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Since late in the Belushi years, when I was finally allowed to stay up and watch Saturday Night Live, I’ve probably caught 90% of the episodes — although now mostly in my Sunday morning DVR ritual. I can’t remember a moment as touching — as human — as the skit from this weekend’s season finale: the final show for seven-year SNL veteran, and now international comedy sensation, Kristen Wiig. If you haven’t caught it over the weekend’s Facebooking and Twittering, check out this legitimate “Must See TV” below: The RP’s column this week in The Huffington Post centers around a special organization that promoted bipartisanship, and how its mission is not being fulfilled…yet. Here’s an excerpt:
Click here to read the full article at The Huffington Post.
20 years as a senior-level executive with three Fortune 500 companies, a high-level governmental official, a political player rubbing elbows with governors, members of congress and even private visits with the President. However, after 20 years of climbing the corporate ladder, extensive travel and a cell phone permanently in my ear, I started to feel that while I had achieved some level of “success,” I was lacking “significance.” While playing corporate musical chairs, the music suddenly stopped one Friday afternoon and I found myself without a chair in that ivory tower I had grown so comfortable in occupying. But it was a 300 year old story that would not only be redemptive; it would provide the purpose I had been seeking and the means to help others in similar situations find their purpose. Ironically, I had delivered thousands of speeches over the years about the power of purpose. Included in those speeches was a simple yet powerful story of a bystander observing two people laying bricks. The first person when asked what he was doing responded, “I’m laying bricks.” The second responded, “I’m building a cathedral.” Naturally, the “cathedral builder” had resonated more with me than the “bricklayer,” but after 20 years of playing the corporate game, pushing my way to the front of the room, I was starting to feel more like that “bricklayer.” And unfortunately, I wasn’t alone.  Click to order Greg's book Numerous studies report that less than half of employees are actually satisfied with their jobs and feel a sense of purpose. Other surveys suggest that a high number of employees would leave their companies today if the economy were better. And with one in ten Americans currently unemployed, six of those ten unemployed say the next job they get will most likely not provide purpose; instead, they expect to have to settle for something less. A women and workplace survey from “More Magazine” revealed that 43% of the women surveyed say they are less ambitious now than they were a decade ago. And only a quarter of the 500 women ages 35 to 60 say they’re working toward their next promotion. Three out of the four of women in the survey, 73%, say they would not apply for their boss’ job, reporting the stress, office politics and lack of purpose make the leap simply not worth it. In fact, two of three women said they would accept considerably less money for more free time and more flexibility. The bottom line is, there’s never been a time when Americans, male and female, young and old, public and private sector, need a sense of purpose. Read the rest of…
From press release: Congressmen Kurt Schrader (D-OR), Scott Rigell (R-VA), Jim Cooper (D-TN), and Reid Ribble (R-WI) today appeared together in front of the U.S. Capitol to send a clear message to America: Congress is broken, and we’re ready to fix it. “The American people recognize that Washington is broken,” said Congressman Scott Rigell, a Republican from Virginia Beach. “This is underscored by the fact that the 112th Congress has an underwhelming 12 percent approval rating. It is a sobering reality that Congress is, indeed, in need of reform, and it’s time we do something about it.” At a press conference Wednesday, Rigell, Schrader, Ribble, and Cooper formally launched the Fix Congress Now Caucus, a small but committed body of like-minded, reform-driven Members — seasoned and new to Congress. Their mission is simple: “We will identify, agree upon, and move forward legislation and rule changes that will fix this institution to such a degree that we are able to fully meet our deep obligation to our fellow Americans — and to our children and grandchildren. And we will be bold in our efforts to truly make a difference.” The top priorities of the Caucus are reforming the benefits of Congress, addressing the inefficient and unaccountable budgeting process that leaves the country without a budget year after year, and finally, elevating the debate from the bitter partisanship now rampant in Washington. As the first practical expression of that goal, the founders, flanked by other Members who have signed on to support their