The Post on the Paid-Speaking Circuit

So, okay, okay, I need to wrap up this three part story that began with my two previous posts, Obama Drunk the Speaking Fees Kool-Aid and Obama Speaking Fees Redux. And please keep in mind that this isn't just about the question of whether ex-presidents should get paid for giving speeches, and whether some of the venues and audiences might be questionable. No, much more importantly, this is about various appearances of my double re-quoted quote, itself based on previous quotes and re-quotes.

So, on the same day that that double re-quote appeared online, April 25th, I was contacted by a reporter from the Washington Post, Krissah Thompson, and she did a phone interview with me on this subject. The article she wrote on the topic was published in the April 27th issue of the paper, as the lead article at the top of Section C:

And here's a closer look, but don't worry, I'll also post the text in easy to read form:

And of course you can also read the article, entitled The Obamas Face The Paid-Speaking Circuit—And All the Questions That Come With It, over on the Post's site, just by clicking on the old link. But should you decide to stick around, here's how the piece opens:

When Barack and Michelle Obama left the White House, they both spoke longingly of a break from life in the public eye. But following a months-long vacation, they have started to tap into the lucrative paid-speaking circuit that has enriched so many other former presidents and first ladies—with the potential to quickly net millions of dollars.

On Thursday, both made their first appearances as speakers-for-hire.

“Hi, everybody, it’s good to get out of the house,” said Michelle Obama, visibly relaxed, as she sat for a wide-ranging—but free of partisan politics—question-and-answer session before the American Institute of Architecture’s annual conference. Her husband, meanwhile, joined historian Doris Kearns Goodwin in New York for a closed-door address to employees of the A&E cable network.

It was not divulged how much they were paid for these first appearances. But the former president will collect $400,000 for a September speech to a health-care conference sponsored by investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald, Fox Business reported this week.

And after all, speaking at an American Institute of Architecture conference and to the A&E channel is not terribly controversial, but getting a big payoff from Wall Street investment firm Cantor Fitzgerald is another story altogether.

As newly minted high-dollar speakers, the Obamas follow a well-worn path from the White House—but one that poses risks to a personal and political brand rooted in their middle-class backgrounds.

Aides to the Obamas would not comment on how much they are charging for other private speaking engagements, but they defended the speaking schedule and pointed out that the president’s first public meeting was a conversation with college students in Chicago earlier this week.

“President Obama will deliver speeches from time to time. Some of those speeches will be paid, some will be unpaid, and regardless of venue or sponsor, President Obama will be true to his values, his vision and his record,” his senior adviser, Eric Schultz, said in a statement issued after the Cantor Fitzgerald speech drew a wave of criticism—including a New York Post headline that dubbed Obama “Wall Street’s new fat cat.”

The New York Post being a conservative paper, this shows how Obama's choice could be seen as playing into the right wing's hands, while on the left, critics would note the fact that as president, Obama failed to prosecute any of the banking executives whose greed led to the great recession that began in 2008, and that he spent his entire two terms trying to deal with.

But let's get back to the article, which provides a defense of Obama both in arguing that he's entitled to make some money, and that there's plenty of precedent for presidents doing so:

Schultz argued that Obama’s appearance at the health-care conference made sense: “As a president who successfully passed health insurance reform, it’s an issue of great importance to him.” As for a six-figure check signed by an investment bank, “I’d just point out that in 2008, Barack Obama raised more money from Wall Street than any candidate in history—and still went on to successfully pass and implement the toughest reforms on Wall Street since FDR.”

Other former first couples have been challenged on their paid speeches, which began in earnest when former president Gerald R. Ford hit the lecture circuit: He needed to make a living somehow, he said. Former president Ronald Reagan was roundly criticized when he followed suit, taking heat for accepting $2 million for two speeches in Japan.

So now it's time to hear from yours truly, and my comment refers to Reagan's speeches in Japan, not Obama, in case that's not clear:

“He was seen as a gung-ho patriotic American, and then the first thing he does is go speak to another country that was, in a sense, an economic rival,” said Lance Strate, a professor of communication at Fordham University. “They are entitled to make money, and nobody really bats an eyelash over the book deals they might get. But there’s something about speaking fees because it involves personal presence. As a former president, you’re still representing the country.”

So there I go again, and once again, let me emphasize the point about personal presence, and how that is much more significant than the specific speech itself, personal presence being on the level of relationship or medium, as opposed to content, in media ecological terms.

But anyway, I do get a little more in later, but at this point it's, and now this:

Richard Painter, a law professor at the University of Minnesota who was chief White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, said that “as private citizens [the Obamas] are pretty much free to give speeches in their personal capacity,” but at a potential cost to their popularity and future political influence.

And let me interject here that this is in keeping with some of the balance theories of attitude change, which suggest, based on behavioral research, that when you have a source about whom folks have generally positive attitudes towards, and that source promotes something, a product, cause, or person, about whom folks have a negative or neutral attitude towards, the source will tend to succeed in improving their attitude towards whatever it is the source is promoting, which is the whole point of doing it, and what you would expect. But this comes at a cost, because doing so will reduce the positive attitude folks have towards the source, often as a delayed reaction, the effect being a kind of transfer of good will and feelings (or in effect selling a bit of the person's positive image).

So, anyway, back to the article now, as Thompson continues to refer to Painter:

His old boss did it, too. According to Robert Draper’s book “Dead Certain,” Bush said the lecture circuit would “replenish the ol’ coffers.” He was reportedly paid between $100,000 and $175,000 for each appearance.

Bill and Hillary Clinton similarly came under heavy criticism for their private speeches, which earned them more than $25 million for delivering 104 speeches over 15 months, and became an issue in her presidential campaigns.

“It’s not a question of whether it’s legal,” Painter said. “It’s a question of whether someone in a political environment can make an argument that it was unethical.”

And the consequences go beyond attitudes folks hold in regard to the former president and first lady:

Though neither of the Obamas seem to want to run for political office in the future, their calculations are complicated by the tenuous state of the Democratic Party, said Julian Zelizer, a presidential historian at Princeton University.

“In a party that doesn’t really have especially captivating personalities right now, he remains a figure­head,” Zelizer said. “If he goes down the road of speaking for a lot of money, that has the potential to hurt the party.”

