Vy Blog

More on keyboard cowards: I wish I had written these two pieces

Oh, man, how do I.  On my pet issue of keyboard cowards, the get-a-life people who descend immediately into the mud with the launch of the first comment.

John Wagner puts it more intelligently than I have in more than half a dozen attempts at it:

We are "word police," always on the lookout for something that we don't like, something we can criticize.

That type of attitude is a major detriment to true communication, and a real reason why so many companies/organizations/people are afraid to truly dialog with others.

Most importantly, it takes a medium that has great potential to increase understanding and help people find common ground -- the internet -- and turns it into one big shouting match, with no one really learning anything other than how to pick apart another's point of view.

Exactly, John.  It's like a Jerry Springer show.

John makes reference to this piece from Dorian Lynskey, the British music critic, who got a whoopin' for daring to criticize Bruce Springsteen.  Oh the humanity.  Lynskey writes:

The most belligerent voices on the blogs speak with either a weary, condescending sneer or a florid pomposity redolent of Ignatius J Reilly in A Confederacy of Dunces. If, as they imply, their taste is flawless and their intellect mighty, then perhaps they could find a better use for these prodigious gifts than taking potshots on websites. Just a thought.

Why am I so exercised about this?  Because it's such a giant waste of potential.  What could be valuable and helpful ends up an exercise in defensiveness and anger. 

And any of you who disagree with me obviously have not read what I wrote.

Manifestos continue

All of these are good.

This one is for attorneys, but could well apply to PR firms.

Schwarzenegger calls for 'a new creative center'

Here's a snip of a CNN story about California Gov. Schwarzenegger asking for an end to D vs. R politics.  He wants to make California a test bed for a "creative center" -- presumably meaning governing less with party affiliation and more with practicality.

Schwarzenegger said California could serve as a model to the rest of the country and larger world.

"At one time, the greatest public policy innovations came from liberals, such as during the New Deal," the Republican celebrity said. "Then the most innovative ideas came from conservatives, such as Ronald Reagan.

"It is time we combined the best of both ideologies into a new creative center. This is a dynamic center that is not held captive by either the left or the right or the past," he said.

I'm all for it if this is real.  Both parties are being held hostage by their extreme wings, so much to the point neither party is appealing.

Election day head gravel

This blog is drifting.  Do you feel it?  I do.  I know it is and I'm conciously not doing anything about it except adding thoughts here and there when it appeals to me.  That's not how I want to run the blog, but it's what I have capacity for now -- to make room for the blog, the way I want it to be, would be to penalize other areas I'm not willing to penalize at the moment.

So, changes coming.  I know what I want it to say and look/feel like.  Just not yet.  Stay with me. 

Meanwhile, Election Day thoughts:

1) I'm glad the election is almost over, and that's saying something when a political junkie is talking.  I'm interested in both politics and government, and my instinct is that the former has nearly consumed the latter.  Interactions in the government are defined politically, and the political camps today are not just different, but openly hostile.  That's what's making the election cycle such a mess, and I'll be glad when tomorrow arrives because I won't have to listen to, "I'm Jack Toothpolish, and I approved this ad becuase Mike McWeatherwax is [earnest look added here] just too extreme and deserves to lose."

I don't necessarily have a quarrel with either party.  But if either party has a big day, I'll hate it if it gloats.

2) For unusual reasons, I've had the occasion to consider the ego.  If you look it up, the definition (under the context of my thoughts) is this:

An inflated feeling of pride in your superiority to others

You may pick up from my tone that I despise any kind of self-importance.  In fact, I'm not sure I hate anything more.  I firmly do not believe that a "healthy ego" is a prerequisite for success.  Confidence may be, but confidence and egoism are entirely separate.  Examples abound, but here's one: Warren Buffett, the most successful judge of business, the most successful investor, of any time or age -- and he's a normal human being.  The fact of the matter is that unhealthy ego is a shortcoming all its own, and my amateur psychology would guess it's a defense covering another shortcoming, which is lack of confidence, or lack of regard for others.  If you're good at what you do, that's impressive enough to me.  If your ego starts crowding the room, you're losing my respect.

Andrew Woolard pointed to a good post at Brand Builder about commitment and desire.  It was worth reading to me, because it hit me right between the eyes with the reminder to cut the crap.  At the end it asks if "brand you" is a happy brand -- in other words, do you love what you're doing and dedicate your energy to it?  That's a great reminder about how to orient your time, energy and effort.

3) If you're in the Portland area, you need to do some hiking in the Columbia River Gorge.  I went with three friends last week to do the Wahkeena Falls loop, a 5.2-mile round trip that starts at Wahkeena Falls, takes you up to Devil's Rest, over to Multnomah Creek, and down the creek to Multnomah Falls.  It's about a 1,400' gain in altitude.  Spectacular hike, one that I haven't done for several years.  We did it in two hours -- unanticipated consequence is a workout of muscles I apparently haven't worked in a while, even though I've been running regularly.

