Be A Man

“Manhood” is back in.

Yesterday on the McLaughlin Group, journalist Monica Crowley summed up the Republican opposition to Obama’s stimulus package this way: “The Republicans rediscovered their manhood”.  This follows weeks of Illinoic Gov Blagojevich-induced rage about taking his lumps like a man, as expressed by Illinois State Senator Dan Cronin,

“It’s somewhat cowardly that he won’t take questions.  If he had something to say, he should have come down here like a man and faced the music.” The “manhood” sentiment is littered across the media world.  Today columnist Susan Antilla of Bloomberg gives advice to fallen financial giants, “So suck it up, be a man…”

This branding of “man” only begs the question, in opposition to what?  Be a man, not a squirrel?  Of course the opposite of acting like a man (a good thing - brave) would be acting like a woman (the wrong thing - cowardly).  And that can’t be good news for feminism.  California Governor Schwarzenegger doesn’t mask his insult to women – he has repeatedly used the term “girlie men” as a way to define the right kind of male behavior, as in “…if they don’t have the guts, I call them girlie men”.

The glut of “manhood” references have started resurging with new vigor.  But the backdoor insult to women remains largely unchallenged. Crowley’s generation hands the language down to younger generations of hopeful pundits.  A psychology student at UC Santa Barbara writes today in the school newspaper, “Steve Pappas, could you please grow a pair, be a man and accept that you lost the election?”

If women get gender branding advice, it’s usually about being a “lady”.  Entertainer Steve Harvey has jumped into the “lady” versus “man” advice with his new book, “Act Like A Lady, Think Like A Man”.  Harvey postulates that men are most comfortable being recognized in the role of provider and protector.

I have a favorite picture of my son at the beach (see below) standing at the water’s edge.  I wonder what he is imagining for himself.  It would be helpful if, when I turn on CNN in our living room, he wasn’t hearing sexist stereotypes about what it means for him to be a  man.

Messing Up At Work

Hmm.  The banks are in trouble, so taxpayers are giving them billions in bailouts.  But the bank executives won’t reign in their wild spending spree. It used to be tolerable that the profits they made on us were spent on massive bonuses and corporate jets and luxury boxes at football stadiums. Those excesses were repugnant but seemed to be part of the bargain we struck, since we agreed to pay all that interest on our credit cards and mortgages.  But last year the banks cried panic and demanded a bailout, meaning that those luxury items and massive bonuses are now being paid for by our taxpayer dollars. Why should we use our tax dollars to subsidize the extravagance of CEO’s who can’t keep their businesses afloat, while millions of workers are losing jobs, healthcare, and housing?

Predictably, the public relations war has escalated with even greater intensity than the economic food fight.

Recently deposed banking executive John Thain, who spent over a million dollars renovating his office last year and slipped in massive executive bonuses just before the Congress turned over taxpayer dollars to help him out, is now in full PR battle mode.  He seems utterly disinterested in playing the role of scapegoat.  Thain, like countless celebrities and moneyed elites before him, hired the best corporate PR talent that money can buy.  Rumor has it that Thain approached Rubenstein first but landed with Sunshine, Sachs & Associates.  Sunshine has helped Thain weave his story, including finger pointing at the man who fired him.  According to Thain, his excesses were known and approved by Bank of America CEO Kenneth Lewis.

Here’s where Camino PR’s Loretta Kane enters the fray.  Public relations can be used for social justice too, like shining a bright light on corporate excesses and abusive practices.  Yesterday Loretta helped the SEIU publicize their new campaign to oust Lewis from his perch.  These efforts landed the SEIU prominent news attention, including coverage in the New York Times business section:

“…Tuesday, the Service Employees International Union, one of the nation’s largest service sector unions, started a “fire Ken Lewis” campaign…”

The Charlotte Observer – the main newspaper where Bank of America’s headquarters’ are located – ran a prominent story that directly pulled from the SEIU press release, ““It’s time to start enforcing some basic standards for corporate behavior,” said Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, a frequent critic of the bank, in a statement. “Ken Lewis has failed Bank of America and he has failed taxpayers – and the Bank of America board should remove him.”  The union also called on the bank to add director seats for a taxpayer and a lower-level employee and to stop all executive bonus payments until the government’s investment is repaid.”