Julian is absolutely right on this point, and as I've said, it also makes it harder for Democrats to take the high moral ground in criticizing Republicans, although the Republicans have sunk so low over the past year that anything the Democrats do right now looks like up to most of us.

So, what now? Can there really be such a thing as a balance in respect to this sort of thing?

Obama seems to be attempting a balance between community-minded appearances and lucrative ones. His first paid event followed a public one Monday at the University of Chicago on civic engagement—typical, his spokesman said, of the topics he wants to discuss in the future.

“He wants to get together with young people and other community leaders who are front of mind to him and get ideas from them on how to create solutions for their communities and also partnering with other organizations that are making it a priority to bring resources to communities in need,” said his press secretary, Kevin Lewis.

Up next: a speech next month in Boston, where he will receive the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award, and trips to Berlin to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Italy for the Global Food Innovation Summit.

As for Michelle Obama, she will speak next month at the Partnership for a Healthier America, which supported her White House anti-obesity initiatives, and join MTV for a “College Signing Day” encouraging high school students to pursue higher education.

Both Obamas are represented on the speaking circuit by the Harry Walker Agency, which also reps Richard B. Cheney, Al Gore and former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan.

So, anyway, I did get another comment included in the article, this one in reference to Michelle Obama, whose choices I believe were much more prudent than her husband's:

Strate said Michelle Obama’s first appearance seemed like a shrewd choice. Architecture “is not terribly controversial. It is something that has both a practical and an artistic element to it,” he said.

By the way, I believe that over across the Atlantic, in Great Britain, Prince Charles made architecture one of this main interests many years ago. Of course, there are some significant differences in motivation:

Onstage in Orlando, the former first lady said she chose the AIA gathering in part because of her early-career work in economic development for the city of Chicago.

“I got to know how important architects are in the lifeblood and beauty of any city, particularly a city like Chicago. . . . So [this] seemed like a good place to get started,” she said. “It’s like coming almost full circle for me.”

She spoke with authority about her experience as a lawyer and executive—topics she often seemed reluctant to address in her husband’s administration. She also seemed to be keeping up with the political news, making indirect comments, in a discussion of the challenges facing cities, that seemed to address President Trump’s proposal for overhauling the nation’s tax code.

“We have to invest,” she said, “which means we have to pay taxes.”

In another oblique reference, she shared a story about her emotional final day at the White House. Her daughters were in tears as they said goodbye to the staff, and she felt herself choke up, too — but she resolved to keep her emotions hidden before the Inauguration Day cameras.

“I didn’t want to have tears in my eyes because people would swear I was crying because of the new president,” she said, as the crowd laughed.

And who could blame her? Anyway, as I indicated, the article began on the front page of section C, and it continued on the third page:

And that's how the article ends, not with a bang, but with a bit of laughter. As I mentioned earlier, my interview with Thompson, who by the way was delightful to talk to, was by way of a telephone conversation (remember those?), so I don't have a record of all that I said, but I think you've got the main talking points here, and in my previous posts on the subject. 

And in bringing my 3-part series to a close, let me end by noting that, much like the web and hypertext more generally, I think you can see how following this trail of quotes, re-quotes, and new quotes represents a pattern of networked connections, which is the shape of much of our interactions, especially in the electronic media environment.



 

Obama Speaking Fees Redux

So, to follow up on my last post, Obama Drunk the Speaking Fees Kool-Aid, which was on my quote that keeps on re-quoting, about a day or so after my double re-quoted quote appeared, it made another appearance, this time on Romper. The piece, by Kenza Moller, isn't dated, so I'm not sure if it appeared on the same day as the others, April 25th, or the next day, April 26th, or on the day it came to my attention, April 27th, but in any event, the title of the article is Why Is Obama Getting Paid For His Speeches? It's Common Practice For Former Presidents.

Okay now, so let's get to it. Here's how the article begins:

President Barack Obama is back from his post-administration vacation visits to Hawaii and French Polynesia, and he's already been busy. He spoke at the University of Chicago on Monday, and he's headed to an awards ceremony in Boston next, followed by a string of private paid speeches both at home and abroad. The former president's new—and reportedly impressive—payroll for these speeches has already drawn criticism from some, and several people are asking why Obama is now getting paid for his speeches.

According to Fox, one of Obama's upcoming speeches, which will reportedly take place at a Wall Street conference put on by Cantor Fitzgerald LP, will earn him a reported $400,000—which is roughly the amount that he would make in an entire year as president. Obama is also intending to give paid speeches in both Europe and the United States, and all of those talks are likely to earn him a pretty penny.

Now, you may remember from my last post that I don't believe that Obama's decision to take a big payday from this major Wall Street firm was the best move, given all that is happening with his successor, and that it tarnishes Obama's own image, which for some is near saintly. So, I give Moller credit for bringing up the fact that Obama's choice is open to criticism:

Some people criticize the idea of former presidents earning money for speaking engagements after vacating the White House, while others see it as their own personal business. According to Politico, Harry Truman once said he had "a very strong feeling about any man, who has the honor of being an occupant of the White House in the greatest job in the history of the world, who would exploit that situation in any way, shape or form."

Still, all in all, Moller takes the same position as Shaw did in my last post, excusing Obama by saying that others have done it before him (which, to my mind, is no excuse at all):

Both Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, however, have responded to questions about their speech circuits with a more laissez-faire—and practical—approach, with each citing their needs to "make a living" and "pay the bills." So why not turn their global fame into a speaking gig? As private citizens who are no longer on the presidential payroll (except for receiving an annual pension), it's really their own prerogative.

Obama's new role as a funded speaker is also hardly new territory for anyone who has made waves in politics, either: Obama joins both George H.W. and George W. Bush, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Ronald Reagan, and others in collecting fees for speeches. And according to Fortune, past presidents' inflated prices make perfect sense, economically, since they bring a level of influence to the event that would otherwise be difficult to achieve.

Okay now, brace yourself, here it comes:

"The speech is kind of secondary to ... just being able to have a big name at your event," Lance Strate, a communications professor at Fordham University, told Fortune in 2015. "It might get reported on some form of TV or cable news, which further adds to the prestige and the publicity of the event."