All cynicism aside on the election issue, if you haven't, get out and vote.  It's the most critical thing you can do in the life and operation of our country.

St. Louis: Dangerous city

I'm disappointed to see that St. Louis is named the most dangerous city.

It disappoints me for a lot of reasons.  I grew up 100 miles south of St. Louis and made, I don't know, a million drives up and back for Cardinal games, swim meets, time with friends, airport runs, whatever.  I know about its heritage as the jumping off point for western exploration in the early 19th century.  For a time, it had (by far) the country's best education system.  It had a lot going for it.

To be fair, it still does -- it's a good city.  I have immediate family that lives and works there, and enjoys St. Louis life.  But like many cities, particularly in the midwest (and I'm very surpised to see KC at only #16 in this ranking -- it's on track for 100 murders again this year), it needs to step on the neck of crime if it's going to have a downtown renaissance, an influx of business, and all the things blighted cities seem to want to regain their lost prestige.

Now, then there's the matter of the world champion St. Louis Cardinals.  More on that shortly.

America's Best Leaders

Great set of people profiled by US News as America's best current crop of leaders.

Definitely worth reading.

Conservatism and argument

I've heard two interviews with Andrew Sullivan in as many days, both on XMPR.  He's flogging his new book about conservatism and what true conservatism is.

Be a fan or detractor of Sullivan, it doesn't really matter -- look at the content of his thinking.  He has well articulated the problem of conservatism today, in a way that I'd bet get quite a lot of head nods from anyone who bore any conservative credentials but is questioning the direction of political thought in the US.  This is from the description on Barnes & Noble's site and sums his position well (I edited for length):

In The Conservative Soul, Andrew Sullivan...makes an impassioned call to rescue conservatism from the corruption of the Republican far right, which has become the first fundamentally religious political party in America. [Sullivan] argues that conservatives cannot in good conscience keep supporting a party that believes in its own God-given mission to change people's souls, instead of protecting their liberties.

This is interesting to me for two reasons.

First, I've always been a political junkie, and used to be a fairly partisan Republican.  I worked for Republicans on Capitol Hill for a good stretch during and after college, believing mainly in the tenets of limited government, both fiscally (balance your checkbook) and socially (live and let live).  This is when we had people representing us like Charles Mathias and Richard Schweiker instead of Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn.

My, how things have changed in such a short time -- I believe Sullivan is right, that the party has become more a representation of religious thought instead of a paradigm for practical governing.  (So is John Danforth, who used to represent me in the Senate when I lived in Missouri -- he argues roughly the same thing.  And he knows what he's talking about as a Republican, a former senator and an ordained Episcopal priest.)  This is why I no longer classify myself as a Republican -- in fact, I'm very solidly independent.  Neither party does much for me and I'm chagrined that there's no "Pragmatic" party that represents fiscal responsibility and social tolerance.  So at minimum, this is an interesting evolution of political thinking.

Second, it has come to start representing how we define arguments about things that are important to us.  This permeates nearly everything, because how we're represented in government, in fact, does affect everything -- from our businesses to our lives to how we conduct ourselves in the world. 

I've said that I'm bothered by the almost instant viciousness of any "debate" today.  This applies to PR, of course, where you seek to converse and ultimately influence, but also more broadly to just our day-to-day living.  (Man pulls gun on coach to get son playing time.)  Everyone seems angry and combative -- sometimes that's warranted but certainly not as often as it's put to use.

The more we allow extremism to flood our lives, the more at risk we are for operating with blinders on, viewing the world from only one perspective and trying to ram that perspective into some level of permanence.  And that creates conflict in a way that is unhealthy.  And we see it today.

Instead, how about we keep our eye on the ball?

Transparency, and knee-jerking

Mike Manuel makes it official.  Transparency, surely the current occupant of the most overused word in business, is now the official euphamism for honesty.  But you can have plenty of the latter with almost none of the former, and still be good with it, correct?

Good follow up in Popular Mechanics about the Cory Lidle accident from the perspective of a piston, fixed-wing pilot.  Never mind all the romanticism at the end -- the author does a good job explaining what really happens and what you need to do to fly safely in this corridor.  But, never mind the thousands of flights conducted safely in that corridor by the day up until last week.  That's not at all relevant.  The FAA closed the airspace.  Much more brilliant solution.

The discussion of what we don't know about

The NYC plane crash: 

We all know the "news" is distorted.  Coverage of the Lidle accident is another example.  It distresses me particularly because I have a pilot's license and know about the flight rules that apply to different areas.

