08/15

No one knew what happened -- whether it was our floor, the building, the block, the grid.  We went to the window and noticed people standing at windows across Madison Avenue.  Then we noticed people spilling into the street -- thousands.  The phones still worked, so I called home to New Jersey.  My wife said power had dipped there but come back on.   It was then we knew something big had happened beyond New York and New Jersey, which could only mean Canada.   The Canadian power grid serves the entire Northeast U.S.  After some fumbling, someone found and turned on the all-news radio, which wasn't helpful because the station didn't know what had happened either at that point.  It did report that two of the three network television stations were off the air.

We have a client in Boston that specializes in energy and electricity matters, so we called them as our office phones began to die.  They weren't aware of the blackout yet either.  The Boston area had not lost power. But they quickly checked the Internet and told us power was out all the way to Detroit. 

The big question:  How to get home?  I live in New Jersey as does another colleague. There were no subways, no trains, no busses through the Lincoln tunnel.  We thought about sleeping at the office but someone suggested calling a car service.  We couldn't get them on the phone, and every car in New York at that point was taken anyway.  After much discussion, one of the executives suggested we try the Hudson ferry at 38th Street and the West Side Highway.  So, a colleague and I decided to walk there from 52d and Madison.  We hiked down stairs to the street and entered a mob of New Yorkers parading down the center of Madison Ave.  Using a little strategy, we worked our way across 52d Street to 11th Avenue one block from the West Side Highway and the Hudson River.  It was easy to walk south at that point.

As we approached 42d Street, we saw a stream of people heading to the river.  We discovered we had arrived at the ferry with 20,000 of our closest friends, and as we were to learn later from a bellowing fellow, each ferry takes just 299 people.  The temperature was in the upper 80s and the crush was unbelievable, but everyone appeared well-behaved.  We joined the pack at the entrance to the terminal on 38th street, skirting a  block long line that stretched to 39th.  There was no organization to the crush -- and no police either at at that point.  It took two hours of inching to make it through the gate, up the ramp and into a ferry.  Gallows humor abounded.  No one was expressing outrage -- yet.  Women with children were pushed through the pack as were pregnant women and the sick.  One woman carrying a baby that started to cry uncontrollably was threaded through the mob as was a visibly pregnant woman and another who was bent over in pain and being led by a man.  (She was allowed to get to the railing where she hung over it and stared at the greasy water of the Hudson below.)  This required people to press against each other tightly to make a tiny hole through which the individual could barely move. 

There was tension with passengers coming off the ferries.  They were yelling at people to step aside so they could get out of the terminal.  No one moved quickly.  In the depths of the crowd, my colleague who is about five-foot-three-inches or so was reduced to hanging onto the strap of my Land's End brief case so she wouldn't be lost. 

The greatest anxiety came from a lack of news.  There was a fellow standing on the top of a box on the pier shouting instructions, which few could hear.  He was handed a megaphone but it didn't work.  Closer to the ferry, we could hear instructions from a fellow standing on top of a piling. Cell phones went out or worked sporadically.  My colleague's radio wasn't providing much information -- even yet.  People were kind enough when a call got through to let others try, but it was a lottery.  My cell phone from VoiceStream was useless and had no reception anywhere for the night.  My colleague's AT&T phone worked just enough that she got a call through to her husband to get her at Port Imperial in Weehawken where we decided to go because that's where this particular ferry was going and we weren't going to go to the back of the crush and start over.  Her husband graciously called my wife to let her know where I was and where I was going.

When we entered the ferry, incredibly, we had a seat, and there were empty seats behind us.  On the Weehawken side, there was chaos.  Passengers made their way through another crush to a parking lot filled with busses, cars and some, but not many police.  (In fairness, police forces throughout the Northeast were caught short.)  We were reduced to waiting to see if our rides would show. The time was about 6:30 p.m. 

We stood under the setting sun with  thousands of others.  Cars were getting into the parking area on one lane of a loop road from River Road -- the main street along the base of the Palisades.  A bus starter was directing traffic the best he could and moving along drivers who decided to stop in the road to look for passengers somewhere among the 8,000 or so milling people.  After watching him for about an hour, I asked if I could help.  He put me to work directing traffic at the turn in the loop back to River Road under a rust-red moon that was rising behind New York City and silhouetting the black buildings.

