So, I have to be quick here.  Power is still out. MacBook down to 43%.  Sixth day and counting.  No hard feelings, just wanted to let you know what you could do differently next time around if you decide you want a modern communications plan.

This would be a good thing.  You ARE the major supplier in the most densely populated state in America, the service you provide, next to air and water, literally means life and death for many people -- and economic catastrophe for others when service fails.  Certainly, it means expense and discomfort for grumpy folks like me.

Yet twice now within a period of six months, you've experienced emergencies from a hurricane and a snow storm that have left hundreds of thousands of residents uninformed and frustrated and dozens of police and fire departments without updates from you.  

Overall?

Just tell the truth.  Stop obfuscating with statistics and cough up the truth.
Look at it this way.


When I ride New Jersey Transit, I experience frequent delays.  Some years back they learned something.

If they explained to passengers what was happening, the passengers were far more understanding.

So now, if I have more than two minutes delay on the rails, I get,
"Ladies and genetlemen, sorry to say we are on hold here for 15 minutes because of a derail at the tunnel.  We apologize for this and are doing everything we can to correct it."


The JCP&L version of this?


"We're stopped and not going anywhere, but 99 percent of the rest of the trains are running on time."



We'll skip the basics and the sarcasm and get to what you did wrong and right as best I can see as your client and as a professional corporate communicator.

Here are some things you do very wrong.

Your web site should, well, work.  It can't go out or down as it has. Consistently.

Don't give us a phone number to call to report outages when it's either always busy or you have us input a phone number so you can call us back. And then never do.

Don't Twitter. Unless you have something to say.  (Saying the website is out on Twitter isn't really actionable info.)

Don't freeze out first responders.  Our police had to siren down a JCP&L truck two days after the storm to get basic information that meant life and death for them and residents who were trying to clear hot wires on emergency thruways.

Don't give overly optimistic information in statistics that you then fail to meet.

Now, here's what you could do.

Have a live web site.  Mirror it.  Have some contingencies for geographic outages and heavy traffic. 
These are table stakes in the poker game you play. We aren't talking mobile apps.  Just a functional web page.

"The power went out" is not an excuse for you in explaining that the website is down.

Have a sign-in page on your website, sorted by simple info like zip codes.

Let us input emails or text message numbers for contact, or phone numbers for robo-calls and updates.
Give us semi-customized updates.

For God's sake, please have a master list of first responders, and do the same for them.

This is simple technology these days.  All it requires is forethought. 

If you'd like more information, get my power up so I can recharge my computer.  Gotta run now.  The fire in the 55-gallon drum is running low and I need to add wood.

Some Real Words for a Real Person

Kate Law, Gerry's Daughter, Runs a Half Marathon Soon to Comemorate her father and my friend of a lifetime. (If you don't know what "get out of the f___in' canoe means,"my original blog on Rodie is far below.) Please contribute and help bipolar research.

Support her at https://www.active.com/donate/klaw

Welcome friends and family! On Jan. 22nd Ken and I will be running our first half marathon in honor of my father, Gerry 'Rodie' Rodeen. We thought there was no better way to honor my father on the anniversary of his passing than to 'get the f*ck outta the canoe' and run 13.1 miles. If you want get out of the canoe and run with us, please feel free to join our team. Or if you'd rather support the cause from afar, we are also accepting donations for the International Bipolar foundation. The journey will be a long, emotional one for us but we've got our 'war paint' on and we're ready to tackle this one mile at a time, and one dollar at a time. All money raised will go directly to the International Bipolar Foundation which strives to eliminate Bipolar Disorder through the advancement of research; promotes and enhances care and support services; and strives to erase associated stigma through public education. Thank you all for your continued love and support as we run the Carlsbad Half Marathon on Jan 22nd! 'War Paint' Kate & Ken Law		Share this page Top Contributors Invite your Friends to Donate!

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Some Real Words for a Real Person

(Expletives Not Deleted.)

My Friend and Brother, Gerald P. Rodeen

By Bob Frump

For those of you who knew Rodie and his profane exuberance for life, love of family, nature, conservation and hunting, this is indeed a shock and I can only conclude that an illness caused his death as surely as cancer or heart disease causes death.

He charged through life. Obstacles were generally dismissed in a patented Rodeen phrase: "Fuck the fucking fuckers."

As recently as this summer, when I was in Dallas on my own, and a bit off my feed, in conditions that made my college dorm room look neat, feeling listless and without energy, complaining about getting older, and generally feeling sorry for myself, Rodie set me straight in typical fashion and style.

. "Listen, motherfucker, we got ten good active years left, at least, and I don't know about you but I am not going to sit back and watch them go by. I am going to grab them by the balls and you get up off your ass and start doing the same."

I did.

And somewhere in the months ahead from that point, Jerry slipped the other way. I am not sure what stole over him, but he was not completely the person I have known since childhood who shared every random thought, doubt and desire with his friends. He had been flat and listless these past few months, friends said, as the meds took their effect -- or rather did not. He was Jerry -- and yet he was not.

I reached out to him two weeks ago and asked him if everything was okay, and I was reassured by the call. Yes, he'd gotten the book I sent to him, "Pheasants of the Mind," but he was reading Keith Richards biography and remarked about the Rolling Stones member had been addicted to heroin for more than ten years and how what we all went through was "nothing compared to that fucker." He would get to my book soon and let me know.

I did sort of a double frisk with him. His health was good? Yeah, yeah. Tired, you know, but good. He'd talked openly about depression four or five years ago and how Cymbalta or a similar med had snapped him right out of it and he was glad he sought treatment. The door was always open to that type of discussion and Rodie was nothing if not self aware. How was that going? Oh, fine, fine. No problems. He said nothing about bi-polar disorder, which he apparently was being treated for.

