Happy New Year, Leo McGarry Style

Lots of people have New Year's Eve traditions: eating special foods; opening the door at midnight to let the 'bad' out and the 'good' in; attending the same NYE party with the same people every year; singing 'Auld Lang Syne' at midnight... 

Me? Not so much. My husband and I sometimes spend the time with family or friends, but typically we're comfortably at home, with the cats, some snacks and wine, and relax our way to the ball drop.

Last night (OK, most of the day, who am I kidding?) I watched several episodes of the second term of the Bartlet administration. That's right - Jed, and CJ, and Toby, and Josh, and Leo, and the rest of the gang are being replayed on HLN's 'The West Wing' marathon. 

The network originally ran the series at Christmas, and I was delighted to receive such a gift; it's one of my favorite shows ever. The writing; the complex characters and their relationships; the perfect cast to bring them to life; and even the 'accidental' theme song, which has been playing in my head since around 5 Am. Unlike most songs that attack me during the early hours, I'm not eager to chase this one away.

Having the episodes available again - and picking up almost at the point where I left off last time? Another gift. Having them available on New Year's Eve, when we put ourselves through the introspection -prospection routine? Priceless. 

The episode that most struck a chord with me was last night's '365 Days' -  with the return of former Chief of Staff Leo McGarry - on the day after Bartlet's final State of the Union address. They wanted him back, after his heart attack and surgery. Everyone wanted to pick his brain on whatever crises they were dealing with, wanted him in the Situation Room, they all wanted him, but no one had a clue what they wanted from him.

Leo sat in a small office, devoid of decoration, nearly devoid of furniture. Sitting on the floor were tapes of Bartlet's inaugurals and State of the Union addresses. Leo sat in the chair, door open, watching one after another. Staffers wandered in and out, promising to get together with him, to plan, to catch up. The most memorable of the drive-bys was with the very neurotic Toby Ziegler, who wrote Bartlet's speeches.

Later, McGarry and Bartlet had dinner, alone in the residence, and at some point, he swung the conversation to the SOTU, and how it missed the mark. He shared examples, from his day of watching the videos, of promises made and not kept, and when Bartlet pushed back, Leo pushed harder. One of the best lines? Paraphrasing here, but Leo emphatically told Bartlet that he doesn't owe a thing to the Democratic Party, he owes everything to the American people. 

That line is one that I'll likely refer back to this year, what with the new Congress, and who knows how many presidential campaign announcements - how long before we get one? And, of course, it applies across the board: to both parties, and to local, state, and national issues.  

The show wrapped up with the senior staff summoned back to work by the President, and led to Leo's office. After a brief explanation from Bartlet on why they were there - to hear from an old friend - Leo updated his whiteboard from 365 days to 364 days left. He pointed out that they had all spent their days reacting to things, not proactively doing things.

He asked what they thought was important, and started listing their ideas: things left out of the SOTU, or that had been dropped over time. Things that motivated, energized, and inspired them. The things that mattered to them. 

I hope, as we sit at our literal or figurative whiteboards, we're able to fill them with things that motivate, energize, inspire, and matter to us, and that in some way, we share our journeys in 2023.

Happy New Year to you and yours. 

Wondering on Wednesday (v114)

Let's get right to it, shall we?

Since the president doesn't watch television, I wonder who had the unpleasant task of informing Donald Trump that, thanks to young people, African Americans, women and write-in voters, he was a two-time loser in the Alabama Senate race?

And, like practically everyone (and by everyone I mean all of the real human beings) who follows the president on Twitter, I wonder who it was that wrote the initial tweet sent on the @realDonaldTrump page congratulating Doug Jones?  Clearly these are not the words of the president:

Congratulations to Doug Jones on a hard fought victory. The write-in votes played a very big factor, but a win is a win. The people are Alabama are great and the Republicans will have another shot at this seat in a very short period of time. It never ends!

Nah - we had to wait until the morning before the real @aRealDonaldTrump put out his own words:

The reason I originally endorsed Luther Strange (and his numbers went up mightily), is that I said Roy Moore will not be able to win the General Election. I was right! Roy worked hard but the deck was stacked against him!

