Black (Friday) Sheep
‘Twas the day after T-day, and all through the land,
The people were shopping for every known brand.
Commercials that blared all week long on TV
And ads in the papers enticed them to see
Those deep-deep discounts and bargains they’d get
When the stores opened – while the dew was still wet,
At seven – no six! – no five! ‘neath parking lot lights.
You’d best get there early or camp overnight.
So, stuffed with turkey, potatoes and pies,
They hit Circuit City for great midnight buys.
By three in the morning, they must leave that store
To line up at Target or K-Mart by four.
Those discounters open at six o’clock sharp,
And only the early-birds get the big carts.
Employee shills (“We’re off work today.”)
Stand first in line, and have much to say:
“Only one set of the three sets of doors
Will be opened at six, so if you want to score
That TV or toaster or child’s rocking horse,
Get in line, keep your place, ‘cause the guards will enforce
The order in which all the shoppers arrive.”
Late-comers who “bump” just may not survive.
Weary waiters will turn upon late-sleeping fools
And call on the guards to enforce all the rules.
But if you’re compliant and stay in the line,
That pre-dawn bargain will make you feel fine.
Never mind that it costs the exact same at noon,
Or even next week. For you know that quite soon
The marketing masters, obeyed, let you sleep
’Til they herd you again like dumb, docile sheep.
I confess. I attempted shopping on Black Friday. I hadn’t shopped on the Friday after Thanksgiving for more than a decade. Completing all my holiday shopping before I eat the turkey is one of the things I’m always thankful for. I am oblivious to the onslaught of marketing that accosts us in every medium. Okay, not oblivious. I hate it. Actively. I cannot imagine many people succumbing to its blatant chicanery. I believed that the annual news coverage of dazed but earnest shoppers huddling in the cold at bizarre hours awaiting a store opening was vastly exaggerated by the media cynically serving the interests of its advertisers. Apparently my imagination was misinformed.
In the wee hours of this Black Friday, I did not set out to shop. I set out for a 7:00 AM cup of coffee with a nearby girlfriend at the local Panera. I knew there would be a Target on the way, and that it would have on sale a pragmatic little item I’d been meaning to get for myself – a small George Foreman grill. So I planned a little stop along the way to Panera. I arrived at 5:40, figuring I’d pop into Target at 6:00 when the store opened, after the (imagined) smallish clusters of very-early risers waiting at the three sets of doors made their well-deserved and too-long-awaited entrance. I would grab my little grill, and probably have to wait in a longish line to check out, and still be at Panera by 7:00.
Couldn’t do it. It wasn’t the long checkout line. I never got that far. I never got into the store. The problem – visceral terror at being in a herd of sheep as mindless as the people I found lined up outside.
Snapshot: One long line, a queue of some 200 people (when I arrived, but it grew as I watched) all leading to one single set of doors. This was dehumanizing crowd-control reminiscent of Disney theme parks without the roped-off switch-back model, which would at least have allowed people to huddle for warmth. In light of last year’s stories of violence against line-jumpers, though, maybe it was simply prudent management.
I never meant to stand in line. I brought a banana and a bottle of water, which I planned to enjoy while sitting in my car until the long-waiting crowd entered. But the vision of the extreme conga line made me curious. The weather was not too cold, so I strolled the line with my banana and my bottle, chatting with folks. Big mistake.
First, I tossed my banana peel in the nearest trash can, which happened to be by the only set of doors from which the line of shoppers snaked out into the wilds of the parking lot. There, as I was strolling away (away from the trash can and away from the sacred door to the temple of Mammon), I was verbally accosted by the (“off-duty”) employees who had been in line since 4:00 AM to nail their bargains. They directed me pointedly to the end of the line. “Yeh, yeh, thanks, I get it. What’d you want me to do? Toss the peel on the ground here where y’all would slip on it?”
On my meander along the line, I noticed the happily chatting groups of people who’d been waiting who-knew-how-long, and whose feet must be hurting. I thought, gee, this is so sweet – people getting along, talking with strangers sharing an experience, with a common goal. There’s something innocently intimate about queueing up with strangers in the dark of very early morning.
I asked one lone, petite woman near the front of the line how long she’d been there. Oh, only about 20 minutes, she said. She had asked the employees at the very front what the deal was with the line going to only one door when there were three – two at opposite ends of the front of the building, and one at the side by the garden department. She wasn’t exactly in the line, more of an out-lier like me, but she wasn’t walking away from the line, either. I asked her what she was going to do. “I’ll wait ‘til they’re all in before I go in. I only want a couple of things I can carry in my arms. Don’t need a cart.” I wished her “happy shopping” and wandered on along the line, eavesdropping on conversations.
