Keep on Growing

Why I'm Not Posting Here Any More

I now post on TeeBeeDee, the online network for baby boomers that I started with an amazing team. We're in preview mode so please come visit.

Acronym Anachronism

I love acronyms maybe more than anyone.  (My new company is called TeeBeeDee for a reason.)  But why do companies persist in publishing 800 numbers that only display the spelling (800-NYTIMES is my complain this morning)?  Don't they know that many of their customers are using smart phones where the numbers don't correspond to the old letters? Would 800-698-4637 be so difficult to display alongside the acronym?

I Hesitate to Write About This

Today's New York Times has a moving front page story

When Soldiers Fall, Grief Binds a Unit’s 2 Worlds. 

Soldiers in Iraq talk about their feelings as comrades die, as they try to save injured soliders and fail. It makes me wonder if it's harder to be a solider (for Americans) now, after decades of cultural emphasis on getting in touch with one's feelings.  Was it easier to be a solider when it was societally acceptable to detach from emotions?  And if so, has our military position in the world weakened?  This feels disloyal -- like it's questioning the ability of our soldiers.  But I am struck by the ability of our enemies -- specifically, a culture that supports matyrdom by suicide bomb -- to emotionally detach from their acts of war, contrasted with our in-touch-Americans.

Divine Retribution

I'm not embarrassed about casting my first Republican vote (well, votes...Schwarzenegger, Poizner and McPherson).  Honest.  I am thrilled by the thumping our President took.  But when I got home on election day ready to curl up with the remote and watch what I hoped would be a triumph, all four TVs were blank, searching for a satellite signal.  DirectTv was unable to fix this over the phone, and was scheduled for a service call (not in time for the election, but hopefully in time to watch George Allen concede).  Today (Wednesday) the TVs are back, with no service call. 

Two notes: CNN Pipeline stinks and is no substitute for watching a television.  And I may promise never to stray again if I can have my satellite stay live.

Madonna

I've never intentionally listened to a song by Madonna, and I religiously avoid the Wall Street Journal editorial pages because I don't like troglodytes. But today's WSJ has a column called "Give Madonna a Break" and I couldn't agree more.  The author is the head of something called Friends of the Orphans. As a member of the media, I am embarrassed by the attention being paid to her personal attempt to save a boy who was abandoned, as so many are, at several weeks old, and the media taking advantage of his naive father to get a specious story. We really have a junk culture. And even if Madonna is somewhat responsible for creating that junk culture, she shouldn't be hounded by it while doing something noble.

My Publishers Weekly Review of Carly Fiorina's Memoir

After reading Joe Nocera's brilliant column yesterday I decided not to post my own review of the Fiorina book (I'd been waiting a week so Publishers Weekly could have it exclusively, which is I think what I promised them). Joe did a better job and I was too easy on the book.  But since friends keep asking, here it is (restoring some of my language pre-PW edit), just promise to read Joe's column first.

Tough Choices/A Memoir by Carly Fiorina

 

Fiorina may have had Tough Choices. But readers have an easy one: skip pages 10 through 149 and read the Hewlett Packard story first. If you become a Carly fan, then go back and read the first half. 

 

Carly Fiorina, the famously fired CEO of HP, starts her memoir with a tedious telling of her rise through the corporate ranks. After plowing through her years at AT&T and Lucent, it’s still not clear exactly what the business challenges were – the only thing she expresses clearly about Lucent is her fondness for the “bold, red logo.” The chapters are filled with numbing passages like this: “In other words, our value-add would be to get everyone on the same page. Any organization is stronger when people are aligned to act together, instead of working at cross-purposes." Perhaps someone told her that the market for the book is middle management, so dumb it down, sound humble and fill it with advice.

 

When the story turns to HP, more of Fiorina’s management views and talents are visible. She vividly dissects the company’s business, board and structural problems. She makes a compelling case for why she deserves some credit for the 2005-6 turnaround.  She’s less compelling when she claims that her introduction as CEO of HP was marred because “the one question we didn’t prepare for was the question most frequently asked…As hard as it may be to believe, we didn’t prepare for one question about my gender.” (Uh-huh.) When Fiorina dishes the board members, it’s delish: especially when citing Jay Keyworth’s stated belief that “anyone who had leaked confidential Board conversations to the press shouldn’t be allowed in the boardroom.” (A wonderful irony since he initially refused to resign during the recent HP scandal when it was revealed that he was the source of  leaks.)

 

Much of what she writes about the Board will be in the news around this book’s release, but her revelations are valuable beyond gossip – because shareholders are demanding accountability from boards, it’s fascinating to be inside a deeply dysfunctional boardroom. And it’s just plain fun to read her settle some scores here. (I wish my editor had let me include more of that kind of backstabbing.)

 

While I didn’t come away with a sense of Carly Fiorina’s personality -- much of what she writes about herself personally is either unconvincing or mealy-mouthed – her book does shed light on the complexities of running a giant corporation. And I learned that I’d bought into media coverage of Carly Fiorina that was superficial at best, and misleading at worst. I owe her an apology for that, and she owes her readers one for not hiring (or heeding) a good editor to make her message less tedious.

 

"Boring Fabulist"? Not.

Some sloppy or biased WSJ editor headlined Peggy Noonan's review of Woodward's State of Denial "The Boring Fabulist." I'd link to the review but because it's behind the WSJ paid subscription wall, here's the salient paragraph:

"Now he has thwarted me. I bought “State of Denial” thinking I might have a merry time bashing it and a satisfying time defending the innocent injured.

But it is a good book. It may be a great one. It is serious, densely, even exhaustively, reported, and a real contribution to history in that it gives history what it most requires, first-person testimony. (It is well documented, with copious notes.) What is most striking is that Mr. Woodward seems to try very hard to be fair, not in a phony “Armitage, however, denies it” way, but in a way that — it will seem too much to say this — reminded me of Jean Renoir."

In short, it's a rave -- and headline is just weird.

Can't Resist

The Foley scandal has enough being written about it that I was staying away, but must repeat this line from today's New York Times: "In Pennsylvania this week, Representative Don Sherwood, a suddenly endangered Republican, bought time on television to offer an apology in response to allegations that he had abused his mistress."

So now we have to ask people "Did you beat your mistress?" instead of "Did you beat your wife?" Is the apology about beating her, or having a mistress in the first place? Is he giving his mistress a preferential treatment to what he gives his wife?

The Times Censors Itself

In the print version of the “In first debate, Spitzer and Faso Differ Sharply” there is such a funny exchange that I went to the web to cut and paste it for my Republican boyfriend, showing Spitzer actually has a sense of humor (a trait I overvalue in choosing husbands as well as politicians).  It’s not in the article on the web.  So I’m typing it from the print.

There were some unexpected moments of levity. At one point, Mr. Faso, who opposes gay marriage, said that he would veto any bill legalizing gay marriage that got to his desk, and noted that Mr. SPitzer supports gay marriage.  'He says that on Day 1 he's going to force gay marriage down the throats of many New Yorkers,' Mr Faso said.
 

Before explaining his support for gay marriage, Mr Spitzer said, ‘Let me just respond to John, first, without commenting on his use of metaphors.’ The exchange prompted the debate’s moderator to say ‘We are cable, gentlemen, but not HBO, so if we could keep it clean….’"

Outsourced Fishing

So I went "sport" fishing in Cabo this weekend.  I thought about my father a lot.  He wouldn't have thought much of sticking a bunch of rods over the side and then being alerted by the boat crew when a fish hit a line, and offered the chance to reel it in. But he would have liked to see me with the 40-lber I reeled in, so here it is. A little out of order - the photo on the right preceded the one on the left :)