recess last summer. Then, he was hanged in effigy by protesters. This time, a round of applause was followed by a glass of chilled wine, a plate of crackers and crudités as he mingled with an invitation-only audience at the Point Breeze Credit Union, a vastly different scene than last year's wide-open televised free-for-alls. The sentiment that fueled the rage during those Congressional forums is still alive in the electorate. But the opportunities for voters to openly express their displeasure, or angrily vent as video cameras roll, have been harder to come by in this election year.--"Democrats Skip Town Halls to Avoid Voter Rage," New York Times (June 6, 2010)
For all intents and purposes, democratic government is breaking down, and we are approaching a crisis point in American society as greater numbers of those on the left and right are beginning to recognize. They see a government that is not only malfunctioning; it is also a government that is spinning out of control. And a government out of control is one that won't listen.
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For all the failures of bankers and policy-makers to tame the unbridled innovations of capitalism in recent years, many of us have also lost our own way financially -- and it's costing us hugely. American consumers are needlessly losing hundreds of billions of dollars in unnecessary banking and checking fees, inflated interest rates, and missed opportunities. Reclaiming those dollars and putting them to work for workers is one of the most powerful, and widely overlooked, opportunities we have to restart economic mobility in the U.S.
For a half-century we've benefited from the democratization of the financial services industry -- and all of the new ways of saving, spending, borrowing, and investing that it created. Up until just 60 years ago, most American's either kept their money under a mattress or just had a checking or savings account at their local bank. Capitalism was simple, in other words. But, during the second half of the 20th century, financial services were broadly expanded for all. In the 1950s, for instance, credit cards didn't exist, 14 percent of us had access to the stock market, and 59 percent had a checking account. Today, by contrast, there are 640 million credit cards in circulation -- nearly three for every adult -- and we owe nearly $1 trillion. Similarly, over 60 percent of us are directly invested in the stock market and over 90 percent have a checking account.
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There are a few authors on my "must go to the bookstore and buy the hardcover immediately even if I don't have a gift card" list, and Christopher Moore is one of them. The day that Bite Me was released, I was in my neighborhood Barnes and Noble having an awkward conversation with the guy at the info desk: "Uh, I think it's You Suck. No, wait, that was the last one. It's Bite Me. The book. I'm talking about a book. That's the title. Bite Me? Not something I'm, you know, suggesting."
I got the book home where it jumped to the front of the queue of books I've got lined up on my "to read" shelf, and tore through it like a hungry vampire through a bucket of pig blood. I'm glad to report that Bite Me lives up to all of the hype it got in my head -- it is irreverent, high-energy, wacked-out, fast-paced, engrossing and funny. Basically, Moore on message. In Moore's world, the angel is just as likely to step on a rake as the demon. His heroes are as likely as not to be monsters, bumbling through an identity crisis without the manual (literally without the manual, as in A Dirty Job). A state with which many of us can relate.
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We have all broken a rule or two. Even the most calm and controlled of us remembers perhaps stealing candy at a store as a kid or drinking alcohol before our twenty-first birthday. We all pushed the limit with our parents' rules, entering the "gray" area of the black and white discussion more often than not. We crave rebellion from an early age and are constantly told to "grow up" and get responsible. We love riskiness and playfulness and are consistently reminded that this has no place in the career world. In the young generation's "Age of Rebellion" though, our generation works perfectly with the new career world at hand.
Risk and rebellion are not only sexy and intriguing to all of us, but they have also recently become "safe" in the sense that less people are finding fulfillment in conventional and predictable careers and are opting to open their own businesses, travel internationally, and pave their own paths altogether. The youth's rebellion from the traditional has morphed into a super-force of excitement, becoming a catalyst for innovation, invention, and creativity with constant successful reminders as they interact on their beloved Apple products. The young generation is one of global communication and world efforts through grass root campaigns. We unite not only under worldwide charities and non-profit campaigns, but also via Facebook and YouTube videos. We value those than can put a fresh spin on an old perspective and celebrate those that successfully go against the norms of the past.
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The proliferation of headlines pertaining to various demands from all levels of government on BP for payment of various costs resulting from the Gulf oil spill - e.g. lost sales and state income tax revenue and salaries for laid off oil service workers, and perhaps lost revenues for tourism dependent firms - has major implications for our economy and legal system. It is certainly viscerally appealing for all concerned to hold out their hands to BP, which has almost certainly done something giving rise to civil liability. At the least, everyone, even BP, agrees that it is liable for direct clean up costs. It is also making voluntary payments to many impacted persons.
However, the efforts which are being pursued at the federal and state levels are at best superfluous, and at worst, seriously detrimental to the economy. There already exists an elaborate body of tort (and perhaps contract) law governing the liability of one who has wrongfully caused harm to another. In general, this body of law limits recoverable damages to what should have reasonably been foreseeable to the wrongdoer at the time of their wrongful act. Those with legal training will recognize and recall the infamous Palsgraf case involving a chain reaction of events on a train - premature movement, people falling, fireworks erupting, objects falling, etc. - which guides us today, and makes clear that the rule of damages which is applied in tort law is not a simple 'but for" standard, but one which limits damages to a much greater extent by defining a "zone of exposure." A moment's reflection indicates that doing otherwise would inhibit economic activity by exposing actors in all fields to vast and unpredictable claims - out of proportion to potential benefits - if anything were to go wrong. While far from perfect, this system has served us reasonably well as our economy has developed.