Prostate cancer treatment holding up? Yeah, yeah, completely clean. Anything bothering you? Folks are fading now, losing it some, and that was a big chore for his sister, Becky. The call ended when he pulled up into Federal District Court for a case, and he was focused on the job. Paul, his son, said he had planned the suicide for a long time, so I would imagine he was thinking about it then. or the part of him that grew ever more ascendingly in control, was.

My mind wonders back through a lifetime of friendship and of the many memories, one particularly illustrates Jerry's philosophy. We were canoeing as 20-somethings before he went to law school. We came past a part of the stream where a rope was tied to a tree -- a swing and drop to a deep part in the generally shallow Brandywine River.

Steve Dilks and I saw the rope and it meant nothing to us. Dots did not connect. Rodie saw it and said, "Whoa! Motherfucker! Pull this baby over to the bank. I gotta do that."

We cautioned him to be careful. "It looks shallow," I said.

With that devil's gleam in his eye, he backed up and slacked up the rope, took a mighty charge and a swing, let loose at the highest point of the swing, where the rope was about to noodle and drop, and then let go.

There was a splash and also a hard thumping sound. Rodie came up gushing serious blood from his forehead and nose, bloody but exuberant.

Told you to be careful, I said.

"Ha! You two motherfuckers don't get it," he said. "You're safe and sound in the canoe, but you never are going to have the experience I just did, ever, and I may have got hurt but I took the shot, and that is what life is about, not sitting in the goddamn canoe."

Rodie helped me swing out there and live life. Forever and always, through his actions, words and example, he got me the fuck out of the canoe.

No doubt there are shouldas here. I feel it. His family no doubt feels it. It is natural. Or so I've read.

Rodeen would scoff at it. He did not live in a world of shoulda, woulda, coulda and if the old Jerry somehow were alive and someone said, "I shoulda done more for you," his reply would be, "Don't flatter yourself motherfucker." He was the ultimate champion of personal responsibility.


I have no idea what lead to his death, I only know how he lead his life. For that I am thankful -- and mournful that such a force has left us.

It would be my strong preference, as Steve suggests, that all you good people stick around and live happy lives, and if you are not, reach out to your friends and family, who will tell you without fail in one way or another how much poorer this world will be without you.

Bob

If there were indeed a radical center, a movement that was intent on us settling wasteful, decades-old debates,  a third party that brought the left and right together by (metaphorically) cracking heads one against the other, here is what that cracking might sound like.

Right, stay out of bedrooms and away from our bodies.
 If you don't like gays, don't marry one.
If you don't want an abortion, don't have one.
You lost this debate.  Roe v Wade is the law of the land. Get over it.  Put your energy into constructive education programs that show love and compassion not hatred and disgust. 
If you are worried that cousin Jethro is wearing pink nighties, talk to him in person, don't threaten him with a jail term.
You might get somewhere that way instead of just being mean church people.

Left, stay out of gun cabinets. 
If you don't like guns, don't buy one.
If you want to control guns, then do buy one -- and control that one.
You have no chance at gun control, have said enormously stupid things about the issue,  and the right to bear arms is now the law of the land.
Get over it.
Put your energy into constructive education programs -- or other issues that do not isolate your natural allies at the polls (out-of-work deer hunters.) 
Right now, every time you open your mouth, you increase NRA membership.


Right, get out of the regulations are evil mode. 
Fracking would make sense if regulated.  But no one trusts it can be because of your "starve the beast mode"of the past 30 years.


Left, support well-regulated fracking.
It's no more risky than sending our young military men and women to feudal countries that hate us so we can send oil in leaky tankers halfway around the world to power  my iPad.


Right, provide us with a distinct and practical conservative platform
...that controls spending and emphasizes individual rights, not a suicide pact love note to Magic Capitalism, Ayn Rand  and two percent of the nation.  Embrace the best of conservatism, not fundamentalists and cult figures.  

Left, concede that a market economy is vital
...and concentrate on simple but effective regulation moving forward not  Gordon Gecko-on-the-guillotine revenge scripts.   Why no prosecutions? Ask the Dems. They coulda. They probably shoulda. They didn't.  Now it's too late.  Move on, as a certain organization says.
 
Right, re-read GOP 2000 platform on foreign policy,
...nation building, Powell Doctrine. Apply liberally, rinse, repeat.

Left, lose the political correctness that really does undermine basic rights.
"Sensitivity" is not a reason to refrain from publishing cartoons of Allah or in other ways criticize other cultures.
You have to have political courage and a set of balls at least equal to those of the producers of South Park. You really can't compromise with tyrants.
To understand all is to excuse all.  Sometimes there are just bad boys, not misunderstood boys, just really, really bad ones who run whole countries and issue death sentences for artists and writers who roll even slightly the "wrong way."

Right, fess up and become self aware and come out of the closet:
Most of you are closeted socialists.
The most conservative red states receive the best return on their fed tax dollars, receiving far more from the feds than they pay in.
You don't have to change the constitution to cut federal spending.   Just send the money you don't want back to the treasury.
You talk one game, but in the bathroom stall of government funding, you've got a real "wide stance." 


Left, stop being appalled that courts have equated money and free speech.
Money talks?  Really?  You needed a court to tell you that?  Name one national campaign the Dems lost because of a lack of money.  Stop complaining and start raising money.  There's plenty on the left. 

Right, stop trying to "swiftboat" Obama.
It won't work this time because you really have no traction other than the racist appeal to his half-blackness.
He's more conservative than Ike, for Chrissakes.
Go that way and it will and should backfire on you.
He's given you enough issues, if you can scare up a candidate who does not speak in tongues or have flies buzzing about the head.

Left, stop complaining about Karl Rove
...and his unethical bully boy tactics.
He is all of that but mostly he's smarter and faster than you are.
You can't fight bullies by telling the teacher.  You have to take them on and beat the poop out of them.  If Rove brings a knife, you bring a pistol.  If he brings a pistol, you bring a shotgun.
There's no lasting power in being a victim.

