Category: Current Affairs

SO LONG GOVERNOR RICHARDS

When I worked at the TODAY SHOW as political producer I had a deal with both parties that they would call and give me a heads up when they named their keynote speakers.  That way I could call and book them to be on the show the morning of their speech — and get them before the other shows.  In 1988 I got a call on a Saturday morning to let me know that the Democrats had chosen Texas Governor Ann Richards.  I was frantic.  It was a weekend.  How would I find her?  How would I get her phone number?  I called the NBC affiliate in Austin.  They had no home number.  I called the AP.  Ditto.  I called a couple of political friends – no luck.  So then, on a lark (you can guess the end of this story I bet) I called information.  Yup.  She was listed in the phone book!  I called, she answered, and we got her first.  She was a riot on the phone, too.  I asked her about listing her number and she seemed genuinely amused- why shouldn’t she list her number like everyone else?  Governor Richards died yesterday, September 13, 2006 at 73.

Probably that speech was one of the high points of her career.  Funny and a bit mischievous, it pushed class angles to differentiate between the parties, and it’s remembered far beyond Michael Dukakis, the candidate who eventually lost to the first President Bush. Bush himself often seemed awkward.  Said Richards, “Poor George, he can’t help it — he was born with a silver foot in his mouth.”  She brought down the house.

But President Bush’s opponent, Michael Dukakis, lost resoundingly. Richards was elected governor in 1991 (12th of the only 28 women ever to serve at governors) and served one term – losing her bid for re-election, ironically – to the son of the man she had so mocked –  George W. Bush.    In her later years she worked for a lobbying firm that included several tobacco accounts, to the dismay of many of her fans.

But this self-made country girl, recovering alcoholic ( and biker – see this photo) led her state with imagination and humor, wrote a wonderful autobiography that made the Depression come alive and set a great example for the emerging crew of women politicians.  Those who followed her gained much from her pioneering leadership – and we’ll miss her.

TOO SAD, TOO TRUE

As usual, Ms. Sweetney is onto whatever a person should be onto in the morning.  This is a remarkable editorial — maybe a it too long but worth watching.   I started to write a long essay to go with it and decided I sounded like a parody, SO I’m not going to say any more.  Except that I totally would have missed it without Tracey – I NEVER watch that show.  Maybe I should start…..

TRY TO REMEMBER — THE FANTASTICKS, JERRY ORBACH, THE INTERNET AND ME

OK – so I should be used to it by now.  I’ve been — as I often say, a walking demographic Baby Boomer as long as I can remember.  But on this morning after the re-opening of THE FANTASTICKS*  – which ran off-Broadway for 42 years, I read "adults 55+ adapting online."  Of course they are — sooner or later whatever I’m doing becomes part of a generational wave.

Don’t worry – there IS a connection.

I saw THE FANTASTICKS  with my college room mate and her mother during fall vacation of my freshman year.  That was 1964 – four years after it opened.  At the end, all of 18, I was crying so hard that the woman sitting next to me – probably 25 or s0 – handed me the rose her date must have given her at dinner.  I kept it on the wall of my room for years. 

El Gallo — the irresistible seducer  and originator of the "hurt’ without which "the heart is hollow" —  was first played by Jerry Orbach.  [hear him sing Try to Remember here.]  I met him when I was close to 50 – and told him I’d seen the show when I was 18.  His face just changed – not a trace of Lennie Briscoe but a combination of affection, nostalgia and pleasure.  We spoke a bit more and then I apologized for approaching him at a reception and acting like a groupie.  He replied "You saw the Fantasticks when you were EIGHTEEN!  That wasn’t an interruption that was a pleasure."  So I guess the story had the same impact on the cast that it had on girls like me.  "Please God please," the young girl ("the girl") cries out – "don’t let me be NORMAL!"  That was me alright.  Please let me be singular – not like the others! 

Well it hasn’t turned out that way.  Whatever I come to, my peers hit within a year or so.  It made me a great talk show producer – never a visionary too far ahead to be relevant, just enough ahead to know what story to do next.  I guess that’s why I accommodated to my role as close enough to normal but with an edge — rather than the downtown woman I had once wished to be.

I knew about this headlong Boomer journey online because my older son, in the industry, had read a similar study.  Last weekend I told him that I seemed to be getting a lot more online consulting work and his theory was that companies need boomer consultants more because more "civilian" boomers are finally hitting the web.  I always knew we would; the tribe that is the baby boom loves to be connected.  The web was a perfect home for us.  Just like THE FANTASTICKS.

*OK Feminist friends, there’s an element of sexism in this original fairy tale (they’ve rewritten the only really troubling song) but I have chosen to ignore it.  It just can’t trump the wonder and poetry.

OF COURSE IT COULDN’T LAST – RANDOM THOUGHTS ON THE DARK SIDE OF THE WEB

I just spent an hour listening to NYT reporter Kurt Eichenwald on a talk show describing the current state of Internet child pornography.  It’s just so sad. 

I remember as far back as 1998, when I helped launch an Internet safety campaign called America Links Up. We organized teach-ins, a TV program, a family website and a lot of other material to help parents keep their kids safe on line.  I, stupidly, thought people were a little overwrought about the whole thing.  If you were honest with kids, they could be trusted.  [ASIDE: I am, I often observe, a walking demographic… here for the George Lakoff nurturing parent.]  How could we deprive them when the Internet was, as John Perry Barlow said, "the most important discovery since fire?"