So, there I go again. And now, for the concluding paragraph, and while I don't quite agree with Moller's conclusion, at least there's some acknowledgement that there is cause for criticism regarding this practice:

Just like other former presidents have, Obama is likely to keep drawing criticism for charging for his speeches. However, now that he's no longer tied to politics, there's really no reason he shouldn't be using his private time and expertise in order to craft a new career as a public speaker.

Yes, well, he can craft a new career while showing some discretion and discrimination about who he accepts speaking fees from. Anyway, that my view on what is, after all, a minor matter in the grand scheme of things. And you might think that the story of all this ends here, but not quite, there's still room for one more post, a very significant post indeed, coming up next time!

Obama Drunk the Speaking Fees Kool-Aid

So, here we go again. What, specifically, I'm referring to is me being quoted, or rather re-quoted, about speaking fees and ex-presidents, and ex-presidential candidates. This one came to my attention as it appeared on the I Drunk website, dated April 25, 2017, under the heading of Barack Obama’s New “Job” Will Pay Nearly as Much as His POTUS Salary… In One Hour. And actually, at the bottom of the post, there is a note that this news item first appeared on the Hot Air website, on the same day, and with that same title: Barack Obama’s New “Job” Will Pay Nearly As Much As His POTUS Salary… In One Hour.

So, what's the story behind this double re-quoted quote, you may ask. Well, here's how the article begins:

The Obama family has certainly been busy since departing the West Wing. The past couple months have been filled with golfing trips to southern California, extended stays in the South Pacific and cruises on David Geffen’s super yacht in the Caribbean. But just like anyone else, the former leader of the free world needs to get back to paying the bills sooner or later. Good news is on the way for those of you who were worried about Obama’s future financial security, however. He’s going to be following the proud tradition of other past presidents and prominent elected officials, striking out on the paid speaking circuit. And his first gig is going to pull down more money in a single hour than 99% of Americans earn all year. (Washington Examiner)

What follows appears to be a block quote, but I am not entirely certain what the source of the quote may be, assuming it is a quote and not just some highlighted text, but here it is:

Former President Barack Obama will be paid $400,000 to speak at Cantor Fitzgerald’s healthcare conference this September, according to a new report.

Obama, whose legacy item was the Affordable Care Act, will deliver the keynote address at the organization’s lunch in what will be one of his first paid speeches, Fox Business’ Charlie Gasparino reported Monday. Cantor Fitzgerald is a New York City-based financial services firm that specializes in fix incomes sales, institutional equity and trading.

This is where the block quote ends, and what follows returns to the regular format for the article:

Just to be clear, I’m not here to criticize Obama for this. Quite the contrary, in fact. As I’ve done with all other private citizens who follow any such path I encourage it. Obama made his way through the political world to a position of prominence and now, as a retired, private citizen, he should be free to cash in to the best of his ability and live the American dream just like anyone else.

I felt the same way about the Clintons, for example. As CNN reported early last year, Bill and Hillary made an estimated $153M from more than 700 appearances on the speaking circuit between 2001 and 2015. (That’s an average of more than $200K per speech.) Granted, when you decide to swing back into the elected political scene (or attempt to in Hillary’s case) you may have to be prepared to be held accountable for where the money came from and what influence those paying you might have been seeking, but you’re still free to take the jobs.

The Clintons weren’t the only ones. George W. Bush did the same thing starting in 2009. According to Politico, Bush gave more than 200 such speeches commanding between $100K and $175K each. It’s added up to tens of millions of dollars for the former POTUS.

So far you may be wondering, so what? And who could blame you, but your patience is about to be rewarded, as we get to the part of the piece that makes it worthy of Blog Time Passing:

If, like me, you’re wondering why people would pay so much money for a lecture from somebody who is no longer in power, Lance Strate, communications professor at Fordham University, offered an explanation in this 2015 piece for Fortune Magazine.

Hurray! And now for the quote, which like the passage above, appears in block quote format in the article:

“The speech is kind of secondary to … just being able to have a big name at your event,” Strate said. “It might get reported on some form of TV or cable news, which further adds to the prestige and the publicity of the event.”And even if it doesn’t end up on the evening news, almost every conference will put their speeches on YouTube, where there is always a chance it will go viral.

If, like me, you're cognizant of format style, you might question the way the block quote format is being used here, so let me quickly add that I'm just reproducing what was on these two sites, okay? Anyway, the main point is how my Fortune magazine quote is being recycled. And now let's get to the end of the article, where the author, whose name, by the way, is Jazz Shaw, essentially comes to the conclusion, based on my comments, that the medium is the message:

So it’s not about the actual content of the speech. These former officials don’t have some secret wisdom or recipe for success that nobody else is privy to. They’re just the very expensive bait which will hopefully attract a lot of attention to the event. There’s an interesting anecdote in that article about how Bush was hired to speak to one sports related association and delivered the sage observation that, “bowling is fun.”

So you get on out there and cash in, Mr. Obama. If you can find anyone willing to pay you, grab what you can. You can probably land another book deal for millions and the publisher won’t even care if they sell any copies. It’s the American dream and you should grab onto as much as you can get just like anybody else.

Now, I will say that I disagree with this conclusion, and believe that, especially given the current political climate, this particular venue for a speech was not helpful and in fact tarnishes Obama's image and legacy, but sure, he was entitled to get that payoff, and it's all in the past now.


The funny thing for me, though, is that this wasn't the end of the story, but I'll leave that for another post. Instead, let me fill you in on the beginning of the story by directing you to the following series of blog posts:  

• Giant Speaking Fees-Fi-Fo-Fum 
• Of Fees, Futility, and Mike Huckabee 
• A Fortune in Speakers' Fees 
• Long-Shot Candidates in the Marketplace 
• Why Run & Other Answers to Political Questions

And as for the rest of the story so far, to be continued...