Right,  end the war on drugs.
Even conservative thinkers understand we are just shaping the market for drugs -- not eliminating it -- and assuring that violent people are in charge.

Left and right, honor our military men and women first and foremost by picking places of battle carefully.  Superior force, clear exit strategy, defined mission.  

Am I saying all these things?

Goodness no.

That would make me a radical centrist.

The trouble started after Suzanne went to bed and Maisie the Jack Russell Terrier indicated she needed to take a bio break in the backyard.
No big deal normally, but the pup (now 16 years old or 112 on the canine calendar) had developed an infection in her right paw.  Vet wrapped it in a pink camo bandage and warned us sternly not to let her get it wet.
This means each time she goes out, we must tie onto her leg a rigid Baggie-like contraption that keeps the infected paw dry.
She hates it of course.
It turns her right foot into a paddle-like contraption and for the first few days, she stumbled over it.
But being a Jack Russell Terrier who can learn new tricks, she adapted.  She figured out how to make decent speed for an old hound by throwing her leg up and out -- almost as if she were swimming a butterfly stroke, but on land.
I caught her at the door and began to tie on the Baggie.  On the fifth try, I got it, but she slipped from my arms and ran off into the house.
Again, normally, no big deal.
The dog is all but blind.  Inoperable cataracts in both eyes give her just a vague notion of what's out there, She has adapted, having walked every inch of the house for hours, and knows the place by rote, but look, let's face it, not hard to catch.
But I've got a blown out knee -- a torn medial meniscus -- that makes me slower than normal and not quick off the mark.
And she has chosen to run to the dark side of the house, where there are no lights.
In short, she is now the blind Audrey Hepburn heroine n Wait Until Dark, and I am the hapless sighted but sorry-ass Alan Arkin villain.
Oh, I can hear her flapping about with her Baggie.  Briefly.  Then she freezes.  I bump into something and she moves again. Then freezes.
I know her game. She's peeved about the bag.  And if she possibly can, she's going to hatch one right on the living room rug.  Not something Hepburn would have done, but I respect the strategy.  I'm bare-footed.  This is high stakes now.  I feel real fear for the first time.
She maneuvers stealthily.  I bang into assorted stuff moved from the basement hurricane flood.  In a battle between a gator and a grizzly, terrain is everything, and I now am hip deep in her swamp.
There are grunts and groans.  My cargo shorts -- real Governor Christie beltless Big Boy specials -- keep dropping down, hampering my movement.  I may also be laughing more than a little.
Suddenly she breaks for it.  She runs to the light.  Turns the corner, skitters on the kitchen linoleum and wham -- is out the door, throwing that bagged paw up in the air like Phelps closing in on the eighth gold medal.
She paces the backyard on her regular patrol, and the light bounces back from a waxy-lidded eye she has cast in my direction as I stand in profile at the lighted door.
"My way," she seems to say, and of course that's fine by me.  Who wouldn't root for Audrey Hepburn?

A new proposal from the House Republican leadership would bring jobs to America by expanding the rights of  Job Creators while also helping young married couples.

"We are all about individual rights," said US Rep. Eric Cantor, "and for too long the federal government has trampled on ancient rights held to be inalienable and eternal, predating the Founding Fathers even."

"It's all about freedom, and the rights that the federal government has taken away from Job Creators," Governor Rick Perry, a proponent, said of the legislation.  "This helps put an end to 'class warfare' practiced for decades by liberals, Democrats and wimpy Republicans."

The program is also designed to help young couples get a start on their marriage by easing the tension and burden of the very early stages of matrimony.

While the bill does not make reference to it, the new legislation is based broadly on the "droits du seigneur" rights of noblemen in Europe.  It is also known as "jus primae noctus" or simply
"the master's obligation."

"That just sounded foreign and maybe even French," said Perry, who successfully implemented a pilot of the program in Texas. "We've taken the basic principle and call it the 'Job Creator Freedom Program."

A spokesman for the White House said it will study the measure, does not practice class warfare and will consider any job stimulus program of merit.  

There's not much that Texas Governor Rick Perry and I have in common.  Oh, I love Texas, the land and its people.  If my Eastern friends don't get that, I can't explain it.  It's a you-had-to-be-there sorta thing.

But Perry strikes me as a rhinestone cowboy rather than the real thing.

First off, there's that varmint claim.  I don't think he really shot a coyote to protect his dog.  Why?

Because if I did, I would have it mounted -- or at least take a picture of it.  He didn't and his friends don't even ask him to prove he shot it.

If I pulled that, my Texas friends would laugh me out of the state.  Every single one of them knows that if they shot a coyote, they would keep at least the tail.  And if they shot a coyote with a pistol, they would have commemorative photos and probably a custom made coffee table book of pictures.

Yet they believe Perry.  I think he maybe saw a coyote.  Or he saw something.  Or he shot a collie thinking it was a coyote.  And then buried Lassie and made up a story.

Plus, he's just too picture perfect in his wardrobe.  I think Ralph Lauren, not Lonesome Dove.  He is far more Lexus than Texas.

In cowboy garb, he dresses as something he isn't.  It's a little like that shot of him dressed as a fighter pilot at the cockpit of a jet.  He served in the Air Force, and good for him.  I respect those who serve.  But he flew cargo planes, not fighter jets.  So why dress up as a fighter jock?  If he can ride a horse, good for him, but why dress up as a Village People dude rancher cowboy?

There is an obvious extension to politics of course.  Hyperbole is one thing.  A good rant can be fun. But Perry's campaign against government -- as a career politician -- strikes me the same as the coyote story.     In fact, there's plenty of proof that if federal dollars would leave Texas, the economy would deflate like a soggy pinata.

Nothing proves the worth of government, at least some of it, than the heroic effort federal fire fighters are waging against the fires in Texas.  This is as it should be.