The full story is laid out in the SEIU press release .  EVERYONE can help with this campaign – just go to seiu.org and find an event to attend in your area.  The SEIU is taking the issue off the newsprint and into the streets.  These small protests will put continued pressure on Bank of America to stop its corporate excesses and culture of abuse.  It’s our money, our jobs, and our houses.  Please take a few minutes to make your voice heard.

Off to the inauguration

We are off to Washington DC today.  Check out our updates on Twitter (caminopr).  Bishop Gene Robinson is kicking off today’s ceremonies.  Here’s my favorite quote from Gene about the words he is preparing for this afternoon, as reported in the New York Times:

“I am very clear,” he said, “that this will not be a Christian prayer, and I won’t be quoting Scripture or anything like that. The texts that I hold as sacred are not sacred texts for all Americans, and I want all people to feel that this is their prayer.” Bishop Robinson said he might address the prayer to “the God of our many understandings,” language that he said he learned from the 12-step program he attended for his alcohol addiction.

We’ll probably be on the New Jersey turnpike when Gene makes his remarks this afternoon.  Even with the snowstorm and our very crowded minivan and the massive traffic jam headed toward DC, it will feel amazing, hurtling toward a new leadership.

Recession PR

Loretta has cut back on trips to the hairdresser due to our 2009 recession spending plan.  Check out her Facebook page (or the pic at the bottom of this post) to see if her new style looks like Barry Gibb of the 70’s Bee Gee’s fame.  Oddly, I recall being at a disco in Honduras in 1980 and the crowd going wild when the DJ spinned a Bee Gee’s song.  Sorry, that’s the kind of useless tangent that gives blogging a bad reputation.

We might be in a recession, though who knows what the economists will say months from now.  I am routinely hearing of layoffs among friends and acquaintances.  And yet anxious customers are still lining up before Best Buy opens its doors in the hopes of snagging a sold-out wii gaming system.  Is it a depression?  An implosion?  A head game?

In the midst of downsizing, Recession PR is in full swing.  That means fewer marketing dollars and more “earned media”. It’s a critical time to re-do a communications strategy.  One good way to deal with reduced budgets and increased expectations among communications staff is to max out technology.  I just finished refresher training with a database subscription service that tracks all of Camino’s media, our media relationships, and the market value of our results.  I have automated systems that tell me when an issue is emerging, what’s happening with opponents of my issue, and what scheduled events the media is planning to cover related to my clients.  All this technology means that staff can focus on proactive and creative work.

I’m about to interview candidates for a staff position that includes “research” so that all this technology can be meaningful.  Way back when the Bee Gee’s were sexy, research meant mastering things like the Dewey Decimal System.  Now research is all about using Boolean logic. Melvin Dewey was barely a teenager when George Boole died, but his work predated Boole’s impact on information searching.  Dewey created the organization system over 100 years ago for a university library and this basic system became, and remains, the theoretical framework for library organization.  Anti-Semitism and sexism mar Dewey’s place in history, and his legacy is threatened by the fact that an alarming number of public schools can’t afford books anymore.

I’ve rarely sent a researcher to the library; today the Internet rules, and for that I need to hire people who get the logic of Boolean.  I need mathematically inclined research staff more than I need organization-inclined staff.  Instead of a hierarchical system,  Boolean  uses a mathematical approach to narrow the search.  Words like AND, OR, NOT, NEAR are the soul of Boolean logic.  For example, my daily apartment search looks something like: apartment AND Manhattan AND 2 bedrooms NOT walkup.

History remembers Boole kindly as a brilliant mathematician, and a modest man inspired by literature and philosophy.  Words and logic together were his poetry.  He said:

“No matter how correct a mathematical theorem may appear to be, one ought never be satisfied that there was not something imperfect about it until it also gives the impression of being beautiful.”

Below is Loretta’s recession PR hairstyle, compared to the coifed Barry Gibbs at the height of his career.  You be the judge — look alike?