From Bunker to Trump (via Reagan)

So, last month I was contacted by Stephen Nessen of WNYC, a New York public radio station, and asked to comment on the parallels and similarities between Donald Trump and Archie Bunker. And I have to admit that connecting the two was not an idea that had ever occurred to me, but as Nessen pointed out, both hail from Queens, one of the five boroughs of New York City, or as it used to be called, Greater New York (on account of the fact that Brooklyn and Queens, the two Long Island boroughs, only became part of the city in 1899). As it turns out, I grew up in Queens as well, in Kew Gardens, not far from where Trump came from, which was the private, affluent neighborhood of Jamaica Estates. Archie Bunker, by way of contrast, was from the older, working class section of Corona.

Speaking of Queens, the elementary school I attended in Kew Gardens, PS 99, was the same one that comedian Rodney Dangerfield went to many years earlier. My Junior High School, Russell Sage (otherwise known as JHS 190) in Forest Hills, had boasted of future NBA player and general manager Ernie Grunfeld, who graduated the year before I began there, and my high school, Hillcrest High, in Jamaica, had two major TV stars a year or two behind me, Ray Romano, and Fran Drescher (not that I was at all aware of them). Just to better establish the milieu I hail from.

And anyway, the Queens connection was just a jumping off point for making the connection between the fictional character from Norman Lear's hit TV show All in the Family (1971-1979, succeeded by the spin-off, Archie Bunker's Place, 1979-1983), and the nonfictional character (although some might debate the point) from The Apprentice (2004-2015, including seven seasons of The Celebrity Apprentice, and more recently the reality series we might as well call Who Wants to Be President?). The key similarities for Nessen and his colleagues had to do with the fact that both were labelled as bigots (Bunker quite intentionally as the comic foil in Lear's liberally minded sitcom, Trump more controversially, based on his comments about Mexicans, women, and Muslims) and both became quite popular with the mass American audience (Bunker unexpectedly, as he was intended as the subject of ridicule, not sympathy, while Trump's popularity was certainly his intended aim, but came as a surprise to many, both liberal and conservative).

So now, how about taking a moment or two to listen to the four minute story they wound up airing back on December 10th?





Or go have a look and listen on the WNYC page devoted to the story, Is Donald Trump the Archie Bunker of Today? The text that accompanies the report, which is similar but with some significant differences from the radio version, is also available on that page, and it goes like this:

Before Donald Trump ran a campaign on xenophobia and pledges to make America great again, another Queens native who feared the changes happening in America dominated television.

Archie Bunker, the cantankerous patriarch of the 1970s sitcom All in the Family, like Trump, was known for spewing anti-immigrant, unabashedly racist screeds on national TV. He told America how it is from the view of his armchair.

WNYC went to the block in Glendale, Queens where Archie Bunker's house was shot to see how residents there feel about both men.

“Lot of people think, and they don't verbalize, he verbalizes and so does Trump,” Irene Kessler, who lives in Woodhaven, Queens, said. She supports Trumps views on the economy, but not his recent comments on Muslim.

“He's saying what I believe the majority of Americans are thinking,” Joe DaSoro, 55, said of Donald Trump.

DaSoro grew up in Ozone Park, but now lives in Huntington, Long Island. He’s a registered Republican, but considers himself a moderate.

“A lot people are stuck on this political correctness, and he's not, he's just speaking his mind and being honest about it where the others are being phony,” DaSoro said.

He could be talking about Donald Trump, or Archie Bunker.

“Donald Trump is paralleling Archie Bunker and appealing to people who are simply dismayed by all the change that’s going on—by political correctness and the influx of immigrants from other parts of the world,” said Lance Strate, a professor of Communications and Media Studies at Fordham University.

Of course, not everyone in Queens is on board. Linda Morton, 84, from Glendale, thinks Trump is simply a bigot.

“I'm really worried, if he becomes president,” she said. “I really think some of the countries are laughing at us.”

No one knows Archie Bunker better than Norman Lear, the creator of All in the Family. Lear believes his creation was more lovable.

“I think Donald Trump is a horse’s ass,” he told WNYC in a recent interview. “A righteous fool. And I've always thought of Archie as simply afraid to be on the precipice of the future, progress baffled him.”

In Archie Bunker's world of the 1970s, young people were having sex out of wedlock, inflation and loss of manufacturing jobs was prevalent, and integration was firmly taking root.

“He wanted to reach back instead of forward,” Lear said. “Blacks moving into the neighbored—‘my god’—the rest of it was just simply poor education and badly informed.”

Today, many Trump supporters are upset by gay marriage, the loss of manufacturing jobs, and minorities becoming the majority.

Near the Bunker family home is a Wendy’s where Pat Ryan, 59, a truck driver from Islip, Long Island stopped for lunch. He said it’s hard to support Trump’s recent comments. But, “if he says something outlandish and at the end of the day something is done positively then I would support that.”

He said while Trump may be trying to appeal to blue collar workers like him, Archie Bunker really did speak for them.

“Archie was part of middle America, he was a blue collar worker he got to work every day,” Ryan said. “Donald Trump is basically looking down from the towers. I don't know if he has a good grasp of what people go through day to day.”

Now, when I spoke to Nessen, we were on the phone for about half an hour, so the brief quote that was used was only a small portion of my comments. And as you may know from many of my previous posts, whenever possible I try to provide you with the entirety of my comments, both to illustrate the process of journalistic practice, and so they don't have to go to waste. In this case, that's not possible, but I can tell you that I did make reference to the fact that All in the Family was all about the profound generation gap that existed between the baby boomers and what is now known as the greatest generation. That gap is what fully ignited the culture wars that exist to this day, with Archie Bunker representing what is sometimes referred to as the red states, the Republican conservative types that Trump has become so popular with, while the baby boomer counterculture types, like Bunker's daughter and son-in-law, turned into the blue state Clintons and Obamas of today (not to mention Bernie Sanders, and of course Al Gore and John Kerry).

I also pointed out that Queens has been the borough of New York that most resembles middle America, being semi-suburban, almost small town in some respects, certainly more Main Street in contrast to Manhattan's Wall Street (to use a common opposition from contemporary political rhetoric). I suspect that this is less the case today than it was in the past, because Queens has become one of the most diverse places on the planet. But at least back in the 70s, that sensibility is what contributed to Archie Bunker's appeal (although one source of misunderstanding had to do with the fact that Bunker didn't own a car, a sign of poverty almost anywhere other than New York). A working class fellow from Queens fit in very nicely with what Richard Nixon referred to as the silent majority, even though in his case, the silence was not very profound (rather profane, actually).