Of course, we don't know why Trump originally endorsed Big Luther, because he deleted most of those tweets as soon as Strange lost, and became a stranger to Trump.

I wonder, also, why Trump spent so much time talking about Nancy Pelosi in his comments about  Doug Jones. As we learned back in 2010, Nancy is quite athletic, but I don't think that she wields power over both the House and the Senate at the same time, does she?

Switching gears, we're told via #FakeNews that the House and Senate conference group working on reconciling the tax reform bill have come to terms, which include implementing the new 21% corporate tax rate next year. 

That's a tick up from the 20% the House wanted, but it goes into effect a year sooner than the Senate would have done in their version, so it's a win for corporations who will be bringing jobs and billions back to America.

But I have to wonder, are the reports even true, given the source?

Presidential Debate Questions (v1)

Tonight, NBC's Lester Holt will be the moderator of the first 2016 Presidential Debate.

Much has been said about what a moderator shouldn't do (repeat Matt Lauer's horrid performance hosting the Commander in Chief forum a while back; don't ask questions just to hear yourself talk; don't cut off the candidates unnecessarily; don't play favorites; don't be the star of the show, and so on) and what a moderator should do (fact-check Donald Trump; call him a liar when he lies, which he will; keep the candidates on the clock; ask Hillary about her emails, and so on).

We can expect that the rules will be broken, quickly - and that there'll be some squabbling, and Lester will likely have his hands full with these two candidates.

Personally, I have only one ground rule: answer the questions you are asked, and do so without talking about your opponent.  Meaning, talk about what you believe, and what you propose to do if elected, rather than wasting time talking about what you think your opponent believes or will do.

I know, I know, that's actually two ground rules, sorry. Mostly, I just want to have some questions answered. And none of them have anything to do with emails.

Here are five questions for Donald Trump:

1. You have so far refused to release your most recent tax return, which we've been told are hundreds and hundreds of pages long, and that you are under a routine audit for the twelfth year in a row. Instead of telling us why you won't release your taxes, can you please truthfully answer these three questions: What was your adjusted gross income? What was your tax liability (the amount you owed the government)? How much did you personally donate to charity?
2. You have made creating American jobs one of the cornerstones of your race for the Presidency. Please explain why your and your daughter personally brand items that are not made in America, and why over the past decade you have sought permission to bring in over 1,200 foreign workers to be waiters, waitresses, bartenders, and housekeepers for properties such as Mar-a-Lago and the Jupiter Golf Club?
3. You have talked in your speeches about immigrants needing to 'assimilate' if they want to stay. Not far from me, there's a two or three mile stretch of road that is anchored at one end by a Slovakian Baptist church and by a mosque at the other end. In between are an Antiochian Orthodox Christian church and a Macedonian Orthodox church. Given that they maintain their own houses of worship, would you consider any of these populations to be 'assimilated'? If yes, which one(s), and if not, what would you do about their lack of assimilation?
4. You have mentioned that we need to very extremely vet refugees and potential immigrants from Syria and other countries to prevent terrorism. Given that the several recent acts of what you refer to as radical Islamic terrorism have been committed by American citizens, should American citizens be 'extremely vetted?  And if yes, how would you identify the people who would be subject to this vetting?
5. You have said, when talking about the Second Amendment, that our broken mental health system needs to be fixed, and that "we need real solutions to address real problems." However, you offer no proposals on how to fix it.Name three specific things you believe we need to do to solve this problem.

And here are five questions for Hillary Clinton.

1. As part of your plan to combat terrorism, you make reference to an 'intelligence surge' to get security officials the tools they need to address both foreign terrorism and terrorism committed by American citizens. What is this surge, how would it be implemented and what are the expected outcomes?
2. You have talked about cutting the wasteful subsidies that oil and gas companies have enjoyed for far too long and instead invest in clean energy. Given the widely publicized failure of Solyndra, how would your plan differ from efforts undertaken by the Obama administration?
3. You mention creating incentives for companies to bring jobs back to America. Specifically, what incentives would you offer, and what are the specific job gains those incentives are designed to achieve?
4. Please provide some details on your plan to fundamentally reform veterans' health care and explain how you would pay for this program?
5. Name three specific things you would consider to be legitimate reasons to send American soldiers to war.

