In case you are interested, I’ve got two TV-on-the-Internet segments coming up that you can check out. Not a big deal, just wanted you to know.
First of all, I am scheduled to be a guest on Pajamas TV (the new Internet video venture of Pajamas Media, where I publish commentary occasionally and where my role appears to be to infuriate people). They’ve asked me to talk about stories the mainstream media has been giving short shrift to. (Please email me if you have ideas you think I should consider.) The PJTV segment is slated for Wednesday, October 8 at 6pm Eastern. To watch, just go to this link.
Secondly, some of my readers know that I have long been involved (at least, until recently) with the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership at the University of Virginia. I helped them design a unique training program for first-time political candidates (the program is centered on ethics but also has a lot of hard-hitting and useful advice). I also have led sessions for their flagship leadership program, which is one of the better ones in the nation. The 2007 Sorensen class is the subject of a recent PBS documentary called “Across The Aisle,” and (while I have not seen it yet) I am told one can see yours truly in the show.
The documentary is airing in various markets around the country. But people everywhere have a chance to see it in its entirety coming up, October 5 through October 11, at 9pm each night. On those days it will be running on Norfolk’s Channel 48 — watch live here (click the button to launch).
Here’s a bit from an article on the documentary from the Charlottesville Daily Progress:
The Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership at the University of Virginia will be the focus of a new public television documentary set to air at the end of May.
The documentary, “Across the Aisle: Returning Trust, Civility and Respect to Politics,” follows civic leaders enrolled in the institute’s political leader training program.
Over the years, numerous Sorensen graduates have been elected to public office. Sixteen alumni currently serve in the Virginia General Assembly.
In the documentary, the institute is held up as a national model for returning civility to America’s increasingly bitter political landscape.
The film focuses on seven of the 35 students in the Sorensen Institute’s class of 2007. The cameras tag along as the students debate and discuss politics with ideological opponents, tour state government facilities and confront their political biases.
Over the course of the 90-minute film, one of the Democratic subjects opts to run for a seat on her local school board in a heavily Republican district.
The documentary also focuses on how several of the subjects with entrenched political beliefs begin to see issues from a different perspective after they spend time with people from the other end of the political spectrum.
WHTJ, Charlottesville’s local PBS member station, produced the documentary.
If you tune in, I hope you enjoy!
 There is a parable I learned long ago from the continuous improvement management philosophy. It’s called “rocks and water.”
Imagine you want to row your boat along a full, gently flowing river. No sweat. Imagine the water level drops significantly, exposing the jagged rocks along the riverbed. Now try rowing. Can’t do it; too many rocks.
In the parable, the water is any enabling resource of which having lots can obscure problems. In many businesses, the water is cash. Too much cash makes it easy to ignore the rocks underwater. Only when the water is drained can we see – and remove – the rocks. Many of the best organizations keep their water level low on purpose so that when rocks begin to appear they can be seen and dealt with.
Now with a panicking New York-DC axis, I can’t help but think about rocks and water. We’ve let the water level rise for decades, hoping it would keep everyone floating along. The so-called “predatory lending” that some point to is just a sliver of the problem. The real problem, as I understand it is that, driven by well-intentioned policies, some smart pencil-pushers figured out how to create a mechanism for avoiding risk altogether. Make the loans, sell the risk to someone else. This opened the floodgates as it became easy to invest with little apparent downside. With the system set up this way, no one feels the pain – until everyone feels the pain.
The river’s drying up now.
The main story being told is that those idiot “back bench” House members scuttled the imperfect-yet-necessary rescue boat for the American economy. In the howls from the editorial columns you can hear the derision. Almost the entire elite of America was unified behind the need to take the rescue deal on offer. How dare these rebels place mere “politics” ahead of the needs of the “market?” Don’t they understand the stakes? To read the coverage, you’d think some small minority had sunk the rescue dinghy because they did not like the color it was painted. Idiots. Cowards.
But take a step away from the panic for just a moment. It was not a small slice of the house of Representatives who voted against the bailout – it was most members of the People’s House. Some were reacting to what appeared to them to be too large a giveaway to the same Wall Street fat cats who had built the house of cards in the first place. Others saw the bailout as a grave rejection of the principles of responsibility, and freedom to fail, that our economy, at its best, is built upon.
But others, most perhaps, saw another problem. They just could not sell a “yes” vote to their constituents. One congressional staffer reported calls flooding in, verifiably from the district, at “a thousand to one” against. Ordinary people are up in arms.
