Author: Cynthia Samuels

Cynthia Samuels is a long-time blogger, writer, producer and Managing Editor. She has an extensive background online, on television and in print, with particular experience developing content for women, parents and families. For the past nine years, that experience has been largely with bloggers, twitter and other social media, most recently at Care2's Causes Channels, which serve 20 million members (13 million when she joined) and cover 16 subject areas. In her three years at Care2 monthly page views grew tenfold, from 450,000 to 4 million. She has been part a member of BlogHer since 2006 years and has spoken at several BlogHer conferences. Among her many other speaking appearances is Politics Online, Fem 2.0 Conference and several other Internet gatherings. She’s also run blogger outreach for clients ranging from EchoDitto to To the Contrary. Earlier, she spent nearly four years with iVillage, the leading Internet site for women; her assignments included the design and supervision of the hugely popular Education Central, a sub-site of Parent Soup that was a soup-to-nuts parent toolkit on K-12 education, designed to support parents as advocates and supporters of their school-age kids. She also served as the iVillage partner for America Links Up, a major corporate Internet safety initiative for parents, ran Click! – the computer channel - and had a long stint as iVillage's Washington editor. In addition, she has developed parent content for Jim Henson Interactive and served as Children’s Book Editor for both Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.com. Before moving online, she had a long and distinguished career as a broadcast journalist, as senior national editor of National Public Radio, political and planning producer of NBC's Today Show (whose audience is 75% women) where she worked for nine years (and was also the primary producer on issues relating to child care, education, learning disabilities and child development), and as the first executive producer of Channel One, a daily news broadcast seen in 12,000 U.S. high schools. She has published a children’s book: It’s A Free Country, a Young Person’s Guide to Politics and Elections (Atheneum, 1988) and numerous children’s book reviews in the New York Times Book Review and Washington Post Book World. A creator of online content since 1994, Samuels is a partner at The Cobblestone Team, LLC, is married to a doctor and recent law school graduate and has two grown sons who make video games, two amazing daughters-in-law and three adorable grandsons.

That Was No Commercial! That Was My Dad

I really loved my dad. So did my kids. Our first grandson carries his name. There’s a reason for that, and the magic of this commercial is that it understands and validates that reason.

Every great ad is supposed to tell a story, but this one doesn’t have to; instead, it validates our own. For any daughter whose dad believed in her, listened to and argued respectfully with her opinions and loved her unconditionally, especially a daughter whose dad is no longer here, the magic of this small moment is that, for 30 seconds, it almost brings him back, allows us to feel again the warm embrace of that love.

Of course its main mission is to sell something, I know. But I’m grateful that this one, as it sold, gave us something lovely in return.

Oh Gwyneth! Mom to Mom to Mom

Gwyneth Paltrow has serious mom shoes to fill. Her own mother, Blythe Danner (you’ve probably seen her in those osteoporosis ads, or as almost everybody’s TV/movie mom…) is a spectacular actress who took a long professional hiatus to stay home with her kids as they grew up. If you had seen her show up at that MASH unit in Korea as Hawkeye Pierce’s great lost love, or as Alma in Eccentricities of a Nightingale you’d know just how much she gave up and we all lost. Her daughter has often acknowledged how aware she was of that decision.

I think one reason it’s tough to watch all the hating on Gwyneth, especially by other women, is that her mother is so extraordinary. I interviewed her once for a story on the Girl Scouts, of all things, and she was fierce. About acting, about her leave from acting, about not raising her kids in Hollywood, about almost everything.

As I’ve watched her daughter all these years, with weird baby names and regimens and what seem like odd decisions, I’ve watched her the way a mother might. Understanding and probably respecting the quest, the efforts to build an original life and, of course, the professional success, and worrying about The Interview and other events that made her sound more shallow than she probably is. Springing to her defense, as Danner did, seems reasonable. The downpour of venom does not.

I know I’m challenging a lot of women I deeply respect but it just seems so — unnecessary. The women of America face a true political emergency, and if the right takes over Congress this fall we are in real danger. Let’s hate more on the people responsible for that and leave this poor, complicated woman to fix what she can and recover from the rest.

From Bunny to Brave Leader of Us All. Happy Birthday Gloria!

Gloria in her "underground" Playboy Bunny garb for her 1963 expose in SHOW Magazine. — Gloria in her “underground” Playboy Bunny garb for her 1963 expose in SHOW Magazine.