But it should make people think twice when they listen to Perry.  Or to any of the "starve the beast, government is evil" folks.  Much in government can be improved.  But eliminated?

It is a false cockiness Perry has.  Romney called him on it well during the debates.  Texas has many blessings that has helped its economy.  Surely Governor Perry is not taking credit for those, or he would be like Al Gore claiming he invented the internet.

But that is how Perry comes off to me.  He is someone banging through the saloon doors angry and looking for a fight.  But he is all hat, no cattle.  He is the cock crowing in the morning, proud that he has raised the sun.

Those aren't the Texans I know.

What more is to be said about 9/11?  I had more than a casual association with it.  I walked through the World Trade Center for 15 years on my daily commute and worked in it for two years.  It was a part of my NYC "home" -- and it was if my home were struck by a meteor.

Three business colleagues of mine perished there, and the devastation blew out my television studio in the World Financial Center across the street and forever scarred the psyche of friends who were witnesses to the devastation.  My neighbor two doors over left behind two young children, a wife, and a faithful Siberian husky who howled constantly for a week with no food and no water before the vets and family reluctantly put him down before he died.  The dog literally grieved itself to death.

For a long time, staring down into the hole in the ground at ground zero, my emotions ranged from anger, sadness to a sense of vengeance and resolve for justice. There was a "phantom limb" phenomenon -- something you knew was gone but felt still existed.   I think I'm pretty typical in that regard.

So the best I can do now -- other than observe the moments of silence -- is to honor the fallen and those who have volunteered to protect our country, and suggest we mark the tenth anniversary as a time when our national mourning stops and closure comes.

I'm not suggesting we forget.  Anything.  The sacrifice, the loss, the bravery, all should be honored.  What may be less obvious is that we should not forget our mistakes, made on both sides of the political spectrum.  We need to understand that for that dreadful day, we were indeed victims of a particularly evil and cynical hatred.  And there were true victims.

What bothers me is that in the time since 9/11 both the left and the right seem to see power in being fulltime victims and blame assessors.  The debates seem not geared to what is best for the country but who will be voted America's Biggest Victim.

There is a power to victimhood, but only when it is authentic and compelling.

We are a powerful nation, not a nation of victims.  Politicians of any stripe would serve us far better by not pointing fingers across the aisle, but extending a hand of compromise, compassion and pragmatism. What made this country great is pragmatic compromise, not pure idealogy.  We do what works.

If we are to honor the roots of this nation, it's time for Congress and the President to stop pointing fingers at each other and collectively point toward a pragmatic future.

It's time to go to work.  Or elect people who will.

Tolstoy wrote,  "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

He got the first part wrong, or at least he never met the Fox family of Paxton, Illinois. 

There were five kids -- two boys and three girls -- all with Beach Boy blond-like hair and then there was Mom Fox. They lived in a big-porched house on Orleans Street and their big living room with big old comfortable chairs and couches was the place where we hung out a lot in the first half of the Sixties, when my generation was coming of age. 


You could call the family cool and come close to it in some ways.  Three of the Fox kids were older than us and the collective, pooled purchasing power meant they had every Kingston Trio album ever made.  The girls were drop-dead gorgeous.  The guys were rugged but laid back.  The college-age siblings sense of fashion and style filtered down fluidly to the younger brothers and sisters, and so if you saw a shirt that was a "bleeding madras" in the early 1960's, you saw it on the Fox kids first.  


But it was effortless. Floating.  There was no strain in it.  What the family emoted was an ease and kindness and comfort that enveloped visitors.  


At the core of that was Mom Fox, who most nights sat with the television off, reading, or so it seemed, looking up and from under a book and her glasses with a smile that was all-knowing and a bit mischievous.  If that was not a welcoming enough sign, cats would dismount from various nooks and eases in the big house to come rub against your shin.  


We'd sit and talk and listen to music for hours in that living room, with the various generations of the Foxes and their friends passing through of an evening.  It was a sort of salon with a touch of the south. But it was also a place where you could speak in front of an adult about the political issues of the day and find an ear rather than a glare. 


Delon and Charlene were the Foxies of my generation.  Delon was a member of the band of buddies we formed at age 16 and a kindred spirit forever.  He was the gentlest soul I knew, off the football field.  On it, he was all raw bone raptor, pure power and muscle, setting conference records as a defensive end. 


Charlene moved down the halls of our high school in a sweet and slow samba as if she were in her own vignetted film spot -- close focus on that Fox smile of content, confidence and spritely mischief.  She seemed to know a secret of sorts, a comforting punchline to the cynical straight lines life often serves up.  


They lost her in August,  by all accounts the same person I knew and loved 50 years or so ago, with that same smile.  She was a remarkable ambassador of good will from a remarkable family whose existence in and of itself made my life in a small town so much larger.  

Fifth day boiling water. 

Third day,line of  neighbors walking in strange manner, up porch, tried to bite Suzanne.

Went down to basement, box marked Texas and other "ammo." 

 Generally, Suzanne loads, I fire, but she is learning. 

Fine so far. 

Call a head if you visit. 

Listen, weathermen.  Local tee-vee news reporters.  I've been there.  I was a journalist for 20 years. I know how you feel.

Yes, I had a hurricane once.  And it....it...turned into a tropical storm.

Worse than loosing my goldfish in fourth grade.  No big headlines, front page bylines.  Crushing!

But you see, like me and the goldfish, you've just got to let Irene go.

You cannot give artificial respiration to a goldfish, and you cannot breath hot air and hype into a tropical storm and convert it into a Cat Five hurricane. 

That's right, I tried the former.  When I was ten. But you?  You're adults.  And you tried it on Irene.  And you're supposed to be journalists. 

Here is what that means:

Journalists have a public trust.  Your job is to gather as many relevant facts as you can, and assemble them in a format that people can rely on. 

As Walter Lippman wrote 80 years ago:  "make a picture of reality upon which men can act."