The wise cluck their tongues and say the politicians should have some backbone. But why? It’s one thing to make a judgment call on the margins, but it’s yet another to jettison the clear will of the people one represents. No rational person can believe the “no” voters did not understand the stakes. They knew the stakes. They’d been briefed. They voted no anyway.
Sometimes the things that seem the worst possible turn out for the best. Maybe that will happen now.
If there is one piece of advice my older self wishes it could give my younger self, it is: Do not make decisions under duress and in haste. Looking back, I think of the many times I have been saved from bonehead moves by something that, at the time, thwarted my desire and seemed a setback. And I think of the times I was not saved, of the times that I forged ahead in panic – only to regret the move later.
Public life feels very much the same way these days.
I know from listening to ordinary Americans all through the country that there is a pervasive sense that, at some point, we’re going to have to pay the piper. The people I hear almost lament that nothing seems able to shake us from our collective consumption and obsession with more. When that time comes, companies will fail. Our lifestyle will drastically simplify. We will feel pain, all of us.
Maybe that time is now. Maybe, with the water receding, we can set to work removing the rocks.
I am not sure who is going to win this year’s presidential election campaign, but I already know who the loser will be. It’s the same sap who’s come out on the short end for the last two decades and more: the person on Main Street.
Wait, you say. Hasn’t this election begun to turn on “populism?” Isn’t Joe Biden the Working Man? Isn’t Sarah Palin the Hockey Mom?
Well, sure they are, but populism is not Main Street. Populism — the way it’s being practiced today — is all about anger and cultural warfare. Washington, Wall Street, bad. Wal Mart, Target, good.
A recent column by Bob Beckel and Cal Thomas in USA Today has them taking a stab at finding common ground. “The idea of a culture war seems so 1990s, doesn’t it?” says one. The other frets, “We’re in danger of heading down that pothole-filled road once again.” Having expressed their preference for reasonableness, the two spend the rest of the column bickering about whether Americans want more health care or less same-sex marriages. They argue over who started the “culture wars” and who is to blame for continuing them. Finally, almost an afterthought, they find something they seem to be able to agree on, and that is that a presidential election is not the place to find “quieter moments of reflection . . . with honest give and take.”
That, in a nutshell, is where we are at. Even people who are trying to find common ground can’t quite do so. We talk past one another, our rhetoric filled with anger and finger pointing, until finally we come upon a dispirited realization: that presidential campaigns are no longer designed around the idea of helping citizens make a choice as to who should lead, but instead are built on a foundation of warfare. I win, you lose. Just as war has evolved from arranged battles to guerrilla asymmetries, so too have campaigns shifted from debates to shin-kicks.
Where candidates used to “stand” for election, they now “run.” Where they used to seek to “govern,” they now say the seek office in order to “fight.”
Even within the campaigns (and, more stridently, the supporters) of Senators MccCain and Obama — of which each man can be made a strong case that they are willing and able to work across divides, placing results ahead of party interest — neither can seem to refrain from phony outrage and disgusting taunts.
Twenty years ago the political world laid hold of the power of organized fear in the image of Willie Horton which in part sunk Michael Dukakis’ candidacy for president. While not the first campaign ad to play on base emotion, it is widely regarded as the archetype. Since then, it’s gotten worse each year. Scare tactics are now the norm, not just in commercials but in almost every campaign communication. And they are not limited to one political party.
This leaves the folks on Main Street in the lurch. It literally perverts them by, playing on their base instincts of fear, hatred, and their urge to support their team at all costs. They see higher stakes, more dire consequences, more reason for outrage, than reality would dictate — all because the machinery of politics cynically eggs them on. My side is attacked – I must hit back and hard. People, under such pressure, tend to lose their equanimity and act more like face-painted sports fans at the Big Game. They’ve been ginned up, whipped into a frenzy.
I recently had the opportunity to eavesdrop on a political conversation between adolescent children. Depending on who was talking, each candidate by turns would “stop terrorists,” “end global warming,” “lower gas prices,” or “stop the war.” Neither candidate can actually do any of these things. Yet these comments are exactly in line with what we hear daily out on the street, as we circulate through life.
Gone is the sense that we are making a decision, weighing options. In its stead is the building-up of our team and the eviscerating of their team.
People on Main Street, meanwhile, are left with little else to do but go along with the mob, or check out of public life.