I was so besotted that I was incorrigible.  My boss at iVillage, whom I represented at American Links Up, used to call me a Web rat.  But it’s a sign of my eternal naivete that I never thought it would get as bad as it (apparently) is. AND that so many kids would log on when parents weren’t looking and participate. ( If the stories are true, it’s not just toddlers and preteens being exploited, it is also older teens getting sucked in and abused as well. )

We raised our kids in a style very similar to that described by long-time Wired writer Jon Katz, writing as Wired’s Netizen.  In 1996 he wrote a kids’ bill of rights on line – linking web rights to responsibilities met.  I wonder how that would play just ten years later.

In addition, I still don’t understand – when there are so many Law and Order SVU and a dozens of other programs portraying the dangers of these people – why young people would engage in this stuff to begin with.  Either too many kids are too lonely to care or we just aren’t paying enough attention.  Parents have to work and if they want decent housing they often have long commutes.  They need help.

So what do you think?  Is the Web as scary as Eichenwald portrays it?  Is some of it hype?  How do we keep kids safe and still help them to savor the Internet in all its wonders and opportunities?  Holler out some ideas….

KATRINA AND HEZBOLLAH

It’s a wacky day and I have a big meeting this afternoon but I’m haunted by something and I want to share it.  For the past two days C-Span (my drug of choice) has been broadcasting from New Orleans.  And it’s been sad and scandalous.  This is not a political opinion, this is a fact.  When you listen to the stories and see how little has been done a year later it’s painful.  BUT

What was hardest to hear was that several times – at least three times that I recall – people called in to compare the fast, effective relief DELIVERED BY HEZBOLLAH to bombed out Lebanese to the stunted, slow support they’re receiving down there.  Whatever you think of Hezbollah – it’s a sad commentary that Americans have lost so much faith in their government that they make these sorts of comparisons.  In a way it reminded me of what the Black Panthers used to do in San Francisco and Oakland — social services, daycare etc.  I’m not objectively comparing the two – just what looks like a remarkable strategy.  Read this NYT piece too if it’s not already behind that wall of "Extra."

I know there are real problems; I know that there’s been fraud and it’s important to watch out, I know that people like Cooper Munroe and Emily McKhann made, and are still making, an amazing difference.  Their Beenthereclearinghouse is a miracle.  But on this anniversary it’s something to think about.

SCARY DAY – THEY DON’T CALL IT TERRORISM FOR NOTHING

REPOSTED FROM VOX 8/10:
Lately we always wake up early — lots of hassles in our life right now — and so the TV was on from about 5. Once we turned it on and saw what was happening, of course there was no way to turn it off. This is a very scary time. I’ve been in Heathrow a zillion times so it was scarier; it’s always worse when you can envision yourself in the place where the trouble’s happening.

It all was compounded by the fact that our older son had just returned from London. Since he’s on planes all the time I’ve stopped letting myself think about it but this is different – far too tangible for me. I know I’m suggestible and don’t bring nearly enough skepticism to the situation but it is too creepy. Besides, we all know that when we feel no prospect for control things feel worse.

I remember how both kids reacted to 9/11 — living on the opposite coast from us and so far away. One of the sad things about that horror and what followed is that it has caused so much pain to the generations who followed my own. Even the Oliver Stone film promos remind us (paraphrasing) “every generation is impacted by something, THIS was ours.” (THIS being 9/11 of course) It’s all just so hard to accept – not so much for me but for my kids and all the other younger people who started out in the tech revolution with so much promise for their futures then watched as those in power seemed to walk into a wall and have no idea how to recover. We all like to leave our kids in better shape than we were. My (Depression-era/WW II) parents did that for us — I’m pretty sure we haven’t passed it on.

Oh – and about security:

I’m also trying to figure out how I would do without

a] My Big Giant Purse

b] My laptop

c] My wheelie

d] At least 3 books and 4 magazines

e] A bottle of water

And where I would put

a] My car key with the keyless entry button (forbidden)

b] My copy of my husband’s car key with the keyless entry button (also forbidden)

c My iPod

d] My Treo

e] Another book

f] Cheese from the Red Carpet Room

How are the rest of us feeling? Am I just a wuss?

Military Americans and the Rest of Us

REPOSTED FROM VOX – 8/08:
The National Military Families Association is an old client of mine and today I’m meeting their former CEO for lunch. She and I had hoped to use her site and some of the “women’s” content sites to begin to bridge the chasm between military and non-military families. Who if not the women would be capable of that? I had just read Absolutely American: Four Years at West Point, a wonderful book about West Point and leadership so was particularly interested in removing the stereotypes and isolation suffered by the military in my formative, actively anti-war youth.

We were unable to interest most of the women’s sites into doing anything without payment though; it was quite sad. When I think of 9/11 and of the Iraq War – and remember how my parents used to talk about the “GIs” and their position in the world during World War II, it’s particularly unfortunate that we now have a “military class” that is separate from the rest of us in so many ways – and whose parents and children were also likely to be military — so much so that we’re worlds apart.

Today Oliver Stone told the Washington Post that he thought combat experience “softens you, if anything. It makes you more aware of human frailty and vulnerability. It doesn’t make you a coward, but it does teach you. ” Yet, as he noted in this interview, none of our current political leaders has any combat experience at all.

I know we need to end this division, but I have two sons and what seems sensible in the abstract is horrifying in the concrete. I have many friends whose kids have gone to live in Israel, for example, and they seem to accept the fact of their sons’ military obligation with equinimity but I don’t know if I could. And I”m not sure if it’s the scars of Vietnam and even more recent futile endeavors or rank selfishness on my part….

More later.