I did have the sense, in my comments, that I was taking Trump more seriously, less dismissively, than Nessen and his colleagues, by which I mean that I was less willing to reduce Trump to the flat stereotype of Archie Bunker, although I did note that the brilliance of Carroll O'Conner as an actor made his character more well-rounded and much more sympathetic than he was meant to be, less of a joke and more of an ironic icon that many could identify with. Even so, I think there is much more to Trump than Bunker's bigotry and rants, as much as Trump eschews both contemporary political correctness (although not entirely) and the diplomatic caution of the career politician. But the hidden ground connecting Trump to Bunker is none other than Ronald Reagan.

In my comments, I noted the similarity between Trump and Reagan quite a bit, both having backgrounds as media professionals before making the switch to politics, both revolutionary outsiders challenging the Republican Party establishment, both seemingly immune from any consequences for their gaffes, mistakes, and controversial comments. Reagan was referred to as the teflon President, because nothing would stick to him, and I'm surprised that almost no one has commented on the similarity to Trump as a teflon candidate.

Archie Bunker preceded Reagan, but the decade that All in the Family ran was the decade that saw liberalism and the counterculture political movement, aka the movement, go into sharp decline. While it was the decade in which the United States finally withdrew all of its troops from Vietnam and the odious Nixon was forced from the White House due to the Watergate scandal, it also saw the collapse of the movement in the landslide loss of Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern in  1972, having already been weakened by the necessities of going mainstream for the general election. Nixon's successor, Gerald Ford, tried to revive American patriotism via the bicentennial celebrations of 1976, and while he gained the Republican nomination that year, he faced a very serious challenge as a sitting president by Ronald Reagan in the Republican primaries. And weakened as he was, Ford was unseated by Democrat Jimmy Carter who, although today viewed as highly liberal, was seen as a relatively conservative candidate during the 70s, certainly more so than McGovern, or Teddy Kennedy, or Eugene McCarthy, or even Humphrey and Lyndon Johnson (Carter was the first born again Christian to become president). And then came 1980, and the Reagan revolution that moved American politics farther to the right than it had been since, at least, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

The increasing conservatism of American politics was reflected in the evolution of All in the Family, as Archie Bunker evolved from ironic foil to American folk hero. And in many ways, he reflected the actual demographic of what came to be known as the Reagan Democrats. This was a part of the population that had traditionally voted for Democratic candidates, but had many conservative tendencies, and had grown increasingly less comfortable with the liberalism of the Democratic Party. Reagan Democrats tended to be blue collar workers, like Bunker, who had previously supported the Democrats in conjunction with their association with the labor movement and labor unions. But while union leadership generally endorsed Democratic candidates, the rank and file more and more were ignoring those endorsements, and favoring the more conservative, Republican types; this was a remarkable shift, in that Republicans were traditionally seen as supporters of management rather than workers, and retain that association today in being the party of big business (although Bill Clinton and others in the Democratic Party shifted away from the leftist anti-capitalist stance of other Democrats, that divide now the under current in the rather subdued contest between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders). It was the beginning of the end of labor unions as a significant political force in American politics, and Reagan's politics were decidedly anti-union. Ironically perhaps, the blue collar workers had come to take the benefits derived from unionizing for granted, seeing them as having outlived their usefulness (and needlessly taking money, in thew form of union dues, out of their paychecks).

The Reagan Democrats were also more hawkish, as opposed to the doves that dominated Democratic politics.  The anti-war protest had resulted in Lyndon Johnson deciding not to run for re-election in 1968, with the Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey, Johnson's Vice-President, not coming out against the war out of loyalty to LBJ until close to the end of his campaign. The protests that followed Nixon's refusal to end the war had much to do with McGovern's victory in the 1972 Democratic primaries, and while losing the election, Nixon's resignation was a victory for the left (and for basic decency I would add), putting an end to the Nixonian promise of peace with honor. Instead, anti-war pressure led to what conservatives viewed as a decidedly dishonorable pullout of our troops, followed by the fall of South Vietnam. Ignoring the fact that this occurred under Republican Jerry Ford's presidency, and putting aside various rhetorical technicalities, this was seen as the first time that the US lost a war. That loss was followed by what would appear to conservatives as Carter's mishandling of the Iranian revolution and hostage crisis. There was a sense of defeatism that accompanied these events, Vietnam, Watergate, and Iran, and also the Arab oil embargoes of the late 70s, which resulted in sudden major hikes in gasoline prices, and even more drastically, long lines and rationing at gas stations. This downward trend was exactly was Reagan vowed to reverse, and that is what Trump is echoing when he talks about making American great again, and how we don't win anymore, and how he'll put an end to that. The Reagan Democrats, being altogether patriotic, resonated with those sorts of messages, and not with the critical appraisals associated with the counterculture.

Going back to the culture wars, Reagan, while touting laissez-faire economics and minimizing government regulation and influence, liberalism in its classic sense, also built a new Republican coalition by appealing to social conservatives, including the growing evangelical and fundamentalist Christian populations opposed to lifestyle liberalism that included civil rights/equal rights for all; social programs including welfare, food stamps, etc; strict separation of church and state; easy availability of birth control options and abortion on demand; the sexual revolution; legalization of recreational drug use; etc. Bunker was nothing if not a social conservative, dismayed in fact by all of the social change going on in the culture. One point that others have made is that while the character is presented as a typical White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, still at least symbolic of the majority of the American population, in fact the kind of demographic that Archie Bunker actually reflected, the Reagan Democrats, were more likely to be Catholic than Protestant. Of course, Reagan benefited from the support of the newly emerged evangelical Protestant Christian Coalition, and Trump also seems to have gained their approval. Ironically for both, I might add, in that Reagan was the first divorced man to be elected president, and Trump also has a personal history of something less than perfect family values.

So, the bottom line here is that while drawing a line connecting Archie Bunker to Donald Trump is a clever insight, the connection itself has much to do with Ronald Reagan, and while this does not guarantee that Trump will become the next president of the United States, or even the Republican nominee, it does suggest, to me at least, that he needs to be taken much more seriously as a candidate than he has been so far. 





