In Defense of Fun

My daughter Mia was published in a magazine this month! She wrote an essay on beauty for New Moon Magazine, a quarterly national magazine for girls. Go Mia! Asked to write about what makes her beautiful, she cited her opposition to the war, her desire to succeed in school, and her ability to have fun. She says “after I have fun I am a lot friendlier to everyone, which makes other people happy…”

Which I can attest is true, and which might be good advice for adults.

I have just finished reading Jeffrey Toobin’s book on the Supreme Court (”The Nine”), where he discusses former Justice Sandra Day O’Conner’s penchant for parties and socializing. She required her female law clerks to join her in morning exercise, which at one point included a salsa class. She required her clerks to decorate pumpkins at Halloween. Her ability to zealously pursue life’s pleasures seems to have invigorated her legal mind and broadened her social views. She became, in her measured and careful style, the most powerful legal influence in this country and perhaps some may argue in the world during her time on the court.

Toobin’s book often draws you in like a reality TV show while making the nation’s legal machinations understandable to the common reader. Some of the quotes are sheer gossip but they are fun. Remember how Nina Totenberg “broke” the Anita Hill story during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings? Thomas later joked, “I have finally had the opportunity to have my surgeon remove her many stilettos from my back..” Justice Scalia, who often votes in synch with Thomas, was once asked to compare their judicial philosophies. Scalia replied, “I am an originalist, but I am not a nut”.

By the end of Toobin’s book I was left worried, again, about who might appoint the next justice.

Yesterday Mia was at the UN in her official capacity as middle school student council Vice President, strategizing with kids from dozens of countries on human rights issues. As she describes the meeting’s premise, kids from around the world became concerned that with weapons stockpiling the adults were going to blow up the planet. So they thought they better organize. Not a bad idea.

I Get Published

I got published this week - my opinion piece is in this week’s issue of PR Week. It’s pretty exciting to appear in this journal if you’re a communications professional. The article explores the newest intersection of social media and citizen journalism.

For many who aren’t communications professionals, those two phrases are like talking about the intersection of macro and Keynesian economics. Not only do most people not know what these terms mean, they have a hard time wanting to figure it out.

That wasn’t the case for the anti-abortion lobby. They not only read my article with great interest, they issued a press release condemning it. I can only surmise that it was a slow news day for them. After falsely accusing me of “applauding” and “complaining” about the issues, they conclude, “Ultimately, Toledo gives Planned Parenthood a playbook for the new media outlook that is important for pro-life advocates to keep in mind”.

The point of my article is that the influence of the everyday news consumer is about to grow exponentially. If you don’t think the news covers the right subjects - or if you think the news is missing the kind of diversity that reflects society - there’s a whole new landscape for your opinion to be heard. This isn’t just about new voices making it onto the pages of the New York Times - this is about influencing what the editors of the major news outlets deem newsworthy.

It may be hard to imagine that the executive editors at the New York Times, CNN, and Reuters are sitting around wondering what I think ought to make headline news this week. But that’s the exact scenario they just invested heavily in. The bet is that the networks that can spark citizen engagement are going to be the media outlets that ultimately deliver the most compelling content (and, of course, deliver the highest ratings).

Thanks, PR Week, for the publication!

Remembering Cesar Chavez

Cesar Chavez died today, 15 years ago.

Congressman Joe Baca and Senator Robert Menendez published an opinion piece today, urging the nation to elevate Cesar Chavez’s to hero status. They have been pushing a resolution that would “urge the creation of a national holiday celebrating his life, and encourage public schools to teach about his work”. Ten states have already declared statewide holidays.

For all of the hype about the rise of the Latino majority in the United States, we have remarkably few recognized heroes. I challenge you to quickly name five Latino/a U.S.-based heroes.

Chavez dedicated his life to improving labor conditions for poor workers, particularly migrants. Recently Latino restaurant workers who claim they are paid “slave wages” of $1.25 per hour as dishwashers and delivery staff have been protesting at various New York restaurants. Below is a picture of some workers protesting at a restaurant in my neighborhood.