The truth is that aircraft of many types regularly fly without talking to air traffic control.  In good weather (under what's known as VFR, or visual flight rules), pilots take the primary responsibility for "separation," or staying out of each others' way.  It is perfectly safe.  In very congested places, even near more than one very busy airport, you'd be surprised at how well this works.  In fact, it works incredibly well overall. 

As usual, we don't get all exercised about something that works well nearly 100% of the time until it doesn't work one time.

How many reports on the news have you seen where the reporter, in mock amazement, says, "Lidle wasn't even talking with controllers!"  Well, stupid, he wasn't required to, and you don't know enough about what you're reporting to know what kind of impact an ATC contact requirement would have.  Here are two I can think of right away:  1) The load on controllers in the busiest air corridor in the US would go way up, with little discernable benefit.  2) You would impede a lot of commercial activity -- there are hundreds of thousands of arrivals and departures per year in and out of Manhattan by helicopters alone.  Welcome to the law of unintended consequences.

The primary duty for ATC is to handle separation of IFR (instrument flight rules -- mostly commercial) aircraft, and in a list of descending priorities, separation of VFR aircraft is literally at the bottom.

The solution here in my mind is to not close off the airspace.  The solution is to have pilots who know what they're doing fly in that airspace, and pilots who don't to stay out of it.

I'm sure someone is saying that somewhat effectively, but s/he's being well-drowned by the hysteria.

Now, how does this relate to reporting?  Like this:  Heat does not resolve issues.  Light does.  Heat agitates.  Light does not.  Of course, heat is good for ratings, which is good for advertising, which is good for revenue.  I don't have a lot of hope for light over heat. 

So, if that's the case, and if we as news consumers continue to decide to use hysteria as the input for our decision-making, then the "garbage in, garbage out" rule applies very fully.  We'll end up with knee-jerk resolutions that might make some people feel better, but in reality won't help at all.

What always bugs me about situations like this is the discussion of what isn't known.  You may know that you can fly VFR below 1,100 feet around Manhattan, clear of LaGuardia airspace, but you may not know why that's safe.  You're assuming it's not, when in reality you don't know.  And presenting that in an incredulous, know-it-all way does not help anyone at all.

Small minds, big Web -- the defense of privacy

I don't subscribe but I've always enjoyed Esquire's writing style.  The other night I was browsing the site, and this month they review 100 ideas, trends, thoughts, etc., that are top of mind at the moment.

One deals with a disturbing trend on the web.  The link is here, and the opening paragraph says this:

Everyone's worried about NSA wiretapping and such.  But really, that's not the invasion of privacy that's going to affect our lives.  Instead, it's user-generated spying and gossip.  That's what is going to make America into the equivalent of a small-minded small town.

Some of this, I would theorize, is due to our fascination with celebrity.  You don't think there's a fascination with celebrity?  Turn on your TV and tune into Entertainment Tonight, Hollywood Insider, etc.  Stroll into your grocery store and glance at a copy of People and its clones.  How about that paparazzi?  And whoa!!  Is Suri Cruise real or not?

I digress.  One of the words of the moment is transparency.  Everyone is calling for more transparency -- in government, in business, in regulation, in nearly everything.  You're hard-pressed to argue against it, aren't you?  That's a no-win position. 

But like anything, there's good and bad.  The Web has given us unparalleled abilities to communicate and share data, which begets user "empowerment," which begets the application of new pressures to institutions, which begets a little more honesty from them (good), which further emboldens users (not necessarily bad), which sometimes spills over into a sort of mob rule (bad).

Putting a magnifying glass over institutions with public responsibility is useful and necessary.  I'm all for it.  However, the need for privacy -- I don't mean secrecy as much as I do privacy -- is very rational and appropriate.  To know that you're on stage and in view all the time (whether as a company, institution or individual) can lead to precisely the opposite desired outcome: inauthentic behavior.

Need an example?  How about a politician?  It's the rare office-seeker or -holder that behaves in public you or your neighbor do.  Why?  Because s/he knows continual judgment is being applied, in the most harsh manner, and the safest course of action for maintaining office is to speak in that unique language we hear on C-SPAN.

This is worth thinking about, don't you agree?  Does anyone think 100% transparency is always a good thing?  I'll probably get basted for this somewhere down the line, but I don't think it is.  The ability to privately discuss, reflect and be creative is extraordinarily useful and important -- it enables out-of-the-limelight frank discussion, humor, venting of spleens, collaboration, you name it that grows our businesses, helps our relationships, advances our interests and just plain keeps things running.

And, finally, how does this relate to PR?  Like this:  Assume anything your company does will be known about, both good and bad.  If you don't want it known, better not to do it at all.  If you do something you try to keep private, do so knowing you may have to discuss it publicly later.