Good Grammar

“I’m going to think about that, yes — writing a book,”
- President George W. Bush pondering the possibility of writing a book after he leaves office

Grammar, having been battered incoherent by politicians and bloggers, is stubbornly standing between middle school students and their desire to attend New York’s most elite public high schools.

I am coaching my daughter for the specialized high school admissions test. The first hurdle is the scrambled paragraph. The idea is to read the first sentence of a paragraph, and then figure out the correct order of the subsequent sentences. This exercise will demonstrate your ability to grasp the main idea and to understand the most logical way to support the main idea.

Try writing down the correct order of this sample test paragraph:

The human male, hearing for the first time about the heartrending love-life of the male praying mantis, would wonder that the species continues.
Q. The anxiety comes from an instinctual awareness that he is likely to quite literally lose his head during mating; this dread seems to slow the process for up to several hours.
R. In response, the female who is locked beneath him turns her head and, if she can manage to, bites his head off.
S. Though now dead, he remains locked in mating position, and the course of the anxiety is ended.
T. The release of his sperm speeds up after his demise, assuring a large supply of future praying mantis (who, in the manner of insects, have no further use for the progenitor).
U. But in the insect world, romance is not an issue – the drive to reproduce is – so the male praying mantis mounts the much larger female despite his anxiety.

You don’t get partial credit, so make sure you’ve got the right order. Otherwise, you are likely not eligible to attend Stuyvesant High School.

I have to wonder about the wisdom of discussing the lethal sex habits of the male praying mantis on the entrance exam. I suspect that admissions officers put this question on the test to see which kids will get distracted by the mental image of an insect ripping the head off of her sexual partner. Only applicants that score among the top 3- 5% of aspiring New York brainiacs get admitted; they apparently are nonplussed when watching Animal Kingdom.

Here’s the answer key:
UQRST

Excellent writing skills have been on the decline among graduates over the years. Voters have rarely valued the proper use of the English language when choosing U.S. Presidents. After Warren Harding died, E.E. Cummings said, “The only man, woman or child who wrote a simple declarative sentence with seven grammatical errors is dead.”

The Bush era of freewheeling grammar is nearing its end, though if Palin is elected she may continue his practice of throwing the administrations full support behind the value of scrambled paragraphs. Just in case traditional grammar does rise again, however, those who have reveled in a world where articulate speech was so very passé may be wise to join the middle schoolers for test prep.

Undecided and Online

Remember when McCain announced his candidacy on David Letterman a few years ago? Now Letterman’s rant this week about McCain canceling on his show last minute so that he could rush back to DC and fix the wall street meltdown is a youtube top hit. Instead of heading back to DC, McCain headed over to Katie Couric’s New York news desk to conduct an interview. During his show, Letterman cut to a live feed of an unsuspecting McCain getting touched up by the make up artist on Katie Couric’s New York set.

This live TV moment was the final proof that this campaign coverage is the equivalent of a reality TV show. The brouhaha has created massive online traffic for Letterman - in fact Letterman got a much better viewership than he might have received if McCain had actually shown up for his interview.

Obama is branded as the internet savvy candidate. McCain is still getting pilloried for saying on the campaign trail, “I am learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon, getting on myself…I don’t expect to be a great communicator, I don’t expect to set up my own blog, but I am becoming computer literate to the point where I can get the information that I need.”

Despite the fact that he has long served on the Senate Commerce Committee, which oversees Telecom law, McCain has not been a powerful voice on internet regulation and has been criticized by national civil rights leaders for opposing increased internet access for schools and libraries. His online campaign strategies seem to mirror his legislative approach: hands off and a bit traditional.

But new marketing research adds a more complex layer to the online electoral battle. Obama cyber-mania may be making campaign history, but a new study shows that McCain’s traditional online strategy may actually give him an important voting edge.

According to MediaPost, “McCain is drawing nearly 11% more traffic from politically neutral sites than the Obama campaign.” The assumption is that undecided voters are more likely than others to be drawn to the neutral sites. That’s a small percentage of people looking at political content online, but it’s a massive percentage of voters with the opportunity to swing the election.

The McCain camp has invested heavily in paid search terms, while the Obama team has generated a colossal online presence through natural search rankings. You might think this gives Obama an advantage, because he’s developed a grassroots driven online network of support. But marketing research says otherwise: in the consumer world, people who clicked on paid ads/terms took action, like purchasing something, at a much higher rate than people who clicked on something resulting from an organic search. In some cases the paid clicks netted a sale about 50% more often than an organic search.

Not all consumer marketing research converts to advocacy. But it’s useful to learn from Madison Avenue.