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On June 17, 2008, I turned 28. I also got to watch the Lakers get spanked in Game 6 of the NBA Finals, a 39-point shaming by the Boston Celtics. Nothing can more deeply wound a Lakers fan than to see his (my) team lose to the Celtics, let alone for the ninth time in the NBA finals, never mind by nearly 40 points in Boston. It's not tremendously unlike watching Gollum get out of Mount Doom with the Ring, while Frodo and Sam's Fellowship team bus gets attacked by Mordor's drunken citizens. I watched the Lakers' humiliation wearing my wife's birthday present to me -- the Lakers warm-up jersey in their home white. Fat lot of good that did. Don't even ask me when I next had the courage to wear it. (I still love you, babe.) These great franchises have now met 12 times in basketball's greatest championship, and between them they have won more than half the NBA's titles: L.A. has won 15 in 31 tries, the Celtics 17 out of 21. They are meeting right now, as you read.
I was born in Massachusetts, raised between there and Connecticut, and have lived practically all my life in the American Northeast. I love it here, and as much as I enjoy visiting new places, I'm reaching that homebody stage where a vacation in Maine embodies the best of all possible worlds. Growing up, I was ostensibly part of a liberal society, a place that often tolerated but rarely embraced. I was an academically successful, culturally alien, metaphysically tragic individual outpost, distant from my parents, weirdly unrelated to my friends and left out of my local mosque, since there were so few in my age group and no durable connection to an elder generation. My too-tanned skin color, my funny name, my incomprehensible religion, my taste for American food and grunge music -- these were all sources of amusement, puzzlement or, at times, harassment. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar meant the (dream) world to me. Nor was it just me: If you visit the Muslim community of Western Massachusetts, you'll find that they and their children, some of us now scattered across America and even other countries, feature an unlikely number of Lakers fans.
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The Supreme Court's refusal this week to hear the claims of Maher Arar
What seems to shock and outrage people about the Arar case in particular is that the facts are not in dispute.
The
On Monday
And last year
The Obama administration has repeatedly insisted that it wants to look forward
Until the
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We'd been planning our trip for over a year: six first cousins, ranging in age from 50 to 70, who hadn't been together in one city (let alone one country or one continent) in at least forty years; a 93-year-old uncle who hadn't seen his nephews in more than twenty; second and third cousins -- children and grandchildren of the cousins -- who had never even met. For some of us, it would be the first trip back to the place of our birth since having left it more than fifty years ago. For others, it was a journey to the fabled place of origin, the ancient city about which we had all heard so much.
Along with my oldest cousin in the U.S., I was the informal organizer of what we had taken to calling our "family reunion," though it was much more than that and we all knew it. My brother called it a "reconciliation of sorts with the country that had made our parents unwelcome," and I shared his view. Overcoming my initial fears, I had already gone back numerous times, and I loved the place. The collective journey back to our homeland had been my idea, and I had worked to reassure everyone that we would all be safe and happy. As the date approached, we exchanged eager emails across the oceans . . . old photos were unearthed and shared, memories began to spill forth, anticipation ran high. An eleven-year-old in public school in London was excused from his exams so he might attend; a 65-year-old in California who rarely traveled because of a debilitating back injury decided he would come.
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Tucking into Mel Brooks's "The Producers," directed by Brian Newell, in that innocuous little Maverick Theatre across from the train station, is like opening a music box and then being bedazzled at the glittering and spirited theatrical spectacle contained inside. All night long the cast was in sync, no mean feat given its twenty-foot stage on which was strewn, variously, a theatre facade on a busy street, an office, a stage set, an East Side apartment, and a jail cell. Giving nifty little twists to each imaginable theatrical stereotype, the cast had the audience eating out of their hands, as did the formidable Ensemble, with its outlandish old ladies with walkers and tap dancing Nazis.
Veering wildly from the contrived to the outlandish, from the devious to the accidental, the production recounts the tale of a washed up Broadway producer (a musical about Hamlet?) who gives up on such ephemeral things as fame and settles instead for a more quantifiable fortune. In the process -- and to his chagrin -- he creates an inadvertent hit, but not before giving us, down to the last umlaut, a behind the curtain look at the underbelly of the theatre world. The curious way it procures funding (before this production I used to thank that grant writing was the world's oldest profession). The tidal fickleness of audiences. And the miracle of how, given the combustible mix of creative egos, any show gets produced in the first place.
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For well over a year now I've been wondering why President Barack Obama, (who is a talented communicator and a student of history), failed to recognize Franklin Delano Roosevelt's example of the necessity of speaking directly to the American people. Tonight, at long last, Obama gave his first "fireside chat." He should have done so long ago to clarify his efforts to reform the financial sector, as well as to explain his stimulus package and health care initiatives. (A weekly Youtube talk is no substitute for a primetime Oval Office address.) His passivity allowed his political opponents, including well-heeled Wall Street and health insurance interests, to define the narrative on their terms. It was a political blunder.
Obama's talk tonight was dominated by a technocratic laundry list of actions he plans to take. Forcing British Petroleum to put some cash aside for compensating the victims of the spill is an important step but how exactly is the U.S. government going to take control of these funds? National "commissions" are slow and ineffective and usually offer only bland "bipartisan" recommendations, (like the 9-11 Commission). What is his commission going to accomplish? The President clearly still has confidence in Interior Secretary Ken Salazar even though he botched overseeing the Mineral Management Service. What makes him think this confidence is warranted? How is Obama going to confront the lobbyists and campaign money coming from the oil industry to buy off the Congress and block his proposed reforms?
