Well what else is there to say?
Category: Current Affairs
Ellen Goodman Doesn’t Write there Anymore
As long as I've worked in media, which is a long time, Ellen Goodman's been there too. Her Pulitzer-prize-winning column, originating in the Boston Globe, has been a beacon and a landmark and a treasure.
And now it's ending. No, nobody fired her, she still has a large audience and many adoring readers but she's decided to stop. Here's part of what she said in her valedictory meditation on covering women in America – and I recommend you go read the entire thing:
My generation — WOMEN — thought the movement would advance on two
legs. With one, we'd kick down the doors closed to us. With the other,
we'd walk through, changing society for men and women.It turned
out that it was easier to kick down the doors than to change society.
It was easier to fit into traditional male life patterns than to change
those patterns. We've had more luck winning the equal right to 70-hour
weeks than we've had selling the equal value of care-giving. We have
yet to solve the problem raised at the outset: Who will take care of
the family?As a young mother and reporter, it did not occur to
me that my daughter would face the same conflicts of work and family.
Or, on the other hand, that my son-in-law would fully share those
conflicts. I did not expect that over two-thirds of mothers would be in
the work force before we had enough child care or sick pay.
Yes – those things are true. My own sons expect (and one has) wives who keep their names and expect to remain in the workforce. And yes, they still face issues of child care and equal pay and glass ceilings. The sad thing is, they won't have the provocative, inspiring, funny and very gifted voice of Ellen Goodman to cheer them on. Maybe she'll write another book though; if she does, I'll send a copy to each of them.
Repost – Best of Don’t Gel 2009: Loving London
That old rascal Samuel Johnson told us that when we were tired of London, we'd be tired of life
I know it's summer when any city is inviting but this week is cool and
bright and breezy and London is full of British school groups and kids
from everywhere else too, and we have an apartment right in the middle
of Covent Garden (well NOT the market, God forbid, just the
neighborhood) and our older son and his new wife are only 40 minutes
away and we have friends here, too. So how could we be tired?
What you see here is the view from Waterloo Bridge (and yes that's St. Paul's Cathedral in the background.) This morning I went out and walked all along the , over where the trees are, then crossed a bridge just out of view on the right and returned via South Bank,
London's wonderful (relatively) new arts and museum area. My entire
walk was around three miles and I'm realizing that it's much easier to
do the walking when there are new things to look at, not just the old
neighborhood or, as lovely as it is, Rock Creek Park.
The wonder of a great city is that it's always changing, that even the most
trivial journey is full of surprises. On my way home tonight I came
across a group of teenagers – one of dozens of groups we've been seeing
ever since we got here. The reason they're all sitting on the sidewalk
is that they're exchanging addresses and spelling them out – different
nationalities, different spelling. Kind of an EU photo.
Of course there's lots else going on here. Huge waves of immigration, the
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, what looks to me to be an appalling
amount of youthful alcohol consumption and unemployment all take their toll. There's something about the
place despite those issues though. The day after the2005 subway bombing that killed 52 people, Londoners got back on the train and went to work. They did that all during the Blitz as much of the rest of the world watched them face down Hitler almost alone.
Cities are supposed to change. That's what makes them exciting. Even so,
London has seen more than its share: waves of immigration that have
transformed it, an early history of wars and fires and plagues,
contemporary royal scandals and of course the "troubles" between
Belfast and the rest of Ireland and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
After all, who would have believed before it arrived to help celebrate
the Millennium, that there would be a ferris wheel right in the center
of town? They call it the London Eye to
make it sound fancy but it's still a ferris wheel, here in same town
that has a real live queen living in a real live palace? It's pretty
amazing.
I'm
thinking that while we're here I can try to get past some of what I've
written here and learn a bit of what it's like to truly live
here. It's got to be different from wandering around with no need to
be on time or face the traffic or crowded mass transit and infinite
numbers of tourists and, incidentally, deal with what appears to be an
enormous amount of alcohol consumption – especially by men. I'm hoping
to keep you posted as I make my way. I hope you'll come along.
RePost: Best of Don’t Gel 2009 – The End of the Berlin Wall: Twenty Years Ago
This is the Brandenburg Gate in the center of Berlin. The first time I saw it, in 1974, there was a wall built right through it.
Here’s a photo of it then, from the Hotel Adlon website. The hotel stood, from 1907 to 1945, when it was decimated by a fire, just to the left of the Gate. It was the stopping place for world leaders and socialites and was rebuilt shortly after the Wall fell.