Most people were telling each other what they were hoping to buy. No surprises – toys for kids, clothes, home appliances. Nobody else mentioned my small grill. That gave me confidence. Who gives a two-burger grill for Christmas?
Then I started asking people how early they’d arrived – 4:30 AM, to be about 50 people back in the line – and why they did that. I mean, Black Friday is infamous for being frustrating to shop in, dangerous to drive in, and not particularly bargain-rich compared to prices that would be offered during the weeks before Christmas.
One well-dressed, merry-faced woman’s response typified the mentality: “Oh, just for the excitement.” Okey-dokey, then. I just could not bring myself to ask her how excited she felt after standing in the cold and dark for an hour and a half. It’s one thing to be all Snidely Whiplash when I write about these sheeple, but I simply could be the Grinch who stole her Christmas right in her face. So I wished her a happy holiday as I noted the slightly unfocused eyes that looked back into mine. Not glazed, exactly, but definitely not focused on present reality. She must have been listening to some very exciting voices in her head where the exciting images were cavorting, in a state of shopping frenzy and glee.
An altered state. That’s what I observed in the rest of the folks I chatted with, once I knew what I was looking at. Oh, they weren’t all in the same state, but they weren’t in the here and now, being who they usually are. No. I wouldn’t call it a state of excitement, but it was some state of fantasy.
There was a recently retired man in a windbreaker and shorts and tennis shoes, directing the latest-arriving stragglers to the (ever farther) end of the line. “End of the line’s over there,” he shouted, flinging his arm in the right direction, “You have to go to the end.” I asked him if he was an employee with an official role this morning. No, “I just like doing it.” Maybe he’d been a policeman, and enjoyed directing traffic when the stop-lights were out. With these folks, the lights were definitely out.
As I passed him, the petite woman who had been hanging out not-quite-in-line near the door caught up with me. “The employees called the security guard on me,” she reported. “They pointed me out. The guard towered up over me and told me to go to the end of the line. I wasn’t going to go in until everybody in line had gone in, I just didn’t want to walk all the way out there just to walk all the way back to the door.” And, shaking her head, off she went to the very end of the line.
As I worked my way farther and farther into the more recent arrivals, people who had been standing an hour or less, I found less conversation and more glazed eyes. They were definitely “in line” physically, but their brains stared out of their eyes into the middle distance – maybe seeking the brightness of the parking lot lights to keep themselves awake. I’ll never know. Their auto-pilot demeanor forbade interruption; one does not want to startle the living dead.
Among the very latest arrivals, there was some spark of active cognition. These folks seemed less amused to be stuck far back in a single line, but figured they were there, might as well stay and get what they came for. They were resigned to the situation, but at least they could verbalize what it was.
Then I looked from the end all the way along the line to the front. I remembered that I’d just driven by a pasture where the cattle were stirring, about to start their grassy breakfast, seeking exactly what they needed precisely when they needed it. No ads could persuade them to do otherwise. These cattle wouldn’t be herded until the slaughter, but they would have no previous experience of that hazard to advise them of the danger – no freezing throngs immortalized on film during last season’s final march to the killing ground. The herd I was looking at in the Target parking lot had no such excuse.
Not that retail marketing would kill them, except, from what I’d observed, spiritually. Just shear them seasonally. Desensitize and deaden them bit by bit. So my herd wasn’t cattle, but sheep – marginally aware, but not really thinking beasts. Not oblivious to the ploys convincing them of this “excitement,” but acquiescing to it. Who knew what this herd might do if prodded just so – unthinking, innocent, but stampeding with sharp hooves all the same.
Not a crowd I wanted to share a store with. This is Florida, after all – a state with its own category of weirdness on Fark.com, where the Florida category has more entries than the “dumbass” category. I didn’t want my friends and relatives seeing me among the terrified (or deceased) in the morning news coverage of a “45-calibre stand-off among over-excited shoppers at SuperTarget.” That’s not my idea of excitement.
I finished my water walking back to my car. It was 5:55. I arrived early at Panera, and had a cup of coffee before my friend arrived. I read the paper – mercifully uncluttered by the previous few days’ volume of ads. No need, today. The sheep were already in the shearing sheds. Baaa! Or, as Scrooge and I would say, “Bah!”
© Kate Diamond 2006
Girls’ Rules
The November 2006 election opened the door for a sea-change in United States history. It was more than a referendum on the war in Iraq. It was a referendum on all the wrongs the Iraq war stands for – from lies about weapons of mass destruction to a strategy of mass deception.