There are three types of online shoppers: those that click on a brand, like “Converse”, those that click on a generic category, like “shoes”, and a pretty small group of people that click on both. Similar to the political shoppers, each category of shopper responds to unique marketing efforts. In the consumer marketplace, the biggest bang comes from people who click on a branded term (51%) compared to those looking at generic terms (37%). Few people did both (12%). Very roughly translated, the 12% crowd is the equivalent of the politically neutral web surfer. They are undecided and a bit malleable.

Taking the concept offline, it’s a bit like shopping for office furniture at a thrift shop versus at Ikea. It takes patience to buy used furniture, but the payoff can be significant. Most people head straight to Ikea, some browse for deals, and a small number dip their toe into both worlds. It’s those that are waffling between Ikea and the thrift store that make up the undecided shopper, and whose consumer habits may help to inform strategies about marketing to the undecided voter.

A few years ago Winnie took me to Century 21, Manhattan’s famous four-story discount department store, after I had complained incessantly about New York’s wickedly cold winter. It was a head throbbing, nauseating experience. There were no less than 1 million coats for sale, some on hangers and many dropped on the floor. She made me try on no less than 500,000 coats, most of which looked substantially worse on my body than on the hanger. I prefer the smallest of boutiques, with clothes displayed like rare works of art. My challenge is that I have a Century 21 budget with a Barney’s mental model. Perhaps that’s why the 12% of people who both shop certain brands and shop generically on line are the least likely to make purchases. It’s not that I don’t need to shop, it’s just that if the choice is between pouring through racks of tightly packed discount coats looking for the one that has no shoulder pads and going into debt to buy the designer label, I lose my will to make any purchase at all.

I am the consumer equivalent of the undecided online voter. My power is miniscule as an online consumer; however, the power of the undecided online voter looms like a massive storm cloud.

Sound bites

I am so distracted by a whirlwind of sound bites on the bailout and the Presidential race that I am having a hard time blogging. Here’s a sampling of sound bites:

“Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency,”
Henry Paulson Jr, Treasury Secretary, proposing bailout language:

“This massive bailout is not a solution. It is financial socialism and it’s un-American,”
-Senator Jim Bunning, Republican

“This was no act of God. This was not like Hurricane Hike — Ike, rather. It was created by a combustible combination of private greed and public regulatory neglect, and now we must confront the present crisis.”
- Senator Chris Dodd

Here are some sound bites from the campaign trail:

BIILL CLINTON talking about Sarah Palin’s candidacy:

[Clinton] said voters would think, “I like that little Down syndrome kid…”

SARAH PALIN talking to Katie Couric about the Wall Street meltdown:

Couric: You’ve said, quote, “John McCain will reform the way Wall Street does business.” Other than supporting stricter regulations of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac two years ago, can you give us any more example of his leading the charge for more oversight?

Palin: I think that the example that you just cited, with his warnings two years ago about Fannie and Freddie - that, that’s paramount. That’s more than a heck of a lot of other senators and representatives did for us.

Couric: But he’s been in Congress for 26 years. He’s been chairman of the powerful Commerce Committee. And he has almost always sided with less regulation, not more.

Palin: He’s also known as the maverick though, taking shots from his own party, and certainly taking shots from the other party. Trying to get people to understand what he’s been talking about - the need to reform government.

Couric: But can you give me any other concrete examples? Because I know you’ve said Barack Obama is a lot of talk and no action. Can you give me any other examples in his 26 years of John McCain truly taking a stand on this?

Palin: I can give you examples of things that John McCain has done, that has shown his foresight, his pragmatism, and his leadership abilities. And that is what America needs today.

Couric: I’m just going to ask you one more time - not to belabor the point. Specific examples in his 26 years of pushing for more regulation.

Palin: I’ll try to find you some and I’ll bring them to you.

JOHN MCCAIN on the campaign trail after not talking to a national reporter for 41 days:

“Has your bus become the No Talk Express?”, a reporter on the bus shouting to McCain as he walked by reporters.

John McCain explaining to a national reporter why he chose Sarah Palin as VP shortly after the “No Talk Express” complaint:
“ First of all, anybody who’s governed a state has some economic experience. And by the way, she cut taxes. The second thing is, she shares the world view that I have.”

JOE BIDEN stumbling through the campaign trail:

Hillary Clinton is as qualified or more qualified than I am to be vice president of the United States of America…Quite frankly, it might have been a better pick than me.”

“Chuck, stand up, let the people see you,” Biden to State Senator Chuck Graham a paraplegic in a wheelchair.

“I thought that was terrible by the way.” - when asked about an Obama campaign ad attacking McCain.

CINDY MCCAIN talking to George Stephanopolous about Sarah Palin:

Stephanopolous: But she has no national security experience.
McCain: You know, the experience that she comes from is what she’s done in government, and remember, Alaska is the closest part of our continent to Russia. It’s not as if she doesn’t understand what’s at stake here.