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Not long after the explosion at its Deepwater Horizon rig killed 11 workers nearly two months ago, BP told the press that the damaged offshore drilling unit was spewing out 1,000 barrels a day. Then, under pressure to confirm that number, BP said it might be 5,000 barrels a day. Over the past few weeks, that number has climbed, and climbed again. The latest evidence indicates that the offshore drilling unit is now gushing 40,000 barrels a day, and perhaps as many as 70,000 barrels a day. If we take the higher figure and subtract the 15,000 barrels that BP is recovering each day and multiply it by 57 days, that's more than 3 million barrels that has been drawn from the Earth and into the ocean. With 42 gallons in a barrel, that's more than 130,000,000 gallons spewing into one of the most fragile marine ecosystems in the world, with endangered turtles, recovering brown pelicans, dolphins, and countless other species.
The devastating Exxon Valdez spill -- the effects of which are still being felt today -- was 257,000 barrels, or 10,800,000 gallons. That spill tarred 1,300 miles of coastline and 11,000 square miles of ocean. To this day, experts report that you can dig just a little below the land surface in some areas, and still find oil now two decades later.
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Most everyone would agree that the training and development of managers is a critical component of success for organizations -- especially if you believe that a stronger leadership team makes a competitive difference. Yet despite its importance, when times are tough management training and development budgets are among the first to be cut. More often than not the reason behind this apparent contradiction is the lack of a clear connection between such training and results. Without this connection, cost-conscious executives at best view management development as a "nice" but discretionary expense and at worst as unnecessary time off.
Let's look at a quick example: The leadership development staff of a large pharmaceutical company worked with a well-known business school to create a five-day residential program on "becoming a senior leader" for their top 400 managers (just below the executive ranks). Over the course of two years, the company ran the program four times, with twenty-five managers attending each session. Each of the programs included visits from the CEO and other executives to talk about the company's strategy; case studies of other companies taught by world-class business school professors; and time for the participants to network and get to know each other. Postsession feedback was extremely positive, with participants saying that they enjoyed the program and "learned a great deal." However, six months later none of the participants could say that their business or function was any better off as a result of the program; and few could cite anything that they were personally doing differently. Based on this assessment combined with the multimillion dollar cost of the program and a budget squeeze, the program was cancelled and most of the leadership development staff was let go.
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I belong to one of the most coveted demographics in the world: a sports-loving American who has never been able to latch on to the world-dominating sport of soccer. We sit stateside, an untapped media market of nearly 300 million people up for viewership grabs, and remain lackadaisical. And there is ample reason for me, personally, to be a fan. A friend of mine earned a scholarship to play soccer at the University of Wisconsin. Several of my closest pals are diehard soccer loyalists, following not only the World Cup but their chosen English teams of Manchester United and Liverpool. I hail from Kalamazoo, Michigan, home of current US women's phenom, Lindsay Tarpley, and I attended a soccer powerhouse at Hackett Catholic Central High School (and the "Lady Irish" are tearing through the state tournament as we speak, so good luck, ladies!). So, why has the game struggled to keep my attention?
The most obvious reasons are cultural. Soccer simply doesn't follow patterns that Americans are accustomed to. I'm used to four periods of play and rampant commercial breaks. Where's the suspense in soccer? Nothing can top a do-or-die fourth and inches play on the goal line interrupted by a commercial break where Betty White gets roughed up in the dirt. Besides, commercial breaks give me time to get more beer and threaten the television set with barrages of empty cans if things don't go as I want them to. But people want to watch games with passionate individuals such as myself -- it simply makes the game more enjoyable. As one friend noted after watching a game with me, "I could be wrong but if I was a betting man I'd say we got kicked out of the bar because you were wearing tear-away pants and flashing your lucky jock strap from high school after every touchdown."
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Art Basel opens officially today, but the unofficial kick off started Sunday with a tour of Zurich organized by the indomitable Kunsthalle Director Beatrix Ruf. The tour was followed by a buffet dinner in a concrete modern palace on a hill outside the center overlooking the Zurich lake. The house was full of art including a Wolfgang Tillmans photograph hanging outside by the pool. The party has become a tradition for the collectors who seem to leave Basel earlier each year. Some of the guests included Serpentine Co-Director Hans Ulrich Obrist, Larry Gagosian, MOCA's Jeffrey Deitch, artists Christopher Williams, Rob Pruit and David Weiss, Stedelijk Museum's (and LA transplant) Ann Goldstein, and of course, the Beyler Director Sam Keller, who made Art Basel a must-see stop for international art travelers. Architecture lovers stopped before the dinner at Galerie Gmurzynska to see Zaha Hadid who had curated a show that totally transformed the architecture of the space with her design and works from the gallery's Russian avant-garde collection. Some, like Serpentine Gallery Co-Director Julia Peyton Jones and Kenny Schaeter, stayed for dinner honoring the Pritzer Prize winning architect and one of TIME magazine's 100 most influential people of 2010.
At a brutally early breakfast meeting, I overheard a Swiss artist say "when the dealers are happy, everyone is happy." The fair had already gotten off to a propitious start. A long line at the VIP opening for Art Unlimited, an exhibition of large scale installations and videos, which was more then worth the wait. Doug Aitken's film Frontier, which had premiered on an island in Rome and stars Ed Ruscha, was shown in a room with cutouts so the viewer could see the film from the outside. It was right across from the great Agnes Varda's plastic whale, which served as a shelter for her latest film La Cabane sur la plage about the island of Sete. Varda says "everyone knows" the island "has the shape of a whale and is used as the city's seal. Her artist statement continued: "Some beached whales may be given back to the sea if it is done quickly. This whale is fake, its skin and fantail are made of black plastic and its head is that of an Italian statue. Be careful. It's angry because the world is sick." She spent two hours sitting in a beach chair today and told passersby that "I think about it, then I forget." Fitting advice for the days to come.