This election was a referendum on sloppy intelligence work, inter-agency turf wars, political over-reaching, lies to Congress and the people (lies nearing the magnitude of fraud, serving agendas conceived before any excuse for action toward them occurred), and unethical behavior ranging from the torture of prisoners to the exorbitant prices paid for Haliburton’s goods and services. Let’s not forget the egregiously exorbitant price paid in the lives and limbs of soldiers and innocent civilians in the name of security from nonexistent weapons of mass destruction.
The electorate taught our political parties—both of them—a lesson. That lesson is change and accountability for it. It’s a lesson of hope and of trust, but hope that must be fulfilled and trust that must be earned. One of the most important results of this election is the historic accession of a female representative to the post of Speaker of the House.
That’s how much we as a people see the need for change. We have played by boys’ rules long enough. Now the girls are not only at the table, we’re closer to the head of it. We shall raise the level of discourse. We shall reach achievable security and economic goals through effective strategies. And we shall burn no bras to do it.
That 1960’s bra burning myth was always just that, myth and metaphor: “Set ‘the girls’ free.” It’s been a long, complex climb, setting the girls free, and the climb’s not done yet. We have sheer north faces to scale and glacier fields to traverse before planting the Chickland flag on the peaks we will summit.
Then we’ll have to mark the trail clearly for others to follow and defend it against the kudzu-like encroachment of the persistent Oldboysland parties. But they have long had their own trails to the summit, and they can (and will) continue to use them. The only difference will be that the Chicklanders will not ever give up our paths to those same summits – and a few new peaks the Oldboyslanders never thought of. Not to worry, though; we’ll share the view.
Nancy Pelosi will be Speaker of the House. During their campaigns, Republicans held that possibility as an unimaginable horror which—along with the threat of a Democrat-led abandonment of the War on Terrorism—would dishonor Our Great Nation. Really? More than initiating an unjustified war did? More than torture of prisoners did? More than defrauding Congress and the electorate into sending our soldiers to die and spending our wealth for nothing good or necessary while enriching politically well-connected companies did? Being led again by the party that achieved our last balanced budget would be worse than that?
Most people aren’t that good at math and logic. The Republican marketing machine was counting on that and also on the fascist-conservative voting block’s deeply subconscious fear of powerful women. I mean, you suppress a group for your own advantage all your life, con them into believing that it’s for their own good, keep them in the dark about how you’re really running the world – and then when somebody turns the lights on, and they see how the world really can be for them, well, the payback should scare you.
I don’t know what’s so surprising about a woman being Speaker of the House. Every woman I know is the primary speaker of her house. Men always complain that we speak too much. Recent studies show that we use more words per day than men do. (Not counting, I’m sure, the many subtle meanings of the common male locutions “Humma-humma,” “Hoo-wah,” and “Oh, baby!”) So a woman becoming The Speaker makes sense in a biology-is-destiny kind of way.
I hope that the first woman Speaker will redeem us Baby Boomers from the embarrassments we have suffered because of the compulsions and excesses of the first two (male) Presidents of our generation. I hope she sets a precedent for the next (and probably last) President of our generation, if the next generation doesn’t pre-empt our last hurrah. Nancy Pelosi’s statements since the elections have established a strong foundation for those hopes – pragmatic, realistic, reasonable, open-minded. I’m pretty sure she can pronounce “nuclear” and construct a coherent sentence.
Thus, she may also be able to help structure a coherent approach to economic and military recovery. Although Pelosi represents that hotbed of liberalism, San Francisco, she will definitely lead no flag burnings nor bra burnings. We original uppity women of the 1960’s now need our bras too much to burn the damn things. But we don’t love them; they’re uncomfortable. Maybe, along with better oversight of big pharma and big insurance, we can pass some regulations about fit and comfort on the bra manufacturing industry. We might fund research into up-lifting technologies – something solar-powered, perhaps bio-engineered and anti-gravity.
It’s time to raise the, um, standards. Let’s hear it for the girls!
© Kate Diamond 2006
Slave to Technology
We’ve come a long way from our deliverance from the washtub and board, to the washing machine with it hand-crank wringer, to the automatic washer and dryer. Now, all we have to worry about is upgrading to the most water- and energy-efficient, front-loading … oh, and colorful and sleek and LCD-screened, and perched atop a handy storage drawer-ed … models. All three most familiar brands of which (Maytag, Kenmore, and Whirlpool) are all actually made by Whirlpool. Only LG is a separate company. But sure as Bank of America has bought MBNA, LG will be subsumed by its industry’s lava flow of acquisition. But what do we care, as long as our lives are made easier and we have more time for greater productivity and recreation of higher orders?