Little wonder so many pick the latter option.
I wanted to share a project that I have been working on with my friends at the Kettering Foundation and the National Issues Forums. I’m quite excited about it.
 It’s a new issue book I’ve written called Coping With the Cost of Health Care: How Do We Pay for What We Need? The “issue brief” is available for free download here, and the larger “issue book” can be ordered here.
(This is a slight revision of a health care issue brief developed back in March.)
Like all National Issues Forums issue guides, this one looks at a difficult public problem from three different perspectives, or “approaches.” The guide is meant to be the core of a small-group discussion where participants wrestle with the choices and trade-offs embedded in the issue, and come to their own view of how we ought to proceed as a nation. The book does not advocate for any one choice.
Here are the approaches it outlines:
Approach #1: Reduce the Threat of Financial Ruin
Proponents of this approach say we need to make health insurance that covers major medical expenses available to everyone.
Approach #2: Restrain Out-of-Control Costs
Health-care costs are too high for too many people. This approach holds that they should be reduced directly through price controls and other means.
Approach #3: Provide Coverage as a Right
Proponents of this approach say that health care coverage is something every citizen is entitled to.
Thank you to the Kettering Foundation for the opportunity to work on this important issue.
 Senator John McCain’s campaign has “abruptly canceled” a fundraiser that had been set to take place at the home of a Texas oilman. The host, Clayton Williams, had run for governor against Ann Richards back in 1990 and, during the campaign, unfortunately at one point compared the weather to a rape — “as long as it’s inevitable, you might as well lie back and enjoy it.” He was trying to be funny. It wasn’t. These words were picked up by the media and by Richards’ campaign and Williams lost.
In canceling their fundraiser, McCain’s campaign spokesman said, “These were obviously incredibly offensive remarks that the campaign was unaware of at the time this event was scheduled.”
Now the questions begin: Should he give back the money? How will this affect the campaign? What will Obama do? Shouldn’t he have known?
That last question is, perhaps, worth thinking about.
There’s a long and proud American tradition of political figures getting torpedoed by words and deeds from the past. Often it is some sort of nominee whose inane or insane remarks from their youth get unearthed. Or weird academic writings that had been read by maybe seven Ph.D.s come to light. Or the figure has a vulgar sense of humor (like our man Williams). Or a family member has a checkered past.
Opponents pounce on such things, and that’s understandable. But in the past, the test in people’s living rooms has been: how does the principal deal with the revelations? For some high-profile nominees, such as for positions that require Senate confirmation, we are dumbfounded that the offense had not come up in the background checks, but for less weighty things there’s this sense of sympathy. You can’t know everything about everybody.
But now that’s changed. Really, it’s hard not to know more about most people than they would like to have known.
Take that fellow who ran for Texas governor and tripped up the Senator from Arizona. One Google search yields his Wikipedia entry as the #2 hit. Wikipedia (and this was current as of March 27), highlights the offending remark. OK, some purists say Wikpedia is prone to manipulation, so follow one more link to the source article. There it is, the remark and the ensuing controversy. That “research” took sixty seconds, including reading time.
Yet, the McCain campaign treats the remark as if it was some obscure thing they could not have possibly known. The only way the campaign could have been “unaware of” the remark “at the time the event was scheduled” would be if no one actually looked into who this guy was. Probably a better response from the Straight Talk Express would have been: “We were moving too fast and just didn’t do our homework.”
This isn’t just McCain’s problem. Senator Barack Obama’s campaign has been plagued by similar Google-blindness and tin-ear moves. James Johnson, the consummate insider, reviewing the Running Mates of Change? Please. Tony Rezko, radioactive fundraiser and neighbor selling a strip of vacant land to the senator from Illinois? He was “glowing” at the time of the sale, under investigation by Federal prosecutors. And for intemperate, embarrassing remarks, see the entry under Rev. Wright.
Senator Obama’s response to criticism that he should have known about Johnson’s sweetheart mortgage deals was: “[E]verybody . . . who is tangentially related to our campaign, I think, is going to have a whole host of relationships. I would have to hire the vetter to vet the vetters.” This is a classic line. If there is justice, “vetter to vet the vetters” will enter pop culture and get screened onto American Apparel basic T’s. At least it deserves something on the Colbert Report.
But he does have a point. Johnson’s apparently too-cozy Countrywide mortgages came to light (through an article in the Wall Street Journal) only after he was named Chief Vetter.