PR and Frost Nixon

After shopping with three kids in a snowstorm today, I was having a hard time finding a cab.  An off duty cab driver stopped and asked where I was headed, then waved us in.  I was helping the first kid across the icy curb when a man sprinted in front of me and jumped into the cab.  The man screamed at me that he had been first. I wasn’t up for a fight; I silently backed up my kids onto the sidewalk.  But the cabbie didn’t agree, he refused to take the man and waved us back in.

The driver was in a full rant about the man for ten blocks.  He was an elderly driver speaking in a heavy accent.  “I tell this man I am not going his way.  But he thinks I take him anyway? This man is on crack!”  He went on about cab etiquette and then declared, “The man’s face, his face look like — Mr. Bush!”

There it was, the ultimate insult.

It’s vogue in these final Bush moments to compare his exit to Nixon.  Bush’s approval rating fell to 24% in December, a few points lower than Nixon in the aftermath of Watergate.  At a recent dinner party on the upper east side of New York, the mention of how Bush exits the White House (triumphant or head bowed) elicited universal disgust.  No one believed that Bush would ever be held accountable for any number of the reasons his approval rating has plummeted.   Even if Bush or Cheney run into legal troubles, people argued, they will be swiftly pardoned.  Like Nixon.

This urge for an acknowledgement and apology was central to the plot in the Frost/Nixon movie.  Even with its historical distortions this movie is feel-good for its thesis that public relations can be used for the greater good.  The suspense of the movie is whether the media pros can hold Nixon accountable in a way that the legal and political system could not.

On the wrong side of history in this movie is Diane Sawyer, who worked in the Nixon administration and stuck by Nixon following impeachment to help him write memoirs.  I don’t know why she chose that path.  Did she believe in Nixon?  Did she view it as a worthwhile career stepping-stone?  Or both?

I wonder the same thing about White House spokesperson Dana Perino, who has survived the tough job of spinning the media for Bush during his descent into ratings quagmire.  Jon Stewart grilled her last spring on her insight into crisis public relations.  She described the Elliot Spitzer prostitution scandal as greater than any crisis situation she’s had to deal with.  Which of course would include thorny subjects like weapons of mass destruction and waterboarding and illegal detention at Guantanamo.

She appeared again last week on the Daily Show and described Bush as “always fun to be around, he’s extremely funny.”  She also said, about the Bush administration legacy, “we’re pretty proud of what we’ve accomplished.” (Jon Stewart, after a long pause, said simply, “why?”). I wondered, does she think she’s on the right side of history? Or potentially like Diane Sawyer, could her allegiance be a career maneuver?

Attorney General nominee Eric Holder is making negative headlines for his crisis work in the private sector.  He earned a reported $2.5 million per year managing tough crisis cases, like helping Chiquita manage accusations that it had collaborated with thugs.  Crisis management by its definition is thorny and secretive.  Whether someone did honorable work in these cases is sometimes complicated, often hard to discern.   If public relations is a tool for social change instead of simply a paycheck, it’s the side of history we land on that matters.

Crisis work, at its best, is about helping justice triumph over power.  Ron Howard made it come true in Frost Nixon with creative license.  Maybe, in the next week while we wait for the inauguration, it’s a good time to escape reality and go to the movies.

In Search of Friends

Loretta suddenly got hooked on Facebook.  In high school my best friend’s mother was desperately worried that we would become hooked on heroin.  She once warned us that if we drove down 4th Avenue, where the hippies live, someone might leap at us with a heroin syringe while we were stopped for a red light. That seems to be what happened to Loretta this week as she plunged suddenly and quite deeply into a Facebook addiction. What started as a gentle nudge from Pablo for her to get in the social networking game turned into an insatiable urge for Loretta to collect friends. She even began recruiting friends using her Blackberry while riding the bus.

It appears that Loretta will be anyone’s friend. I don’t take that jab at her simply because she mocked me on her Facebook page for not having many friends. I’ve known Loretta for almost two decades, and she is no Julie McCoy (remember Julie from The Love Boat? She was the social coordinator on the cruise. For confused twenty something people, check out old episodes on hulu). Loretta doesn’t prefer to spend a lot of time at large social gatherings. So why, suddenly, is she proactively making online friends?