And that's the story, Jerry!

Musings on Jewish Identity at Christmastime

So, I wrote another op-ed for the Jewish Standard, which was published this past Friday, December 18th. It's timely, as you might gather from the title, Musings on Jewish Identity at Christmastime, and that link goes to the post on my Times of Israel/Jewish Standard blog, but of course you can just read here, below, starting now...

Adam Sandler performed an update of his “Chanukah Song” last month at the New York Comedy Festival, with a second performance in San Diego available on YouTube. The new rendition is the fourth version of the song he debuted in 1994 on Saturday Night Live, a song that is as much about Jewish identity as it is about the holiday.

 

Sandler’s “Chanukah Song” is not without its critics, however. In an editorial published in the New Jersey Jewish News last month, the newspaper’s editor-in-chief, Andrew Silow-Carroll of Teaneck, expresses much ambivalence about Sandler’s listing of Jewish celebrities. He worries that while it reflects a sense that it is cool to be Jewish, that coolness is a shallow expression of ethnic pride, lacking the depth of religious commitment.

In my view, Silow-Carroll sells Sandler short.

But first let me note that I agree with the general argument that Jewish identity ought to be based on something more than ethnic pride. If Jewish identity is reduced to ethnicity alone, it eventually will be lost within the great American melting pot. Think of how many Americans today claim to have a Native American great grandparent. But the key to understanding “The Chanukah Song” is not in the list of Jewish celebrities, even though that constitutes the main part of the song.

Steve Allen once observed that the comedian is usually a person with a grievance, and Sandler explained the grievance behind “The Chanukah Song” when he first introduced it on December 3, 1994. “When I was a kid, this time of year always made me feel a little left out, because in school there were so many Christmas songs, and all us Jewish kids had was the song, ‘Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel,’” he said then. And while Sandler goes on to say that he “wrote a brand new Chanukah song for you Jewish kids to sing,” in actuality the song actually has very little to do with the holiday.

Sandler does begin with a reference to religious tradition, as the first line of the song tells us to “put on your yarmulke,” and goes on to identify the holiday as the festival of lights. But for the most part, the connection to Chanukah is tangential, a list of famous people who are more or less Jewish, motivated by the mostly unstated implication that they also celebrate Chanukah instead of Christmas. In other words, the song is not about Chanukah itself, but rather about not celebrating Christmas, about feeling like “the only kid in town without a Christmas tree.” About feeling left out.

Certainly, the song’s appeal to ethnic pride is an effort to compensate for that sense of alienation, and there is something very Jewish about taking note when a prominent person is a member of the tribe. Indeed, doing so constitutes a link to our tribal roots, an expression of a group-centered communal sensibility, one that stands in marked contrast to the extreme individualism of American society. Moreover, it can serve not only as an expression of shared pride, but also of collective shame. For example, in the new version of the song Sandler expresses his disapproval of former Subway spokesperson and convicted sex offender Jared Fogle, and his disappointment that Fogle is Jewish.

To understand the peculiarity of American-Jewish life over the past century or more, it is helpful to consider how the equivalent of “The Chanukah Song” would work for other groups. A song pointing out the identity of African-Americans or Asian-Americans, for example, would seem pointless; it simply would state what is obvious to all. The same would be true, to a large extent, for a song about Italian-Americans naming Pacino, DeNiro, Stallone, DiCaprio, etc.; or for Hispanics naming Lopez, Garcia, Longoria, Montalban, etc. And yes, we have our Levines, Shapiros, and Cohens, but then there are also names like Gyllenhaal, Johansson, and LaBeouf, all named in Sandler’s recent update.

That Jewish identity is often not immediately apparent goes hand-in-hand with the fact that for most of the time, Jewish-Americans are privileged to feel and function as if we are part of mainstream American society. Even when we take off for Jewish holidays, fast on Yom Kippur, and avoid chametz on Passover, we may be diverging from the mainstream, but we do so by taking an alternate path, a detour, rather than running counter to its current. It is only at Christmastime that we find ourselves at odds with the vast majority of Americans and can feel like strangers in our native land.

And let’s be honest, generic phrases like “holiday season” and “season’s greetings” are essentially euphemisms for Christmas. The attempt to acknowledge that there is more than one holiday at this time of year essentially translates to “Christmas and others,” or more accurately “Christmases and others,” by which I mean not only the Orthodox Church’s Christmas that falls during the first week of January, but more importantly the distinction between the religious observance of the Christian holy day and what has become, for many, a secularized American holiday.

It is pointless to deny the power of secularized Christmas, whose elements include Christmas trees, magic snowmen and reindeer, elves, and of course Santa Claus as a figure akin to the tooth fairy. And Sandler doesn’t mention the fact that in an effort to avoid feeling left out, some Jews actually do celebrate some form of secularized Christmas.

While I don’t believe that Santa Claus ever can be fully separated from his origins as the Christian Saint Nicholas, or that Christmas ever can be the kind of pluralistic national holiday that Thanksgiving is, my point is not to criticize attempts to create a kosher Christmas. Rather, what I want to emphasize is that if it is possible for us to celebrate some form of secularized Christmas, then the decision not to celebrate Christmas becomes a conscious choice that we have to make, an act of resistance to the dominant culture, an affirmation of our group identity as a people, and most importantly, an affirmation of our faith.

The decision not to celebrate Christmas is much more than a matter of ethnic pride. It must be based on religion, and this is the underlying assumption of Sandler’s “Chanukah Song,” and the point that Silow-Carroll misses. We are defined by what we are not, as well as by what we are. Admittedly, it is not enough to define ourselves against others. We also have to define ourselves positively, by our beliefs and practices. But we should understand the hidden ground of faith behind Sandler’s humor.

We should also understand the grievance behind the song, stemming from a sense of isolation that may be felt only or much more acutely at this time of year. Sandler’s song counters isolation through the creation of a sense of connection, achieved by naming others who are “just like you and me.” What he gives us is an imaginary community of people who are known to us, but who do not know us in return. In doing so, he points the way to the real solution, which is to seek out a real sense of community, something we can only find through our Jewish congregations, synagogues, and community centers.