SARAH PALIN talking to Katie Couric about whether Russia’s proximity to Alaska bolsters her foreign policy credentials:

“Well, it certainly does because our– our next-door neighbors are foreign countries. They’re in the state that I am the executive of.”

What’s Hollywood saying about all this?

“It’s as if [Sarah Palin] became celebrated. I mean, the mother, Palin, was celebrated for this. Every woman in the world has applauded her strength and her convictions and poor little old Jamie Lynn, you saw how she was crucified — everybody did, firsthand. I just feel like it’s been a very hypocritical situation.”
- Lynn Spears, mom of teenage mom Jamie Lynn Spears

“…I will tell you a secret: Her baby does sleep all night. What do you think about those apples?
Lynn Spears, mom of teenage mom Jamie Lynn Spears

“Is our country so divided that the Republicans’ best hope is a narrow-minded, media-obsessed homophobe?” Lindsay Lohan

“I find it quite interesting that a woman who now is running to be second in command of the United States, only four years ago had aspirations to be a television anchor. Which is probably all she is qualified to be.” Lindsay Lohan

“It’s like a really bad Disney movie, “The Hockey Mom.’ Oh, I’m just a hockey mom from Alaska, and she’s president. She’s facing down Vladimir Putin and using the folksy stuff she learned at the hockey rink. It’s absurd.” – Matt Damon

“There’s nothing more scary than watching ignorance in action”
- Tommy Smothers accepting his Emmy award, after commenting on the war

Water

A recent comScore report shows that demand for online health information is growing at a rate four times faster than the total Internet. In fact, despite conventional wisdom that older people are not heavy Internet users, researchers have found that the Internet age gap almost disappears when it comes to searching for health information.

I guess its no surprise that one of the world’s most successful innovators – AOL co-founder Steve Case – is leading the pack in expanding online health resources with his site, Revolution Health Network. Case says that he’s learned two important lessons over the years: you can convince people to try almost any product with good marketing, and timing is everything. He doesn’t mention persistence but his own history underscores its importance: it took AOL four years in the 1980’s to convince computer giants to build a modem into PC’s because nobody thought consumers would be interested in logging on.

Steve Case and his wife Jean also run the Case Foundation, which supports innovative causes. Among them is the PlayPump Water System, designed to increase access to clean water in the sub-Saharan region of Africa. The lack of clean water supply is a worldwide health disaster.

Loretta likes to show off Camino PR’s commitment to water conservation. When visitors arrive she begins her office tour in our tiny bathroom, where she has converted the toilet into a water conservation system. She installed a tiny sink on the top of the toilet; when you flush the clean water first runs into the sink (for hand washing) and then runs into the toilet for flushing purposes. I often recommend that she allow visitors to discover our clever conservation renovation on their own, but she can’t contain her enthusiasm.

Bathrooms are great marketing venues. My father used to hang instructional posters in our bathrooms at home, which is how I came to learn all of the referee signals for professional football. If Loretta were to have more restraint, our visitors would discover Camino’s conservation efforts by reading this sign, which hangs in the tiny bathroom:

“Every day the United States uses about 5.7 billion gallons of clean water to flush toilets. Meanwhile, more than 1 billion people worldwide lack access to clean, safe drinking water. The lack of clean, safe drinking water is estimated to kill 4,500 children per day. We know that conserving water at Camino PR is not going to get clean water to people in need. But treating clean water as a precious commodity is one step toward living our values.”

Bailout confusion

“Hey M,
I didn’t take economics or finance in college, huge mistake. What’s going on? I can’t keep it all straight. Should we be doing this bailout? Are my hedge fund office neighbors about to go out of business? What’s the deal for poor and middle income people — is it all about to go to hell? PLEASE explain as tho I am in middle school. Hope you and J are riding this out without too many bumps. I have been too afraid to call and find out what’s happened to my retirement account.
Miss you,
E

PS – Want to have dinner when I’m in town next month? Somewhere cheap?”

Despite decades of doing advocacy work on issues like poverty, I am deeply confused about how the money machine in our country actually churns. I didn’t realize I was so confused until NPR started unveiling the shenanigans that many people engaged to make a quick buck. The easy piece of the puzzle is to point at Bush, but digging deeper, every day I am learning about new fiscal zigs and zags over recent years that should have sparked millions of advocacy email alerts firing through virtual space. Now that we’re in the kind of mess that can’t be disguised or ignored, the messages in the media are hard to sort out: conservatives like William Kristol are deeply skeptical about the buyout plan, the Presidential candidates are weaving and bobbing, and progressives like Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank are behind a massive bailout with a pinch of pork barrel sprinkled on top.