efforts, announced their unanimous support for HR 3643, ‘No Budget, No Pay,’ a bill introduced in the House by Cooper and in the Senate by former House Member Dean Heller of Nevada. The bill essentially establishes ‘pay for performance’ in Congress. It prohibits payment to any Member of Congress if both houses of Congress have not approved a concurrent resolution on the budget for a fiscal year before October 1 of that fiscal year and have not passed all the regular appropriations bills for the next fiscal year by the same date. Schrader, a Democrat from Oregon agreed: “One of the fundamental responsibilities of Congress is to designate a fiscally responsible budget for which the Federal government has to operate. If we cannot perform this most basic task, we have no right to be collecting a paycheck from hardworking American taxpayers who rely on us to do so.” “Diagnosis is the first step to treatment,” said Cooper, a Democrat from Tennessee who has long advocated for Congressional reform. “So I’m glad my colleagues are recognizing that Congress is broken. By tackling reform, this caucus will push for medicine – like No Budget, No Pay – that Congress could actually swallow.” Ribble, a Wisconsin freshman who sits on the House Budget Committee, said: “I ran for office for the same reason that I helped start the Fix Congress Now Caucus. I want to ensure that my children and grandchildren can experience America as it should be: the land of opportunity. “We want the Fix Congress Now Caucus to be a vehicle to correct the systemic dysfunction that has plagued Washington – regardless of party affiliation,” Ribble continued. “If our colleagues on both sides of the aisle stand with us and work toward commonsense solutions, then we can make sure that generations to come have a chance at the American dream.” Rigell also stressed the importance of elevating the tone of the debate in Washington from partisanship rhetoric to a more civil debate. “We must strive for a civil tone in Washington. In all debates we have here, we must seek the true facts and not question each other’s motives,” Rigell said. “But do not mistake civility for weakness. Each of us is firmly rooted in our principles, but we are also committed to seeking the common ground that Americans expect us to find to address this nation’s great challenges.” For a full list of Fix Congress Now Caucus Members and more information visit: http://rigell.house.gov/FCNC/ Thanks for joining us for what I believe was a very enlightening, and sometimes even entertaining debate on the relevance of Mitt Romney’s alleged bullying of a fellow prep school attendee nearly 50 years ago. Some concluding observations:
We interrupt this fascinating and revealing debate with the uber-emotional rantings by this site’s founder. This debate has torn the scab off two pet peeves that have been the target of some of my most agonized rhetorical fury during my post-political recovery. First, with due respect to my friend, the Frozen Chosen Mr. Berkowitz — as well as dozens of columnists who’ve weighed in similarly over the past week — I am not persuaded at all that Romney’s reaction to the disclosure of events is troubling. In saying he didn’t remember the incident, I assume he lied. Any good lawyer or political consultant would have advised him to do the same. There was no advantage in him extending the debate by confirming or disputing the story, and no one can prove that he remembered it or not. I do not think Romney should be blamed for lying about an event that does not deserve punishment today, just as I don’t think Bill Clinton should have been impeached for lying about personal indiscretions, nor that my friend Jeff Smith should have been incarcerated for a year for falling into a perjury trap about a minor campaign finance violation. People lie because they are embarrassed, or because they don’t want to get bad publicity, but if what they lie about is not actionable in itself, I have trouble claiming that the lie is a major offense. Second, I dispute the notion shared by many of the previous contributors — as well, again, as by many pols and pundits this week — that we can draw some psychological conclusions about Romney’s performance as President based on something he did as a teenager. Of course, if a qualified therapist had Romney on the couch for a year’s worth of weekly sessions, and Romney shared his life story, the therapist could develop some meaningful conclusions about how Romney’s childhood shaped him in the decades that followed. But as any good therapist would tell you, they could not draw the same conclusions simply through reading a series of unrelated press accounts of his six decade life. Indeed, they would tell you: “This is not my patient; it would be irresponsible for me to draw such conclusions.” This is simply another excuse the press uses to pick apart the dirty laundry in a politician’s private life. This psychobabble