While there are many things that a campaign ought to know, there are just as many things about supporters that campaigns can’t know. And the means for many of these things to come to the fore are firmly entrenched in the landscape. Look no further than sites like Pajamas Media. The only certainty, then, is that things will come to light.
Candidates need to both up their game and prepare for the mistakes they will definitely make. It won’t pass muster to say you didn’t know something anyone can find out in less than a minute.
But, as former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld pointed out (and for which wisdom he was unfairly ridiculed), there are known unknowns. That is to say, candidates can bet on embarrassing revelations about their supporters, even if they do not yet know, and cannot yet know, what they are.
How will the campaigns respond? Circle the wagons? Or — perhaps too much to ask from the Candidate of Believable Change or from Camp Straight Talk — with straightforward candor?
I wonder what I would say to Eliot Spitzer if he were my neighbor.
 Watching his wife, Silda Wall Spitzer, in that first hastily-called press conference, I thought to myself, That’s a deep wound he’s left. Eliot Spitzer apparently took extraordinary actions to get what he wanted, jumping through hoop after hoop after hoop put in his way by his contact at Emperor’s Club VIP. The payments they requested ratcheted up and up with each telephone call, if the affidavits from the wiretaps are to be believed. It seems clear this is not the only time he’s been a customer at such an establishment. It’s hard to argue that it was a momentary weakness. The facts are quite damning. They get worse the more we learn.
Preamble aside, here’s what he said he planned to do in his initial announcement: “I must now dedicate some time to regain the trust of my family.”
That seemed a tall order to me then, and it still does. It is likely to take a bit more than “some” time.
Many say Spitzer’s troubles are quite pleasing because of their irony. Spitzer was known as a crusader, with a carefully cultivated squeaky clean image, and with few friends, so this episode goes beyond a simple john-caught-in-a-sting story. Indeed, even the admissions of marriage on-on-the-rocks dalliances years ago by his successor, and even racier ones emerging from the neighboring Garden State somehow don’t carry the same weight. Roger L. Simon called it correctly when he pointed out: “The outcry against Spitzer was not because he was some man seeing a prostitute, but because he was a guy who puts prostitutes in jail seeing a prostitute.”
But, I’m putting aside for a moment the laws, his political career, and his storied lack of allies. I neither despise his policies nor particularly applaud his successes.
Instead, at a distance, it is possible to think of him as a man who is a husband and a father, whom I have to believe will want to try to make amends to his wife. At least, that’s what he says.
A measure of compassion — not for him, but for the spot he is in — emerged as I heard the line about his plans to “dedicate some time” to regain his family’s trust. As if it is a project to be tackled over the weekend, or a gardening holiday. It sounded like the desperate hope of any male who thinks he can just focus in and fix things. But anyone with close relations to any other human being, and especially people who have hurt, or been hurt, knows that such pain does not go away quickly. Breached trust is not regained after just “some time.” It takes much longer. And it takes a much different attitude.
Watching, I placed myself in his shoes, listening to that press conference. What must it be like to be caught so very publicly and red-handed, to have to ask your wife of twenty-one years to accompany you to the dais, to desperately want the clock to turn back? A living nightmare.
Hate the sin, love the sinner. What would I want to say to my pretend neighbor, perhaps while we met one another on the way down the street to pick up the dry cleaning? At a time, in other words, when he was not a governor but just another person? Like he is now?
I’d want to say: “Don’t think it’s all going to get better right away. But if you have true remorse, and truly want to change, it often can turn out OK. It can take years, decades, and the outcome is not always assured. If I were your wife, I would want to ask you how I can be assured you are really trying to change.”
I would want to talk about the difference between an apology — that really just amounts to regret at being caught — and truly making amends. When you make amends, you recognize your own wrongdoing and set out to put it right. “Sorry” gets you a do-over. Making amends begins to address the problem.
You get the sense, watching public figures do their public business, that people begin to believe their own press after a time. Celebrities “become” their personae, as do politicians. This is Spitzer’s domestic challenge now, to take himself down a peg and do more than “dedicate some time.”
He hasn’t been seen much lately so maybe that’s what he’s up to.
We’ve all hurt people and we’ve all wanted to make it right. And we have all experienced the feeling of remorse over not having truly made it right. How many of us mutter an apology and move on — when far more is required?