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San Francisco -- As we wait for President Obama's speech tonight on the oil catastrophe in the Gulf, it's important to understand that many of the options he has discussed -- from requiring BP to set funds aside in escrow for cleanup to asking Congress to raise the liability limit on oil companies -- are possible only because BP is a British, as opposed to a Canadian or Mexican, company. That's because under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) the so-called "investor-protection clauses" would allow a Canadian or Mexican oil company that caused a gusher on the floor of the Gulf to appeal any change in the liability or responsibility it faces to a trade tribunal. Such a tribunal would likely overturn, for example, an after-the-fact raise in the liability limit (or in the royalties companies had to pay).
But since the U.S. does not have a free-trade agreement with Britain, BP can't hide behind these trade tribunals.
Yet, here in San Francisco this week, the Obama administration is engaging in its first trade negotiations (the Trans-Pacific Partnership), and these investor-protection clauses that give foreign companies immunity from more stringent environmental or safety regulations are still on the table.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership could deliver a new model of trade agreement that reflects the kind of policies that candidate Obama championed -- one of his campaign promises was to do away with excessive investor-protection clauses. But there are companies like BP in the room here in San Francisco -- the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is sponsoring the biggest reception -- and they will be pushing hard for the same "get out of jail free" card that came with NAFTA.
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I awoke at 4 am this morning to fly home to California. I've been in Pennsylvania, attending the West Chester Poetry Conference. I am leaving the company of some of the greatest living poets to catch my son's baseball team play in their league championship. At the airport, I read from a few favorite collections by Wendy Cope and Dana Gioia, and newer works from A.E. Stallings, Rhina Espaillat, and Chelsea Rathburn. I begin to wonder about the way these poems will affect my son when he begins to read them in earnest. He will have his own joy and sadness, his own memories and dreams to act as counterpoint and compass through these worlds of words. I suppose I am excited for all that life has in store for him, but still I worry. For me to sit in a quiet airport crying seems no great matter -- sorrows, whether large or small, can be blessings, as many poems reveal. Yet, every parent wants to protect.
My son's sense of place in this world will be shaped not only by me, but by relatives, teachers, coaches, friends, mentors, and his own children, one day. If I could ask one thing of this expanding family circle it would be that we all work together to grow his goodness. There is so much in life that cannot be predicted or altered, but we can control our own actions, our voices, and our behavior towards others. For the children that you have and for those you know, be a role model - be even better than you thought you could. They need you. Don't disappoint them. Teach them how to treat others, how they should expect to be treated, and encourage them to grow goodness in themselves. For all the kids with the right kind of strength around them and for the ones that don't, declare your respect. Share your kindness. Be good. http://pledge.giverespect.org/
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That's paraphrasing a wisdom Warren Buffett once uttered (by the way, Warren Buffett's lunch auction sold for a record $2.63 million last weekend in the annual charity fundraiser for Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco; this is the highest winning bid in this 11th annual event so maybe the economy is coming back!) Bill George, former CEO for Medtronic when that medical instruments company experienced the largest capitalization growth of any New York Stock Exchange company in the 90s, takes this headline one step further, "Do your shareholders choose you or do you choose them? Sophisticated CEO's choose their investors by defining their particular business approach and strategy and assuring their investors are aligned with that program."
This was a bell-ringing week for me ... literally. A week ago, I got the honor of standing at the podium of the New York Stock Exchange to open trading on Monday morning for the world's most well-known marketplace. On that very day, the Wall Street Journal reported that I'd sold a majority share in my company to a company owned by an heir to the founders of Hyatt. After 23 years, I was no longer the sole shareholder of my company, nor necessarily in control of my company's destiny. How did that feel? While there's a series of mixed emotions -- just like the word "surrender" has multiple meanings, both positive and negative -- I have to say that I feel like a proud father who's married his daughter off to just the right guy. Sad at the passing of an era, but satisfied that this is exactly what's supposed to be happening and I couldn't choose a better partner for my offspring.
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President Obama's Oval Office speech tonight could be a turning point of historical significance for his legacy, America's security, and the world that we leave our children. Will President Obama give a grandiose speech followed by more politically expedient baby-steps, or will he set America on a new path?
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| View more images of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. |
This is a turning point of immense historical significance. Â If we miss the turn, we miss the chance to grab our future with both hands. For President Obama to show the leadership that people dreamed he would when sweeping him into office, he needs to declare a new Apollo program, the moon mission that invests in energy efficiency, clean energy, electric cars, public transportation, geothermal energy and safe biofuels that will help kick our oil addiction by 2030. President Obama must stand in the Oval Office tonight and turn away from apologies, excuses, and finger-pointing to seize this moment for America's future.
President Bush missed his chance to free America from the oil addiction that funds those who would attack our country. President Obama must not miss his chance to free us from the same substance that is now despoiling the Gulf.
Big oil, coal and nuclear companies have commandeered the President's energy policy. The recently-formed federal oil spill commission is headed by former EPA Administrator William Reilly, who has been on the Board of Directors at the Conoco-Phillips oil company since 2002. In an August 2009 sale, Conoco-Phillips finished second â€" just after BP â€" in snapping up deepwater leases in the Gulf of Mexico.
President Obama's Climate Czar, Carol Browner, is pressuring the commission to curtail the moratorium and rush into drilling again. If this commission, with its conflicts of interest, recommends a few safety and regulatory tweaks, it would be like a tobacco executive putting a band-aid on lung cancer.
We hope that the commission will take their responsibility seriously and use this as a moment to reevaluate our energy plan for the future, without relying on false solutions like nuclear power, "clean coal," or "safer" drilling. They must deliver an independent evaluation that isn't compromised by industry interests.