4 Points on the Meaning of the Donald Trump Candidacy

So much attention on the part of the news media is being devoted to Donald Trump running for president that I can't resist adding some comments on the meaning of Trump's candidacy, on Trump as a pseudo-candidate, on Trump as a celebrity candidate, on Trump representing the business sector, and on Trump as a leader.

1. Trump is a pseudo-candidate. Much of the coverage about his candidacy amounts to discussion about whether he should be taken seriously or not. The opinion polls showing him leading the pack of contenders for the Republican nomination are evidence that he is a legitimate contender. But his behavior falls outside of the norm of political rhetoric, adding to the fact that his past experience does not fit the profile of most major party candidates.

While news media are covering Trump as a controversial candidate, and how some are arguing that he is not fit to be president, most are not taking the opportunity to raise the more interesting question of what are the requirements to becoming president? Part of the problem is that we have the American cultural myth that there are no requirements, that anyone can grow up to be president, so it goes against that deeply held and cherished belief to suggest that someone who is born a citizen and is not a convicted felon cannot be president. No one wants to say that American presidents tend to come from a relatively small segment of the population, to have a relatively narrow set of qualifications based on education (Ivy League for the most part in recent decades), socioeconomic background (often affluent, at least professionals occupying the upper middle class). and experience (significant records of government service).

And when it comes to the coverage, while there is acknowledgement that Trump's candidacy is fueled by his personal fortune, implying that anyone with the means can effectively "buy" his way into the race, this tends to obscure the fact that much of the task of running for president is about fundraising, that all of the candidates have to be or quickly become resource rich in order to mount an effective campaign. Which leads to the inverse conclusion, that people without the means or connections, poor people, working class people, even most middle class people, can never become president. Of course, everyone knows this, but it is never actually stated in an overt manner, because that would pop the bubble, ruin the illusion.

But even here, there is the sense that Trump's use of personal wealth to fund his campaign places him outside of the political norm. It's not unheard of, but it is another way in which he is non-traditional candidate.

Of course, the main thing is that he speaks off the cuff, and that his comments, about immigration, Mexico, John McCain, Obama's birth status, etc., are not politic. And there is an obvious popular appeal to this, in contrast to most candidates being increasingly more unwilling to take a stand on anything because it will be shared throughout our vast electronic media environment, to all of the conflicting constituencies that the candidates are vying for support from. In the face of the bland way of talking that results from all this, an uncandidate who speaks his mind and is not afraid of offending others comes across as authentic where all the others seem phoney. That this contributes to Trump's appeal is clear enough, but again what often goes unsaid is that this also implies is that if you are authentic, you can never be president. That is perhaps the greatest threat posed by Trump's candidacy to traditional politicians.

The solution, of course, is a theatrical one. Following Erving Goffman, we can understand that authenticity is a performance, a way of playing a role, and candidates need to play the part of being authentic while not actually being authentic, just as actors need to convince you that they are the character they're portraying, not an actor playing a part. The performance needs to be transparent, so the audience forgets that it is a performance. And let's be clear, sometimes the performance of authenticity may not be a lie; in fact, it works best if most of the time the performance is felt to be real and true by the actor. Most politicians, not having experience on the stage or screen, have some trouble with their projection of a sense of authenticity when performing their roles. Of course, Ronald Reagan, who was an actor before he became a politician was the master at creating an image of authenticity, and thereby establishing credibility, and likeability, with his audience.

Despite the threat that Trump's image of authenticity poses, ultimately he will be seen as a pseudo-candidate. The message that he is not to be taken seriously, or that he is not fit to be president, is being broadcast fairly consistently by the news media, comedians and talk show hosts, and by many of his Republican rivals. And while this is not the intent of the journalists and media professionals at least, dismissing Trump serves to reinforce the legitimacy of all of the other candidates.

I want to emphasize this point: By presenting Trump as a pseudo-candidate, news media outlets are telling us that all of the other candidates are not pseudo-candidates. They are telling us that they are, in fact, real candidates. That they are, in fact, authentic.

This serves to disguise what media ecology scholar Jacques Ellul referred to as the political illusion, the illusion that politics in a technological society is not reduced to decisions largely made by technical experts on the basis of efficiency, rather than any other human value.

.......

Postmodernist Jean Baudrillard, a media ecologist in his own right, once argued that the function of Disneyland, an an obvious simulation of reality, was to give us the impression that everything else is real, is not a simulation as well. That is, it gives us the impression that our malls, highways, cities, buildings, homes, as well as our parks and farms, are not the product of human technological intervention, that we have not radically reshaped the environment that we live in. That it is not, in that sense, an artificially manufactured, pseudo-environment.

By the same token, Trump as a pseudo-candidate reinforces the view that the other candidates, who all behave in the narrow way that a candidate is supposed to behave, and who all represent a narrow segment of the population, all are real, actual, authentic, legitimate candidates that ought to be taken seriously. Trump is the obvious simulation of the political process that hides the fact that it is all a simulation of a true democracy.

I don't mean to say that it makes no difference whatsoever who we elect as president. It does make a difference. Just maybe not anywhere near as much difference as we are led to believe. And just that the difference it makes has less to do with the candidates themselves, and more to do with the specific technical experts they call upon to guide them.

2. Trump is a celebrity candidate. In referring to Trump as a pseudo-candidate, I have been following media ecology scholar Daniel Boorstin's lead. Boorstin coined the term pseudo-event to refer to artificially manufactured events designed simply to be reported by the mass media, publicity stunts, interviews, press conferences, press releases, news leaks, etc. And in a groundbreaking discussion of heroes and celebrities, he referred to the celebrity as a human pseudo-event.

It follows that Trump is a celebrity, and is certainly not the first to capitalize on star power in the pursuit of political office, the most obvious example being Reagan. And it is perhaps not surprising, given the prominence of the entertainment industry in California, that that state would give us Reagan and more recently Arnold Schwarzenegger as Governor, but how to explain Minnesota where former professional wrestler and movie actor Jesse Ventura served a term as governor, and comedian Al Franken is currently serving his second term as United States Senator? Except to understand that celebrity politics is a national, indeed an international phenomenon.