I was 17 the first time I saw this, a Pittsburgh kid with grand ambitions for worldliness and intellectual heft and the ability to do the New York Times crossword puzzle in ink; so many that I actually subscribed to magazines like The Saturday Review, The New Yorker and SHOW: the Magazine of the Arts, where Gloria’s famous Playboy Club expose first appeared.

My reaction: “What a showboat, dumb thing to do!” My (never-less-than-honest) mother responded “You’re just jealous!” And she was right. Gloria had done something I so wanted to do – and so early in her career! How could I ever get from a Monongahela River mill town to that?

I never dreamed that Gloria, too, came from an industrial town – Toledo – much less that we would both have attended the same college, that I would hear her speak at my sister’s Smith graduation, and that, amazingly, I would actually come to know this remarkable woman. And here, on her 80th birthday, is what I learned:

In 1974, I told one of Ms’ spectacular co-founders how much I admired her. She replied “That’s how I feel about Gloria.” Heroes have heroes too, and hers was Gloria.

In 1982, for Ms. Magazine‘s 10th birthday, I produced an anniversary story called “A Day in the Life of Gloria Steinem” for the Today Show. The camera crew and I took a train from Penn Station to Philadelphia with her and followed her from event to event, including a couple of large public appearances. At least once every couple of minutes, a woman would walk up to her to thank her for something: courage, perspective, “you changed my life.”

Every time, every interruption, every stop on the street or in the hotel lobby or the ball room or the train, she treated each woman as if she were the first one she’d ever met. She listened intently. She responded in a very personal way. Every time.

To Gloria, every woman: each of us, all of us, has mattered to her. We are not just a formidable, critical cause, we are women who one by one by one have been living the lives women live, unequal, unheralded, amazing lives.

It is this that has made her the most remarkable of leaders, of change agents and of women. Never, in all the marches and speeches and honors and sadnesses has she forgotten that each one of us is all of us. She is not just a leader, she is a shining example. And inside each of us, we know it.

Happy Birthday Gloria – and thanks, from all of us here now and the girls and women yet to come.

Take a look at this MAKERS profile, too.

Darrell Issa, Rudy Giuliani and Debo Adegbile: What a Crummy Day

It can’t all be about race, can it? Even though House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa stands over his seated African-American Co-Chair and speaks to him like a house slave. It was mortifying to watch.

That Co-Chair, Maryland Rep- Elijah Cummings, had demanded the opportunity to speak at a hearing Issa had adjourned over his objections. If you think I’m over-reacting, watch it for yourself.

Monday, America’s Mayor abdicated his title, if he hadn’t already, as he described totalitarian Vladimir Putin as decisive, and “a leader” — as opposed to a dictator which is pretty much what he is. The drumbeat went on: John McCain, Lindsay Graham, Sarah Palin and the rest of them. But here’s Giuliani:

Then today. Here’s how the New York Times tells the story of the Debo Adegbile:

Debo Adegbile did his job, and for that he was deemed unfit by the Senate to become the head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. His misstep, specifically, was helping represent a death-row inmate while he was director of litigation at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

With this excuse in hand, Senate Republicans and seven cowardly Democrats, three of whom are up for re-election in November, managed to shut down Mr. Adegbile’s nomination. The final, shameful vote was effectively 51-48 (Senator Harry Reid supported Mr. Adegbile but voted no for procedural reasons).

But wait: didn’t the Senate vote to confirm John Roberts to the Supreme Court, even after learning that he, too, had assisted in the defense of a death-row inmate? That man, John Errol Ferguson, killed eight people. (Despite the help of one of the nation’s top lawyers, Ferguson was executed in Florida last year.)

So why does John Roberts get a pass but not Debo Adegbile? Because Mr. Adegbile represented Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was convicted and sentenced to death in 1982 for killing a Philadelphia police officer named Daniel Faulkner. For three decades the case has reverberated across the region, which now apparently includes the constituency of Delaware Senator Chris Coons, the last and least expected Democratic vote against the nomination.

Even those who felt ambivalent about the Mumia case, one would hope, would want the accused to have a constitutionally-guaranteed defense, right? And no one questioned Mr. Adegbile’s capacity or experience, so he should have been fine. But no. A vicious FOX campaign planted the seed and it worked, even pulling in a few Democrats. They knew they were succumbing to demagoguery; they had to.