So it is fine to go full throttle when a storm looks truly awful and harmful.

But when it moves from a Cat Two to a Cat One and then to a tropical storm, and you've out there in the rain trying to make it look just as horrible as you possibly can, you are not performing a public service.  You are building public distrust.

We're not dumb.

(Those of us who are were actually at the shore with surfboards.)

We know when you've told us there is a flooding danger there is a flooding danger.

You don't have to find the deepest puddle in the road -- about ankle deep -- and act like you're Helen Hunt in Twister.

If you don't have real visuals, you can't screw up your face like an angry cartoon toaster and make them appear.  (There is no blue screen behind you now where they can pipe in outtakes of a worse storm.)

And, I mean, wow, you so did not have visuals. 

There weren't even fallen tree branches.  Water under the boardwalk at Atlantic City?  You had to shoot those puddles really close.   A normal n'oreaster looks worse.

Perhaps my favorite part of the local newscast was the caffeinated  WCBS blond meteorologist wannabe guy, shirtsleeves rolled up very carefully to simulate hard work.  He was interviewing the composed, sober and rational head of NOAA about the storm surge.

"I've been trying to explain to people and have them understand that this storm surge is so serious because it is formed by the low pressure area that (wildly gesturing) allows the water to rise up against the lower pressure and slam the shoreline eight feet higher than normal!  Can you help me with that, to make people understand?"

Serious scientist at NOAA

"Uh, the low pressure doesn't really play much of a role in the storm surge...."

"But there will be a storm surge..."

"Yes...."

"Okay, let's concentrate on that storm surge....(panning away from NOAA guy)..... people look at all these flashing bright colors on the screen right now....this is where the problems are...."

And so on. And on. And on.

His frantic exclusive prediction was that the eye of the hurricane (which had broken up by then) would reach "landfall" at Manhattan at noon.   Right.

Then he went to the "spaghetti bands" -- the superimposed predictions of where the path would fall, each of a different color.

"Now some of these show the storm passing to the west of us, some to the east of us, but these right here are the ones we want to look at because this is our storm...."

Dude.  We're right here in the room with you.  We can hear everything you can say. You are on television. 

We know you loved the storm.  We know it was your storm.  They were my goldfish.  I had a hurricane too.  Trust me, we have to let them go.

This is not to belittle the damage done by the storm.  With the saturated ground and the heavy downpour, the usual spots will flood -- and also a level up from that will flood. 

But you hyped this one horribly media folks.  That may mean disappointment to you in the short term.

For the rest of us, it means even more distrust in a news media that has lost all bearings and attachment to true journalism.

If you still don't get it?

You're supposed to help us out with your best reasoned assessment of matters, not scare the crap out of us needlessly in order to grab a half point rating.

You had a public trust to serve.  You did not.

Well, maybe I am overstating it... I get carried away....I think journalism is a public trust and perhaps I....

Oops, this just in. 

With the storm long gone on his stretch of beach, WNBC reporter says "Angry seas are still roiling behind us now....." at what looks like a slightly damp day down the shore.  I've been surfishing in a lot worse, out in boats without discomfort.

Geez, did you just say something like,  "the seas were angry that day my friends"?

Just hire George Costanza as your storm guy, shove a mic in his hand and have him save a whale choking on Kramer's golf ball.

More entertaining and just as informative. 

Yes, yes.  I'm taking the hurricane seriously.  No, no, I'm not saying Irene should be discounted.

In fact I am offering this as a public service so that you can match the seriousness of the hurricane with the antics of our news media.

So here it is:

Anderson Cooper Hurricane Warning Scale

Category One:

Ball cap, knee deep in water for no good earthly reason.  

Action: Make some popcorn, you have time. 

Category Two:
 
Same shot, no cap, wet tee shirt, hair rippling slightly.

Action: Go to store, buy more water.

Category Three:
 
At shore, braced against wind, tee ripped at chest, mic noise. Water at thigh. Hair blowing like marsh grass.

Action: Check generator, get out blue tarp.

Category Four:
 
Same shot,  hoodie up.  Shirt like tattered flag.  Branches, hub caps snap by in background. Shouting into mic. Pointing finger desperately toward direction of wind.

Action: Check boat, outboard.

Category Five:

No shirt.  Whitie tighties.  Water beads on bare chest. Snorkel, diving mask around neck.  Survival knife clenched in teeth.  Cows, pigs, Helen Hunt, sound man, tumble by airborne in background.

Action:  Too late now sucker, you've spent all your time watching Anderson Cooper.  Head to roof, look for chopper.

Yup.  Stole it from Colbert's "truthiness," sorta. 

"Newsiness" occurs when writers and broadcasters give the impression they are reporting the news when in fact they are not expressing anything new, actionable or important.

This state of affairs always has been present in the news business, but was once limited to awkward moments when one had to say something at deadline even though news had not actually happened.  Example: It's election night, but your first edition closes at 6 pm before the polls do. 

So you write something like, "Voters under cloudy skies went to the polls in (heavy, moderate, light) numbers yesterday to determine who would lead the City of Philadelphia for the next four years."

Fair enough.  You need to acknowledge there was an election last night even if you really have nothing to say.  And there were always the "dog days of summer."  Desperate editors still assign reporters to see if they can fry an egg on the sidewalk.

But what was once awkward and infrequent is now mainstream and accepted. Cable news and the blogosphere are so demanding of instant information that the default parameter is to say or write anything that even vaguely resembles a news-like object.


Saturday Night Live may have captured this decades ago with its "Francisco Franco is still dead today" parody of the last lingering days of the former dictator of Spain.  Day after day, he lay on his death bed and day after day, network news reported that -- until he died -- without anything new to say. 

Now you see Francisco Franco-is-still-dead reporting every day, all day on cable.  There are news events of course but in between, the 24/7 news cycle maw feeds on "newsiness." 

