Top Ten “Don’t Go Cheap” Items

I’m not one of those guys who goes nuts at Bed, Bath & Beyond. I hardly ever apply hand lotion. I see my father when I look in the mirror, but I don’t put age-defying cream on the bags that have developed under my eyes. Not a drop of Axe body spray has ever touched my frame. And I have never ever had a professional–or even an unprofessional–manicure. So I was underwhelmed when I walked into the bathroom last night and noticed that my wife had received some lemon-glycerine hand soap as a gift. Then I squirted some on my hands. The texture! The scent! It was like I’d never used hand soap before. How had I managed to miss out on this delightfully sensual personal hygiene experience during the first 60 years of my life? Will I ever be satisfied with Dial again? Will Zest ever be zesty again? Not likely.

The surprising experience got me to thinking about the things I buy that cost a bit more money but are truly worth the extra expense. At the automatic car wash I routinely choose the Good wash @ $4, refusing the machine’s repeated urgings to upgrade to Better @ $5 or Best @ $6 (Pre-soak and Undercarriage Rinse!) When it comes to fueling that vehicle, I figure gas is gas, and I go wherever it’s cheapest. And is there any reason to buy name-brand milk? Doesn’t it all come from the same cows?

But there are some things for which it doesn’t pay to go cheap. Spend the extra few cents. We all like to save money, but here are my top ten things that should not be on your list of “Ways We Can Cut Back”:

10. Shoes. If your feet aren’t happy, you’re not happy. Cheap shoes are uncomfortable and wear out more quickly. Go name-brand and make sure they fit your feet well.

9. Cheese. My folks struggled to feed four hungry kids on a shoestring budget. That meant Velveeta instead of real cheese. Once I left home and tasted a grilled-cheese sandwich that actually had cheese in it, I never went back. No Velveeta for me ever again, no matter how enticing they make it look in those TV commercials. I know the truth.

8. Orange Juice. See the above. When I was growing up, Tang was a luxury. Real orange juice was out of our financial reach. But there just is no comparison between the two. If you buy Tang because it’s half the price of OJ, then only buy OJ every other shopping trip. You’ll spend the same amount of money, and your taste buds will thank you for it.

7. Coffee. I was supremely happy and content with the grocery-store coffee that flowed out of my Mr. Coffee until I visited the big city and found this new place called Starbucks. I was reluctant to plunk down the cash at first ($2 for a cup of coffee! It costs 50 cents back home.), but at the first taste of that ebony nectar I was hooked. Whatever extra I pay for my morning cup of coffee-shop caffeine I receive back in the I-can-handle-anything-this-day-throws-at-me attitude that’s included free of charge with that first sip. Don’t go cheap on coffee.

6. Suits. Ever hear the expression “all over me like a cheap suit”? If you’ve ever tried to save a few bucks on menswear, you know where this slang phrase came from and what it means. Instead wait until you have the money and buy a decent suit. And make sure a professional tailor fits the suit for you. (And by professional tailor I don’t meant the guy who sold you the suit. His job is to sell you the suit; rely on a tailor to make you look good in it.)

5. Poptarts. A shout-out to a good friend for reminding me of this today. Generic toaster pastries are just not the same. Not at all. And I think her opinion would be the same for Oreos. Go name-brand.

4. Furniture. Three rooms of furniture for 699.99! This is almost never a good deal long-term. The end tables will wobble and collapse. The recliner will refuse to recline. The three-way lamp will dwindle down to one-way and eventually stop illuminating anything whatsoever. All before you’ve finished your EZ payment plan.

3. Chocolate Chips. Take my word for it, chocolate chips make the cookie. You’re going to all the trouble to make homemade cookies; don’t go cheap on the chips! They’re not real chocolate; they’re just brown waxy gunk.

2. Snowblowers. If it was a crime to abuse yard-maintenance machinery, I’d be a convicted felon. In the years since I bought a house that came with a long driveway, I’ve given my name-brand snowblower no respect at all. No tender loving care. Fill it up with gas when it runs out and then toss it in a corner of the garage after the final spring snowfall. And the next winter it starts right up, and we do it all over again. Every year. For 28 years. I love that thing.

1. Engagement Rings. If the gold flakes off her ring in between the Save the Date card and the wedding invitation, you’d better check to see if your parents can get a refund on the deposit they plunked down for the rehearsal dinner.  And try to track down your cousin Louie who got you such a great deal on the ring.

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas (the sequel)

On Christmas Eve I posted a piece about the word “merry”, in which I explained the old-English meaning of the word and why that meaning should give us encouragement when we greet one another during the season of Christ’s birth. Little did I know that one day later–on Christmas itself–Billy Graham would publish a daily devotion on that very same topic.  Like me, he pointed out that the slightly different meaning of “merry” back then makes the “Merry Christmas!” greeting special. Of course, he said it more briefly, more eloquently–and certainly more authoritatively!–than I did. He’s Billy Graham after all.