Since we can't turn back the clock, we cannot clean up the mess in the Gulf, and going back to our old dirty energy habits will only mean more environmental catastrophes in the future, the only remaining option is to start fresh and do it right this time.
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The Gourmet Latino Festival wrapped up this past week with a series of dinners at restaurants across the boroughs. I found myself on Thursday night at Palo Santo, an enchanting South American wine bar tucked away in a Park Slope brownstone just off the R train at Union Street. It's easy to miss, and if you're like me, you've probably passed by it on the way to Union Hall down the block, but it's truly a rare find, blending tranquil ambiance with top-notch food from Chef Jacques Gautier, who treats his patrons like treasured house guests -- he lives right upstairs! From the exposed brick to the rustic chairs and tables and greenery bursting from the small back garden, it's easy to forget you're in the city as you linger for hours over dinner.
We started out with refreshing razor clams dashed with a bit of citrus followed by an unusual pairing of spicy raw tuna with a few pieces of popcorn thrown into the mix. It was a surprisingly good pairing. Who would have thought? Next up were scallops. I'm not generally a fan as they can often turn up bland, but Chef Gautier's were cooked perfectly and had a wonderful texture. After the trio of seafood, we cleansed our palate with a small plate of fresh greens from the rooftop garden. Next up was a flavorful duck followed by an impossibly tender pork that was the highlight of the evening. The accompanying wines paired by Jayne Rockmill were equally impressive. I've always found it a bit jarring to go from white to red throughout a meal, but Rockmill's choices made the transition seamless. I particularly liked the Malbec that was paired with the duck and the Cabernet blend that went with the duck. Just when we thought we were finished, out came dessert: a small trio of strawberry ice cream (made from real strawberries!), bread pudding and a warm ginger tart. It was paired with a desert wine that was more complex than sweet. All I could wish for is more.
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Iran. Why so little mention in the Western press of the demonstrations that still took place this Saturday and Sunday, in the streets of Tehran? Thanks to the Franco-Iranian writer Armin Arefi and his dissident friends on the inside, we followed them, live, on the website of my online magazine, minute by minute, street by street, twitters, photos, videos captured on cell phones and immediately posted, messages of distress and hope, calls for help, minuscule and pathetic victories. Even if there were only a few thousand, even just a few hundred, demonstrating, even if only a handful defied the Basiji paramilitaries on their motorcycles and the combat helicopters swooping down over Behesht-e Zahra cemetery, even if only a small minority disobeyed their leaders, who, fearing the threat of a bloodbath at any moment, called on them to stay home, still it was up to us to be at their side in thought, to salute them, support them, count them when we could, name them. And in the place of that, nothing. Or, shall we say, almost nothing. Well, that's the norm for mass media coverage. One day, bright lights, the next, an inexplicable shadow. And on this stage, where world peace and the future of democracy in the Muslim world play out, in this tense space where the only worthwhile battle, pitting the obscurantist, fanatical, fascistic Islam of Ahmadinejad and his allies against the immense majority of those who adhere to a modern Islam, friend of the Enlightenment and of human rights, is taking place, a bell jar of leaden silence. A shame.
More than a shame, this debate on the boycott that, in Europe, is like the comet's tail following the "flotilla affair" in Gaza, is infamous. The blockade of Gaza is one thing. We can discuss it, deplore it, pronounce it counter-productive, make it more flexible. Hamas being what it is, that is to say a totalitarian and fascistic party, we can open the same debate that took place over the sanctions against Milosevic, against the racists of South Africa before Mandela, or against the jailers of the tropical gulag of Cuba. "Is it effective, or not? Are there perverse effects, and if so which ones? In our intent to topple a dictatorship, don't we risk inflicting even further suffering on a people this dictatorship has taken hostage and oppressed?" What we do not have the right to do is 1) to reverse the roles and transform people of the same ilk as yesterday's Serbian nationalists, day-before-yesterday's Afrikaner racists, and day-before-the-day-before-yesterday's Cuban torturers (Hamas) into nice democrats; 2) to distort the meaning of words in a semantic sleight-of-hand, thereby transforming a military blockade (of arms and of any other product considered, wrongly or rightly, useful in their production) into a humanitarian blockade (we must not tire of repeating: there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza); and 3) to mix everything up, confuse everything and, in an effect of false symmetry that's palmed off on us as patently obvious, answer the blockade with the boycott and, when one is stopping arms, respond by refusing works of the mind. I refer, of course, to the affair of the Utopia chain of French cinemas which, after a good deal of prevarication, shabby cowardice, and sordid calculations, has simply called off the screening of Israeli Leon Prudovsky's film. During the war in Iraq, did anyone think of boycotting a single American film? On the pretext of Turkey's occupation of Cyprus, has it occurred to anyone to deprive the French public of Yilmaz Güney's films? Why the double standard? In the name of what obscure reflex are a people and its artists demonized ? When infamy rhymes with idiocy, according to the Sunday fedayin's conception of culture.
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American soccer's Anglophilia always has and always will confuse me. Take one listen to ESPN analyst and former U.S.-team star John Harkes, and you'll hear it in his lilt; that weird accent of his wasn't cultivated in his childhood home near Newark, New Jersey. Now, don't get me wrong, it's delightful to listen to, but it's peculiar for its reliance on British English for inflection and explication. And it's not just Harkes who casts his eyes fondly upon some Merseyside muse. To gin up Anglo-American antagonism before Saturday's USA-England game, then, U.S. Soccer necessarily required some truly convoluted rebels-versus-lobsterbacks retro-fitting. ESPN's promotions featured minutemen, drum corps, and even a call to arms by the great pamphleteer himself, Thomas Paine. Banners waved, and someone even unfurled the old rattlesnake Gadsden Flag. We trembled. Could we possibly pull off a Yorktown? A New Orleans?