In search of the unvarnished truth, I sent an email to one of my college friends, M, who is such a finance whiz that she and her husband retired years ago. M was the first woman on the floor of the Pacific Stock exchange not long after we finished college. She used to trudge to work in the pitch dark at 4:30 AM and then start calling to see if I wanted to go to happy hour mid afternoon when Wall Street closed up. We would be chatting on the phone and then suddenly she’d hang up, mid-sentence. “No time to say goodbye” she would later explain, unapologetically. That’s what I know about the stock market. It’s so important and chaotic that microseconds matter.

“Dear E,
I’m confused too, but hoping for the best — trying out the Pollyanna approach. Would love to see you in SF. Where are you staying? Will give you Econ 101 then with lots of wine!
Love you
M”

As I suspected, the prevailing public message from the entire disaster is confusion. It’s a well-researched phenomenon that when a situation appears to be too entrenched or overwhelming, the public has a harder time engaging a solution. Show a picture of millions of starving people and donors think, what good can my small contribution do? Show a picture of a single starving child and the donor thinks, I can help.

M used to take me to the kind of bars where stock exchange people gathered. By the time I arrived, like 5:30, happy hour would have been in full swing for some time. She once introduced me at the bar to the ABC Radio reporter who covered the stock exchange. His voice swaggered and his endearing term for everyone was “you old f—-er.” As soon as M spotted me across the crowd he boomed, “Finally she’s arrived! Come here E and buy me a beer, you old f—er.” By 7:00 he got off his bar stool, stumbled once, and then collapsed drunk on the floor. That is my enduring image of the stock market: swaggering, powerful, and then in a split second laying immobile and drunk on the dirty bar floor.

The back of the plane

There was a full sized rat lying in the middle of the sidewalk in front of my son’s school this morning. The rat looked like it had gorged in the nearby trash cans and had fallen into a drunken stupor overnight. Jeez, I thought, now when my kids are adults they are going to say, about their inner city childhood, “we had to step over dead rats on the way to school.”

The rat was lying outside of the fenced-in concrete schoolyard where the sixth graders socialize at lunchtime. The first time my co-worker saw the playground he said it looked remarkably like a prison yard. It is a small concrete gathering with two basketball hoops arranged along one wall, so that a full-court game must be played in a u-shape. On rainy days the kids crowd underneath the scaffolding opposite the basketball wall.

This is one of Manhattans’ best academic public middle schools. My son worked hard to get admitted, which includes high test scores, a teacher’s recommendation, and an interview. It’s not like he had many Mexican-origin classmates in his elementary school. But now that he is wading through middle school he has tired of teaching his name to everyone. It is “Tomas”, not “Thomas”. Pronounced like “toe” plus “moss”. His humanities teacher assigned an essay about names, and he wrote that he planned to change his name to “Tom” or “Tommy” because he hated being called “Thomas”.

I heard a presentation a few days ago in New Mexico about the health impact of identity. The main thesis was about the larger health implications of major societal discriminations, like racism and homophobia. But the researcher also talked about microstresses – the everyday indignities that are sometimes clear and often fuzzy but that collectively can become more debilitating than major stressful life events. The small ways that we communicate status in our society aren’t so much invisible as much as they are managed to the point where they sink to the subconscious. It happens to all of us, most days, even the days we choose to ignore it. It is rampant in the world of advertising and entertainment, and it seeps into press releases and other public relations efforts more easily than we’d like to imagine.

The airline industry leads the corporate world in their effort to reinforce status. On my flight to New Mexico I sat alone in my row; in fact, no one else was sitting within fifteen rows of me. But in the back of the plane everyone was smushed in three to a row. Once the doors closed the sardine passengers begin to spread out, causing the flight attendant to flap her arms and grab the microphone. “Stop changing seats!” she announced urgently. She was standing in the aisle next to my row. “Stop! Stop! You people in the back,” she said punching her finger at them, “you did not pay for the seating with the extra leg room.” She swept her hand across the fifteen empty rows plus mine. “These people did. It’s not fair for you to sit in these other rows. Unless you’re willing to upgrade your ticket, you need to stay-in-your-seat.” She said the last words in a slow staccato, like she was talking to a mob that was on the verge of storming the embassy.

I looked back at the angry mob. They were my people but I could feel them seething at me, as if I had sentenced them to being corralled in to the back of the plane. Technically I didn’t pay for my legroom either, even though I might argue that I deserved it for literally running from Terminal B to the very end of Terminal C in Chicago where I barely missed my connection. The gate agent upgraded me on my alternate flight. I don’t even use the treadmill; I only use the elliptical machine, because running is jarring. I had earned my legroom.