The word “merry” is from an old Anglo-Saxon word which sometimes meant “famous,” “illustrious,” “great,” or “mighty.” Originally, to be merry did not imply to be merely mirthful, but strong and gallant. It was in this sense that gallant soldiers were called “merry men.” … The word “merry” carries with it the double thought of “might” and “mirth,” and is used both ways in Scripture. One of the early Christmas carols was “God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen.” The Christian is to engage in spiritual merriment as he thinks upon the fact that, through the redemption, he becomes a child of God’s family. The Bible teaches that the angels made merry at Christ’s birth. 

So, if my words blessed you in any way, take a moment to read the rest of what Billy Graham said in his devotion: What Does “Merry” Mean? You’ll be doubly blessed. And have a Merry Christmas.

Afterword: A big thank you to my brother Dan for pointing out to his little bro that he’d been one-upped by one of the most prominent and respected people in the world. I guess that’s what big brothers are for!

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Last December, in the wake of the Newtown massacre, I published a post called Let Nothing You Dismay. I contended that joy at Christmas is not inconsistent with tragedies like last season’s murder of children and their teachers. 2013 proved to be no less tragic:

• The Boston Marathon, held annually on Patriots Day in April, was interrupted by two terrorist-bomb explosions at the finish line. Three people died and more than 200 were injured.
• A 3-year-old Florida boy died in June after being left in a car while his parents, ironically, attended a funeral.
• On the last day of June, a fast-moving Arizona wildfire overtook a group of 19 firefighters. All but one died.
• A Cleveland man pled guilty in August to keeping three women hostage in his home for more than a decade. He died, allegedly by suicide, just weeks into his life sentence.
•  In October a Massachusetts teacher allegedly had her throat slashed by a student who followed her into a girls’ rest room. Her half-naked body was found dumped in the woods along with a note saying “I hate you all.”

As the followers of Christ gather together in places of worship this Christmas Eve, the carols we sing should remind us that although we live in a fallen world seemingly in the grip of evil, the Savior’s birth means God has won the victory and will ultimately triumph. Joy to the world, the Lord has come! He came to a place where “a curse is found”, a place where “sins and sorrows grow” and ”thorns infest the ground”. As the events of 2013 demonstrate, we still live in a thorn-infested world full of sins and sorrows.

What brought me great comfort last year–and inspired my post–was one small thing: a comma. I learned there was a comma between Merry and Gentlemen. The familiar carol was not seeking rest for merry gentlemen; it was seeking a merry rest for gentlemen who were dismayed. God rest ye merry, gentlemen. Let nothing you dismay. Like 2012 and 2013, people had gone terribly astray that year. The gentlemen were dismayed. But what gave them merry rest was the remembrance that Christ our Savior was born on Christmas day to save all of us from Satan’s power.

This year a chance meeting at Starbucks with one of my community’s pastors gave me further comfort (and sparked this second look at my top post of 2012). He told me that back in the time the carol was written, “merry” meant more than just happy celebration. It meant being strong and confident of one’s cause in the midst of that celebration. Think Robin Hood and his band of Merry Men. The guys who joined Robin in his struggle against injustice were not men gone wild, enjoying endless rounds of partying in Sherwood Forest. They were joined with Robin in a difficult struggle against evil, but it was a struggle in which they were confident of success because of the justice of their cause and the strength of their leader. And that made them happy men. It made them Robin’s Merry Men.

There must be a reason why we say “Merry Christmas”. Why that adjective? Why not “Happy Christmas”? Why not “Joyous Christmas”?  I have to believe the tradition started as a way of reminding us to be strong and confident, to be merry men and women. It started as a way to remind us that that the reason for our happiness is the strength of our Leader and our confidence in His victory. There is joy in the world. Because the Savior reigns. So, have yourself a merry little Christmas. And let nothing you dismay.

Freedom from Consequences?

Talking about an old guy with a long beard is nothing new at Christmas. What’s new during the 2013 holiday season is that the big-bearded senior citizen who has Facebook in a froth is not Santa Claus; it’s Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson. For those who have been living in a cave since Christmas 2012, Robertson is the patriarch of a backwoods Louisiana clan that transformed their tiny duck-call manufacturing business into a media sensation. Duck Dynasty, a reality show entering its fifth season on the A&E cable network, follows the antics of Robertson’s family as it teeters on the brink of disintegration but pulls itself together by the end of each episode with a big sit-down dinner at the home of Phil and his wife, Miss Kay. (A recent episode featured a feud between two of their sons. CEO Willie insisted that all employees wear company uniforms. His brother Jase resisted and led employees out onto a protest picket line. Miss Kay put an end to the squabble by sitting her two sons down and giving them a lecture about the importance of family.) Duck Dynasty is the most popular reality show in cable-TV history.