Yet the ad played into a crucial fallacy of American soccer. As long as American soccer looks across the pond for cultural direction (this is different from tactical direction), it will remain a second-tier sport here. We Americanized cricket into baseball; We Americanized Grand Prix into Talladega, rugby union into the New England Patriots. These sports took root because we made them our own and, at times, unrecognizable as descendants of their Old World ancestors. They became ubiquitous, popular, part of society. We don't bother to compare NASCAR with F1 -- we're confident (and chauvinistic) in our perceived superiority. Michael Schumacher, seven-time F1 World Champion and driver of that circuit's #3 car, is considered the greatest driver in world history -- but in this country, of course, "3" begins and ends with The Intimidator. Not surprisingly, we have to do it our way. American kids don't play baseball and futilely wish that they might have been born in, say, Mysore, earning scores of test centuries against the hated Pakistanis as the next Salchin Tendulkar.
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Listen people, we are not in a summer box office slump. No matter what The New York Times is trying to sell you, audiences have not deserted the multiplexes in favor of other entertainment options (yep, Brook Barnes is at it again). Why has this summer been so middling thus far? Simple, with the exception of Iron Man 2 (which opened with $128 million and just crossed $300 million today or tomorrow), the really big guns haven't been released yet. Besides, as occasionally is the case, studios were spoiled by the mega-movies that did uncommonly well over the winter and Spring. Aside from Avatar, which made about $400 million of its $749 million over 2010, we had the $332 million-grossing Alice in Wonderland, as well as the solid smash hits in How to Train Your Dragon and Clash of the Titans. As far as the summer season goes, just like the summers of my youth (1988-1995), the real peak season starts in mid-June, or this Friday to be exact. In other words, come this Friday, to quote the last true mid-June giant, "Now... the real game begins now."
Unmarried Carrie was a pro at breaking The Rules while dating -- pushing too hard for commitment, being overly honest and not mysterious, seeing a married man, losing her L&B ("light and breezy") on a regular basis, and overall trying way, way too hard with Big. Given that The Rules for Marriage is, in some ways, the mirror opposite of The Rules for Dating, you might think that Carrie would have an easier time being Rules-y within the new construct of matrimony. And....you would be wrong.
It's one thing to try and suspend disbelief in pretending that it's realistic that an extremely handsome business tycoon would -- after years of foot dragging and even canceling a wedding -- enthusiastically jump into marriage with a quirky-looking, needy, insecure Carrie. Sure.......it's fiction, right? Anything can happen. But to watch Carrie start to take for granted her incredible stroke of fortune....to start nagging Big about his TV-watching-habits, or forcing him to go out when he doesn't want to, is a little too much to bear.
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Today was certainly one of my longest work days, but it is a day I'll never forget. This morning, I had to fly from New York to Los Angeles for a shoot that lasted about four hours, and then fly back to New York. As I write, I'm in a car rushing to the airport to catch the 4:30 p.m. back to New York. And, it was all worth it. I had a chance to work with Chad Ochocinco, Cincinnati Bengals star wide receiver, on his new reality show on VH1 Ochocinco: The Ultimate Catch.
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On Monday, the New York Times reported on a Defense Department memo claiming that under Afghanistan's hard terrain lays nearly a $1 trillion in mineral deposits. These minerals include large veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and lithium a vital component of computer batteries. But the reality of this story is that it is more of a propaganda campaign or "information operation" than it is real news. Yes it is true that these minerals do exist in Afghanistan but it is by no means news. The U.S. Geological survey made the discovery back in 2007. However, the U.S. government is pushing the story now because the coalition here has been rocked by some particularly bad press here the past week (Ironically from the New York Times. This causes me to wonder if the Times is attempting to buy its way back into the good graces of the Embassy in Kabul.) The most damaging of this press was comments attributed to President Karzai about the West not being able to win in Afghanistan. This story is similar to ones that preceded the Iraq War when the Bush administration claimed that Iraq's oil wealth would pay for all the costs of reconstruction.
The reason why news of these vasts deposits is no need to celebrate is simple. The minerals are worthless unless you can actually get private companies to come in here and mine them. And with the security situation what it is that is not likely to happen any time soon. Afghanistan for instance would be a great country to run oil pipeline through, stretching from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan and then on to China as well. However, despite a great deal of effort on the part of a U.S. company called Unocal they were never able to negotiate enough treaties with all the tribes and Taliban to agree not to blow up the lines or siphon oil from them. The one country with a mining contract in Afghanistan right now is China which now owns the largest copper mine here. They don't care about their people dying so it works out well for them.
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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said friday that BP should be held accountable for all damages caused by the British company's horrendous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. In pandering to public anger at BP, however, Pelosi misses the real point of this tragedy. Yes, BP may be guilty of gross negligence, and, yes, if the company wants to stay in business in the U.S., it will have to pay all fines and claims that the U.S. Government and U.S. courts deem appropriate. But BP is not the first oil company to have a huge accident, and it won't be the last. These companies are merely flawed purveyors of a product that we Americans can't get enough of. The real cause of the Gulf disaster is our insatiable thirst for oil.