Headlines blare out about the months-old weak economy as if it were a breaking-news school fire.  The market isn't falling.  It's plummeting.  Until it is not.  Then it is soaring. Graphics are ginned up that show a 1.7 % drop look like the end of the White Cliffs of Dover.  MSNBC does card and egg tricks.  CNN calculates what it would cost in tuition to attend Hogwarts.

In such an atmosphere, "news" people benefit less from cutting through the crap and more from artfully creating it.

This leads to a situation where the craft of the business no longer concerns cutting through the spin -- but contributing to it.  Analytic capabilities are either ignored or punished. They're a buzz kill.  (We'll see how Don Lemon does at CNN dissing the silliness there.)

Our current state of affairs?

Round the clock coverage of whether Obama (substitute Bush, Clinton as you prefer) should go on vacation.  Ever. 

Worse are the lost opportunities.

Case in point this past Sunday?

Maria Bartiroma is asked whether she places any credence in Michelle Bachman's campaign promise to bring back $2 a gallon gasoline in the first quarter of her presidency.

Lots of responses here that could keep you impartial but give people a real picture of the world. 

But....Maria....who has a press agent named "Sunshine".... says....."I don't know, perhaps, who knows."


I don't know a real journalist who would give an answer like that if they were water boarded.

I have seen this happen so many times -- and seen it work so many times -- I feel I am an expert.

So, men, listen up.

Should you or your girl friend,  estranged wife, ex-wife, surly father-in-law, kid brother or handicapped sister be approached by twenty thugs, terrorists or bad cops armed with fully automatic weapons, grenades, helicopters and ballistic protective vests...follow me if you want to live.

Grab your significant other and a single hand-gun, and run into an old industrial warehouse.  A barn will do in a rural setting.  So will your house if you are in the burbs.

The thugs will fan out surrounding your position.

If you are holed up in your house, now is the time to place all crystal and fine china in a vault.

The thugs will open up on full automatic as they walk slowly toward you.

This will mostly punch holes in the barn and destroy all wall hangings and appliances in the house.

One of the thugs will look at another thug with a satisfied smile.  None of the thugs will reload.

This is when you jump up and shoot half of them with your pistol.

Then you run.  You grab the hand of your ex-wife, present girlfriend, kid brother or sullen father-in-law first.

You run like hell out the back door, which the thugs did not think to cover.

In a clearing, you make  a stand and wipe out most of the remaining ten thugs, but the ninth thug, usually the best friend or lieutenant  of the number one thug, gets the drop on you.

Wait until he cocks his gun, aims it at your head and says clearly and distinctly, "No, you don't deserve to  die fast."

This is a sure sign that as he is slowly strangling you, or placing a cage of scorpions around your head, your ex wife, present girlfriend, kid brother or father-in-law has picked up one of the bad guy's weapons.

Up until this point, they may have been Quakers or vegans who let spiders out of the house.  But they say, 'Well, maybe just this once" and drill the number nine bad guy in the back.

They then find out they kind of like this and, having never touched an automatic weapon before, lay down effective suppressive fire, killing all the other bad guys except the tenth, worst guy.

The worst guy runs out of ammo after firing 5,000 rounds through his 100 round magazine.  You run out of ammo after firing 1,000 rounds through your 30 round magazine.

Fortunately, both of your are martial arts champions.

You soon subdue him but you choose not to kill him.

 (You may be tempted to kill him, but you have a flashback involving "the war" or the death of a favorite childhood pet and realize violence is no good.)

In one last treacherous gesture, he attempts to kill you but is undone by his own greed.  

If he is a drug lord, he steps on a rotten plank and falls into a meth cooker.  If he is a terrorist, he pulls out a knife and unwittingly triggers the bomb he has strapped to himself.

If he is a corrupt policeman, he successfully gets his ankle carry gun out and fires at you but your father-in-law dives in slow motion between you and the bullet.  With his last breath, he says you weren't a pussy after all, or at least not as big a one as he thought you were.

If it was your girlfriend, ex-wife, estranged wife or kid brother who took the bullet, they are only wounded and tell you they really love you. Lots.

You now pursue the villain -- who runs gun in hand into the field of fire of an honest swat team and is killled.  Ironically and in slow mo.

Credits up.  You get the girl.  Or your kid brother likes you again.

Note:  This does not work with zombies.    "Zombieland" provides decent enough rules with no further work on my part.

And let me be clear about biases from the start.

Some of the journalism I discuss here does indeed carry those ironic little quote marks.

They are there in the same sense I would say let's go watch "wrestling" right before I tuned to a professional bout where chairs are thrown and guys wear viking horns into the ring.

Let's start with the basics, with the real deal.

Journalists report facts.  The simplest version of good, plain journalism is that something happened. The Yanks beat the Red Sox 4 to 3.  The local city council voted 12 to 4 to approve a zoning permit.

So the intent is to get the facts right, and to inform.

Another layer atop that is also the need to do this clearly and in an entertaining and an appropriately attention commanding  manner.   Even A.J. Liebling, who invented the field of media criticism, acknowledged there is a slight wink and a con to even the best journalism.

Key word here?  A little.  

As in there may be a little wine in the best sauces that top fish and poultry.   Add too much wine, though, and you are serving drinks, not nourishment and that is kinda the worn road a lot of the wayward press has followed.

There is a point at which intention means everything.

And it feels to me as if a good 90 percent of the video and web news sources said ten years ago, "You know, fuck it, the viewers don't care, and the 'fourth estate stuff' is bullshit....

"I'm covering politics and government like professional wrestling.  This is not really journalism anymore, I am a kind of second rate actor and.....whoa, did you see Clinton throw that chair at Newt. He's down! No, no, he is up, the Comeback Kid is up! Here comes Monica over the rings...Hillary too!

Thus did we have the press in slapshoes and paint face chase after stained blue dresses.  And killer sharks off the Florida coast!  Right before 9/11 and the economic slide of our nation.