Technology has also delivered us from the horse and carriage to horsepower and highways. We have been freed from the manual shift to the automatic, from analog AM radio to digital AM/FM and satellite radio, with random-play multi-disc CD systems. We no longer have to worry about who might rustle our horses, and what might spook the horse into throwing us as we ride. Automotive security systems first tell passersby to step away from the car and then Lojack their whereabouts to the police after the Grand Theft Auto wiseguy outsmarts the alarm. In the “protect us from ourselves” department, our cars have gone from the annoying clang to the gentle tone to the dulcet voice warning us that a seatbelt is unfastened or a door ajar.
Now, Lexus can parallel park itself – a chore I was ready to be freed from, say, 40 years ago. Now that I've finally mastered that skill, what I need is for the car to unload the groceries from the trunk and shlep them to the kitchen. But I guess life-long suburbanites who have never parked anywhere but mall lots will need this service when they regentrify hip new urban environments (to walk to theaters, shopping and restaurants, as the ads bray) after their offspring leave the nest. I wonder what the gentle auto-voice will tell the driver when the car won’t fit into the chosen spot. For men: “Sorry, you’re just too big to fit. Let’s go find something that can take all of you.” For women: “Honey, you know you deserve more space than this puny little thing.” Now, there’s a technology that we could become slaves to. And you know the auto industry marketing gurus will give us whatever will appeal to our deepest psychological needs (or fantasies), the ones we don’t admit into our conscious awareness. The gentle voice will not say, "Dummy! Get a Prius or a MiniCooper for in-town. And save some resources by driving it everywhere else, too."
But we don’t mind. As long as our lives are easier and we feel better about ourselves, we don’t mind having fewer real choices. Choices take so much time, make us think so hard. So we pay a bit more because there’s less competition among manufacturers. Among banks. Hey, efficiencies of scale make things both better and cheaper for us, right? Everybody says so. Yeah, and more than 60% of Americans thought that Saddam Hussein was allied with Osama bin Laden around the time we invaded Iraq.
I’m not some Luddite who wants to reject technological conveniences. I just want to keep the context in mind. What do the providers of those conveniences know about us that lead them to offer particular subtleties instead of others? What needs (or fantasies) for prestige and self-esteem are they counting on – and addicting us to their brand of satisfaction thereof? And what more do they hope to profit from them?
It’s one thing to want more freedom from drudgery in order to apply our talents and intellect to higher order goals. But it’s a different, and a much worse, thing to let ourselves be turned into whatever consumer creatures the marketers work so hard to carve us into. We don’t know their full agendas, we can only be sure those agendas extend beyond the juicy tidbit on the hook dangling in front of us at the moment.
The only agendas, goals and missions we can know are our own. And we’d better be very clear about those. Can you visualize and verbalize yours, and the steps to achieve them, clearly enough to evaluate every tempting toy pushed at you with the question, “Does this serve my goals?” And then choose the ones that serve you more than you serve them.
© Kate Diamond 2006
Menopause Barbie in Corporate America
A Word to the Unwise
Attention, Dilbertian managers and Machiavellian princes! Somewhere in your organization lurks the archetype of Xena the Warrior Princess, exercising her powers. Relax! She’s on the same team as you, and she shares your goals. Even if she’s on the opposing team, you should be glad she’s there because she’ll make sure that negotiations result in a mutual win.
She has read Princessa, and said to herself, “Oh, so that’s why my own ‘secret strategies’ have always worked for me although I found them in no previous directions on how to swim with the sharks, win at the art of war, or be a highly effective person.” She has relaxed and allowed the laws of interpersonal power physics to work for her. A war between enemies is a no-win situation that consumes much fuel but produces too little light. Opponents who can be shown a more beneficial goal than the one they originally held become collaborators in a process that produces great amounts of light compared to the fuel invested. Thus, she achieves much with little (apparent) effort. You rely upon her. You fear her. You may resent her. She knows all that. Don’t worry. She’s too busy to destroy you. She'll make everyone rich if you stay out of her way - and richer if you join with her.
Rosie the Riveter Now Has More Powerful Tools
We embody (and en-soul) corporate America’s best hope and worst nightmare - women old enough to possess wisdom and young enough to have the energy to act on it. Feminist? Women’s rights? The gender-specific causes, the labels each of us may choose matter not. In the workplace, only human rights provide a broad enough canvas for the true picture - the rights of men and women to the dignity of their work and to the rewards for their creative ideas as well as their labor.