And so I would want, finally, to say this to my neighbor: “It’s time to devote your life to deserving the trust of your family. You can do it, but only if you want it deeply enough.”
 I wanted to share a project that I have been working on with my friends at the Kettering Foundation and the National Issues Forums. I’m quite excited about it.
It’s a new issue book called Paying For Health Care in America: How Can We Make It More Affordable? I’ve finished the “issue brief” and am now working on a larger “issue book.” The 12-page brief is available for free download here. The issue book (which will be slightly larger and have more research and quotes and such) will be sold for a nominal fee.
Like all National Issues Forums issue guides, this one looks at a difficult public problem from three different perspectives, or “approaches.” The guide is meant to be the core of a small-group discussion where participants wrestle with the choices and trade-offs embedded in the issue, and come to their own view of how we ought to proceed as a nation. The book does not advocate for any one choice.
Here’s a recap of this particular guide:
Forty-seven million Americans lack health insurance while costs continue to spiral out of control for those who do have coverage. The nation spends more than any other country on health care, but many are still dissatisfied with what we have to show for it. Now it is time to face the difficult choices needed to make the U.S. health-care system function properly.
Approach #1: Focus on Personal Choice and Responsibility
There is neither enough individual choice nor enough personal responsibility when it comes to health-care coverage. The real costs are hidden because it always looks like someone else is paying. We need to place individuals more in charge of their health-spending decisions; this will create incentives to reduce spending and improve service.
Approach #2: Provide Coverage as a Right for all Americans
It is an outrage that, in the wealthiest nation on the planet, more than 15 percent of us lack health insurance. We are all in this together, as a society. We rely on government to protect us from fire and crime and to provide education; it should ensure our health too. We need to provide health-care coverage as a right to all Americans, not just those who can afford it.
Approach #3: Build on What is Working
The U.S. health-care system is facing real problems right now– and there are real solutions available right now. Holding out for a “perfect” answer is not reasonable. We can institute a modest set of reforms right away, which will bring real strides in increasing health insurance coverage and reducing costs.
Watch for an announcement of the full issue book, which should be available later in the spring.
 There is another race that Senator Barack Obama has won hands-down.
He’s the only one with a decent logo. The Obama campaign has developed a contained, clear graphic that conveys just about everything most folks feel they need to know.
People know Obama’s got good design on his side, too. Next time there’s news of an Obama speech, take a look at the photo: often, it’ll be a stark image of the Senator against a dark background, so he stands out. Hovering, a bit out of focus, behind the Senator, will be that logo.
 The fact of this logo’s existence says more than you might think about his candidacy. No other candidate has one. Sure, other candidates may say they have a logo — but it’s all just little wavy flags or bold stars surrounding their names. That Obama logo marks that the campaign, in part, has been about building a “brand.”
 But we are not in an ad campaign; we are in an election campaign. The competition is far different than that between soft drinks. If I buy The Real Thing today, I can turn around and Do The Dew tomorrow. But the act of voting is more than simply stating a preference.
We go to a special place in order to vote, having in most cases waited in a line with others who are about to do the same thing. Tension mounts; we see our neighbors. The American flags and officious posters on the walls, the intent poll-watchers skulking about, the earnest volunteer election judges — it all adds to the seriousness. Even if I was not really focusing last night, or the week before, I sure am now, in line.
As I enter the booth, the import of my task strikes me. (I hear a similar thing happens among juries.)
On some level, I begin to realize I am not just saying who I “like” more, or who I would more rather go to Applebee’s with. Nor am I “hiring” someone for a “job.” I am, instead, making a choice that I believe ought to be binding on my fellow citizens. I am choosing for them as much as I am choosing for me.
Veteran political consultants know that the rules of the commercial world do not fully apply in election campaigns. While the two worlds use many of the same tools, they are different in important respects. Candidates who consciously proclaim “a different kind of message” run a risk when it comes to be crunch time. Because, for all of our complaining that campaigns have become a beauty contest — it’s not exactly so. Buzz, as we saw during Howard Dean’s candidacy, does not necessarily translate into votes.
But, from observing the Obama campaign’s mien over the last weeks, it seems the Senator or his strategists do indeed know the difference between ads and elections — you see that logo less and less these days.
The Clinton campaign now has a slim reed on which to hang, which is that the hard work that has gone before will pay dividends and allow her to hang on into the spring. But it is not a foregone conclusion that the slogging work of politics can overtake the undeniable allure of a powerful message and a charismatic messenger — which has now begun to focus like a laser on closing the deal.