Oil and its filthy cousin coal are dirty, dangerous fuels that have destroyed countless lives and are fast destroying our climate. Who knows how much damage is now being inflicted on the fragile ecosystem along the Gulf Coast? And who shares the blame with BP? How about people who drive cars much larger than they need? How about NASCAR, which burns oil for the amusement of spectators? How about well-to-do environmental activists like myself and Al Gore? We've spent our whole careers jetting around the globe for business and pleasure.
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Meg Whitman has proven that all else being equal it sure is nice to be rich. After spending $68-per-vote to win the Republican nomination she is now turning her sights, her $90,000/month campaign manager and her platitudes on Jerry Brown. Her win was impressive, if not predictable considering the over seventy million of her personal fortune that she poured into the race. She won all of California's counties and bested her opponent over two-to-one in votes. Already, Democrats are expressing their concerns about facing an opponent with a massive war chest at a time where the national mood could be souring on anyone seen as an insider. But not to worry - I put my money on Moonbeam.
Why would Democrats be optimistic in a race like this? Anyone that can remember Wikipedia footnote Al Checchi of the 1998 California Gubernatorial race should know why. After spending tens of millions of his personal fortune, running as an outside candidate (touting his business background including chairmanship of a major airline) and shattering spending records he was, well, trounced. The victor, Jerry Brown's former Chief of Staff Gray Davis focused on a simple message: "experience money can't buy." For his 2010 bid, Brown would do well looking into his protégé's strategy - although he should stop short of learning about gubernatorial recalls from him.
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All too often in many companies, performance reviews are treated as an annual event. But in order to truly be useful, evaluating employees and providing feedback should really be a continuous function in every organization - all the time. It's not enough to tell someone retrospectively once a year how he or she fared over the course of twelve months, nor does doing so fully capture an accurate picture of that individual's value to the business, or lack thereof.
Every employer has daily opportunities to provide employees with information about their performance that is accurate, constructive and actionable. On the positive side, this does not mean that a pat on the back is necessary every two seconds. In fact, it reminds me of my first boss who told me that I should assume I was doing fine as long as I didn't hear from her. I think her exact words were, "No news is good news." That was her way to give me the information I needed without having to interrupt me from my work to say that I was doing a good job. For me, it was very effective because I knew she was pleased, until she wasn't, in which case she told me on the spot. But what made it all work was that my annual review became a review of the conversations we'd had as well as a forum to plan out a strategy for the weeks and months to come.
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Today has been a whirlwind experience -- the second day of extensive field assessment of what's occurring with the oil spill in the Gulf.
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The White House has apparently realized that they have something of a perception problem when it comes to President Obama and the federal government's response to the BP oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico. So this week will be devoted to attempting to redeem Obama's image as being "in charge" of what is going on down there. Today, the president flew down to the Gulf, where he will be visiting all the states that have so far been affected. He'll spend the night in the region, then fly back to Washington to give his first-ever Oval Office address to the nation on primetime television. Wednesday, the bigwigs of BP will come to the White House for a meeting.
All this activity is welcome, because up until now the White House has seemed a bit adrift in their response to the tragedy. They may have been on top of the entire situation from Day One, as they claim, but it wasn't readily apparent to the public, meaning they either were actually adrift, or they have been having a communication and press relations problem. This must be frustrating to the White House, since the press has been somewhat lacking in their own response and coverage. Case in point, after obsessing for a solid week that the president needed to "show some rage" over the situation, the press immediately pounced when Obama did show a bit of annoyance, immediately proclaiming that he was "too angry," or the press just giggled in true Beavis and Butthead fashion: "heh heh heh... the president said ass... heh heh."
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Hello. My name is Wendy Gordon and I'm addicted to oil. As with any addiction, admitting we have a problem is an important first step. But are we ready to take responsibility for the solution? I had a chance to talk recently with Dr. Sarah B. Warren, a psychologist and addiction specialist, who believes the calamity in the Gulf of Mexico may be that wake up call we need that pushes us to take the hard steps necessary to overcome our quenchless thirst for oil. Here's our conversation:
Simple Steps: Dr. Warren, you are a psychologist with 20 years experience helping individuals conquer addiction and deal with its lasting repercussions. The calamitous oil spill in the Gulf brings into sharp relief America's addiction to dirty fuels. What parallels can you draw between our collective behavior as regards oil and addictions that may be more familiar to us, such as smoking, drinking, drug use or gambling?
Dr. Warren: Addiction is ugly. By contrast, recovery is work, but tremendously rewarding not just for alcoholics but for the families.
The spill in the Gulf is no aberration. It's a consequence of our habit. Our appetite --like any addict's-- does not diminish as oil reserves dwindle. Alcoholics do desperate things like drink grain alcohol. So oil companies venture into deeper waters, beyond the limits of responsibility, to keep giving us the fix we demand. This kind of drilling costs human lives, the lives of other living creatures, takes a toll on the health of residents, and destroys the livelihoods of those who depend on a healthy ocean. A parallel process is underway with coal and tar sands as we resort to more desperate and risky measures to feed our addiction to fossil fuels.
Simple Steps: Does our oil habit comport with the patterns of other addictions? If so, are there lessons to be learned that we might apply to treat this particular dependency?
Dr. Warren: The disaster of the BP oil spill brings into sharp focus elements that are familiar and useful in addiction treatment: denial, rationalization, and the unintended harmful consequences that help addicts wake up.
At the Deepwater Horizon site, they were trying to harness a torrent of abrasive, sand-bearing oil powerful enough to explode a rig. They were literally "beyond their depth," able to drill the well but not able to control it if something went wrong. It takes an addict's will to deny the obvious: Rigs like this will break, and break catastrophically.