Setting aside the re-branding of the term “friends”, which among other things has given us permission to think fondly again of former co-workers and fleeting acquaintances, the Facebook phenomenon is very much about fostering certain types of collaboration.

Beyond Facebook’s cute kitty photos and virtual presents is the sophisticated and fascinating science of collaboration on display. Last month the Harvard Business Review (HBR) wrote an in-depth piece on the underlying principles of collaboration. Looking at collaboration with a critical lens helps communications pro’s figure out what project structures are aimed squarely at failure and which ones will succeed. Software advances have allowed a lot of organizations and causes to set up their own version of Facebook – but most fail while Facebook and its counterparts grow. Why?

Millions of dollars spent on web design and technology acquisition get flushed every year because the cool technology tool is driving the project. The HBR article takes the opposite approach. It suggests figuring out what kind of collaboration is best suited to the ultimate goal, and then building the tool to match it. Will solutions be found in a flat style (much like Facebook) or a hierarchical model? There isn’t a value judgment attached to either style, but rather recognition that understanding how decisions will be made is critical to successful collaboration.

Here’s a real-life example. The FDA regulates how drugs are used based on a hierarchical model; certain elite players conduct evaluation and the FDA bases its decisions on this narrow set of data. Meanwhile, many doctors are using a flat model. Doctors prescribe drugs “off-label”, commonly referred to as “evidence-based medicine.” In this flat model, the common knowledge derived across the practice of medicine is used to convince doctors to prescribe drugs in ways that the FDA has not approved. Most patients aren’t aware, when they are getting a recommended treatment from a doctor, whether she or he is using FDA-approved protocol or evidence-based protocol.

Sometimes the FDA wags a finger at off-label practices, other times they shrug and acknowledge the limits of their control over medical decision-making. This type of role switching happens in coalition-style organizing all the time. Sometimes players believe that by having a seat at the table, they are impacting decision-making. In reality, a lot of coalitions are not operating in a flat model; they are operating in a hierarchical model with the pretense of a more robust collaboration. Or, like the FDA, they are vacillating between the two models (only use the drug the way we tell you to versus follow the science even if we haven’t given it our stamp of approval yet).

HBR writes that that there are two ways to manage a flat collaboration:

The Innovation Mall, where problems get posted and anyone can propose a solution (kind of like most of the computer tech support today) but the company or entity decides on the solution;

The Innovation Community, where anybody proposes problems or solutions, and makes decisions about them (much like Facebook);

HBR then describes two ways to manage a hierarchical collaboration:

The Elite Circle, where a select group of participants defines the problem and solution;

The Consortium, which is a lot like the Elite Circle except that a private group of participants may be working across organizations or entities.

Every model has benefits and costs. An innovation model invites new creative solutions that may be beyond the imagination or expertise of the establishment. A consortium model may work best when an industry has become fragmented and artificial walls are preventing the best practices from emerging.

When I think about social networking as a strategy for collaboration, Loretta’s sudden Facebook addiction makes sense. She is rarely hierarchical; what matters to her is finding the right solution, not having the solution come from within or outside an establishment. She is someone who has a genuine interest in the lives and ideas of a diverse network of collaborators. Contrast that to my long-time friend Michelle, who does not use Facebook but who I have often referred to as Julie McCoy. Michelle consistently has a very full social calendar, but her model is hierarchical. Just as Julie is only interested in the cruise ship guests, Michelle is primarily interested in a particular circle of connected people.

I mentioned to Loretta that I was writing about her Facebook Friend Frenzy. She said proudly in response, “…you may want to note that I’m up to 68 friends – and we’re talking quality folks here. Kate Clinton, Mandy Carter, the national action VP at NOW (she invited me), and all of my cousins. The list goes on and on…”

Addendum:

Right after posting this, I got an email from an old friend who found me on Linked In.  We haven’t spoken since 1987 — she is amazing and I’m so glad to have reconnected.  And, Loretta updated her numbers: she’s up to 74 Facebook friends.