Because Berlin has such a dramatic history, it was always exciting to be there — maybe more so while the wall remained.
I remember especially coming through Checkpoint Charlie
(that’s it on the left) on a dark fall day (Americans were allowed to
visit for the day after going through this scary border station and
having cars and packages searched) and, as we approached the Gate,
seeing an old man standing, looking over into the West. In his hands,
clasped behind his back, was a rosary. Not so popular in communist
East Berlin. I recall thinking immediately “Oh. His daughter is
getting married in the West today and he can’t go, and he’s standing
there, thinking about her, praying for her.” Berlin in those times
lent itself to imagining such things. The drama was palpable.
The first time we went to Berlin after the wall fell, I remember, it was
pouring. Oblivious to the weather, we walked back and forth beneath
the lovely arches in the now-open gate, kind of giddy at what it meant
to the people of Berlin and all those who care about freedom and, I
guess, redemption. For despite what happened in Berlin during the war
(and we’ve studied it extensively and spoken both with survivors and
those involved in the rebuilding of the Jewish community) the Wall caused immeasurable suffering and was a diabolical slash through the heart of the city and every one of its people.
I’ve written about Berlin before: from its playgrounds to its grim Communist years. We go there often. It seems to pull us back, its intellectual energy
and re-emerging Jewish community irresistible. Once, when we’d taken
our kids there while the Wall remained, one son, around 5, bought a
stuffed wool pig and told everyone he “got it out of jail.”
Here’s one last photo – of two buildings: one redone and the other still old and rickety, in the very cool neighborhood of Prenzlauer Berg, which is in the old “East Berlin” and now, last I heard, had the highest childbirth rate in Germany and was home to artists, writers, musicians and fashionably cool people who don’t have to work. What you see stands for it all: the struggle to renew, still only partly complete.
Happy New Year: Jib Jab Does it Best
I Don’t Know Why but This Just Makes Me Happy
Planned Parenthood is offering them on pre-order. It's enough to make you move to VA, no?
Thanks to the one and only PunditMom for tweeting this.
Is There a Draft in Here? Should There Be a Draft?
I can't believe I missed it! Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the first United States draft lottery drawing, Every young man my age and many older and younger waited in front of their TVs with sweaty palms and pounding hearts (I'm not kidding) as the numbers came out of the barrel. And those in this photo were the "old white guys" who did it. The one drawing the number is Republican House Armed Serviced Chairman Alexander Pirnie (R-NY) and the man to his right is the (then) despised Chairman of the Selective Service (the Draft) General Lewis Hershey.
OH and one more thing: just beyond that camera, over to the left, was me. Sitting with a telephone and reading each drawn number to the CBS News studio where the number was then posted on the screen. Each number was a birthday, and the order in which they were drawn determined the likelihood that the men in the list would be drafted and, most likely, go to Vietnam. First birthday drawn – lottery number 1. Last birthday drawn – lottery number 365.
As I read the numbers into the phone, I was reading death warrants. Of men my own age. And I knew it.
Every number, every birthday, could be someone I knew – an old boyfriend, a cousin, someone's brother, a high school classmate, a teacher, another someone's son. The war was real in a way it hadn't been before, even though there had always been a draft. Up until the lottery, college students and graduate students were deferred and so were married men. In fact, there were more than a few weddings to keep boyfriends home.
Many of these rules, which were, after all, based on class since there were so many more white middle class men in college than other groups, were wiped out when the lottery began.
That meant that on a theoretical level, I should have been proud. My country was spreading the risk, spreading the pain – and even if I opposed the war, I knew that others were not being asked to fight it for me and my peers anymore. Those we loved were also at risk. All I felt though was fear, and anger, and despair. Which is probably not a bad way to feel when loved ones are about to be drafted to go fight in a "dirty little war" in Vietnam.
So today, after the President's speech last night, I wonder. We know the military prefers a volunteer military even with all the re-deployments and disruptions. It's building a "military class" in our country of people who know things we don't – won't learn. And they're proud to be there, scared or not. It's effective. But is it fair? Is it even productive, when it insulates so many of us from an imminent sense of loss? When we never have to fear the husband in a wheel chair, the son whose PTSD will not fade and, worst of all, that dreaded knock at the door,
9/11 Predicted the Role of Bloggers (I’m Not Kidding)
I don't know about you, but 9/11 footage still wipes me out. It doesn't get any easier to watch. But this morning MSNBC was running the first few hours of coverage from the TODAY SHOW in real time and I watched a couple of hours.