Denial can be a useful psychological coping mechanism. Or not. Denial helps us cope in the face of realities so painful that they might overwhelm us psychically. But, as appears to be the case with the BP executives, denial can also prevent us from accurately measuring the risks in advance, from connecting actions to consequences, and recognizing the wider circle of harm that flows--in this case literally-- from our addiction.
Take a good look at the ruined beaches, the shrimpers who've lost their livelihood, possibly forever, the destruction of the nation's most productive estuary, the photos of innocent dead sea turtles. Recall the stories of those rig workers who got off the rig during the explosion --barely, but perhaps emotionally scarred for life. Don't blink.
This is what hitting bottom looks like.
Simple Steps: So BP execs are in denial that they can manage the risks or chalk up a spill -- even a disastrous one like the Gulf spill -- as the cost of doing business. What about us? What role do we play in all this?
Dr. Warren: It's not just oil company execs that are in denial. As a society, we have been living without awareness of the effect of our lifestyles on the natural world. In the past, that was not denial; that was ignorance. For quite a while, the public didn't have a lot of information about how we were impacting the environment and putting our children at risk by living our consumer-oriented, addicted-to-oil lifestyles.
Now we have more information. I don't feel too terribly about the way I was living before I became aware of the implications of my choices. And certainly, like most of us, I've been busy raising a family and working, and had plenty on my mind. I just wasn't thinking about how my choices affected the environment, now and in the future.
Not any more. Now, I'm informed. These days, you have to make an effort not to be. We can hardly open a newspaper or magazine or listen to the news without being reminded of the planetary crisis, and how we can "live green" to help correct the problem. The animated movie Arctic Tale, released in the summer of 2007, reminds us that how we live here affects the animals in the Arctic.
If I fail to act now, that's denial.
The parallel to the denial of the addictive process here is that we now have lots of indication - scientific data and signs in our own backyards--about how our lifestyles put our children at risk, just as an alcoholic's drinking does. As long as we continue to consume vast quantities of oil, gas, plastics, aluminum, paper products, electricity, and stuff that's hauled half way around the world to get to us, much of it bundled in huge amounts of packaging, we engage in denial about the impact of our behavior on our children and their children. In this, we are not unlike alcoholics consuming too much alcohol, destined to either profoundly regret our excess or die in denial.
A cardinal feature of addiction is rationalization. Alcoholics often say things such as, "I deserve this drink because I had a hard day," or, "It's OK for me to drink today because I'm celebrating." The variations go on: "My husband drinks more than I do, so why should I quit?" Or the classic, "I'll quit tomorrow." If I say to myself, "I'm just one person, it doesn't matter what I do," or "Why should I inconvenience myself by recycling when my next door neighbor doesn't?" or if I say "Why should I trade in my SUV for a hybrid when China is continuing to increase its emissions?" I am rationalizing my behavior. I'm justifying not changing. And the problem persists, and worsens.
Simple Steps: It's as if we've been on a collective binge since about 1960.
Dr. Warren: Precisely! Only instead of drinking, we've been consuming lots of stuff. And instead of getting DUIs and lab results telling us that our liver is shot, we're getting what I call "global weirdness" and a host of complications like rising asthma and cancer rates, taking the problem to a crisis level.
Our actions have caught up with us.
Simple Steps: Do you think we can muster the collective will to fight our addiction?
Dr. Warren: Consequences are good teachers. The BP disaster is delivering a wake-up call on our addiction to oil. If we can recognize we have a problem, we're better positioned to take action. Not just as individuals. I can challenge myself to turn off my computer and fight my "need" to continue buying sassy shoes. But just like a drinker who can't battle her cravings alone, we need a supportive community to join in fighting our collective addiction, and choose as a country to get on the path to recovery. We need to know we're in this together.
Consider how the community helped fight the consequences of over-drinking. The organization MADD organized, lobbied and ultimately brought us tougher laws, safer roads. We can put similar controls on our use of oil, and set price signals that motivate us to conserve. Just as ordinary citizens lobbied to make our roads safer, we need to use our voices to protect the natural world and our families from the ravages of our fossil fuel dependence.
Simple Steps: You believe the American Power Act is a means by which we can begin to address our addiction?
Dr. Warren: I do. With the American Power Act, we have a bill in the Senate, finally, that uses market mechanisms to manage our energy use. If we want to get out of denial and reap the rewards of going into recovery--and ensure our children a life without this spiraling addiction--we each need to conserve energy, yes, but what we really need to do is support our Senators in passing a strong bill that puts a price on carbon.
Joining with others, taking part in a citizens' call for a new clean energy policy is positively empowering. It may seem small, but quite the opposite is the case, a simple call or letter shows your resolve to support solutions to our collective oil addiction. And what I've learned now from my experience as a newly involved voter, is that our elected officials want to hear from us. Our voices do matter.
It's true, big oil is big, and powerful. But there are a lot of voters in this country, and lots of us painfully aware of the impacts our oil addiction is having on real people, their livelihoods, and life-giving ecosystems. Then sit down and write the letter, or the email, or pick up the phone, and tell your representative how you feel. It's empowering, rewarding.
And it's what getting out of denial looks like.
Simple Steps: A recent poll showed that while most Americans believe we're too materialistic, that we over-consume, they don't believe they themselves consume too much. What does this say about our addiction?
Dr. Warren: Addiction distorts perception. Maybe we're not in denial about the problem, but are we in denial about the solution? Are we as individuals and as a society ready to pay more for oil or to invest what's necessary to develop alternative energy?
Take Action
Get beyond your oil addiction. Start today:
- Join Simple Steps CO2 Smackdown and participate in a nation-wide makeover of our energy habits.
- Urge your Senator to support legislation that will put the US on the path to a clean energy future.
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