A few minutes later the flight attendant reappeared holding a tray of drinks. “First class doesn’t want these beverages!” She was very excited. “Go ahead and choose one, why not?” she said, as though she was offering me leftover pearl necklaces instead of rejected tomato juice. I asked her if I could give permission for the sardine passengers to spread out into my fifteen rows. If the only thing standing in their way was the insult to the passengers who had paid the extra fee, I was willing to waive my right to be insulted. “That won’t be possible!” she snapped and then stiffly returned to first class with the second hand juice.

The truth for my son to discover is that even if his new friends call him “Tommy”, he will always walk through this world as “Tomas”. He will step over rats if it means that at the end of the sidewalk is the best education his city offers. He will play on a U-shaped basketball court if that is how he can stay fit. He will learn how to measure the worth of his daily indignities. As he grows up he will decide what role he plays in societies indignities, whether he finds himself on playgrounds or in airports.

At the New Mexico conference we saw laid bare how words, and their context, matters to the health of our society. Perhaps suffering in the back of the plane isn’t a human rights issue. But recognizing the status that words convey is the soul of good communications.

Failing the fat test

This past weekend, while sitting at a small dinner party sipping a glass of Malbec wine, the legs on my plastic chair broke and flipped me backwards onto the floor. I careened into the wine bar head-first and shards of plastic chair legs flew into the living room. Perhaps the weight limitations of the plastic seating were not suitable for dinner parties. But…

This morning I dropped the kids off early at school and went to my new gym to conduct a fitness evaluation with their most senior trainer. Too much fat, not enough muscle was the diagnosis. My evaluator was seven months pregnant but looked more fit than I have ever been at any age. “I look more pregnant than you do” I couldn’t help remarking as she was pinching my abdominal fat, “and it’s been 11 years since I had my youngest kid.” My back is crooked which creates waistline chaos, so I encouraged her to measure the pinch of fat on my thin side. The fatty results were the same.

As if it would comfort me, she tried pinching her own waist and said, “I’m all muscle.” She explained that New Yorkers imagine ourselves as thin and fashionable, but physically maybe not so much. Her theory is that we drink wine like Europeans, eat super fatty street food, and mistakenly believe that climbing all those subway stairs keeps us fit. She said that when she asks a New Yorker if they had to choose between the wine and losing ten pounds, they are likely to choose the wine.

It is wildly depressing that my family has used precious Manhattan apartment square footage for an elliptical machine for three years and yet I failed the Equinox fat test.

September is Go Healthy Month, sponsored by the Alliance for a Healthier Generation. Their aim is to make living healthy the norm for kids. They are investing in a youth movement around health, but a big part of that movement is getting adults on board with healthy food and exercise. In fact the Equinox evaluator started our evaluation by asking me about my childhood fitness footprint. Meaning, what had my body absorbed about fitness as a child? She was encouraged that I grew up in an athletically-inclined household and seemed genuinely pleased that I was undefeated on my high school tennis team, even if I was only ranked number three.

Kudos to the The Alliance for a Healthier Generation for investing in a nationwide childhood fitness footprint. The Alliance is using online and offline strategies, including computer games that kids can play like exploring the “cave of nutrition.”

My middle school niece, Desiree Leyva, sits on the national youth advisory board of the Alliance. Her and other board members consistently point to the prevalence of junk food as a top challenge for kids who are trying to live healthier. She did her first media interview for a Spanish language paper where I mistakenly read that she was concerned about everyone “eating fast.” I re-read the paragraph with sharper Spanish translation skills and understood that she was concerned about “fast food.” That seems to be the number one response when you ask kids about their personal challenge when it comes to fitness and health – the lure and omnipresence of fast food.

Last year I was at a branding presentation by Nickelodeon where their marketing executives were patting themselves on the back for their new programming which encourages kids to exercise and eat well. A marketing executive from Subway complained that they had been trying, unsuccessfully, to become a Nickelodeon fitness partner because Subway was being very proactive about healthy kids meals, but Nickelodeon was partnering with fast food chains like McDonald’s instead. The frustration had a lot of merit – if you line up a McDonald’s happy meal against a Subway Kids meal, the calorie counts are wildly different. The Nickelodeon rep grimaced and said that their partners had everything to do with ad budgets, not calorie counts.

As for my fat ratio, Equinox is pretty sure that I can make things right again if I do what they suggest for six weeks. And that includes continuing to sip glasses of Malbec. I’ll report back in late October.

Seventeen

It was hard not to cry while watching the Republic Convention. Behind the scenes Sarah Palin chose to conduct only private meetings with a handful of her closest advisors, including with the world’s most prominent anti-feminist, Phyllis Schafley. Among Schafley’s past quotes are “Sex education classes are like in-home sales parties for abortions,” and “Sexual harassment on the job is not a problem for virtuous women.”