Dilbert illustrates a daily example of human rights violations in the work place, regardless of gender. The humor strikes us from the exaggeration, the archetypal characters. Men and women alike, we know that every day’s Dilbert shows us the truth of our life at work in the vast majority of companies. Our laughter buffers the pain of that truth. Our sense of humor saves us from many types of devastating pain. In the workplace, the daily persistent battering at our dignity, at our sense of self-esteem, builds up calluses on our sensitivity, as writing daily with a pen builds a callus on the middle finger’s first joint. (A metaphor you can pursue for yourself.)
You Can Be a Team Player Only If You're Allowed in the Locker Room
Flaunt your callused fingers as you may (or as you may fantasize), you still show up on time for the daily grind. You attend meetings, and arrive on time. You act as a team player. You practice the seven habits of highly effective people. You are a responsible member of the corporate family. Still, you recognize the dysfunctional nature of this family. You work for personally abusive managers, or under systemically abusive policies. As a salaried (exempt) employee, you donate as much as twenty hours a week beyond the standard forty – more if you count the hours of commuting from the neighborhood in which you can afford to live, to the office (near which you cannot afford to live). You make this contribution to corporate well-being in the blind faith that the corporation is contributing equally to your well-being through the benefits it provides. By now, probably, personal experience has forced you to think again.
Take health insurance – please. Most companies provide access to some form of health maintenance organization; some provide a cafeteria of health insurance options from which you can choose, but only the HMOs fall within your budget. And the HMOs decreasingly provide full coverage for the very kind of care whose support formed their original charter: health maintenance, disease prevention.
Take mammograms – please, really. Personal story: Many years ago, my then-employer’s HMO that required the least employee contribution for premiums and lowest co-pays for treatment and prescriptions fully covered the cost of annual mammograms for women forty years old and up. This coverage included several of the area’s most respected hospital-related MRI services providing the annual, non-critical mammogram. Suddenly, one year, only a more limited list of MRI providers were covered at all for the annual health maintenance mammo – and those had old, poorly maintained equipment. (Their own employees were upset with the state of the equipment.) The better providers remained on the list for critical care only.
That meant that if old equipment whose output was read by over-worked, underpaid radiologists (whose competence levels did not permit them to practice at the best hospitals) failed to reveal a tumor early on, when shorter-term less expensive care could affect a cure, you could then receive coverage at one of the higher quality institutions for critical care – when it would cost more, take longer, and deprive the company of more of your productivity. Oh, and you have a lower chance of survival because of the later detection. Does this approach really save the HMO or the company money? No. Does it put your life at greater risk? Yes. A lose-lose situation, and still they do it.
There are those who say that if the MRI was for testicular cancer, no such limitation would occur. Be that as it may, this HMO policy demonstrated that the HMO knew that women care enough about their own health care to go pay full price themselves at reliable MRI providers. And those women who simply could not afford that, well, how important a member of society can they be? I changed HMOs instead – but the search for adequate coverage within my budget delayed my MRI six months until my company’s next annual insurance selection period, and the new HMO had higher co-pays. Them that have, get. I had what I had, and I got what I could. This constitutes a wealth and class issue, where perception clouds the bottom line reality. A false corporate economy based on a false assumption.
Menopause Barbie sees the law of gravity inexorably apply to her body – breasts, face, upper arms, lower tush. Looks blur, but the mind sharpens. So does the tongue and the wit. Sure, we know that old saw that you attract more flies with honey. I ask you, who wants to attract flies? Besides, vinegar is not the only alternative to sugar. Truth works. Examples work. Proposing solutions works. Numbers of workers armed with truth and examples and solutions proposals work best. Size does count in these matters. If you want to make a change in corporate policy, or at least in the corporate insurance policy, organize an e-mail campaign to the Benefits executive. A high enough volume on the same subject will get the attention of the administrator who screens the exec’s e-mails, so that the exec gets at least a report on the topic and number of emails – and he or she may get the greater message, too, after reading a few of the individual messages.
. . . So Let's Redecorate That Locker Room
Gravity works on us – a law of physics we can’t repeal. Laws of economics and power work, too. We can make those work for us – and all the habitual misconceptions in the world can’t repeal them, either. Let's re-invent those laws, repeal the laws that don't work, enact new laws that do. Got any ideas? Talk to me!
© 2006 Kate Diamond
Collared
Police call an arrest a collar. Being arrested limits your options, affects the way you think – particularly if you’re innocent. Or if you had no idea that your behavior was in any way destructive or self-destructive. What if the workplace “collar” we identify with has been arresting our development all these years?
The collar you’ve been wearing and identifying with can, metaphorically, arrest you. It can limit your options, affect the way you think (in ways you never thought of). Your collar can choke you … with the very tie or necklace that was part of your work uniform if you identify yourself as a white-collar professional.