One of the keys to the show’s popularity is the Robertson family’s no-excuses embrace of Bible-Belt Christianity. Another is their tendency to forthrightly express their opinions. And it was the combination of those two that got Phil Robertson in duck doo-doo with the suits at A&E. In an interview with GQ, the patriarch spoke his mind* without the political-correctness filter that A&E imposes on his show.  He is a self-professed “Bible-thumper” who believes that the Bible is clear on this point: homosexuality is sinful. But he believes the Bible is also clear on this: it’s not his job to judge gay people, just to love them into repentance.

We never, ever judge someone on who’s going to heaven, hell. That’s the Almighty’s job. We just love ’em, give ’em the good news about Jesus—whether they’re homosexuals, drunks, terrorists. We let God sort ’em out later, you see what I’m saying?

When Robertson’s words hit the media, half the nation thought he was a homophobe who has no business on a national TV show and the other half considered him a courageous Christian who’s being persecuted for stating Biblical truth. A&E–shocked that its fundamentalist Christian star expressed fundamentalist Christian views–pushed the panic button. This is the heart of the network’s statement:

We are extremely disappointed to have read Phil Robertson’s comments in GQ, which are based on his own personal beliefs and are not reflected in the series Duck Dynasty. His personal views in no way reflect those of A+E Networks, who have always been strong supporters and champions of the LGBT community. The network has placed Phil under hiatus from filming indefinitely.

Those who champion Phil’s cause cry: “First Amendment!”, saying A&E is denying the Duck Dynasty patriarch his freedom of speech. But freedom of speech has never meant freedom from the consequences of one’s speech. If one chooses to exercise one’s rights, one must be willing to accept responsibility for that choice and not whine about the consequences. Consider these points:

• The First Amendment protects us only from government action. This is what it says: “Congress shall make no law  …  abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; … .” Congress–judicially interpreted to mean any instrumentality of a government–can’t tell me what I can or can’t say. But the First Amendment doesn’t have much to say about the ability of my boss to fire me if I say something to offend millions of his customers. A&E has some freedom to control who appears on its network, including the ability to keep someone off its network if that person chooses to say something that is offensive to A&E or in A&E’s view is offensive to its viewers. And by taking a reported $200,000 from A&E for each episode, Phil and the rest of the Duck Dynasty cast have given A&E some control over who gets to appear in the show and what they say on–or off–the show.
• Real freedom means not only the ability to make a choice but also the willingness to accept responsibility for the consequences of that choice. We say “freedom isn’t free”, but that doesn’t just mean that men and women died to keep us free, it means that the exercise of freedom involves taking risks and accepting consequences.  Freedom without responsibility is cheap freedom, phony freedom. Despite the laws that white men enacted to keep them oppressed, Martin Luther King, Jr.,  and Nelson Mandela were free because they were willing to disobey unjust laws and accept the consequences of that choice.
• Mature followers of Jesus Christ should not be surprised that trouble and hardship follow the expression of what they believe to be God’s Word. Phil Robertson knows this because he knows his Bible. It tells us so in pretty clear language.
  “In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, …” (2 Timothy 3:12 NIV)
  “Remember what I told you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. … ” (John 15:20 NIV).
  “For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him,” (Philippians 1:29 NIV)
  ” … [F]or Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties.” (2 Corinthians 12:10 NIV)

To be fair to Phil Robertson, I have read not one word of complaint from him about the consequences of his exercise of the right to speak and believe freely. And as for the rest of the Duck Dynasty clan, they’re not doing much whining either except to say they’re “disappointed” that A&E chose to suspend Phil for a constitutionally protected expression of his religious views. I am free to say what I wish, but in doing so I must be willing to accept responsibility for the consequences of that speech. Freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequences.

*Getting less media attention–but arguably more offensive–are Robertson’s remarks on race. He grew up in Jim-Crow Louisiana, but Robertson denied seeing any black person ever mistreated. In his view, they were “singing and happy” in the “pre-entitlement, pre-welfare” era. One wonders if Robertson ever considered the possibility that his African-American acquaintances might have been reluctant to share their racial-injustice stories with a white man, even one who, according to Robertson, was “white trash”. And did Robertson ever notice what was sometimes done to a black man in the Deep South who openly opposed segregation?