The most agonizing television moments were shots of Bristol Palin in the VIP box, seventeen, pregnant, her name tattooed on her fiance’s finger and watching her mother describe how she will unravel what the women’s movement has woven, barracuda-style.

My mother was seventeen when she became pregnant. Nobody celebrated. On the day she told the school nurse my mother was escorted first to the principal’s office, next to her locker, and then taken by both of them to the edge of campus. She stood for a bit outside the school gate on Sixth Avenue in South Tucson, a broke and dusty township where the poor were forcibly relocated after the city decided it wanted to use downtown for a convention hall. My mother tried going home but my grandmother wouldn’t let her in, so she walked a few miles more, clutching only useless schoolbooks and a handbag, and moved in to my father’s house.

That was the end of the government’s obligation to educate my mother. I was her third teenage pregnancy. It wasn’t until I turned seventeen, in 1978, that the Congress finally passed a law that forbid the kind of pregnancy discrimination that allowed a South Tucson high school to discard my mother. It took years for that law to begin to take hold, and even today pregnant teens face monumental obstacles in getting an equal education.

Millions of other teen women were kicked out school due to pregnancy. Nobody officially tracked their numbers but it’s probable that by 1978 more than 60 million pregnant teens in the United States had been cast out or maneuvered out of the educational system.

I think they should get restitution. Money would be nice but even a national apology would be a good start.

All of them deserve it. We should apologize to all the women who were denied an education due to pregnancy and then stigmatized and marginalized, forced to struggle financially in low paying jobs for decades and now, in their retirement ages, work as cashiers at Cracker Barrel to stay afloat. In addition to restitution, I think that her high school ought to grant my mother an honorary degree. So should the rest of the schools who, arrogantly, bolstered by an all-male Supreme Court, not only kicked girls out of school but threw stigma and shame at their backsides like rotted wedding rice as they stepped off campus.

As for Bristol Palin, it is not her personally nor her sexual history that effects me. It is the image of Bristol Palin honored played in a splitscreen with my mothers indignities that kills me. Our entire national discourse about women and reproduction should not be only about sex education and abortion. Sometimes it has to be about dignity, education, and opportunity. Because the Palin/Schafley agenda is not only about hammering a woman’s right to choose, it is also the reinforcement of widely discarded stereotypes about women and society.

I can’t begin to assume what resolve seeped into my mother’s core during her walk through South Tucson on her last day of high school. What I do know is that she made sure to teach her kids about survival. Once she took her bundle of kids to the Y to teach us how to swim. She began by showing us how to bob across the pool, which means that you sink to the very bottom and then push up hard with your feet so that your head bobs above the water, where you quickly take a breath before sinking again. If you project forward and upward with every push you will eventually make it to the other side. Her instinct, before teaching us how to swim, was to teach us how not to drown.

The twin currents of survival and success are the story arc of the disenfranchised. You’ve got to be tough, which is why my Republican convention rage turning to tears was such a personal let-down. I hated when Pat Schroeder cried as she announced that she was dropping her bid for the Presidency in 1987. My preteen daughter holds back her tears until she’s safely in the shower, and I hate that instead she doesn’t just burst into tears in the kitchen. I hate that Palin and McCain brought me to this precipice as though crying on my couch would invite even the smallest white flag of defeat.

The nation is firmly on the side of real teen pregnancy prevention, however much noise the chastity proponents generate. But for those teens like Bristol Palin who have moved beyond the prevention debate, where are we, so many years after my mother stood in her shoes? The Republican party messaging cures the shame of Bristol Palin’s pregnancy by putting her engagement on display. Not one mention yet about her prospects as a pregnant student who maintains her right to a good education but instead audible heaves of relief that she will soon be not just a mom but a respectable,married mom. It is an admirable coup for this Republican convention to both make history by declaring that a woman is qualified to be President and to simultaneously reinforce the values of “virtuous” women.

Sarah and Bristol Palin both stand on the shoulders of my mother, whose generation waded through sex and pregnancy, work and family, ambition and stigma, all without a government that recognized their humanity. They were marched out of high schools everywhere and thrown into the streets. Their lonely walk to whoever would take them in wasn’t a march on Washington, but it was a movement nonetheless. These disenfranchised women did their part to dismantle social stigma by pushing on. Some of us have taken to the streets for women’s rights but we are blinded by ego if for one minute we fail to recognize that we are marching on well-treaded paths of resistance created by those who will never be recognized on a podium or in a VIP box. Sometimes you don’t have to unfurl a banner to blaze a trail, you simply need to have the ostentatious, stubborn resolve to survive.