After each answer, they can argue at each other for a bit, and then move on to the next question. Now these questions won't likely be asked, but it would be interesting. 

As will tonight's real action - hope you'll be watching!

Wondering, on Wednesday (v41)

Tonight, on a cable news channel far, far away, there are a couple of GOP presidential candidate debates.  As with the previous two, there's an under card, featuring the candidates who are in the race for reasons known only to them. The 'happy hour' debate, as some call it, featured Bobby Jindal, George Pataki, Lindsay Graham, and Rick Santorum, who have about as much chance as I do of getting the nomination.  The rest of the gang is on the main card.

I won't be watching, because we have basic cable, and CNBC is not one of our thirteen channels. I know, I know - that's completely un-American, but it's the choice we've made. Similarly, we missed the Fox News Republican debate, and the Dem & Rep debates on CNN.

I'm wondering though, if these 'cable only' debates are an accident, or by design?

We knew the first debate had to be on Fox - that was a given.  But CNN and CNBC?

Is the Republican hierarchy trying to limit who can see the debates, the same as they want to limit people's ability to vote by changing the rules for early voting, in-person voting, leaving the line to go pee while you wait to vote, and so on?

Or, I wonder, are the giant media companies behind the shift to their cable affiliates? Do they really figure the network prime time lineups are way too important to interrupt with something as silly as, you know, a debate between people who want to be leader of the free world? Especially when they can force interested viewers to their cable channels, jack up ad rates, and rake in a few extra million bucks for democracy's sake?

I don't know about you, but I think we can - and should -- do better.

These debates should not be money-makers for the networks, they should be free-for-all free-for-alls, open to all Americans who are interested in watching them. The last thing we need is to have media conglomerates gerrymander the debates the same as the politicians gerrymander their districts.

A Great Business Model?

I've been thinking about whether we should upgrade our current basic cable (yes, I said basic cable - that's all we have) to something more substantial, such as Dish, DirecTV, or something less basic from our local cable monopoly. I've asked friends for help on Facebook, and am getting some pretty good feedback, mostly from people who are happy with what they have, even if where there are now is not where they started out. 

The more I think I'm going to do some research on it, the more I think I really don't want to. Because I hate the whole concept of how the whole getting-TV-into-my-house business works. Regardless of delivery method, it seems I'm gong to be stuck with a boatload of channels that I will NEVER watch, and don't want to pay for. 

For example, it seems like the retail therapy I do now from my laptop is simply not good enough. Apparently, I need five or ten home shopping networks, 24-hour infomercial channels, 'all jewelry all the time' broadcasts, and a corresponding number of auction networks so that I can do even more than my fair share to help our struggling economy.

And I guess we don't need our Bose sound system anymore - or my bookshelf stereo, or my HD radio either. Might as well just throw those out the window, because no matter how hard I try, it seems I'm going to be stuck with scads of radio channels on my television. Why? Because, clearly, I must want to have my TV on so I can listen to tinny twangers from the 40's, or virgin Viennese violin virtuosos, or terror-inducing tenors, or a bunch of rapacious rappers. Well, hold on a second -- I don't want to have my TV on so I can listen to the radio. I can already do that any of the above-mentioned radio-type devices. 

And, strangely enough, I've never felt the urge to start watching a show on my PC in the basement rec room, pause it and then start it up again when I'm in the second floor bathroom, only to pause it and start it again downstairs in the kitchen where I watch for a moment trying to determine whether I want a glass of chocolate milk, a cold beer, or something else. Then, I stop it one more time, grab my wine and ice cream and head for the home theater room where I can finally sit down, relax, and watch the weather forecast. 

Have you?