Feeling a tad insecure? Survived several rounds of layoffs? Been ripped by a RIF (reduction in force) and restructured your career and your life? Tried viewing yourself as “Me, Inc.” in the workplace – marketing yourself to outshine the competition of your professional brethren? Tried literally forming your own company or sole proprietorship as some kind of freelance service provider, expert consultant, contract knowledge-worker? Worked one shift four days a week at WalMart and another shift three days a week at Seven-Eleven?
Shed that collar, yet? Who are you now?
No need, really. You can keep the collar. All you really want to shed are all the lies you’ve been brainwashed into believing that collar represents. Eventually, you may even earn enough again to get those collars dry-cleaned every week. Meanwhile, break out the iron and the Magic Sizing. Your collar is entirely in your hands.
What does it mean to be a white-collar, exempt, professional in today’s corporation? It no longer means you are a valued employee, part of the family. It means you work a 60-hour week with no overtime wages. You’re a college-educated salaried professional. Your employer is entitled to your intellect and intellectual property developed on its time. But it’s sucking up more of your time and leaving you less energy to be so smart for yourself.
Employers expect white-collar professionals to be smart for the company but stupid for themselves. Sadly, the companies often get exactly what they expect. And the employees? They don’t get much at all. No defined-benefit pensions, and very little matching funds in the 401-K. Higher contributions to the health insurance for lower benefit levels. Longer hours in buildings less carefully maintained for the employees’ health and comfort. Fewer familiar faces around the water cooler in the break room, more foreign accents around the speaker phone in the conference room.
And still we believe that the path to success is individual contribution, in competition against all our peers. We have been brainwashed. We have drunk the Kool-Aid. We are brilliant fools.
Remember the mantra of teamwork in its heyday? “None of us is as smart as all of us.”
That’s still true. We just have to redefine the game the team is playing and the nature of the goal. The team is still “all of us,” but in the broadest sense. Not our business unit against their business unit. Now, it’s all professional-level employees against our corporate masters. You know what masters own, right? We’re not that, right? Not exactly … not yet … or are we closer than we like to admit?
But there’s hope and it’s a hope we know is true and that we know how to work. None of us is as smart as all of us – I mean, ALL of us. None of us is as loud as all of us. None of us can afford as many lawyers and lobbyists as all of us. None of us can muster as much media attention as all of us. None of us possess the power of all of us. The power of numbers. Numbers high enough for negotiating purchasing power. Numbers high enough to attract marketing attention … journalistic attention … political attention … the attention of the same societal forces that have clamored for our attention all our lives.
What “target market” group or groups are you part of? Female over fifty – you control the lioness’s share of the disposable income in the United States. Baby Boomer – you’re part of the largest consumer demographic the world has ever known, and you’re just entering your years of highest levels of disposable income, now that the kids are grown and earning their own way. (Unless, of course, your pension was eviscerated, forcing you to work until you drop and your kids have moved back home because they can’t find those lucrative jobs you were sure college would prepare them for.)
Whatever target group you were or are part of, surely you’ve grown weary of the bombardment of advertising blasting us from every form of entertainment, transportation and just plain wall surface (public restroom stalls, for heaven’s sake) – and we’re not even going to think about the male portion of the target market’s target area at the bottom of urinals. Oh, wait … we did just think about it. Well, I warned you in the first posting, we’ll think unthinkable thoughts here. And, really, haven’t you always wanted to piss on the advertisers?
Now we can achieve more than the “piddle on the ad” pyrrhic victory. We can use those targeting us to target the bulls…, um, I mean bulls-eye we really want to hit: employers who have shifted the risk part of the “risk-reward” equation onto the shoulders of their employees. And they have been doing exactly that, you know. Follow the money like this – corporate profits are enriching the executives disproportionately more than the shareholders (who aren’t realizing fair rewards for their investment risk) and the employees (whose salaries have not kept pace with rising costs of petroleum products, products whose transportation to retail destinations relies upon petroleum products, real estate taxes tied to madly inflated house prices, and insurance on those houses and on our own health. (See “Real wages fail to match a rise in productivity” by Steven Greenhouse and David Leonhardt in The New York Times, August 28, 2006, Section A; Column 6; National Desk; Pg. 1. Many local newspapers’ business sections in August and September carried the same statistical information with related local corporations’ profit and local workers’ wage stats.)
The rich are getting way richer, the poor are still poor, and they’re being joined by former middle-class workers turned out of the workplace into the soup kitchen, and by the middle-class workers hanging onto jobs with double or triple the responsibility and longer hours in return for a salary falling ever farther behind the cost of living. Ugly picture.