I had to use my best command voice and a strong sense of irritation to get some drivers going.  MOVE! YOU CAN'T STAY HERE!  Most obeyed readily:  A few protested and tried to park right where it would block the lane.  I directed traffic until 9:45 p.m.   My colleague's husband found her and they went home about 8 p.m.  My wife was driving farther on closed roads and sudden detours and couldn't  reach Port Imperial for hours.  At 10 p.m., a young women who lives in Union and I decided to find our way home any way that we could. 

Here is where one learns there is innate goodness in humanity, which expresses itself in times of need.  At that moment, a young man walked up and shouted that he would take six people home to wherever they needed to go.  He had driven in from Livingston, New Jersey on his own to help out.  He said he told his wife that he just couldn't sit home.  He collected six of us and we walked the half-mile of the loop robe to the exit where he had parked.  I was worried because I couldn't reach my wife and I knew she was looking for me, but it was 10 p.m. and this fellow was taking us home.

Just as we wheeled from the parking lot onto River Road, I spotted our van about to turn into the Port Imperial loop road.  I screamed for him to stop, and I ran back 50 yards where I bellowed at my wife just before she made the turn.  She wheeled about and picked me up along with the young woman whose named turned out to be Renee and who is a swim wear buyer for a major department store in New York.  After that, it was a matter of threading our way home through blacked out streets and then into a region where there was power and lights, yes lights!

I gobbled some rice and peas, took a shower and dropped into bed at 11:30 p.m.  All in all, not the longest commute I've taken.

 08/14

Fox News, known for its conservatism, leapt into the fray and sued Franken and his publisher, Penguin, because Fox News had trademarked "Fair & Balanced" in 1995.  Moreover, the suit described Franken as "increasingly unfunny." as" neither a journalist not a television news personality.  He is not a well-respected voice in American politics; rather, he appears to be shrill and unstable.  His views lack any serious depth or insight."

Franken handled the lawsuit beautifully.  He thanked Fox News for the publicity, and he said his only regret was that Fox News filed the suit while he was on vacation.  Then he dug in for the kill, as one news story reported:

"As far as the personal attacks go," Franken responded, "when I read
'intoxicated or deranged' and 'shrill and unstable' in their complaint, I
thought for a moment I was a Fox commentator.

"And by the way, a few months ago, I trademarked the word 'funny.' So when
Fox calls me `unfunny,' they're violating my trademark. I am seriously
considering a countersuit."

Zing!  Fox News never saw it coming.  And sure enough, "Lies" rose to no. 4 on the bestseller list of Amazon.com. 

Where the heck was the Fox News' PR counselor through all this?  Any PR practitioner from a junior up would have told Fox News that suing an author and comedian is a set-up for oneself.  I can only hope a lawyer was not so dumb as to think that no one would take notice of the filing except Franken and the publisher.   Adding to the mystery of Fox's stupid PR move was a report that leading Fox News anchor, Bill O'Reilly, had pushed for the lawsuit because it was a matter of honor (?).

Could it be that Fox News lacks a sense of humor?  We know it lacks common PR sense.   There were any number of ways this could have been handled.  1.  Ignore it -- the best way.  2.  Telephone the publisher and ask if the publisher understood that it might be in violation of a trademark.  3.  Write a latter requesting that the author and Penguin honor the trademark -- or at least discuss it.  4.  Announce publicly that Franken appears to be in violation of the  Fox News trademark with a request for the title to be changed. 

Nowhere here do you see the word lawsuit.  That's because a suit solves nothing and sets up the one suing to look like an ass. Score 1 for Al Franken.  Score 0 for Fox News.

08/13

For once, Bush appears to be on the right side of science.  Numerous tests show that careful forest thinning stops fires and lessens damage.  Failure to thin causes conflagrations that char everything.  The Forest Service has been pushing for thinning for more than a decade, especially since it has fought the major fires of recent years.  Environmentalists see thinning as a sneaky way to allow corporate predators back into the woods where they will slash and clear-cut at will.  Neither side trusts the other.

And, why should they?  The Bush Administration does not have a great record on the environment.  And when one considers the source, who would trust Bush's people to have the best interests of forests and wilderness in mind?  On the other hand, had a Democratic president/ environmentalist been in office proposing the same bill, there would be less opposition, and that President might be hailed as an environmental hero. 