The Rubric Resume

Here is the best quote from the nearly 600 résumé’s I’ve received for a part-time position at Camino PR: “I have never been particularly interested in working with a PR firm…”

I posted the job on Craig’slist late Friday, and by Saturday my inbox was bursting. We already had a few candidates who responded to our website listing, like a Doula whose positive ch’i leaps off her resume like perfumed stationary. I plan to invite the Doula to interview. There was also a wonderful activist who had taught capoera to homeless children in Africa. But we thought we ought to create a broader candidate pool, particularly of communications professionals. I toyed with the idea of paying for a listing in PR Week, but decided instead to use recession recruitment tools: Craigslist, and the NYU job board.

A small firm simply can’t look at 600 résumé’s. On Saturday afternoon, after I quoted aloud from the first 80 emails while browsing résumé’s at the kitchen counter, Winnie threatened to come in and do the job herself. I’m not sure if she meant that she would sift through applicants or if she would actually be our project assistant. She would be fantastic at organizing our office. She is the kind of chef (and I mean chef, not just cook) who simultaneously finishes preparing an organic and healthy dinner and has all of the dishes clean before I’ve even set the table. In my defense, it is often difficult to find the matches so I can light the candles. I have never once seen her not make the bed the second she leaves it, and more than once she has even made the bed while I am still lounging in it (“So when you get up its already done,” she says). I am a thousand percent certain that we would never have lost the plug to the monitor or knocked the fax machine off its wobbly shelf if Winnie were in charge.

One thing I am quite certain of is that my occasional office junk food junkets would end the minute Winnie joined our staff, so I kept pouring through applicant emails. Soon I found myself looking for tedious reasons to like or dislike an applicant. If their email address name sounded silly, I worried. If they seemed to have a long commute, I wondered if they would last long. I loved the applicants who had checked out my website, I got angry at those who obviously did not.

My son interrupted my résumé surfing with a homework question related to the “rubric” for his book report assignment. It occurred to me then that the rubric résumé approach was the best way to engage the issue, both from the perspective of the job seeker and the employer. For those of you who have been out of middle school a long time, a “rubric” is a chart that details the requirements of the project and grades each category of the rubric. I took a look at the job advertisement, and chose four things that were critical, ranked in priority. Then I made four piles: one, people with no match; two, people matching the top criteria, three, people matching the second criteria, etc. I also created a wildcard pile for people like the Doula – someone that I had a gut reaction to even if their skill set didn’t match up perfectly.

I still had the time consuming task, however, of actually opening each email and glancing at the résumé. Here’s what I learned, from a job seeker perspective:

Number one (and this is huge): Make the subject line count. Almost every subject line was the same, “Project Assistant Position”. Email number 455 wrote “Amazing Project Assistant Position”. I looked at his application out of order. He turns out to be a communications pro, and someone I will definitely call about an interview.

Number two: Tell me what you will do for me based on what I’ve asked for. Don’t lead with what I will do for you.

Number three: Write well. Use full sentences and old-fashioned good grammar.

Number four: Sell me on your candidacy in the first paragraph of your cover letter AND in the first paragraph of your email. Simply writing “Attached is my resume” is a huge wasted opportunity to stand out. If I don’t believe in you by the fourth sentence, I’m not reading further.

Number five: Both attach your resume and copy it in the email. That saves me time.

Number six: Do some research – at minimum, check out the employer’s website.

Here’s what I learned, from an employer perspective:

I should have paid the money for a targeted ad – perhaps a combination of PR Week and Non Profit Times. The price tag seemed high for a small firm, but my time is billable by the hour, and Craigslist turned out to be a very pricey way for me to get the job done. I assume that using PR Week would have limited the candidate pool to those who are serious enough about communications work that they are engaging trade magazines. I might have eliminated the hundreds of people recently laid off from the financial sector.