Teach Your Children Well

Have you noticed all the “Schools in Crisis!” items popping up in the news? Merit pay for teachers. No child left behind. Schools of choice. Common Core. Tenure reform. Standardized testing. Charter schools. Vouchers. It’s hard to read a newspaper without running across one of those controversial topics. Of course, dissatisfaction with teachers and schools is nothing new. One landmark critique of education, Why Johnny Can’t Read , was published almost sixty years ago. And my guess is that after McGuffey published his first reader in 1836, critics slammed him for dumbing down the educational process. (“Reading the Greek classics was good enough for me fifty years ago. The Iliad and Odyssey should be good enough for kids today, even if it is the 19th Century.”)

But the fact that education critics existed yesterday can’t hide the fact that we’ve got a genuine education problem on our hands today. Our children are leaving school without the skills they need to compete in a global economy. The New York Times reports that international test scores released Tuesday show American 15-year-olds lagging behind their European and Asian counterparts, especially in math. 40% of the high-school kids in Singapore snagged top scores in math. Only 17% of Polish high-school students managed to score at that same level. But how many of the American high-schoolers got top scores in mathematics? 9%.

Politicians blame teacher unions more interested in protecting incompetent teachers than preparing kids for the future. Teacher unions blame politicians whose policies force teachers to spend too much time preparing their students for standardized tests. Taxpayers grumble about high taxes. And for every person who claims to have found the villain at fault for the education crisis, there’s another person who claims to have the solution. Tie teacher pay to their students’ performance. Unleash teachers from the shackles of standardized testing and let them teach. Give each mom and dad a voucher for their kid, and let them and the free market decide which schools succeed. Stop siphoning money away from cash-starved public schools and give them the resources to do the job.

Curiously, despite all the people playing the education blame game, no one is brave enough to point the finger at villain #1: Me. Me as a parent. As the classic comic-strip character Pogo once said: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”*

A parent is the child’s first and most important teacher. Research shows parental involvement is the most important component of a child’s school success. Not teachers. Not high-tech classrooms. Not big tax dollars. Parents. Unless parents accept primary responsibility for their own child’s education instead shifting that responsibility entirely onto the state, we will continue to have an education crisis in America and we will continue to lag behind the Singapores and Polands of the world.

Yes, there are bad teachers. Yes, there are rotten schools. Yes, the federal government sticks its nose where it doesn’t belong. And yes, poverty still means that some kids start school already behind. But that doesn’t mean parents can throw up their hands and walk away.  Here are some things we can do instead:

• Read to her. Sit her on your lap when she’s just a baby. She won’t understand what you’re reading, but she’ll enjoy looking at the pictures, and she’ll love the closeness with mom or dad. Then she’ll grow up knowing that reading is not a pain but a pleasure.
• Keep reading to her. When she’s a toddler she’ll start to recognize letters. When she’s a bit older she’ll start to realize that letters make words. Soon she’ll be reading the book to you and be so proud of herself.
• Keep reading to her. When she hits elementary school you can start reading her big books–one chapter every night. Excitement will build as each night the story unfolds. You’re building on what you started when she was a baby: Reading is fun.
• Take the time to learn how your child learns in those vital 0-5 years before he even hits the door of the schoolhouse. What is he capable of learning at this age? What toys can I get for her or what things can I do with her to help her master those lessons?
•  Support and encourage him as he starts school. Expect success. Help him with his homework. Ask: “What’s the most exciting thing you learned today?” Make sure he has all the supplies he needs.
• Show up at her school. Attend her parent-teacher conferences. Ask her teacher how you can be helpful, how you can be the teacher’s at-home partner. (Kids spend 70% of their waking hours outside school.)
• Make sure he gets enough sleep and enough of the right food to eat. He can’t go places if his tank’s empty.
• Support her teacher. Surprise the teacher with a thoughtful gift every now and then. Bring in treats for the teachers when they’re stuck at school for a boring in-service training session. And it doesn’t cost you a penny to send her teacher a note of thanks and encouragement.

He’s your kid and it’s your responsibility to prepare him for his future. So do it.

*In the War of 1812 after Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry won a naval victory on Lake Erie, he sent this message: “We have met the enemy, and they are ours.” On the first Earth Day in 1970, Pogo creator Walt Kelly cleverly twisted the famous quotation to make the point that we ourselves are responsible for the pollution of our planet.

Top Ten Movie Metaphors for Sex

Who is responsible for the morality of movies? Is it those who make the movies? Do movies that vividly portray casual, no-consequence sex encourage irresponsible sexual behavior? Are they then responsible for all the social problems–like teen pregnancy and sexually-transmitted disease–that spring from such behavior? Shouldn’t Hollywood accept responsibility for the product it produces?

But doesn’t Hollywood hold up a mirror to ourselves? Doesn’t Hollywood just give us what we demand? (They’re in the business to make money, after all.)  Aren’t they providing a product that feeds–rather than creates–our obsession with sex? Are we the culprits here?