So at a time when voting rights are under challenge across the country without a full Voting Rights Act to protect them, at a time when a public figure can call the President of the United States a “subhuman mongrel,” and just keep going, when swing state early and weekend voting hours most used by timecard workers and students are eviscerated, when our first African-American President faces fierce obstruction for anything he proposes, we pretend we are behaving like the citizens we were meant to be. And aren’t.

Bad things happen all the time these days – but these three in such rapid succession were a real kick in the gut.

Lupita, the Oscars, Race and the Un-Funny (I’m Lookin’ at YOU Chelsea)

Mocking LUPITA? Really?

The presence of President Barack Obama has clearly given haters permission to go public. It’s given conservative politicians excuses to obstruct nominees and legislation almost to the point of treason. Today’s criticism of the president’s Ukraine responses, especially that of Senator Lindsey Graham, who knows better and seems to fear his primary opponent more than he fears adversely affecting our country’s future, is the latest example.

We expect that from the predictably-racist and from opportunistic politicians. We do NOT, however, expect it from mainstream comedians on mainstream outlets like The Huffington Post. So how does it happen that the much-honored Chelsea Handler, who has 5.4 million Twitter followers, her own nightly E! TV show, and is a frequent guest on others, feels free to:

a) Tweet what she did about African Americans and the Oscars (read this, you won’t believe it)

b) EVER believe these posts would be funny

c) Continue so long on such an influential venue without interruption by her “publisher?”

She is about to launch a stand-up tour and was tweeting to promote it, but in service to that end, repeatedly tweeted what were at least disrespectful and self-occupied and at most patently racist comments not only about Lupita Nyong’o’s win, but also about past Oscar winners Sidney Poitier and Angelina Jolie (who also received this year’s Humanitarian Award,) Whoopi Goldberg, and this: “#NelsonMandela looks great #abc #resurrection -Oscars –@chelseahandler” referring, presumably, to ABC’s endless promos for their new drama Resurrection.

As of this writing, there has been no searchable comment from HuffPo beyond a bland response to the Grio.

The thing is, as the only woman late-night anchor, an edgy humorist and all that stuff, her behavior is somehow especially painful. She’s reaching younger people and, with this kind of talk, making it a little easier for them to accept it from others. Because of the huge reach of HuffPo, she’s legitimized both by her presence and their silence.

So how is it, in the 5th year of the administration of our first Black president, when best picture, best screenplay and best supporting actress Oscars went to African-Americans, and, as Larry Irving has noted, “Who says Hollywood is stuck in the past… Mexican born Director wins for Best Director. British Born Brother wins for Best Picture… Kenyan born Yale educated woman wins for Best Supporting Actress… Love it!!! In America anything really can happen…” it is possible for this to happen and be almost solely in African-American outlets like The Grio and The Root?

Come on guys! Free speech, free press indeed. But we really need to speak up when this kind of thing is still acceptable as humor. Seriously.

Through the Looking Glass, 21st Century RFID-Style

iTunes stations2 Equation of the day: Cognitive dissonance = searching for travel accessories that will hold a passport and credit cards AND provide RFID protection AND go under one’s clothing — while at the same time listening to the “If You Like the Grateful Dead” Channel on iTunes Radio. OR I could switch to the Leonard Cohen one for the same result. I’m usually pretty good at avoiding over-60 vertigo but this…

We can’t take our laptops or iPhones overseas without the capacity to completely cut off data and email. Everything but text. The data pirates I first met all those years ago in Neuromancer are legion now, having moved from (fictionally) stealing corporate data to (really) pulling infinite amounts of information from our passports, phones, laptops and credit cards. At least the kind they use in Europe.

Pretty dark, and way beyond simple identity theft, right? Now available: where we’ve gone and for how long, what we’ve bought and from whom, phone calls, emails, passwords and personal information out there like a big buffet just waiting for them. As I listen to the music, I keep thinking of anthem-saturated marches, pot-scented dorm rooms, grey afternoons with the Sisters of Mercy and a vital, curious, well-educated self who could never have imagined, much less understood, our modern vulnerabilities. Even in the 90’s, with its “Information wants to be free” mantra didn’t prepare me for this.