Now picture these fragmented white-collar professionals, uniting. All of us. The same “all of us” that’s smarter than any one of us. All of us professionals, united. United Professionals. Here ya go! See you there. All of us. Let’s get smart together. And take smart action – in the interest of the social contract at the core of our nation.
© 2006 Kate Diamond
Election Year Issues: Interns and Pages and …
What was that third thing? Oh, right … wars! Oh, my! Also, the economy, although that doesn’t fit the “Wizard of Oz” chant’s rhythm.
We are coming up on an election, and of all the factors that might inform voters about the integrity and trustworthiness of either party, what are we hearing most about from the media and the water-cooler crowd and the Starbucks sippers? Representative Mark Foley’s horrific and hypocritical behavior. It speaks ill of him. It speaks ill of Hastert and the rest who knew early on and— not having learned the fate of cover-ups from Watergate—covered it up. To quote the original Reagan Republican, “There you go again …!”
Yes, my liberal-inclined self cannot help enjoying the sweet irony of the fact that this Republican sex scandal is near-perfect payback for the Lewinsky onslaught upon the Clinton presidency. Poetic justice and all that. But any abuse of power over employees is outrageous and illegal, regardless of the presence of sexual content and regardless of the less-powerful participant’s willingness. We cannot assume willing participation by the far less powerful person, even if the subordinate believes (at the time) that he or she invited or welcomes the superior’s attentions. In any workplace, these issues must be reported and followed by legal action. Psychological issues of the perpetrator and subsequent rehab therapy notwithstanding, if you do the crime, you should do the time.
But I’m just as concerned about the media’s perception of what we care about, what they can sell advertising space and time for at the highest rate. I mean, sure, hypocrisy and power-abuse is important for us to know about in an election season. And the evidence of those instant messages is straightforward enough for even the simplest voter to understand, and it’s unarguable. Like DNA on a blue dress. Still, I have to think that the media, in all their cynical phrase-making, know this truth about us: “Sex sells” trumps “if it bleeds, it leads.” Bleeds, as in war.
Condi Rice isn’t going to appear on a Sunday morning talk show insisting that the executive and legislative branches of government acted as they thought necessary based on the best intelligence they had about Mr. Foley. Sex is easier to understand than war –for some of us, at least. But the same issues of hidden agendas, when decision-makers really knew what, and how long and strenuously they resisted informing the public about it all – those apply more significantly to the war in Iraq than they do to anybody’s sexual compulsions. Wars, however, and the decisions to wage them are more complex and involve more subtle and more unimaginable (by most of us) compulsions. Now that North Korea’s bomb-blast has exceeded its bombast, and the U.S. executive branch is huffing and puffing about “provocative” behavior by nations instead of congressmen, it’s clear that if we hadn’t deployed troops to Iraq in response to its trumped-up provocation, the availability of those troops to respond to real provocations would have likely prevented North Korea from daring to actually, you know, provoke. Whoever said, “It’s better to have and not need than to need and not have” was right.
The Foley folly hasn’t cost us thousands of deaths and billions of dollars wasted on a military fraud perpetrated upon us (and our allies and the citizens of Iraq) to achieve the objective of overthrowing Saddam Hussein, recorded in meetings of the current inhabitants of executive branch long before the 9/11 terrorist attacks occurred. When the Iraq-WMD intelligence came to their attention fortuitously after 9/11, maybe they lied to us only insofar as they lied to themselves. But we elect people to that level of responsibility to be more objective than that, more honest with themselves than that. Does anybody still expect them to also be more honest with us than that?
The executive branch and the military leadership knew about North Korea’s volatility and intentions before terrorists blew holes in our worldview. But they gambled on a short-handed military’s quick success in unprecedented and unpredictable circumstances on one side of the world while ignoring the more certain outcome of Korea’s opportunistic nuclear ambitions on the other side of the world. Now our worldview is split in two directions, we have insufficient military resources to succeed in either direction, and we have disgraced ourselves and our most stalwart allies through criminal (I mean that literally.) mishandling of the public trust in the interest of private agendas.
So although Foley’s high eeeyewwww-factor instant messages bespeak outrageous behavior, other behaviors should outrage us far more. I have to wonder … to what standard are we going to hold our elected officials from now on? How quickly will murky decisions, redacted to inscrutability, be scrutinized in the light of day? When will we put new batteries in our bullshit detectors and shout out that the king has no clothes?
© 2006 Kate Diamond
Come in From the Cold: Who is this uppity woman?