My guess is that somebody asked this question of Thomas Edison about two minutes after he invented the moving picture. From its beginning Hollywood has accepted a measure of responsibility for the purity of its product, not exactly because of an altruistic desire to protect society from filth but more from a selfish desire to protect itself from outside censorship. Hollywood has always figured it’s better to impose its own morality rules that wait for some institution outside the movie industry (e.g., the Church or the government) to cram rules down its throat.

Shortly after “talkies” went into wide production at the close of the Roaring Twenties, Hollywood imposed its own morality rules governing the depiction–or, more accurately, non-depiction–of sex in the movies. The Production Code (sometimes known as The Hays Code) prohibited “excessive and lustful kissing, lustful embraces, suggestive postures and gestures”.

When this system began to break apart in the taboo-busting 60s, Hollywood recalibrated its self-censorship by creating a body to rate films, a system that remains largely in place 46 years later. This rating system was supposed to shift responsibility to the ticket-buyer: anything could be depicted in a film and the consumer could make a watch-or-not-watch decision based on the rating the movie received. In actuality, the ratings agency censors the content of a film by refusing to give it the rating that its producers want unless the movie is changed to make it less sexually explicit. (An R-rated movie can be widely distributed, but few multiplexes will show an NC-17 film.)

If America’s moral guardians thought that censorship rules would eliminate sex from the movies, they were sadly mistaken. Nothing stimulates an artist’s creativity than a set of you-can’t-do-that rules. The artist will inevitably find a way to “do that”, and do it not only within the rules but do it more powerfully.

And so it was with sex in the movies. Hinting at sex rather than starkly depicting it can actually make a sex scene more erotic, more interesting, more compelling. Here’s my list of the top ten ways Hollywood found to show sex without actually showing sex.

10. A Kiss – All those Fred-and-Ginger movies ended just after Fred gave Ginger a big fat kiss. And after spending the whole movie building up to that kiss, everyone knows that the two lovebirds didn’t stop at a kiss after the screen faded to black.

9. A Dance – In all of moviedom is there anything loaded with more implicit sexuality than the “Shall We Dance” scene in The King and I? They have an impossible love that cannot be expressed, even to each other. But they can dance. And they do. Twice. With lots of heavy breathing.

8. A Train – There’s something about the sound of a steam locomotive chugging at full speed that gets Hollywood screenwriters all hot and bothered. But it was a train powerfully straining to leave the station that substituted for sex in the latest film version of Anna Karenina. The scenes also served a foreshadowing purpose as well, signaling the nature of–SPOILER ALERT–Anna’s untimely demise.

7. A Roman Candle – Is there something going on between Cary Grant and Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief? You betcha! Hitchcock uses fireworks tell us what The Production Code wouldn’t allow him to show. Bam! Pow! Boom!!

6. A Tunnel – Hitchcock again. Soon after the hero rescues the damsel in distress as she dangles from some president’s Mount Rushmore nose, Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint climb into their honeymoon “sleeper” berth as North by Northwest ends. The movie fades to a shot of the train speeding into a tunnel with whistles blaring. Is there anyone under 10 who is not on the Production Code’s censorship board who doesn’t get Hitchcock’s message there?

5. A Meal – Tom Jones was the Best Picture of 1964, and some give credit for the win to the tavern meal enthusiastically shared by young Tom and the lusty Mrs. Waters.

4. A Lighthouse – Ilsa dramatically pulls a gun on Rick when he refuses to turn over the letters of transit that will safely see her and her husband out of Casablanca. But Rick–like everyone watching the movie–knows she won’t shoot; she still loves him a bunch. After he grabs her and plants a big kiss, the scene changes to a lighthouse shining brightly in the Moroccan harbor. Freud said sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. And sometimes a lighthouse is just a lighthouse. But sometimes it’s not.

3. An Open Window – They look into one another’s eyes and see only love, passion and an irresistible desire. Then we see only an open bedroom window. With the curtains fluttering in the wind. Hey, what’s going on in there?

2. A Flower – The blossom has been tightly coiled since its creation until it suddenly bursts open, revealing itself as the beautiful flower it was always meant to be. (Variation on the theme: bee pollinating the open flower or–more obvious yet–bee crawls inside the open flower.)

1. A Wave – The #1 sex-but-not-sex scene in all movie history comes from another Best Picture winner: From Here to Eternity. Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr entangle themselves on a Hawaiian beach while the surf crashes over them. Says Deborah to Burt: “Nobody ever kissed me the way you do.” See #10 above.