It took 15 years after the assassination of Martin Luther King for a federal holiday to be established in his honor. It took another 17 years after the federal law was signed for all 50 states to officially observe the holiday. Many states resisted, including Virginia which had created a “Lee-Jackson-King Day” to simultaneously celebrate King’s legacy alongside a celebration of Confederate Army generals.

My home state of Arizona famously resisted the King holiday. In 1987 the Governor rescinded the MLK holiday in one of his first acts in office. In 1990 efforts to pass a ballot measure to restore the holiday were defeated. In 1992 the pro-King advocates tried again and this time won by a landslide. The campaign made very different choices in 1992, many which were at odds with local leaders. Peter Burr of Command Research described the campaign strategy in an article written by Erik Dodds Potholm.

Campaign obstacles included major voter fatigue, an impression among white voters that the holiday was really for African Americans, a misimpression that King had stimulated violence, and widespread annoyance that the state had been labeled “racist” by outsiders after the 1990 defeat.

The campaign message strategy was:

1. Emphasize King’s values, not his life
2. Work with groups outside of Arizona to minimize the appearance of outside influence
3. Minimize opportunities for opponents to be heard by avoiding media events where reporters would seek both sides of the story.
4. Use ads that minimized confrontation and focused on ordinary people of diverse backgrounds
5. Invest more in grassroots than in paid advertising

Thankfully, the strategy worked and the King Holiday initiative won by a landslide.

War Propaganda

The New York Times published a major expose yesterday of the propaganda efforts by the Pentagon to promote the Iraq war to the American public. After winning a lawsuit where the Times demanded secret documentation about publicity efforts, a front-page article documented an orchestrated campaign to use opinion leaders on leading news outlets to shape public opinion.

In summary, the Pentagon gave special access and privileges to a select group of military analysts who were used by CNN, Fox News, and other outlets to provide commentary on the war. The analysts got an intense inside glimpse of the government’s military operations, including government paid trips to Iraq and other sites, and were given talking points and media strategies to help bolster public opinion about war efforts. In return, many of them secured important contracts with media outlets and in many cases used their insider status to secure billion-dollar contracts as suppliers to the war effort. A senior aide working on the project, Brent Krueger, told the Times that the effort was designed so that military analysts would be “writing the op-ed” for the war.

At some point in the Pentagon war communications effort it is clear that public relations strategies drifted from advocacy to propaganda. Some of the “military analysts” admit that they had serious doubts about the war operation but did not express them publicly because their financial interests were too important. Others claim they stayed quiet about their doubts because they prioritized keeping the public enthusiastic over the need for full disclosure. One commentator was immediately cut off from the Pentagon when he criticized the administration. News outlets have been embarrassed by the ordeal; CNN admitted it did not perform due diligence in ensuring that its commentators did not have a personal interest in the subject matter. ABC issued a strained statement that avoided directly dealing with the expose, and Fox News refused to comment.

Media veteran Torie Clarke is at the center of the scandal; she headed communications strategies for Donald Rumsfeld and is credited with creating the strategy. Clarke is a long-time Republican operative, and has personally supported candidates like Rick Santorum and Arlen Specter. She used to work for John McCain.

Clarke wrote a book, “Lipstick on a Pig, Winning in the No Spin Era”. She appeared on the Jon Stewart Show in 2006 to promote her book. Stewart asked her about what “no spin” meant to her.

Stewart: “When you say the no spin era, in what world?”

Clarke: “Our world. Think about how fast information rockets around the world, think about the millions of people that watch your show, and its just all instantaneous. The bad stuff can’t hide, it just can’t hide anywhere.”

Stewart: “When you say bad stuff, you mean lying or massaging or…”

Clarke: “All of the above.”

Stewart: “You’re saying it can’t work. ”

Clarke: “Yeah, I’ve never really subscribed to it myself, never really tried it myself, and in this era it just doesn’t work.”

Stewart (incredulously): “You’ve worked for Donald Rumsfeld”.

The Washington Post covered the expose in its Style section today. Howard Kurtz, who also hosts the CNN program “Reliable Sources” , wrote in the Post that “What has been obscured is the extent to which [military pundits] are still part of the military’s web and entangled with companies trying to milk the Pentagon for profit.”