Not Bush.  He's evil -- plain and simple --, and his thinning bill is proof of his wickedness.   Bush, however, represents a different point of view about natural resources, and his view is the one that built this country.   Natural resources are there for man to use, so take and use them.  It was this spirit run amok that caused so much harm to the country in the 19th and early 20th centuries.  Those who used resources mined them:  They didn't bother to renew them.

When environmentalism moved to the fore in the 1960s and 1970s, it did so on a different assumption.  Natural resources are precious, and should be protected against predation.  The movement adopted a sacred vision of nature from men like John Muir, the naturalist who explored so much of the Sierra Nevada mountains in California.  One never desecrates sacred nature.

The two sides have rarely learned to co-exist and timber thinning is the latest example of unease.  Oddly,  if one were to look at the situation objectively, the capitalist point of view about mining resources has done more for the United States than the environmentalist view.  Everything we own and use comes from natural resources that have been exploited wisely or not.

It would be nice to see an accommodation between the two camps, but it seems like every time one is tried, someone is accused of selling out.  It is a knotty perceptual and public relations issue and only time will cure it.  Generations will have to pass before wiser and cooler heads prevail.   Meanwhile, forests burn.

08/12

It is understatement to say Connerly is considered a "sellout" by other blacks, but he has points to make.  By getting out of racial classification , the state would get out of racial politics as well.  Moreover, because there is intermarriage, it is hard to say what race a person is.  A classic example is Tiger Woods, the golfer, whose mother is Thai and father is a mixture of African-American and Indian. 

Racial classification, unfortunately, is a public relations problem for organizations.  When talking diversity, there is an unspoken push for quotas that can embarrass a company with too few minorities in management.  Connerly would say without collection of racial data, everyone has an equal chance to enter management.  His opponents would say there has been so much unequal treatment for so long that Connerly's vision wouldn't happen.  

I don't profess to know the answer to this contention.  The Supreme Court this year reluctantly sided with Affirmation Action because of its concern that minorities were not yet getting a fair shake.  The court said that it hoped within 25 years there would be no further need for Affirmative Action. 

Connerly isn't willing to wait.  Interestingly, it appears that many Californians aren't willing to wait either.  An independent poll showed California voters favor the initiative by 50% to 29%. 

No matter what happens, it will become a PR issue for California companies.  Pressure groups are going to ask companies to commit themselves.  My guess is that CEOs will duck and/or support the status quo.  I doubt many will publicly express support for Prop. 54.  And, if I were a PR practitioner in California, I suspect that would be the advice I would give.  

Connerly's vision of a color-blind America is the dream Martin Luther King spoke of so eloquently.  Groups pushing for Affirmative Action and racial preferences also believe in that future, but they say government must make up for centuries of injustice.  There is no winner in a debate like this. 

No matter who becomes governor in the recall, the real perceptual change might come from Prop 54.  If it passes, it will present California PR practitioners with a new set of challenges.
 

08/11

Last week, Dean got caught on Social Security.  He said he never favored raising the retirement age for Social Security benefits to age 70 from age 65.  Then, he had to reverse field and acknowledge that he did call for raising the age to 70 back in 1995.   He says he now thinks it is no longer necessary. 

Dean got caught because today, more than ever, one's words in the public domain are kept where people can find them, and Associated Press did.   Dean has been spotlighted for other comments as well.  Notable is one that he made about an opponent, John Edwards,  in which he said Edwards had ducked talking about his support for the Iraq war before an anti-war audience.  Edwards had in fact supported his position.  And, Dean has made disparaging remarks about yet another candidate,  Bob Graham, that was noted in the press.

What Dean has to worry about is that reporters start to gang up on him and to track his remarks to see if they are accurate.  The worst case would be a perception that Dean can't quite tell the truth.  If Dean were farther back in the pack, it is unlikely so much attention would be lavished on him.  But, because he is a front runner, he attracts scrutiny and his public relations are all the more challenging. 

I have read elsewhere that Dean doesn't get along with reporters that well.  This is a mistake, because the press won't make an effort to get along with him.  On the other hand, as long as Dean can attract support, he can say what he wants and treat reporters any way he wants.  Let him slip even a little bit, however...

Not having run a presidential campaign, I can't say how one plays good defense and great offense in the primaries.   One thing is for sure, one can't rest on the past.  A candidate has to join with the public and take his or her chances.  Having done so, there is a possibility that something one said or did years before assumes greater importance than it should.  But hey, that's politics.