I'm a 1947 vintage, uncorked to reveal a spicy bouquet. I'll talk about a variety of things here - some issues about which I feel strongly, some observations on newsworthy events, mostly observations on the life of a 2X-er. No, not somebody who wears size 2X
. Somebody with two X chromosomes. Someone blessed with a higher number of neurons across the corpus callosum between the right and left halves of the brain. Someone who, for several years, has had none of her eggs in any basket - but all her marbles well in hand, and a diversified stock portfolio, thank you.
Uppity women, unite!
I speak to those who are older and have better insurance. (How many times have you watched Fried Green Tomatoes?) There exist unthinkable thoughts, and sometimes I will think them out loud here. I heartily invite you to share yours, as well. No taboo subjects. No more Ms Nice Girl. No old "should" tapes running in our heads from our 1950's mothers or our 1960's support groups. We have lived long enough to know the real deal, and yes, we will talk about it. I'll start today, with the fact of all our lives that gave birth to the banner of this column.
‘Pause this film
Come in out of the cold about the joys of menopause. Yes, joys. You know them. Talk about freedom!
Do not whine about menopause being the turning point from which we know we are growing old. The first 30-something who called you "ma'am" told you that. Your daughter growing new breasts as your own began to sag told you that. The first crow’s foot at your eye told you that until it was joined by other laugh-lines. Menopause is just a bit less convenient for awhile. Hot flashes exist. So does hormone replacement. So do exercise and black cohosh. So do female doctors who will help you find the right coping mechanisms for your own body. And, just in time, you’re resourceful enough and persistent enough to find what’s right for you..
Film this ‘pause
Changes in Latitude. Some measures of health rise; others fall. My own menopause was no picnic, starting with the hot flashes. Talk about mood-swings! Menopausal women get crabby because we are sleep-deprived from nighttime hot flashes. Hated it! My family and personal medical history allowed hormone replacement to work for me. Yours may not - try something else. Do not go gentle - you' re too irritable from sleep deprivation to go gentle, anyway. Get help. My boyfriend worried that hormone replacement would make me "lose my edge." I told him not to worry. Estrogen isn't Prozac.
On top of the expected hormonal dry-up, my thyroid went south with the rest of the girls. A male doctor told me that my thyroid count was normal when it was at the very bottom of the normal range, and let me suffer another six months wondering why I felt tired all the time and was gaining weight. Then his female nurse practitioner told me exactly how "normal" my thyroid count had been. I found another doctor, had another test, and soon thereafter started taking Synthroid. Bingo!
Changes in Attitude. I think, in some ways, the irritability of menopause-induced sleep-deprivation is a survival mechanism. It makes us far less tolerant of others' supposed authority if its dictates benefit us naught. Sort of like the founding mothers’ attitude toward England. It's good to return to fundamentals sometimes. If it doesn't work, fix it or replace it. That applies to hormones and doctors, alike. Doctors and women, that's a-whole-nother article. Let me know what you think about doctors' interactions with female patients "of a certain age."
There is a Zen view of a bowl. Look at a bowl. You see the physical bowl. What is important about the bowl? What about the bowl benefits you, nourishes you? Not the bowl itself, but what is in the bowl. Now look at menopause. All your eggs were in one basket. The eggs are gone. What benefits you is whatever is in the basket. I say, refill your basket with the valuables you truly value!
Mine-opause
Now, I know that women have taken to calling hot flashes "power surges," and they certainly can be, but no euphemism will make up for their drain on your energy. Still, I've heard many women mention the same surge of creative power I experienced. Look for your own creative bursts. Fill your bowl with those.
I used this new energy to re-focus on my life's mission and directed that energy following my dreams. I started by throwing a Menopause Party for my female friends and all their mothers and daughters that they could bring. We played with our dreams, we wrote ourselves positive messages to tuck into pockets and under telephones for later when we'd need them, we affirmed our lives, our values and our missions. We continue to support each other. After a steep and winding path, climbing new hills and enjoying new vistas, here I am finding new mountaintops . . . and still climbing.
Pause to share
One lesson menopause validated for me: I am not a body that has spirit; I am a spirit that has a body for awhile. When my body began visibly aging, needing more conscious effort from me (the spirit) to maintain it as a serviceable vehicle, at the same time that I (the spirit) felt my highest-volume, most mature creativity blossom, then I knew who and what "I" am. I am the spirit; I have the body. Yes, I know I just said that. I say it with every breath. Now, I know why I'm breathing. I know the nature of my power.
What is your power? Talk to me. Come on. Send me a signal from your own mountain top, or from wherever along your path you happen to be, on any topic that is your passion. Send the signal to, at least, yourself.
© 2006 Kate Diamond