I am a bit hopeful that the primary season will wear on, tiresome as it can be. I do know it may well be over soon. But the fight does the candidates good, and pays dividends to us citizens at home: Watching the repeated primaries, I am invited to check my own opinions — Who would I have voted for last Tuesday? How about the Tuesday a few weeks before? My thoughts become clearer week by week and, eventually, along with my neighbor’s and fellow citizens across the country, they build up to a collective judgment of who ought to be the nominee. Such judgments are improved by age.
I may be old-fashioned, but I am glad there is still an area of public life that we continue to keep closed off from the marketers. When we draw the curtain in the voting booth, even if we may not articulate this to ourselves, each of us stakes our own tiny claim for the seriousness of the task before us.
(Images from campaign websites.)
One recent week, I had occasion to say publicly I’d been wrong — not once but twice. I like to think, each time, that it’ll be the last time I have to do that. But, if past performance is the best predictor of future behavior, then the likelihood is that I will need to publicly admit to being wrong again in the not-too-distant future.
I used to think such admissions were momentous occasions to be avoided, that they reflected some fundamental problem that could have been avoided. Better planning, more precision, be more careful, those were the answers. Sure, that will all help improve things. But more recently, I see public apologies differently, as an increasing part of public life. I believe this is for the best.
The conventional wisdom, which still holds sway with many, is that an admission of error is to be shunned. Even if forced to retract something, or (worse yet) apologize, it’s always “mistakes were made,” or there was an “appearance of impropriety.” Why is it so hard to just ‘fess up and get on with things? While it can be very painful, it’s not the end of the world; just try harder next time.
My good friend Rich Harwood likes to say that leading in public life takes courage and humility — courage to place a stake in the ground, and humility to know that, later, you will more than likely have to publicly pick it up and move it.
The Internet, and the transparency it has driven, has accelerated this. Statements get made, articles get published, and responses appear immediately. Things that are far off the mark increasingly stand out, and the original speakers will often need to make corrections, issue retractions. The ability — the imperative — to do this is one of the chief differences between the “old” guard of journalism and the “new.” Think of CBS’s response to what is now known as “Rathergate“: lengthy refusal to admit that key documents in one of its high-profile stories were likely forged. Digging their heels into the ground, they increasingly opened themselves to criticism. By contrast, in one of my recent episodes of contrition, my article was updated based on feedback received the same day it was originally published. I don’t hold this up to point out how groovy I am personally, but instead to show this as an example of what a different approach to public life might look like.
But, maybe it’s ingrained in people not to admit mistakes. When hiring someone, I have a favorite interview question. I ask them to describe something that was a failure. I make sure to say the word, “failure,” too. People have a hard time with that one; they typically don’t want to point to anything they did that might have been a mistake.
My subjects will squirm and then discuss situations that went awry due to others’ idiocy, or due to circumstances beyond anyone’s control. They will almost never say, “I did such-and-so, and later saw that this was a bonehead move, so instead I did this-and-that. Here’s what I learned.” Maybe it’s too much to ask for someone to admit error in an interview situation. No one has ever asked me that in an interview; maybe I couldn’t answer. But if someone ever gives me a straight answer to that question, I am hiring them on the spot.
I like to believe that, as communications technologies continue to erode the barriers between the opiners and the opined-to, and between the leaders and the led, that we will see more and more instances of public correction. It is already expected in many quarters, and the holdouts are slowly becoming fewer in number. It may be a bitter pill, but it is also strong medicine in public life. It erases many divisions, so that people can hear one another better.
Since we are all likely to be wrong not once but many times, we all will have a chance to be part of the movement away from the bunker mentality and towards a more productive way of relating in public life.
The question is whether we will find the guts to follow it. I fall short more than I would like to admit. How about you?
There is a priceless moment in Oliver Stone’s unfairly maligned The Doors, when our heroes are prepping to go on the Ed Sullivan Show. They are met by a stage assistant, a real twerp, who informs them that, “The network guys have a problem with one of your lyrics. ‘Girl, we couldn’t get much higher.’” He goes on: ” You can’t say ‘higher’ on the network, so they asked if you could say instead: ‘Girl, we couldn’t get much better.’”
 The band looks at him, bemused. He finishes with: “Could you dig that?”