Obamacare: Part Two

Last week’s blog post dealt with the remarkable reluctance of anyone connected with the Obamacare website failure to take any responsibility for it. Federal contractors. Government bureaucrats. The White House. When countless frustrated citizens–people whom the government was requiring to buy health-care insurance–asked why they couldn’t log on to a website set up to comply with the health-insurance mandate, no one was willing to step up and say “It was my fault”. Like siblings standing in the shards of what used to be Mom’s favorite table lamp, finger-pointing was the order of the day.

Since then there’s been some progress. No, the website is not up and running smoothly; the feds tell us–promise us!–that by the end of November healthcare.gov will be tuned up and running as smoothly as Jimmie Johnson’s Chevy coming out of the pits at Talladega. (That’s a full two months after Uncle Sam told us the website would be ready and a scant one month before health-insurance polices expire for millions of Americans.)

Since then, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius testifed before a congressional committee and apologized to the American people. NBC News reports that her testimony included this statement: “You deserve better. I apologize.” I do applaud the federal government’s step in the right acceptance-of-responsibility direction. Apologies are good. But with the hope that Secretary Sebelius might want to make further progress, let me offer these observations:

• When making an apology for one’s failure, it’s best not to minimize the failure. Using the word “flawed” to describe the website’s launch is like calling the Titanic’s maiden voyage “disappointing”. It’s best to accurately own up to what it was–a disastrous failure–if you want your apology to be well received. (Madame Secretary, you share this problem with somebody who works for you. CNN reports that Marilyn Tavenner, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said in her congressional apology that “the website does not work as well as it should.”)
• Apologies are no time to minimize the problem or to find what you perceive to be a silver lining to the cloud for which you’re apologizing. So, pointing out that the website never actually “crashed”–it was just unreliabe and slow–doesn’t enhance the quality of your apology. (Ms. Tavenner is no stranger to the silver-lining approach either, claiming that it was actually an ecouraging sign that the website buckled under the weight of so many people trying to access it. It shows that the government is offering a good people: scads of citizens want to buy it. Pssst to Ms. Tavenner: The government is requiring people to buy health insurance.)
• Don’t feel so bad, Secretary Sebelius; lots of people miss this next point. Saying “I apologize” is a weak, weasely way to make an apology. (Even weaker: “I want to apologize.”) Grow a spine and spit out these two simple words: “I’m sorry.” It puzzles me and makes me sad that so many people find it so hard to say those two little words. They make one’s apology powerful and credible.
• I understand your reluctance to throw your boss under the bus, but when asked if President Obama is ultimately responsible for the website fiasco, your first reponse could have been better than: ““You clearly, uh — whatever, yes.” To your credit you recovered quickly and did concede that President Obama “is responsible for government programs.”

But, hey, I’m a glass-half-full kind of a guy. Any step in the right acceptance-of-responsibility direction is worth a applauding. Kudos to you, Secretary Sebelius for taking those first few baby steps in the right direction. Let’s wait and see what November 30 brings.

Check out Jon Stewart’s R-rated commentary:

A Finger-Pointing Frenzy

The Affordable Care Act became law in March 2010. That’s more than three years ago. More than three years for Washington to implement the law. More than three years to set up a website to enable people to shop for the health insurance that the feds now required them to buy. More than three years for Washington to get its act together. (Yes, readers, I intended that pun.) Yet when the program’s website debuted on October 1, only a handful who tried to access the site actually succeeded in doing so. Then a finger-pointing frenzy began. Bureaucrats, politicians and government contractors all ran for cover, looking for somebody–anybody but me!–to blame for the snafu*.

The Affordable Care Act marked the most massive federal government involvement in the health-care industry since Medicare. A government health-insurance system that covered everyone–not just the 65+ crowd–had been the dream of Democrats since Medicare became law fifty years ago. When the Obama landslide of 2008 gave them control of both the legislative and executive branches of government, they maneuvered the Affordable Care Act through Congress without a single Republican vote. The GOP dubbed the new health-care system Obamacare, and the President eventually accepted the name, deciding to consider it an unintended compliment.

The key–and most controversial–component of Obamacare is its requirement that everyone obtain health insurance. If my employer doesn’t provide it then I have to buy it myself or risk paying big bucks in penalties. The plan was for uninsured individuals to shop for health-care coverage through an on-line insurance exchange. (The word “exchange” is used here to mean an open marketplace. The New York Stock Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade are two well-known exchanges.) The Department of Health and Human Services was responsible for implementing Obamacare, including setting up the insurance-exchange website. On the day of its debut it collapsed under the crush of consumers trying to comply with the law’s mandate to get themselves insured.