What I would really like is to call up some television service deliverer and say to them "I want my local channels, and I want these other 15 channels. And I don't want anything else. How much will that cost?" And if I were to ask that question, after they stopped laughing at me, I'd be told it's not possible.  You need to get these other channels, you need to have at least one hockey channel for every team, and at least four soccer channels, and six watching-waves-crash-against-the-shore channels, and 27 religious and inspirational channels, and movie channels, my poor girl, you simply must have 50 movie channels, you poor pitiful behind the times girl - and the choir of sobbing, hand-wringing customer service reps in the background can only be appeased if I spend my $39.99 or $49.99 or $79.99 or $89.99 or $199.99 per month for the two-year introductory period and get my dishes and boxes and cards and hoppers and DVRs and HGTV....oh wait that's a channel I want, not a delivery method, sorry. 

Oh - and bundle up, sister, because it's cold outside. Heaven forbid you have more than one supplier of TV, phone, and Internet service. Because that's plain un-American. Just ask them. 

Yep -- for some reason, these companies have come up with a business model that says we have to take what they want us to take, and we have to take all of it, even if we have no intention of using most of it - and we have bought into it hook, line, and sinker. 

Can you imagine, just for a moment, if any other company or business did the same thing? 

• Picture walking into a shoe store and being told that, in order to get the pair of boots you really want, you also need to get three handbags, eight pairs of those nylon shoe-trying-on things, ten pairs of flip-flops and a dozen pairs of stilettos, in sizes that don't fit and colors that are beyond horrid -- a bunch of junk plus twenty-two pairs of shoes you will never wear -- just to get the one pair you want. You gonna buy those boots? 
• Or going into a grocery store to get milk and bread, because we've got a Nor'easter or an Alberta clipper or lake effect snow heading our way, and being told that you also have to pay for and take home both adult and baby diapers, some weird-looking sushi, gluten-free cookies, blue dye for your hair, anchovies, week-old bagels, unsalted nuts, and off-brand tuna fish packed in oil, because that's what the store wants to sell you. How badly do you want that bread and milk? 
• Or taking your car to the speedy oil change place, and have to get new tires, a pollution control valve, seat covers, a windshield, a side-view mirror, and cargo-area carpeting, because after all, if you want that speedy oil change, well, you know the drill. 

It's crazy that we fall for this, isn't it?

Case Studies: A&F, JCP, and A&E

Abercrombie & Fitch, the allegedly hip store for young people who want to wear lots of layers of clothes in a stylish way and carry around arty-farty shopping bags with pictures of topless or almost topless chiseled pretty people on them, once offered to pay a customer to stop wearing their brand. Yep - don't wear our clothes, said their 'brand senses department': 

We are deeply concerned that Mr Sorrentino's association with our brand could cause significant damage to our image. We understand that the show is for entertainment purposes, but believe this association is contrary to the aspirational nature of our brand, and may be distressing to many of our fans. We have therefore offered a substantial payment to Michael 'The Situation' Sorrentino and the producers of MTV's The Jersey Shore to have the character wear an alternative brand. We have also extended this offer to other members of the cast, and are urgently awaiting a response.

Famously, A&F also ran into trouble with their 'exclusionary practices' which were detailed in a 2006 interview with CEO Mike Jeffries (the comments resurfaced more recently).  When asked about the emotional experience he offers his customers, and how sex plays into that, here's what he said:

It's almost everything. That's why we hire good-looking people in our stores. Because good-looking people attract other good-looking people, and we want to market to cool, good-looking people. We don't market to anyone other than that. 

Jeffries went on to say this about some potential customers:

In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the no-so-cool kids. Candidly, we go after the cool kids.  We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends.  A lot of people don't belong (in our clothes) and they can't belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely. Those companies that are in trouble are trying to target everybody: young, old, fat, skinny. But then you become totally vanilla. You don't alienate anybody, but you don't excite anybody, either. 

A&F, which offers women's clothes in sizes XS (00-0), S (2-4), M (6-8), and L (10),  and men's pants  ranging in size from 28x30 to 36x34, didn't want to market to fat people, or falling-down-drunk Jersey Shore folks, because they weren't cool.  They couldn't 'vanilla' the brand and become indistinguishable from everyone else.