That dork’s use of the word “dig” in this context perfectly illustrates what often happens when mainstream folks try to appropriate street talk: they get it wrong, either by not understanding proper usage, or just plain sounding silly. While we play such things for laughs, they ring true because we see the same thing every day.
I remember a song by a milquetoast rapper named Vanilla Ice, called “Ice Ice Baby.” You probably remember it too. It’s your standard 1990′s fare, filled with braggadocio about the protagonist’s many fine exploits. I can’t help laughing when I hear some of the lines in the tune. Vanilla says he is “Rollin’ in my 5.0″ at one point. We all remember the angular 5.0 liter Mustang that was popular then. Vanilla spends three couplets on his “5.0,” with evident pride not just in its fanciness but also in his street cred for knowing such slang. Thing is, that’s not what the term “5-0″ meant at the time — it meant “police,” as in “Hawaii 5-0.” (Vanilla, whose real name is Rob Van Winkle, is a far more mature person now and a new crowd has come to enjoy his music.)
All this came back to me as the David Shuster saga unfolded. In an intemperate moment, our chalk-stripe-suited host says that Chelsea Clinton is being “pimped out” by her mom’s campaign.
This has generated a firestorm and Shuster is now suspended for uttering such a derogatory remark. For my part, I would have wanted to suspend him for not understanding the language he was trying to use. He pulled a Vanilla Ice.
Dig: “Pimped out” means “made very fancy,” as a stereotypical pimp might decorate something. There are overtones of exploitation, too, as in when something is “tricked out” — that is, made alluring enough for a trick.
What Shuster probably meant to say was that he felt Chelsea was being “pimped,” as in “exploited.” It’s a small slip, like Vanilla Ice’s slip when it comes to his car, but it matters. On its face, Shuster’s remark meant the campaign was dressing Chelsea up. In context, it was incoherent. In trying to appropriate so-called street lingo, he botched the job and made the same mistakes any foreign speaker makes when idiomatically out of their depth, with similarly hilarious results.
When I was in high school, I hosted an exchange student from Belgium. He fancied himself quite the Casanova, but most of my friends thought him the opposite. We taught him that the term “doughbrain” was our slang expression for “ladies’ man.” I regret it, now, as it was just mean — but, man was it funny at the time.
If I were advising my exchange brother now, I would say to watch out and double check what idiomatic expressions mean, because you might just wind up sounding like a real Newman.
I guess David Shuster could use the same advice.
ADDENDUM: Looks like I made a mistake, and relied on my recollection and the lyric sheet when it came to Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby” — instead of re-listening to the song itself. He doesn’t say “five-oh” (which is what I remembered) but says “five point oh.” Commenters at Pajamas Media who have pointed that out are right. Kicking myself. You should, too!
They’re also right that it knocks a big leg out from under my point, but not entirely: Shuster sounded really silly saying “pimped out,” like a suit trying to talk street, and (this much I still maintain) misusing the term in that way.
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In 2007, I founded Rockville Central (about Rockville, MD) and comanaged it until we ceased publishing in October 2011.
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There is a parable I learned long ago from the continuous improvement management philosophy. It’s called “rocks and water.”
I'm On TV
In case you are interested, I’ve got two TV-on-the-Internet segments coming up that you can check out. Not a big deal, just wanted you to know.
First of all, I am scheduled to be a guest on Pajamas TV (the new Internet video venture of Pajamas Media, where I publish commentary occasionally and where my role appears to be to infuriate people). They’ve asked me to talk about stories the mainstream media has been giving short shrift to. (Please email me if you have ideas you think I should consider.) The PJTV segment is slated for Wednesday, October 8 at 6pm Eastern. To watch, just go to this link.
Secondly, some of my readers know that I have long been involved (at least, until recently) with the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership at the University of Virginia. I helped them design a unique training program for first-time political candidates (the program is centered on ethics but also has a lot of hard-hitting and useful advice). I also have led sessions for their flagship leadership program, which is one of the better ones in the nation. The 2007 Sorensen class is the subject of a recent PBS documentary called “Across The Aisle,” and (while I have not seen it yet) I am told one can see yours truly in the show.
The documentary is airing in various markets around the country. But people everywhere have a chance to see it in its entirety coming up, October 5 through October 11, at 9pm each night. On those days it will be running on Norfolk’s Channel 48 — watch live here (click the button to launch).
Here’s a bit from an article on the documentary from the Charlottesville Daily Progress:
If you tune in, I hope you enjoy!