Who was to blame for the massive failure? “Not me!” was the universal answer. The New York Times headlined its article : “Contractors Assign Blame, but Admit No Faults of Their Own, in Health Site”. That pretty much sums it up. The main contractor who set up the site pointed a finger (the index finger, that is) at Washington, saying it was free from blame because it did its job “under the direction and supervision” of the feds. With its other index finger the website contractor blamed the company that set up the process by which consmers could create password-accessed accounts. The account contractor refused blame, pointing yet another finger at Washington, claiming the feds decided to go with password-protected accounts too late to give it adequate time to create and test the process.

What was Washington’s response? We’re working to “iron out the kinks” said the White House. Other administration spokespeople pointed fingers at the computers themselves, claiming that “glitches” are to blame. Really? Computers are machines; they don’t make mistakes. Computers do only what the people who manufacture the machine, develop the software and operate the finished product tell them to do. An application failure can be attributed to bad code, inadequate testing, or nadequate hardware for the application. Attributing an application or site failure to a “glitch” explains nothing. There are things that can go wrong that aren’t attributable to human error, but the inability to rapidly recover is due to lack of planning or readiness, and that is human error. Blaming “glitches” for the disastrous debut of the health-insurance exchange website is a not-so-clever way to evade responsibility for the failure.

What would have been refreshing–and surprising!–would have been for the website contractors and the government to admit what is obvious. They all grossly underestimated both the difficulty of developing the website and time it would take to get it up to speed. Even though they had three years to get it done. The site would have to accommodate the tens of millions of users who would be initially accessing the site to sign up or obtain information. Many contractors would have to work separately to build different components of the system, and then all those components would have to mesh. The site would have to connect to and be compatible with the computer systems of more than 100 different health-insurance carriers. The site would have to access many federal and state government databases. All that’s incredibly complicated! Why didn’t they all just admit they a big mistake about how hard it would be to build this system from the ground up. Ask for forgiveness and understanding. Then pledge to put noses to the grindstone to get the website up and working. The finger-pointing and excuse-making only enhance the image of ineptitude they’ve created for themselves and don’t make the website even one day closer to becoming operational.

The Times reports that the website contractors had assured Congress on September 10 “that they were ready to handle a surge of users when the federal exchange opened on October 1.” Testimony before Congress recently revealed that the website testing didn’t begin until two weeks before the October 1 launch. My third-grade arithmetic tells me that the contractors gave their September 10 assurance to Congress a week BEFORE they started testing the site! Now the contractors say they’ll be ready by December 15. Health insurance coverage is supposed to start January 1. Stay tuned.

*The federal government runs the army as well as the Obamacare website. Legend has it that the word “snafu” originated somewhere among the combat soldiers of World War II who were well aware of Washington’s proclivity for massive mistakes. Snafu is an acronym for “situation normal all f***ed up”. Less common today is the word’s close cousin “fubar”, meaning “f***ed up beyond all recognition”.

A big thank you to my sister Ruth who gave me some help with how and why websites crash. She’s as tech-savvy as I am tech-stupid. Of course, any dumb mistakes or misguided opinions are mine and mine alone.

Top Ten Rules for Bad Leadership

10. Never ask for or take advice.
I’m the boss. I’m supposed to know everything. Asking for help is a sure sign of weakness; it makes me look like I don’t know what I’m doing. When I don’t know what to do, I just fake it!

9. Don’t answer to anybody.
I’m the boss. I do what I want when I want to do it. I don’t need some suit in a corner office looking over my shoulder. What does she know anyway?

8. Keep your team guessing.
I’m the boss. I try to create an atmosphere of perpetual uncertainty. That keeps the people who work for me always on their toes. They never know what to expect from me!

7. Never get to know your team members.
I’m the boss. I never want to get too close to the people who work for me. As far as I’m concerned, they’re just nameless numbers. So, when I have to cut them loose or shift blame, I don’t feel so bad about it. I can’t throw somebody under the bus if I know the names of his children.

6. Issue lots of orders–and make them confusing.
I’m the boss. A clear directive can trace responsibility for a screw-up right back to me. Who needs that? If I make the instructions to my staff hard to understand, I can always claim they didn’t do as I directed.

5. Do as I say, not as I do.
I’m the boss. And being the boss has certain perqs. One of those is the ability to break rules that I require my staff to follow. Rank has its privileges!

4. Never develop leadership skills among your team members.
I’m the boss. If I train anyone else to be a boss, he’ll be after my job. So, no one else knows how to do my job. When I’m forced to take a vacation, I always carry my cell phone and iPad with me. That’s job security, baby!

3. I’m smart enough already.
I’m the boss. What does anybody have to teach me? Do i need to repeat it: I’m the boss!

2. Procrastinate.
I’m the boss. I take as much time as possible if I’m forced into a corner and actually have to make a decision. If I make excuses or ignore the situation, the problem sometimes goes away. And the fewer decisions I make, the fewer reasons anybody has to blame me when things go wrong.