Woody Allen Returns

Woody Allen is filming in my patio along with about 50 set people. They have simulated a bright sunny day by installing huge lights on my staircase, which means that I am trapped in this basement office. There is a massive bee heaving itself between the light fixtures in my office. Jeff is bravely doing his research trying to ignore the bee, I have turned off the lights above my desk in a cowardly attempt to keep the bee on Jeff’s side of the office.

In my old job I would have called the guys in the facilities office to take care of the bee. It’s hard to be an entrepreneur. Once a four-year-old friend said, about swimming with your head under water, that you have to “be bwave”. I think about being “bwave” when the thousand details of business ownership seem overwhelming.

Mostly I love the experience of entrepreneurship. In many ways I feel connected to more people as a business owner than I did as an employee, a phenomenon I attribute to the blogosphere. Instead of me, Jeff and the bee today, it feels like me, Jeff, the bee, and several thousand of my closest online friends. I bet, if I took the time, I would find a listserve whose aficionados would recommend the best way to maintain a bee-free office.

New research circulated by PR Week today further unmasks the blogger. It turns out that Hispanics are much more likely than others to blog. According to BIGresearch, the average blogger is male, 37.6 years old, a libertarian, unmarried, lower income, and uses a cell phone. What’s most interesting about the research is that almost 25% of registered voters blog, marking a serious increase in political blogs.

Beyond blogging, new technologies help make small organizations appear more prominent. Camino PR has just begun using interactive press releases - which means that reporters can mouse over sections of the release and get pop up windows that include photos, related web sites, citations, video, and more. New distribution mechanisms spend as much time making sure a client’s information gets to the right bloggers and websites as it does putting the release in the hands of traditional reporters.

It’s not like computers can take care of life’s mundane tasks, like filing all my tax receipts in the right folder. But I am wildly more efficient as a small business owner than I was as an employee, given that these tools have become my expanded workforce.

Someone yelled, “That’s a wrap!” upstairs and now there is loud equipment dismantling on the staircase. The bee is resting on the light. I am wondering how long a very fat bee can live. It’s Friday; will it die over the weekend? Should I try to push it out the door or would it attack me right back? Should I kill the bee, and if so, how? Among our environmentally friendly products are there any that would choke a bee?

Punishable by Death

President Bush told the Pope that he gave an “awesome speech” at the White House yesterday. The Pope urged thousands of White House guests to live fully their religious values in their secular lives. Even as Bush told the cheering crowd and the Pope that “all life is sacred”, the Supreme Court was affirming the death penalty just down the street. The Pope has to be one of the world’s most influential critics of the death penalty. The five Catholic Supreme Court justices headed to a White House dinner with the Pope following their affirmation of the death penalty.

Justice Stevens declared his opposition to the death penalty while voting to uphold it yesterday, in deference to legal precedent. On the other end of the spectrum, Justice Roberts concluded that executing prisoners was not “cruel and unusual punishment”, and compared lethal injection to going to sleep. Justice Clarence Thomas preferred an even harsher standard than Roberts in evaluating death penalty practices but took pains to explain that extraordinary cruel methods of the death penalty would not be allowed, such as “burning prisoners alive”. Justice Scalia punted to the states, declaring that the issue ought to be decided by the legislatures not the courts.

Perhaps the massive gulf between Catholic teaching and public opinion on the death penalty in this country caused the justices - along with Christian leaders nationwide - to present a strained and disparate justification for their positions. Leading Christian conservatives Gary Bauer, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and James Dobson have all spoken in favor of the death penalty. Pat Buchanon challenged Pope John Paul II on his anti-death penalty position, declaring that “it is the Holy Father and the bishops who are outside the Catholic mainstream, and at odds with Scripture, tradition and natural law”. Most US-based Catholics, like most Americans overall, support the death penalty. Over the last ten years the support for the death penalty in the United States has decreased from 75% to 63%, which represents an encouraging trend and discouraging distance to travel for death penalty opponents.