JCPenney, on the other hand, got into trouble when Ron Johnson, their former CEO, noted in an interview that they had no 'growth platform' and so made a huge marketing change, which included making JCP look very different.  Here are his comments:

We had a business model that didn't have any growth in the future. Every business needs to build off a growth platform...We had a promotional model which had merit but it played its course. We need a new growth platform....The key was we had to have the courage to transform the business. 

He went on to get in trouble with this comment, in a response to getting customers back after the significant drop in sales that resulted from the business transformation:

Come to our stores right now. Our stores are busy. We're gaining that customer back. We know who she is, we talk to her in a variety of ways and it's important to get her back in store. It's even more important to attract new customers. That's the key to this long term, new customers. We had one of the oldest and poorest customers in the industry. We have to over time get a little younger and affluent. What will bring them in is everyday value on products they can't find elsewhere and not losing the older customer as well. We'd love to keep her. 

JCP's CEO knew who his customers were, and the numbers did not compare favorably with competitors like Target, Macy's and Kohl's.  Nearly half were over 55, and only 20% were younger than 35. Looking at income, only 13% earned more than $100,000, and 29% earned less than $35,000.  As a 'growth platform', that doesn't look sustainable, does it?

So what happened for these two retailers, when their CEOs did and said things that ticked off the customer base?  For A&F, people bought their clothes and gave them to homeless people.  Ellen DeGeneres (coincidentally, a JCP spokesperson) mocked them for selling 'doll clothes'.  Sales crumbled, with losses over multiple quarters.  The store is going to start offering clothes in larger sizes and more colors, among other things.

JCP suffered significant losses, as those older, poorer customers boycotted the store; they ditched Johnson as CEO and rehired a former CEO to right the ship.

So, what do these have to do with A&E and the Duck Dynasty drama? On the one hand, the two retail cases may look different; after all, in the case of A&F the representative was defending the brand, and in the JCP case the representative was turning the brand on its head. And, of course the brand representatives were the CEOs.

But what got then in trouble, more than anything, was their words, and the impact those words had on actual or potential customers. Those customers, real or wished-for, got up in arms, and in all sorts of ways complained about the exercise of free speech by the CEOs; they organized, they stormed social media, and yes they denied the brand their hard-earned cash. Heck, I have friends who stopped shopping at JCP for the duration of Johnson's tenure, and I know folks who were very upset with A&F and their short-sighted, narrow-wasted view of 'Authentic American' kids.

In the case of A&E, the 'brand representative' was not the CEO, he was just the star of  A&E's biggest sub-brand. A&E heard from actual or potential customers (the LGBT advocates and yes, the NAACP regarding those happy, non-blues-singing, cotton-picking, pre-welfare black folks) who will organize, who did flood social media with strongly worded messages, who would boycott the brand -- all of the same things that happened to A&F and JCP, as well as yoga-clothing retailer Lululemon; their founder/CEO is now out.

Listen, I'm not a fan of reality shows, that's not a secret. I watch a few of the competition shows, less now that many of them are growing old and tired. But there were American Idol contestants being booted for bad behavior -- not for being bad singers, but because their bad behavior off the show could damage the brand. And frankly, we don't have to look a whole lot further than folks like Mel Gibson or Charlie Sheen to see that, yes, even actors and TV stars suffer consequences from their behaviors, including their exercise of free speech.

A&E, which surprisingly does air shows other than Duck Dynasty, suspended a guy from a show that's currently on hiatus, to think about how or whether to protect its brand, not necessarily the sub-brand of the Robertson family. (Not for nothing, that's kind of like Major League Baseball suspending a pitcher for a certain number of games, and the suspension includes days the pitcher doesn't even play, isn't it?)

The biggest thing that will come of this? An even stronger DD brand, according to at least one crisis manager, which is apparently just fine with the Robertson family; after all, they're already a hundreds-of-million-dollar company what with their marketing of anything and everything Duck. They'll profit either way, frankly. We  may never know whether that conflicts with the Duck Dude's comments about 'the greedy' and their chances on judgment day.