1. Never–ever–admit a mistake.
I’m the boss. The people who work for me have to think I don’t make mistakes; admitting them makes me look like a weak-kneed sissy. There’s always a way to shift blame, make an excuse or obscure responsibility for my failure.

My Letter to Miley

Dear Miley,

I watched your performance at the Video Music Awards show. Actually, I saw about 5 seconds of it before I reached for the remote. I don’t know why it took me as long as 5 seconds. Stunned, I guess. Blame it on momentary paralysis from shock. Or was it embarrassment?

But, Miley, that’s not why I’m writing to you. This is about that People article. You know, the one publicizing the MTV program documenting your career. Miley: The Movement premieres tomorrow night at ten! This quote of yours from the show screeched like fingernails on a chalkboard when I read it:

Right now I’m at a point in my career where I can just be exactly who I want to be. I can just have fun and not think about any kind of repercussion and just go for what you want to do.

Honey, we all want that. Well, maybe Mother Teresa didn’t. And maybe Billy Graham and Pope Francis don’t.  But for pretty much the rest of us, the desire to have fun without consequences is never far from the surface.  We all want to just go for what we want to do when we want to do it, to be in total control of our own lives. It’s a impulse that’s as old as humanity. Over the course of human history, billions of us have acted on that impulse. And, Darlin’, it never ends well.

It didn’t end well for Adam and Eve. They lived in the Garden of Eden. They had fellowship with God Himself, walking with Him there in the cool of the evening. They had all that they could ever want in that paradise. Everything except this: control. They had to submit to God’s loving direction; they could not eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. God got to decide, as their all-wise Father, what was good and permissible and what was evil and impermissible. Adam and Eve couldn’t accept that. In your words, they decided to just go for what they wanted to do. And it cost them a life in paradise.

And I guess you’re too young to remember a secret agent named Austin Powers. He was frozen back in 1967, ready to be thawed out if he was ever needed in the future to do battle against Dr.Evil. When the mega-villian did make his return thirty years later, Austin was defrosted. But his handlers at British Intelligence were a bit concerned; would he miss the swingin’ sixties?  No, Austin said he’d be OK with life in the 90s:

As long as people are still having unprotected sex with many anonymous partners, whilst at the same time experimenting with mind-expanding drugs in a consequence-free environment, I’ll be sound as a pound.

See, MIley, what made that one of the funniest lines in the movie is that by 1997 it was obvious to everyone that actions really do have consequences. By that time we all knew that the free-and-easy 60s generated social problems we’re still battling today.

HIV was unknown in 1967, but by the time of Austin’s defrosting HIV-related deaths peaked at about 17 per 100,000 of population. Roughly a million Americans of every race, age, gender and sexual orientation were infected with the virus. Unprotected sex was identified as a main cause of the disease’s spread. Sharing needles among intravenous drug users was another.

In 1967 about 1 in every 6 babies was born to an unmarried woman. In thirty years, while Austin and Dr. Evil remained frozen, the rate had changed to 1 in 3. Today almost half of all babies are born outside of marriage. Households composed of a single parent or cohabiting parents increased dramatically over that time span. Virtually no one argues that the children within those households fare better than their counterparts in traditional households where mom and dad are present and married.

As Austin Powers learned to his dismay–along with those of us who were fully thawed during those decades–there is no such thing as a consequence-free environment. Fun is great. It’s vital to our mental health. But to have fun without thought to repercussions is dangerous. And just plain wrong.

Worse than that, just going for it and doing what you want to do is doomed to failure. A life spent in selfish pursuit of pleasure is not only a wasted life but an unhappy one as well. Decades from now you’ll be old (It’ll come much sooner than you think. Just ask Madonna.) I predict you’ll realize that the times you felt truly happy and truly fulfilled were not the times you spent having fun without thought of repercussions or times you decided to just go for it and do what you wanted to do.

I predict you’ll find true satisfaction and pride only when you realize you were created to serve others. You’ll fondly remember how you discovered that the tremendous gifts with which you’ve been blessed could be used to enhance the quality of others’ lives. And your happiest moments will be the times you were not pursuing pleasure for yourself but serving others. But here’s the kicker. Though you weren’t pursuing pleasure by serving others, that’s exactly where you will have found your greatest pleasure.

Yes. You’re young. Have fun. Lots of it. But humor an old man and hear these words. Don’t waste your life and your talents in the selfish pursuit of pleasure. And don’t pretend like there are no repercussions to your choices. There are. And they might last a lifetime and prevent you from being all you were created to be. That would be a shame. Because this sad and sorry world needs all the joy that Miley Cyrus can bring to it.