It was like watching a horror movie as Katie and Matt started out so cheerily, then began reporting a "small plane" flying into the first Tower. Then, gradually, the awful reality began to emerge. And for a good long time, and intermittently thereafter, it was "eye witnesses" and "neighborhood residents" and other information "civilians" who delivered the best information.
I listened as a young woman on the telephone, on her way to work at a downtown hotel and having just emerged from the subway just below the Trade Center, described the early sights of the attack. She calmly detailed what she saw, at least until the second plane hit when she responded with understandable emotion. Even then, she was able to carefully report developments – even putting her questioners on hold to check with a local policeman. No seasoned reporter could have done it better.
Later, other eyewitnesses appeared, one after the other. They used words like "reportedly," were very careful as they described what they saw, and offered careful, tempered accounts. This went on all day. Of course those closer to the real product of the attacks, the bodies, the people jumping out of the windows – civilian and reporter alike – were deeply moved and it showed.
So fast-forward to today. As the mainstream media fights for its life, as programs like my alma mater (9 years) the TODAY SHOW move more and more toward infotainment, the serious, thoughtful and original journalism is done as often on blogs as it is anywhere else. Of course there are impulsive writers and rumor mongers and gossip tramps but that's true everywhere and, as the witnesses demonstrated eight years ago, you don't need a network paycheck to deliver reliable and well-presented information. The citizen army of bloggers today is validated every time a caring and thoughtful eyewitness offers mainstream media a sane, helpful description of what's happening, or has happened.
So next time you hear someone going on about "those bloggers" and their untrustworthy nature, take it from a long-time broadcast journalist turned blogger: it's the content of character, not the brand of employer, that makes a journalist.
Photo via Creative Commons by macten
Now That Wasn’t So Bad, Was It? The President and the Kids
I’m going to post the entire Obama schools speech because it’s so ridiculously safe and regular and parental and sweet — perfect evidence of how insane this whole battle has been. See for yourself
Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama
Back to School Event
Arlington, Virginia
September 8, 2009The President: Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today? I’m here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we’ve got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I’m glad you all could join us today.
I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your first day in a new school, so it’s understandable if you’re a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.
I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning.
Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I’d fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, “This is no picnic for me either, buster.”
So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I’m here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I’m here because I want to talk with you about your education and what’s expected of all of you in this new school year.
Now I’ve given a lot of speeches about education. And I’ve talked a lot about responsibility.
I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn.
I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.
I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working where students aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve.
But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.
And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.
Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide.
Maybe you could be a good writer – maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper – but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor – maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine – but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.
And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.
And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can me
et our greatest challenges in the future.You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.
We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.
Now I know it’s not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.
I get it. I know what that’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in.
So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.
But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.
Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right.
But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying.
Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.
That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.
Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.
I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three. He’s endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer – hundreds of extra hours – to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he’s headed to college this fall.
And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she’s on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.
Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren’t any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same.
That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education – and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending
time each day reading a book. Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you’ll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.
I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work — that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things.
But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.
That’s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, “I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.
No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in.
Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.
And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.
The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.
It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.
So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?
Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.
Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.
OK So I’m Mad
It’s been a lazy weekend. Both Sunday papers got read. The COSTCO run was made (but not the bed.) We went out for three different meals so cooking was minimal. But the news is really pissing me off.
We’ve reduced the President of the United States to a propaganda tool. I’ve worked in school TV. I know what will happen when the President speaks on Tuesday. Teachers who disagree with Obama will talk during the speech; others will just turn off the TV. Remember the story of the kids in Dallas who cheered when President Kennedy was killed? They were too young to have an informed hatred. It was generated in them. And now, with a President whom we all know faces more danger than most, the President’s enemies are willing to do it again.
OK lets go from there to health care. With a calculated harshness these same people have managed to stir up every frightened, confused voter in the country by convincing them they’re in infinite danger. For the elderly it’s nearly a promise to send them all out to die on an ice flow. For others it’s the promise that they’ll have to wait forever for care, that they’ll never be able to pick their doctors and that their care will lose quality. And let’s not forget the screaming madness that forever polluted the revered American tradition of the town meeting.
I’m writing this as Labor Day draws to a close. Cranky and sad, I wish for a renewed commitment, as we honor those who, mostly, work with their hands, that a miracle will move the battling legislators to “man up” and make something happen so that no worker, or any other American, will spend next Labor Day worrying about what they’ll do if one of their kids falls off his bike on the last day of summer and breaks a leg.