One of the most impactful speakers in opposition to the death penalty in this country is Sister Helen Prejean. Prejean was absent from news coverage of the decision yesterday. The Tim Robbins movie based on Prejean’s book (”Dead Man Walking”) is worth renting again. Prejean often points to media bias about the death penalty in her remarks; she accuses the media of making it easy for the public to view killing prisoners in positive terms, such as justice being done or a crime avenged.

Newspapers today mostly treated the decision as a front-page story; in fact more prominent coverage was given to the death penalty decision than the Pope’s remarks. Most headlines used somewhat modest language, supporting Prejean’s theory. The LA Times wrote, “High court finds lethal injections are humane”, the Washington Post wrote “Justices Uphold Lethal Injection Procedure”, and the Chicago Tribune led with “Stevens now foe of death penalty”.

The Obama-Clinton debate was the most prominent newspaper headline today. All three Presidential candidates are death penalty supporters. According to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, Hillary Clinton is a “longtime advocate” of the death penalty. She lobbied for Bill Clinton’s crime bill, which expanded the list of crimes punishable by death. John McCain is also a proponent of the death penalty, and has supported the expansion of the death penalty law. Barack Obama is tentative in his support, sounding very much like a politician caught between his convictions and his political reality. Obama supports punishment by death when “the community is justified in expressing the full measure of its outrage”.

Ron Paul is the only contender that opposes the death penalty, and is on record praising former Pope John Paul II for his opposition to punishment by death. Yes, he is still running.

Skin Equality

Yesterday was the 15th anniversary of my Grandmother’s death. Below is a picture of her with my Dad.

My Nana had the most beautiful skin I’ve ever seen. Everyone agrees on this point. Every night she used what she called “Campana” on her skin. I remember that it smelled bad, and that she only used it at night. In my memory she used it nightly without fail; I even saw a tub of Campana on her dresser on the day she died. I later learned that the product was probably the very popular Mexican product, “Pomada de la Campana”, often called “the miracle cream”. It means “clear my sister’s melasma”.

Perhaps she never developed melasma - which is a skin discoloration on the face that effects many Latina’s - because of the Campana. I visited a highly regarded dermatology practice in Soho to seek relief from the brown patches on my face after innumerable hairdressers and even my eye doctor urged me to fix the problem. Without prompting a nail technician recently whispered that while her manager was out she could perform some sort of laser treatment on my brown spots for half price. There is no adverse health reason to get rid of melasma, only vanity. After two visits, hundreds of dollars in products, and an outbreak of hives every time I put the very pricey French sunscreen on my skin, my brown spots are still with me.

My experience was a common one described in an article published last week by USA Today on skin color and dermatology. The Skin of Color Society has been growing rapidly over the last four years as the industry recognizes the need for differing treatment models based on skin tone. The organization is supported by Johnson & Johnson, L’Oreal, and other industry giants. It looks like a noble effort, thought it doesn’t help me figure out which dermatologists understand my skin type. Don’t all of them study all kinds of skin? With the long list of causes that need our urgent attention, do we have to add equality for my skin patches to the list?

Johnson & Johnson is preparing for the changing demographics in the U.S. like every other retailer. It’s been slow for industry to expand their view of the “norm”. When the birth control patch was introduced by Ortho Evra many women objected to its description,”flesh tone”, which was only available in the color of flesh for many Caucasian women.

Perhaps if I had used Campana I wouldn’t be worried about brown spots. I am vacillating between asking my Dad to pick up some Campana for me next time he crosses the border, and finding a new dermatologist with a specialty in brown skin. The bigger issue perhaps is whether I fight the societal norms that place such a high value on appearance, or whether I succumb to my vanity and “improve” my appearance.

Deducting My Salad

The subway train was deserted this morning, and my phone has not rung once. I assume that everyone is finishing his or her taxes. I filed online and on time, learning a hard lesson after getting stung by not filing the year I earned $11,000 while living in San Francisco. I was either too disorganized or I figured that nobody would bother with an $11,000 annual income, but later I ended up paying substantial penalties.