It is tough to get a job in this marketplace. I have Ivy League graduates, distinguished authors, and seasoned researchers interested in this entry-level position. The hard truth is that everyone needs to figure out how to market him or herself. Public relations isn’t just for celebrities or snack food vendors. Just ask applicant number 455, whose head bobbed above the hundreds of hopeful emails. These days interactive or other forms of advanced resumes, clever outreach, and storytelling are vital for highly successful job searches and school applications.

The Stalk Market

Winnie and I attended the buy-nothing-day protest in New York yesterday.  This was after reading headlines about a Wal-Mart worker who had been trampled to death in Long Island by unruly bargain shoppers. I had recently re-read the much publicized story of Addie Polk, a 90-year old victim of predatory lending that resulted in foreclosure, who shot herself in her bedroom as the sheriff knocked on the door on the day she was to be forcibly removed.  Our credit culture has gone too far awry to be an armchair critic.

Winnie and I found the buy-nothing-day protestors at Barnes & Noble on Union Square.  The idea is to take one day – “Black Friday” – and boycott consumerism.  At first we weren’t sure if we had found protestors or a holiday marching band.  We were standing right in front of Starbucks, half a block from the protest, when we clearly heard their chants about the rot of a consumer-crazed culture.

But I was very thirsty.  I have been taking extra asthma medicine and suffering the side effect of dry mouth.  I am hooked on iced chai latte from Starbucks.  I said to Winnie, you probably want to wait for me on the sidewalk, right?  She didn’t say anything, only raised her left eyebrow.  I don’t know why people promise things they can’t control, like promising Winnie I’d be back in a sec when in reality I had no control over how long it might take to assemble my drink.  But I had promised to be quick and so became very stressed when the Barista collaboration begin to break down.

A couple minutes in to waiting for my order, the buy-nothing-day protestors in green santa hats descended on Starbucks. Baristas in green aprons begin chasing a few protestors around the store, who were offering leaflets to the confused coffee drinkers.  A huge crowd converged on the sidewalk directly in front of the door, chanting and ranting.   The remaining Baristas behind the counter began making nervous errors, like rimming the drink with chocolate instead of caramel and forgetting the whipped cream altogether.  I thought that customers should just grab whatever drink was offered to them, given the radically altered circumstances.  But they were stubborn, continuing to insist that the Barista’s fix the mounting drink errors.

Wow, I thought, I am being protested.  By Winnie.  I’ve been protested before, but never by loved ones.  Once the Young Republicans at Chico State protested a speech I had been invited to make about affirmative action.  The protest leader wore a Hooters shirt and held a sign that read “Reverse Discrimination Sucks.”

My iced chai latte was half made but stuck behind a long line of errors.  Protestors were now making speeches in front of the huge glass Starbucks panes and I could see news cameras.  I decided to take pictures of the protest, from the vantage point of a protestee (see below).  The security-prone Baristas told me to cut it out.  I told the other protestees who were waiting for their corrected drink orders that we were not supposed to be consuming today.  One of them rolled their eyes but nobody said anything back.  I had to wait on the sidewalk in front of Starbucks until the entire protest crowd had moved along to their next target before Winnie reappeared.  “You protested me!”, I said, cupping my iced tea between my gloved hands. “Yes”, she smiled.

Even in such dire economic conditions that a trip to the dentist has become a coveted Christmas present, the country can’t resist overspending.  We find ourselves caught in Starbucks, purchasing a $3.35 tea that can be created for a few cents in our own kitchens, even when our hearts are with those who are fighting the corrupt underbelly of the consumption propaganda campaign.

The tenuous distinction between promoting excess consumption for “good”, like to prop up the stock marketing, and consumption for “evil”, like trampling a Wal-Mart employee and then grumbling about the store being closed, is a weak barrier between order and chaos.  Credit is branded as honorable – a high credit score lands you access to jobs and money, and a low one reveals you as a suspicious character.  Everyone wants credit, even though it is credit itself that has thrown families out of their homes and cars and has propelled the nation into an economic sinkhole.

I am grateful that in a moment of either prescience or sheer luck we committed, from the earliest days, to build a firm that did not rely on credit.  Camino PR grows at the pace that the marketplace demands.  We seek out the most frugal solutions to even the thorniest challenges (check out Pablo’s excellent blog about open source solutions).  We work simply, so that our drag on the earth’s resources is minimal.