Much has been made of the fact that Trump has been host of the reality television program The Apprentice for over a decade, and its variation (quite fitting in this context) known as The Celebrity Apprentice. His famous last words to contestants, "you're fired!" is taken as evidence of his leadership ability, the efficiency of the executive, unconstrained by sentimentality, or even humanity.

But on the subject of celebrity, it is worth noting that, while he has enjoyed considerable success in business, as a real estate developer, Trump is a human pseudo-event in the sense that he is not the most successful executive or entrepreneur in this area, not at all. Long before he was tapped to host a TV series, going back to the 80s and the Reagan years, he was a master at self-promotion, and so gained much higher visibility than many others whose records of achievement in business, in real estate, in hotels and casinos, in any of the areas he was involved in, far exceeded his own. He is the product of publicity, not profits.

And with the barriers that once existed between sectors of society dissolving on account of the electronic media, where everything is just an image, a performance, and a chunk of data, Trump was able to move between worlds, from private enterprise to the world of celebrity, and so to television entertainment, and from there into politics. Just another example of what Neil Postman referred to as amusing ourselves to death. A process that has exploded in the decades that followed Postman's publication, which I address in my own work.

 ......

3. Trump means business. Trump is hardly the first individual to run for president based on his experience in the private sector, as a corporate executive, rather than as a

politician. Back in May, Carly Fiorina made it official that she was seeking the Republican nomination, her background being a former executive at AT&T and Lucent, and CEO of Hewlett-Packard, before being forced to resign.

In 2012, Herman Cain was one of the Republican candidates, running on his experience as a Vice-President at Pillsbury, an executive at Burger King, and CEO of Godfather's Pizza. Mitt Romney won the nomination, and while he served one term as governor of Massachusetts, he also

emphasized his experience as an executive and CEO of Bain & Co. management consultants and the Bain Capital private equity investment firm.

 Going back a little further, in 1992 Ross Perot ran as an independent candidate, as a billionaire entrepreneur with long experience in the tech sector, and gained enough support in the polls to be included in the televised debates along with

incumbent Republican president George H. W. Bush and Democratic challenger Bill Clinton. He drew almost 19% of the popular vote in the general election, much of which might have otherwise gone to Bush, which insured Clinton's victory. Perot ran again in 1996 under the banner of the Reform Party, which he founded, but only drew 8% of the popular vote that time, still a very significant showing.

From all this, you might conclude that business-based candidates are not serious contenders for the presidency, and that does seem to be the case, sort of. But note that our previous two-term president, George W. Bush. while  campaigning based on his service as Governor of Texas, also included quite a bit of private sector experience on his resume, working in the oil industry, both as an executive and

an entrepreneur, and as managing general partner of the Texas Rangers baseball team for five years. Moreover, he was the first president of the United States to hold an MBA degree (from the Harvard Business School). Opinions on his actual business acumen and how well it served him as a political leader vary considerably, as you might imagine.

4. Trump is a leader. Trump's rationale for why he is qualified to be president, a rationale shared by all who run on their experience in business rather than politics, is that politicians are often not efficient administrators, and that the private sector is a better training ground for leadership than the public sector—note, in this regard, that for a long time, it was military service that was seen as the best preparation for civic leadership, but the aftermath of the Vietnam War put an end to that, and consider the despicable treatment of John Kerry in 2004 (running against George W. Bush who evaded serving in Vietnam by enlisting in the Texas National Guard, and through family connections avoided a dishonorable discharge after refusing to take a required medical examination, presumably due to drug use), not to mention the recent conflict between Trump and John McCain over McCain's experience as a POW and status as a war hero.

There is an analogy at work here, that government is an organization like any other organization, and therefore the skills and talents needed to run one organization can be transferred to another. Following this logic, the CEO of a soda company can become the CEO of a computer company (a move that brought Apple to the brink of bankruptcy in the 80s), that it's all about technique, method, not material. And even if this would be true for the private sector, does it translate to the public sector. Is the simile that government is like a business, or worse yet the metaphor that government is a business, put in a milder way that it ought to be run like a business, valid?

Calvin Coolidge is often misquoted as saying, "the business of America is business," the actual quote being, "the chief business of the American people is business," but either way, he did not say that the American government is a business or should be one. Does government manufacture a product? Does government sell products or services to consumers? Are the people customers of the government, and consumers of its products and services? Is the government itself something to be bought and sold? Does the government have an owner or owners? Are there shareholders, with some having more than others, maybe even some being majority stockholders? Knowing the kinds of answers that many would give to these questions, it might make sense to substitute "should" for "does" because my point is not to argue about the reality of socioeconomic and political inequality, but rather about how we think about the concept of government.

The argument for approaching government as if it were a business, and the presidency as if it were being the CEO of a corporation, is that the private sector is more efficient than the public, because any given business operates within an external environment of free enterprise, and therefore faces Darwinian pressures of competition, survival of the fittest and all that, along with the financial pressure to maximize profits for shareholders, which requires businesses to operate in as lean and mean a manner as possible. Now, holding aside the fact that businesses often are successful in squelching competition, and are not always so wonderfully efficient, the argument itself is based on the technical criteria of efficiency, which media ecology scholars such as Ellul and Postman have argued is inhuman, anti-human, hostile to any human value. 

..................

Is government all about efficiency? Maybe, if we're talking about fascism, Nazism, totalitarianism. Not if we're talking about citizens participating in democratic self-governance. Not if we're talking about preserving human rights, human dignity, and nurturing human potential. Not if we're talking about doing what is right and providing for what is good, for individuals and groups, communities and the people as a whole. Not even if we're talking about what Trump called the art of the deal, the ability to negotiate with individuals who do not share the same views or goals, and to be diplomatic. The old-fashioned words, statesman and statesmanship, and apologies for the sexist language, refer to qualities entirely different from that of a sharp business executive.

We use the same word, leader, to refer to heads of state and heads of corporations, and the officers who devise battle plans and the officers who actually lead soldiers into battle, and community organizers, and clergy, and school administrators, and the list goes on and on. And the case can be made for studying leadership as a general concept, but ultimately, there are many different types of leaders for many different types of situations, and what makes for a good leader is always dependent on the context. Different contexts are differences that make a difference. They are differences that can make all the difference in the world.