does no service to the debate except selling papers and encouraging clicks from readers who love to revel in the misery of the famous, and/or who have been brainwashed by the movies and the media to expect full and consistent narratives about famous people. And by the way — this particular story matches no narrative of Mitt Romney, the candidate or human being, that I have ever read to date. The dominant narrative — one I have been inclined (brainwashed?) to accept as true — is that he is a politician who would do anything to get elected. In 1994, he was pro-gay in order to run against Ted Kennedy, and stayed pro-gay through his election as Governor of Massachusetts. By 2012 he became anti-gay to appeal to the right wing of his party. My guess he really doesn’t care much about the issue; his sole focus is on getting elected President. (And even that narrative is unfair. I am sure Romney cares about something — there are some ideas that he would never abandon for political expediency. There simply are no perfectly consistent narratives for us flawed human beings.) The fact that the 18 year old Romney was an asshole bully sheds no light on anything except the fact that when he was 18, he was an asshole bully. If I were his principal at the time, I would have expelled him and turned over the evidence to authorities to prosecute him for assault. (Of course, at that time — as well as in my own childhood — incidents like these were quite common and rarely punished severely: “Boys will be boys!” Replace “gay” with “Jew,” and I suffered a similar humiliation on a handful of occasions. Thank God today, society is moving in the direction of treating bullying as the crime that it is.) However, as I concluded in my introductory post, his stupid, mean, hurtful behavior as a teenager does not disqualify Mitt Romney to be President.
The worst and most shameful thing I have ever done was as a teenager. I was the ringleader of a group of friends that wrote, sang and produced a parody song about a younger kid with whom we attended camp. For purposes of privacy, I will call him Jimmy. In those pre-autism, pre-Asberger days, Jimmy was simply considered strange, bereft of the many of the social and inter-personal skills shared by most teenagers. None of our gang ever made fun of him to his face, but in the conspiracy of a friend’s basement music studio, we sang about his perceived deficiencies to the tune of a then-popular song. At the time, it seemed brilliant and hilarious. And today, it reveals itself as unrelentingly cruel. I console myself with the confidence that Jimmy never heard the cassette tape we recorded. (Thank God there was no Facebook). I don’t think he even heard about it. I also understand that my own episode of bullying was related to the extensive bullying I underwent in middle school — both physical and verbal — for my strange faith, my short stature, and my own personality issues. But none of that excuses my behavior. I was wrong. I was awful. I’ve been thinking a lot about Jimmy this week when I heard the story of Mitt Romney’s own episode of teenage bullying. If you’ve been on another planet in the past week, the press has been consumed with the story first reported by The Washington Post that Romney tackled and forcibly cut the hair of a fellow student who reveled in his nonconformity and was presumed gay. In one sense, I am grateful that the story has been revealed. As I’ve written extensively at this site, I believe that gay rights is the most important civil rights issue of this generation, and anything that enables discussion of teenage bullying, and the horrible impact it has on gay children, is a positive development. But while this discussion is important, I do not believe that the story is relevant for judging the character of Mitt Romney. We all have done stupid and cruel things as teenagers. While my own episode did not involve violence, nor did it directly involve the victim, it was awful nonetheless. But I don’t think my character today is defined by that moment. Indeed, science has demonstrated clearly over the past few decades that teenagers are wired much different that grown adults. Their brains are still developing, and they are prone to move more impulsive, emotional and destructive behavior. For those of you who disagree with me — those who think that we should hold this 50-year-old incident against Romney — think about your own Jimmy story. I know you have one. We all do. The important thing is not what we did as a teenager, but whether or not we learned from it. Romney’s record on gay rights and bullying as an adult must be carefully scrutinized. It is very much fair game. But as much as I’m happy that the nation is focused again on the horrible crime of teenage bullying against gays and lesbians, I do not agree that any one should cast a vote against Romney because of this incident. |
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