One weekday afternoon my kids claimed to have no homework, so I assigned them an essay on the Wall Street meltdown. Not surprisingly, the kids had no confidence that the adults could pay back the bailout we’ve just gifted to corporate America. My 6th grade son proposed in an essay titled “the Stalk Market Crash” that each household contribute $200 to a debt relief fund, so that his generation could have the money it will take to fix the economy. If you consider that there are almost 115 million households in the country, he created a plan that would generate a $2.3 trillion savings account for bailout relief.  It would require each of us to contribute roughly the equivalent of 60 iced chai latte’s from Starbucks.  Not a bad idea.

Channeling Lynn Spears

Landing a 3-minute middle school parent/teacher conference in New York is akin to running with the bulls. Not everyone makes it to the finish line, and those who do hope simply to not be gored at the end. I grew up in the southwest, where competing for a limited number of 3-minute teacher conference slots is simply bizarre. But I am now a New Yorker with two children in the public middle school system and so I am becoming tougher by the year. Today I jumped in the parent/teacher conference competition for my son who is just starting his middle school career.

The hallways were crammed with worried parents who were shocked to see their star student kids come home with report cards that read “satisfactory” but not “excellent”. One boy reported that his parent slapped him upon seeing the report card. The hallway rumor mill reports that schools are graded on “improvement”, and therefore it is quite unusual to get an “excellent” in any subject in the first quarter.

While I was waiting in the long snaking line of parents anxious to speak to Ms. Quackenbush, the homeroom teacher, I asked other parents how they were able to take an afternoon off from work for about 9 total minutes of teacher interaction. The parent next to me explained that she is a professional personal lingerie shopper and therefore has a flexible schedule. She first evaluates her client’s existing lingerie collection, and then escorts them to some of New York’s finest underwear stores. Her results are transformative, which she credits to a course she took on “women studying pleasure”. I asked her why women had such a hard time buying underwear. She blamed a pitiful social environment that suppresses women’s abilities to feel good about themselves.

Nobody was interested in chatting with me while I waited for the science teacher (perhaps they had overheard the lingerie conversation and were frightened), so I read the packet of information handed to parents as we arrived. This small packet included a full page of safety advice for teens. They recommend that teens carry $10 in “escape money” so that if a cab driver starts acting bizarre you can toss ten bucks at him and jump out at a red light.

Apparently the public school authorities understand that you’ve got to be tough to be a New Yorker. Loretta graduated from middle school in the Bronx, which may explain her safety shrewdness. Just last week as I was leaving the office after dark she advised me to roll up my New York Times very tightly like a stick so I can shank any muggers in the throat if attacked. And then she added as an aside, run like hell afterwards because the mugger will be very angry. I am pretty sure that Loretta has never seen the New York Times used in this way, and I’m very sure that if I am mugged I will politely turn over my ipod.

It’s tough being a stage Mom – even if you are an education stage Mom where the goal is far, far from celebrity-dom. There is a lot of waiting around. I read Lynn Spear’s autobiography to see if I could learn some things that might put stage Mom-ing to good causes. There are some bizarre moments in the book – like when she nearly sent her teen daughter to a Christian home for unwed pregnant teens and instead brought her to New York on a vacation where they snuck in to the movie theatre to watch “Juno.” Mostly it seems that Lynn Spears transported Britney and her sister to lots of extra curricular activities, and waited around. Plus, when she could, she got pushy.

The first time I ran with the bulls was for my daughter, when parents began assembling an hour ahead of the scheduled conference time outside the school doors in the bitter November wind. At exactly noon the principal threw open the doors and parents ran – literally – up the five flights of stairs to the middle school floor. Some parents got winded by floor three and slowed down or stopped to take off their jackets, but the more fit parents just ran past them. Finally, my gym membership had really paid off. Once on the fifth floor, the trick was to run from classroom to classroom and sign up for a meeting, and then race back and forth through the hallways to check your status on the call sheets. The most entertaining meeting was with the gym teacher, who stopped me in the hallway and said “You are Mia’s Mom, I guarantee you that you are Mia’s Mom…” and then led me to his desk where he talked non stop for the entire three minutes, ending with “No matter what happens, Mia’s team won the 6th grade volleyball championships and you can never take that away from her. She served the winning point, did she tell you that? Nope, nobody can ever take that away from her. Never.”