The Hot Chick

Everyone watched Palin deliver a powerful speech. I knew that last night would be a moment when both sexism and an assault on feminism would be coiled tightly together. As the cameras panned the crowd you could see buttons that read “Hoosiers for the hot chick” and “Hottest VP, warmest state.” The popular “hot chick” buttons were being sold as a fundraiser for hurricane victim relief.

The beauty queen warm up, to be fair, began with the nomination of Joe Biden as the Democratic VP when the first descriptor he used when introducing his wife was “drop dead gorgeous.” It’s not necessarily sexist to be called gorgeous, but when being introduced to the nation as the potential “second lady,” appearance is irrelevant at best.

Palin described herself as a pit bull with lipstick who was at war with the media. This morning I checked out the media bias. In all of the media coverage of Palin, the most prominent descriptor turns out to be “pretty,” followed by “tough” as a distant second and tied for third: “smart” and “hot.” Who wouldn’t prefer a VP who was pretty and hot while also being tough and smart? I suppose it’s impressive to get away with blowing kisses from the podium and simultaneously being positioned as “tough.” That Hillary campaign moment last winter when her eyes welled up for a second, sparking worldwide debate about whether almost crying would make her not tough enough, are firmly behind us. Palin didn’t comment on her spouses appearance but got kudos for hanging on to her “guy” since high school.

Matthew Scully wrote the Palin speech. As a professional he did an admirable job. Scully is a veteran values mudslinger, such as his past efforts to link the pornography industry to reproductive health care. Scully is experienced arguing the credentials of the inexperienced, having written for and about candidates like Dan Quayle and Harriet Miers. Among Miers qualifications for Supreme Court justice that Scully pointed to in a Wall Street Journal editorial was that she had “found time to prepare the will of a terminally ill 27-year old colleague, and to spend nights and mornings staying with her and praying with her.” Palin’s speech was classic Scully, elevating human interest aspects of a biography to sidestep hard questions about direct experience.

To Scully’s certain delight, conservative pundits have been arguing that any woman who could raise five kids could run this country. Jon Stewart said that the staunch anti-choice Palin had made her daughter’s pregnancy fair game in the pundit wars since Palin had noted in a press release that her daughter made her own choices related to her pregnancy. Just last week the elections were focused on the war and the economy but now it’s all about teens, sex, “traditional” marriage, God and guns.

Last night in his warm up act for Palin, Mike Huckabee warned us against allowing Obama to import European ideas. I’ve never been to Europe so I’m not entirely certain what scary ideas run rampant, but I hope he’s not talking about the teens and sex part. The U.S. teen pregnancy rate is nine times higher than in the Netherlands, and nearly five times higher than in Germany and France.

One of the most interesting editorials today is written by Bay Buchanan. She describes her efforts to make sure that her brother Pat Buchanan had a prime time slot in the 1992 Republican Convention, where he delivered his famous culture wars speech. Quotes from that speech not only helped Bill Clinton win his election, they fueled direct mail drives for progressive groups for more than a decade. Bay Buchanan’s editorial lays out the gamemanship used to elevate the most conservative messages in that Republican convention. That scenario seems to have played out, once again, in last night’s Palin payday.

A PR Mulligan

“And you may ask yourself – well…how did I get here?”
- Talking Heads

It is often puzzling how organizations find themselves in a PR nightmare of their own design, and then are puzzled. Not surprisingly it often happens related to issues of diversity.

Women’s golf has been stuck in an unwelcome PR whirlwind for weeks in the wake of their new proposed regulations that would require professional women golfers to speak English by 2009. Not all the time, just when players are giving speeches and talking to the press and impressing donors.

Most news reports agree that the South Korean players were the prime target of this rule change, even though players from 26 nations are on the tour this year. Rumor has it that the issue boiled over when Eun-Hee Ji could not deliver her victory speech in English after winning a major tournament.

“We have been puzzled, if not surprised, by some of the reactions,” said deputy commissioner Libba Galloway, who previously was the LPGA’s top attorney. “We see this as a pro-international move.”

In a burst of condescending message framing, Galloway explained that the English-proficiency move would help motivate international players to speak English and therefore land more endorsement deals. Galloway said she drew the “short stick” when she had to deal with the media uproar while the LPGA commissioner Carolyn Bivens, who is at the heart of the policy shift, was on vacation and unavailable.

You might imagine that Bivens blundered into the language fiasco due to unfamiliarity or even naivete about global communications issues. Not so. She used to lead worldwide advertising for USA Today and was once the COO of the largest media services agency in the United States. Here is her reaction to the massive negative reaction to her new policy:

“I find it troubling that media that does not know the whole story would jump on a racist bandwagon,” Bivens told Golf World. “If these players don’t take this step [and learn English], their ability to earn a living is reduced. They will be cut out of corporate and endorsement opportunities. I can’t imagine that someone who has thought this through does not realize that in opposing this measure they are penalizing the very people they are trying to help.”