So if that sounds particularly liberal, I do not intend it to be.  Fox News certainly has perfected the professional wrestling model of news, but MSNBC and progressives there have given tit for tat.  CNBC is now the business version of ESPN, with the same wide-eyed lack of perspective on meaning and context.

Even poor Wolf Blitzer, vaguely aware that something has happened to the business beyond him, blinks and is confused about what is a news fact and what is an Entertainment Tonight gossip line.

So what should you be looking for?

That's the wrong question really. Try this instead:

How should you be looking for it?

In these complex days, it is rare that "urgent" news is important.  Market crashes, invasions, tsunamis, yes.  Not much else really from a public policy standpoint.

What passes for urgent news these days is more likely warmed over exclusives that play with emotional pictures and impact designed to keep you glued to the popping eyes of the news anchor and the plunging  neckline of the reporter in the field. (See popular meme/email: "News Anchor or Porn Star" quiz.)

You already are genetically arranged to react to this "urgent" delivery.  You are programmed to listen to negatives -- to warnings.

So if CNBC says the market has plunged by "500 points!" once, it is better for them to say it four times.  And call it the "biggest drop in five months!!!"

By all means don't say, "The market is off four percent today amid uncertain trading" and let it lay there.

The urgent is the enemy of the important.  But it is the king of your attention.

 While we are urgently waiting to see if Bill Clinton is being impeached or there really are killer sharks off the coast of Florida, while all our concern and energy is attuned to crazies disrupting the dignity of military funerals, and Obama birth certificates, and Michelle and Sarah antics, real stuff happens.

And it is virtually unseen and not understood by most of us.

This is not some grand conspiracy theory.  It is how we are wired and how the media market is incented to behave.

How do we change that?

We get the media and the politicians we deserve.  We vote for each, one with our money and the other with our votes (and money.)

The best sources of journalism for me are those with the best intent.  And the best intent for a journalistic organization is the goal set out by Walter Lippmann early last century.  He set a higher goal than traditional "news."  He aimed for the truth.

And what was his version of the truth?  As good as I have ever heard it said:


“... the function of truth is to bring to light the hidden facts, to set them in relation with each other, and make a picture of reality on which men can act.”


So the next time you are listening to the "news" -- or more rarely these days, reading it -- apply that test to your news provider. 


Is the reporter or broadcaster really trying to give you something actionable?  Something you can really make a decision on?


Or are they spinning an idealogy, or just grabbing your attention for the sheer "urgent" moment that provides the fire of ratings but sheds just smoke and smudge, no light, on what to actually do about it. 

 

It is true that chimpanzees use sticks and straw tools to retrieve termites for food. This amazes biologists. It puzzles Jack Russell Terriers.  

Why grow opposable thumbs, perform difficult tasks and give up a cool set of front legs when you can  train slow-witted hominids to do the work for you.

Maisie the JRT is nearly sixteen years old now, more than 100 in dog years. If  it is true that you cannot teach an old dog new tricks, it does not work the other way around. Maisers teaches me new ones every week.  I fail regularly.  She is patient.

It started the other way around, of course. 

First, she learned that etiquette required an outdoors toilette.   Soon, she would walk to the door when she wanted to be let out. Then, she learned that when she ran to the door, the hominids ran too -- thinking the call of nature was immediate.  Not long after, she ran to the door full tilt, causing me to run to let her out.  She looked at the open door, looked at me. 
Then she moved three feet to the left and stood in front of the refrigerator door. She fixed the fridge with the same intense stare she gave the back door.  I did nothing.  She looked up at me until she caught my eyes.  Then she looked at the fridge door. Back to my eyes, then to the fridge door. Her head actually moves toward the fridge in such moments.  It is a quick short jerk.   An indicator.  Almost a friendly crib for a slow friend. 

So sure. What else could I do. 

There are variations on this theme. The scamper to the back door can mean she really needs to go outside.  It can mean the fridge.  Now it can mean that she wants me to go to bed.  She goes to the back door, sees I am up and have momentum -- and then she scampers up the stairs.
Many times, she has it right. Lights out and I follow her up. She can't make the jump up onto the bed anymore, but she has a fix for that as well.  She stands near the bed, looking backward over her shoulder. When I approach and she feels my hands, she then jumps up...and I fly her up to her nest for the night.

Lost in the S&P downgrade, the market plunge, the riots in London and the debt crisis in Italy is this simple fact of market economics:

We can unlock billions in untapped revenue for individuals, even the poor, by repealing Luddite laws against the sale of body organs.

Most of us have organ surpluses now -- a holdover from when we lived on the savannas and needed to run for our lives.  We needed two kidneys and two lungs to do that.

We no longer do and in fact probably would have let market forces properly set the number of organs we really need if it were not for regulators who thwart the individual's right to choose and exercize control over the most personal decisions of our lives.

 For example, you now have two perfectly good kidneys.  You need one. That means you have a valuable commodity you would under a free market consider selling were it not for government interference.

At the same time, market forces have created fire sale conditions and prices in great destination tourist countries like Spain, Greece and now apparently Italy.


You want to travel there but you can't take advantage of the market dip in those countries because you have no money.


But if it is acknowledged that your body has surplus organ value, you can take that trip, you can take advantage of the market and answer the pull of market forces to these now bankrupt countries.  By then spending your organ money there, you stimulate those economies--which in turn results in higher prices for your organs. 



Some will suggest that the planning and recovery period from an organ transplant mean that organs are not a very liquid "currency," so to speak.  But this is where science and finance come together.

You would not actually have to have your kidney removed, merely pledge that you will.  In financial terms, you sell an option on your kidney and the buyer of the option may exercize a right within a certain time period to buy the kidney at full price.  In the mean time, you have money that you will spend to stimulate the economy.