Tax politics are a gruesome game and a messaging morass. On this day every year, with either Republicans or Democrats at the helm, I am always feeling financially outsmarted and overtaxed. So if I can’t figure out which politicians have my back, I began to wonder, which organizations are advocating for my financial future?

For the last few years ago the National Council of Women’s Organizations and other feminist groups have gone toe-to-toe with Republicans over social security privatization. It used to be that housewives got severely penalized for the years they did not spend in the workforce. Then, married couples were allowed to collect social security based on either income, so the stay-at-home Mom still got benefits equal to her go-to-work husband. Since most husbands earned more than wives, this was an important economic equalizer for women’s right proponents.

The anti-privatization movement has not found its messaging sweet spot in feminist politics. Even press release headlines are wonky and it takes some digging to figure out the bottom line. In short, though, feminists seem to be advocating for the following:

- A “Family Service Credit” to boost social security payments for stay-at-home spouses;
- In a nod to the divorce rate, dropping the number of years of required marriage from 10 to 7 before eligibility for tax savings kicks in;
- An increase in the amount of benefits given to widows;
- An increase in benefits for disabled widows and divorced disabled spouses.

All this leaves unmarried women (including me) in the same retirement morass, given the gender wage gap that persists. I’m happy to support the cause of married or divorced-after-long-marriages women. Nevertheless, I kept digging to find someone helping my personal tax dilemma.

I checked out the National Association of Women Business Owners website. As it turns out, small businesses, which are dominated by women, get the short end of tax deductions compared to big businesses, which are dominated by men. For example, I can attest to the fact that small businesses rely much more on meals and entertainment for “marketing”, compared to the big ad campaigns run by large corporations. However, big corporations get to deduct 100% of their ad campaigns while small businesses get to deduct only 50% of our business lunches. This doesn’t even seem fiscally sensible - wouldn’t Washington rather have a share of multimillion-dollar ad campaigns instead of 50% of my Cobb Salad?

Still, I didn’t feel completely satisfied that my tax frustrations were being met. So I next checked out “Tax Tips for Gays, Lesbians and Same-Sex Couples” on About.com. This is a very short entry, which basically says that everyone is one their own, don’t even think about gaining a tax advantage from your relationship.

Next I decided to Google myself with the terms: “single mom”, “small business owner”, “Latina”,” taxes”. And guess what? I was taken directly to President Bush’s remarks on the tax cut proposal.

Finally, my profile was front and center. In the second paragraph Bush says, “Latino businesses are growing faster than the government can count. Back in 1997, there were 1.4 million Latino-owned businesses. Since then, the number has been growing by an estimated 25 percent. No one is entirely sure of the total. Your success has left all statistics behind, and America is better off for it.”

Then Bush said the economy looked bad, and since in his view “my job is to lead”, he had a plan. After assuring us that “every big business began as a small business”, he said that his plan would “reduce the marginal rates that many small businesses pay”.

I didn’t even know that marginal rates were damaging me. Frankly, I didn’t know what he meant by “marginal rate”. But upon further Googling, I figured out that the anti-marginal rate people were also worried about the amount of my Cobb Salad that I could deduct. It turns out these Bush-style tax advocates wanted to let me deduct 80% of my salad, not the radical 100% proposed by the National Association of Women Business Owners.

With that, I concluded my tax research and decided to take advantage of the quiet phone and go to lunch. Which is not tax deductible, not even if I were married for a decade and at the helm of a very large business.

Sanger’s Passion

Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.
- Oscar Wilde

I asked a friend recently what in life she might regret. “Not finding my passion”, she lamented. It was a shocking answer given that she had blazed trails for women in her field and had a list of charitable activities whose volume would rival Angelina Jolie.

Mike Wallace asked Margaret Sanger, one of the world’s most famous trailblazers, about finding her passion in a 1957 interview.

Sanger says she was a “born humanitarian”. She looks straight at Wallace and says with a stern and unflinching expression, “I don’t like to see people suffer, I don’t like to see cruelty, even to this day.”

Wallace presses her further. He speculates that it was not simply the cause itself, but the breathtaking rush of making change, that may have spurred on Sanger.