First, I would never recommend that someone who is being described in national news reports as “xenophobic” hit back by using the term “racist bandwagon.”

And secondly, it is simply a bad policy coupled with a trainwreck communication strategy. At least one corporate sponsor – State Farm – has publicly stated they are reconsidering their ties with the LPGA after hearing of the new policy. Kip Biggs of State Farm said they were “dumbfounded” upon hearing the news. Corporate sponsor Choice Hotels Intl is also expressing concern.

Yesterday Biven posted her statement of explanation on the LPGA home page, explaining that the LPGA does not work like other sports. The association earns a great deal of money by selling “sponsors” the opportunity to play golf with the professional players. Some of the sponsors apparently become dismayed when they are not able to have casual conversation, sans translator, with the gifted professional athlete they have paid good money to golf with. Biven did concede, however, that players could use their “native languages” when speaking to their caddies, friends and fans.

I predict this all won’t end happily for Bivens. Golf is an international sport and the LPGA plays on an international stage. In fact while English remains a solid U.S. mainstay, over 300 languages are spoken in this country and most nations are seeking ways to become even more multilingual, not increasingly monolingual. Woody Allen pokes fun at U.S. English-only blinders in his new film, “Barcelona.” Penelope Cruz asks Scarlett Johansson why she only speaks English, and Johansson responds that she studied Japanese briefly because it sounded pretty.

Most of the world embraces multiple languages, but the English-only movement persists here. English is the official language in 28 states, though that doesn’t prevent government business from also being conducted in other languages. In 1914 President Roosevelt endorsed English-only sentiment so that we would not become “dwellers in a polyglot boarding house”. Pat Buchanan has borrowed that phrase. A “polyglot” is a “generic term for multilingual persons,” according to Wikepedia.

I am an occasional golfer, though now I will be a polyglot golfer. I took up the sport after a rigorous and successful effort in San Francisco by women’s groups to stop public funds from supporting male-only golf clubs. In a tribute to those fierce activists, we began to integrate the golf course from the bottom up. Now I will be sure to use many languages while on the course. I am a native spanglish speaker, which means that often members in my household doubt my Spanish translation, such as my instinct to simply throw an “el” or “la” in front of an English word. But I am encouraged that “golf” and “putt” and “mulligan” in English and Spanish are same, perhaps with a different accent.

The number one golfer in the world lives in Guadalajara, Mexico. Among the top ten women golfers worldwide, only two are from the United States (ranked 5th and 6th). Lorena Ochoa from Mexico is ranked number one worldwide, followed by Annika Sorenstam from Sweden, Yani Tseng from Taiwan, and Suzann Petterson from Norway.

Ochoa, who speaks both English and Spanish, called the new English policy “drastic”. She also runs a charitable foundation aimed at helping poor kids in Mexico. Ochoa suggests that performance on the golf course ought to be the driving factor when judging golfers. The male golfers don’t face the same English standards. Tiger Woods declined to comment, but other champion male golfers did weigh in. Argentinian Angel Cabrera said “you don’t have to speak English to play golf,” and K.J. Choi of South Korea recalled that during his rookie PGA Tour his English was so bad that he couldn’t read street signs well enough to find the golf course – but that didn’t stop his soaring PGA career.

When a media firestorm erupts, it’s a great idea for organizations to use new media tracking tools to get some perspective on how the story is playing out. In this case, of the hundreds of blog posts that have erupted, some of the most common terms found, in order of prominence, are “Korean,” “criticism,” “harsh,”, “racist,”, and “punish.” In the blogosphere, Bivens lead messages of “effective communication” and “bandwagon” get barely more play than the term “xenophobia”.

A similar message tone exists in the mainstream news, though journalists are not favoring the term “punish” and have ignored the “bandwagon” message. Mainstream news outlets are pitting the “effective communication” quote against “xenophobia” quotes.

This kind of PR analysis matters if the LPGA is truly engaged in managing this storm proactively. Among new media outlets the concept of players being “punished” is surging. Across all media the concept of this story being tied to South Korean players is solid. Taking a look at the “word cloud” analysis, it is impossible for the LPGA to win this PR battle without a shift in policy or strategy.

Whatever happens, I remain committed to playing multi-lingual golf. Years ago it was exhausting golfing (and golfing badly) under the cloud of resentment when the San Francisco courses were forced to let us play. I have a feeling, however, that multilingual golfing won’t be such a hostile experience. In fact I plan to support Ochoa’s outspoken stance and her charitable efforts by ordering a golf hat from her website to wear on the course while I toss around phrases like “trampa de arena,” or “sand trap” for my deep pocket sponsors who may be golfing with me.

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