You might also choose to mortgage your kidney, placing it as collateral for a loan that you pay back over a 30 year period. These organ mortgages of course could be traded as derivatives.

There are other organs and other approaches of course.  Kidneys are just the first logical step.

The numbers I am looking at show that if all middle class Americans would sell just one kidney, they will have enough money to live comfortably in retirement until their death.

The beauty of the market force economy here  is that selling an organ not only provides the seller revenue, it also shortens the period of time spent in retirement and cuts social services costs such as Medicare and Medicaid because fewer people qualify for such programs from an actuarial longevity projection standpoint factor. 


It should be noted that my financials to this point are rough.  I'll grant that.  Some organ  numbers may need to be rounded up.

For example, the economic lift of a middle class organ owner is sufficient with one kidney.  The poor, starting from a lower economic, may have to sell more kidneys on a more frequent basis in order to reach sustainable economic independence.


But in the long run, the numbers lift the economy, cut social services and I dare say may finally win the War on Poverty. 

You can call John Chambers and David Beers and S&P Ratings anything you want.  I call Beers and Chambers the good guys and I am thankful that the good guys are back in charge of at least one part of  S&P. 

You should be too. 

In Cormac McCarthy’s post apocalyptic novel, “The Road,” the man’s young son looks up from a world of ash and carnage and says, “We’re the good guys, right Dad?” And the father says in fact, yes, they are, and the world needs good guys.

We are not in an apocalyptic era, but there is enough drifting ash in the air to make it hard to find the good guys.  I am happy that two of them showed up. 

Here’s who they are.  

Chambers and Beers are not your typical Wall Street analysts.  They are slightly tweedy, a tad academic.  Chambers reads Joyce.  Beers sports a soup strainer walrus mustache. 

They are about as un-Wall Streetie as you can get and that’s always been fine with them and the dozens of other “lifers” at S&P Ratings.  The analysts on the Street don’t particularly like the lifers at S&P and most certainly they are cut from a different cloth.

The pitch to rating analysts from the late Leo O’Neill of S&P always went something like this:

“You can walk across the street and earn a million dollars a year, work nights, weekends  and try to remember when you last saw your kids, or you can stay here, earn decent enough money, be home on the weekends,  do good work, and have a life.”

I was skeptical of that when I walked in the door in 1992 to become vice president of publishing and wondered whether I could work there for long.  I had arrived freighted with a certain set of standards acquired during a 20 year career as an investigative reporter during which I had written stories that lead directly to the arrest of more than 20 white collar criminals in the government and corporate world and felony convictions of two major American corporations. 

The concept of paid ratings seemed like a joke to me and It was not long before the first test.  At the governance board of the insurance rating division, analysts had deadlocked on whether to upgrade or downgrade a well-known firm.  The insurance company of course was keen for a better rating and had paid S&P anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000 to get one. 

So I figured what followed would be short and simple.  Everyone knows whose side of the bread is buttered in such a deal.   The vice president of marketing even got a vote on the matter, and I settled back into my chair as he rose to speak, thinking to my self exactly how I would phrase my resignation letter after finding my next job. 

“No upgrade,” the marketing guy said. “It’s not in the numbers and as a firm we have nothing if we don’t have trust and credibility.”

There was a rumbling of agreement and the 11 member governance board rejected the upgrade in about 90 seconds.  

It was like that in the 1990s.  Leo O’Neill, the president of S&P then, established   a collegial, peer-driven culture.  Committees of up to seven analysts would meet to consider a rating and the discussions and arguments could go on for hours.  It was horribly inefficient. The analysts were overly introspective.  Many times, sessions seemed like faculty caucuses or accounting trivia clubs.  

Yet there was a focus always on the balance sheets of the companies, never on what it meant to S&P revenues.  The analytical culture reigned, not the accountants, and the firm returned solid 40 percent margins to its parent McGraw Hill.  

This was when the good guys ran the company.  They were slow, too slow for my journalistic reflexes.  

But they were not producing exposes.  They were providing fair and accurate ratings. And study after study showed that on balance, the system worked.  The ratings historically expressed reality. 

Never was I fan of “paid” ratings but in my nine years there, my antennae never caught a whiff of fraud.  The paradox was that to have value, the rating needed to be valid -- not a Better Business Bureau happy face sticker.   S&P in effect shot its way into the insurance rating business by issuing tougher ratings than Best’s  And in Japan, the firm lead the way in downgrading many Japanese banks that had been overrated for years, even though that hurt the rating business there in the short to mid-term. 

In a way, it’s disappointing.  I’m a good journalist, a published author and a decent writer.  Such a book I could write about corrupt rating agencies taking bribes under the table.  It just didn’t happen. 

 I left at the end of 2000 just as structured finance was on the rise and throwing jet fuel on the ratings business.  Leo O’Neill died of cancer, tragically, before he could transition the leadership.  

What happened to cause S&P to so badly miss the structured financial ratings of the collateral debt and mortgage obligations? 


 I was not present, but feel I’ve a good idea from the casual stories over the years. 

The culture and the leadership changed. Old ways were disdained.  A lot of the lifers left or were encouraged to leave. They were not fast enough guns in a new age more akin to investment banking.  Even when I was still there, McGraw Hill was looking for 60 percent margins, not just 40.  There was a move toward far less introspection, just production.   

The “miss” on mortgages can never be excused or forgotten.

But Beers and Chambers were not a part of the structured mess.  They are old school S&P, the sons of Leo O’Neill  in spirit and like dozens of other good rating analysts were thrown into the same cauldron as the mortgage raters. 

I should say also that they are not friends of mine and I have not seen them or communicated with them in at least 12 years.   

I do know that they are ethical, expert and devoted to their work.   

Argue with them all you want  on methodology and technique. 

But honor them for their integrity and courage.   

Those qualities are in short supply right now.  


At a time when we needed it, two good men stood up and took the heat to say what they believe is important and true.