“Is it possible, Wallace says, “that the movement itself, the feeling of wanting to do anything that you felt was important, that perhaps that moved you a good deal. Because, the fact remains that you led a movement against overwhelming pressures that stem back to centuries and in doing so according to your biography you even left your first husband..”

Sanger dismisses Wallace’s theory, and goes on to criticize a host of social ills from child poverty to homophobia. She has no tolerance for a world which bears children that are destined to be sick or disenfranchised. Still, Wallace persisted.

Could it be, despite Sanger’s genuine concern for “suffering”, that some of us are also spurred by the adreneline of the movement even while we believe we are drawn only to the cause itself?

The Harmonious Journey

The pro-Tibet activists have been dominating western news coverage of the Olympics. I’m not certain why the Olympic committee chose San Francisco as the only North American site for the torch run, given the city’s deep history of protest. The Chinese officially dub the torch run the “Harmonious Journey”. Despite its hopeful moniker, the ill-fated torch run in San Francisco yesterday was anything but harmonious.

The Chinese Consultant tried to drown out opposition voices by bussing in supporters from Sacramento. The Organization of Chinese Americans also contributed supporters, as well as the Northern California Chinese Cultural Athletics Federation who brought 20 buses from nearby cities. Despite the hundreds of imported supporters, the torch run was secretly moved last minute to a location far away from the celebratory stage and cheering (or jeering) crowds. The torchbearers are always surrounded by a group of men called the “flame protection squad” who quickly ripped a Tibetan flag from the hands of an activist torchbearer as he neared the Golden Gate bridge.

Bussing in Chinese supporters was as knuckleheaded a grassroots strategy as choosing San Francisco in the first place. The Tibetan activists have been effective at the use of symbolism, not amassing crowds. They are passionate and disciplined. The Students for a Free Tibet - the group that hung the banners on the Golden Gate bridge a few days ago and created international front page news - describe their staff as “living to make life difficult for the Chinese government” (emphasis mine). Compare that to Amnesty International who describes themselves as “working to protect human rights worldwide”.

The Tibetan activists use symbolism as their grassroots weapon, which is why the Olympic torch has been a natural cause celebe for them. I assume this is the first time in history that the torch proceeded by bus through Paris after protestors extinguished the flame several times. The Olympic games have always been about symbolism as much as they are about athletics.

The most famous symbolic protest in US Olympic history is the 1968 image of Tommie Smith and John Carlos raising a fist on the Olympic platform (see photo below). The protest had been urged by Harry Edwards (Olympic Project for Human Rights). Smith raised his right fist to represent black power, and Carlos raised his left fist to represent unity in black America. Smith wore a black scarf to represent black pride, and their lack of shoes represented black poverty in America. Both Smith and Carlos were kicked out of the Olympic village and suspended from their team. The headline in Sports Illustrated was “The Black Athlete - A Shameful Story”.

1968 was marked by protest in the United States. 100 women stood outside the Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City and threw girdles, steno pads, and high heels in a trash can. Students occupied academic and administrative buildings at Columbia University for six days in response to Vietnam horrors and other social issues. Martin Luther King, Jr and Robert F Kennedy were assassinated in the spring. Less than two weeks prior to the suummer Olympic games the Mexican Army opened fire on a large student protest, killing hundreds.

Leading up to the 1968 Olympic games, the year prior, Muhammed Ali had been prosecuted for refusing to be drafted and he was stripped of his boxing title. Ali said “No, I’m not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end”. That same year a new organization was formed, the “Olympic Project for Human Rights”, whose aim was to organize a boycott of the Olympic games and to restore Muhammed Ali’s title.

Stripped of his title and out of prison on bail bond, Ali spent 1968 on a speaking tour. His title was restored in 1970. In 1996 Ali carried the Olympic torch and lit the flame in a symbol of unity. He said, “An honor. Mankind coming together. Martin Luther King’s home. Muslims seeing me with this torch.” President Clinton spoke to Ali shortly after the ceremony, “They didn’t tell me who would light the flame, but when I saw it was you, I cried”.

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