A few weeks ago while shopping for high schools at the borough fair, I switched gears and started asking hard questions, like whether the school environment was gay friendly. One guidance counselor became flustered, claiming “I can’t know what everyone is thinking” and told me the story of how a few years ago a student “had a parent situation like mine” but problems were averted because “only one of them came with her at a time to the school, they didn’t ever come together.” A few guys from the performing arts schools were gleeful to be asked and begged me to choose their school.

It was far more satisfying to engage in a discussion about creating an empowering and respectful educational environment rather than focusing on whether or not my kid should have received an “excellent” grade instead of the less glamorous “satisfactory.” Loretta has told me to stop harassing public workers, but I couldn’t help myself. I called my daughter’s school principal and asked her what she is doing to make sure there isn’t gender bias in the classroom. They have ramped up their ballroom dancing curriculum, but the girls outnumber the boys so my daughter has been assigned the role of a “boy”. I asked the principal what she intended to do about the fact that the dance program reinforced the role of boys as leaders and girls as followers. Couldn’t she have simply assigned my daughter to the role of “leader”, instead of forcing a gender switch? And isn’t it possible that two girls might someday want to ballroom dance together? In a month where gay marriage just became legal in Connecticut, shouldn’t these kids be able to imagine a groom and groom waltzing?

Unfortunately, after about three minutes, the principal was called away to an emergency meeting in the middle of our phone conversation.

Funny News

“You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore…”
- former President Richard Nixon to the press after losing his 1962 race for California Governor

Researchers from Pew have reminded us again that distrust of news organizations is on the rise. This trend started well before this Presidential election race, but the fury on the campaign trail is accelerating some viewer discontent. The McCain/Palin campaign has whipped up so much fury about the media on the campaign trail their supporters recently made obscene gestures at the media caravan that was covering their town hall gathering.

News parody shows like the Daily Show and the Colbert Report have benefited from this growing trust gap. Now CNN and other news outlets are imitating Comedy Central, with new shows like DL Hughley Breaks the News. The new CNN effort is more akin to The Tonight Show than the Daily Show, but it’s intent is clear: comic relief. “When you watch as much news as our audience does, there comes a time when you just want to stop and laugh” said CNN executive Jonathan Klein.

Audiences are finding satire to be a more genuine look at the day’s events. As fun as the Saturday Night Live skits have been, I’m disappointed that news organizations aren’t trying to solve their growing credibility problems by become more, well, credible. Maybe drawing a more clear line between opinion and fact would be a good start.

In a recent article, Pew reminds us of some historical attacks on the integrity of the press. Those with the biggest bully pulpits have been at the forefront of undermining trust of the media:

Thomas Jefferson once said that he would prefer newspapers without a government to a government without newspapers. In the aftermath of news reports regarding his personal life, he flipped sides and said, “The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.”

Lyndon Johnson called the New York Times “a bunch of commies”, and in recent weeks Governor Sarah Palin whips up her crowds into a chorus of boos aimed at the “liberal media” and “The New York Times.” McCain campaign senior advisor said that the New York Times “is today not by any standard a journalistic organization.”

President H.W. Bush used this slogan on his campaign trail: “Annoy the media: re-elect Bush.” His son, President George W. Bush, claims to “glance at the headlines” but “rarely read the stories”, preferring instead to have “people on my staff [tell] me what’s happening in the world.”

Newt Gingrich ranted earlier this week about the Presidential election news coverage, “…we have been brainwashed, propagandized, insultingly lectured by the news media”.

Although I am dubious about the wisdom of CNN competing with Comedy Central, I am a big fan of using comedy and art to authentically speak out about society’s complex struggles. That’s why Camino PR published a book of cartoons last year. Here are a few of my favorites:

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