Here's a nice summation of the whole thing, from the LA Times:

In the end, it comes down to freedom.  A&E has the freedom to reckon lost revenue against lost good will and make whatever decision works best for it. (It will be a practical decision more than a moral one.) The Robertsons have every right to do likewise, within the bounds of whatever the lawyers work out. If the show continues, sponsors will make similar calculations.  And, should the show return, you will be free to watch or never to watch, and to protest its ongoing existence or not.

Yep -- it's all about freedom. The Robertsons and other actors (and even politicians like Sarah Palin and Bobby Jindal) and corporate CEOs can say what they want; advocacy groups (regardless of their specific positions) can respond. Customers can stick with or walk away from a company, and companies can stick with or walk away from people who actually or potentially damage the brand and/or the bottom line.

I'm fascinated that we don't express the same outrage over all of the situations where similar actions and reactions occur, and I wonder, maybe that's our real, 'authentic American' brand.

If I Said What the Duck Dude Said

...I would at the very least be suspended, and probably terminated, from my job.

Why? Because in my 'reality show', I work at the pleasure of my employer, and if I'm casting them in a negative light, they have every right to not keep me around. We have an employee handbook, we have a Code of Ethics, we have a social media policy, the whole nine. And all employees are expected to not only abide by what's in the guidelines, but report situations that we see as potential violations of the Code by other employees.

I have friends and coworkers who think that's unreasonable, that an employer shouldn't have the option of terminating someone 'without cause'. One particular case locally that got us on this discussion was Syracuse University's termination of Bernie Fine, in the midst of as yet unproven allegations of child sex abuse. As the pressure heated up -- with multiple accusers (two of them presumed to be liars, the other two a little more convincing at least in the eyes of our DA for Life Bill Fitzpatrick) the topic of conversation moved away from SU basketball and started to focus on Fine, his case, what head coach Jim Boeheim may have known about the situation, and so on.

The fact that the university had previously investigated the situation and had already decided to stick with Bernie as Boeheim's chief assistant likely contributed to their decision initially to suspend him, and ultimately terminate him. You know the old adage, 'once bitten, twice shy' and I think that was SU's situation.

It's been the same situation for other employers, over the years; after all, political correctness has been around for a long time. Sometimes the issues change, but the outcomes are similar.  Here's a refresher:

• Juan Williams, who spoke about being scared of Muslims in their garb while on Fox, and was let go by NPR as a result of that and previous line-crossing in violation of his contract. 
• Helen Thomas, who lost her job as a White House reporter because of anti-Semitic comments 
• Gilbert Gottfried, for joking a little too soon about the tsunami which cost him the spokes-duck job for Aflac; Shirley Sherrod, former government worker who was dropped for allegedly being biased against white people; and CNN's Rick Sanchez, who went overboard talking about Jews in the television business (you can link to their stories here and here)
• Howard Cosell, who killed his career with his 'look at that little monkey run' comment years ago
• Paula "I is what I is" Deen, for using the N-word on one or more occasions
• Martin Bashir, who resigned from MSNBC after slamming Sarah Palin for ridiculous remarks she had made when exercising her right to free speech. Palin immediately took up the Duck call, no surprise there, appearing on Fox wearing her Duck Dynasty cutie camo.
• Just yesterday, there was a report that an Air Force general was fired for, among other things, 'rude and brash behavior' and showing up late for a meeting. 

Importantly, these folks were let go for a variety of comments bashing a whole host of populations, and except for the general, they didn't get in trouble while they were working for the company that fired them, suspended them, or 'let them resign'.  And that's the point here.

The Duck Dude is entitled to his opinions, and those opinions apparently should not be surprising to anyone who watches the show, or to A&E, the network that airs it. After all, you can take the boy out of the Louisiana backwoods, but you can't take the Louisiana backwoods out of the boy. The network accepted the risk, obviously, and as with most employers, there are limits, even when cash is pouring into the coffers. When you jeopardize the brand, the business, and the bottom line, employers will act, and they should.

One other thing that's important to note here, on the sponsor thing: WalMart, particularly in their rural stores, is a huge seller of all of the Duck Dynasty spin-off merchandise. I haven't heard yet that they were dropping those items, but I think they have to.

After all, that's what they did to Paula Deen; and isn't what's good for the goose good for the, er, Duck?