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Editor’s note: The lawsuit of Misraje v. Carolla was settled after today’s blog article was prepared. I’m going to run the article in its original form anyway because the issues it discusses regarding personal relationships and money are still valid. Details about the conclusion of the case are available here.
By: Chris Warren.
In my early years me and my brother and our friends would come up with all kinds of crazy schemes to make money. Some were remarkably clever. Genius even. Most were beyond ridiculous. None ever got farther than the “wouldn’t it be cool if we…” stage, which, thinking back, may have kept us out of the back of a police car. It was a blast staying up far past midnight eating cheap Little Ceasar’s pizza and slugging down soda, colluding together on our get rich hustles and talking big of how everyone else is an idiot and we’re going to haul in gobs of their money. My brother had the most twisted mind of all of us and came up with the best way-out there rackets. We were adolescent male minds in their highest form of creative buffoonery. Still today, our young adventures will occasionally come up in conversation. All I have to do is mention “Magic Fountain Scam” to my brother and three-plus decades out he still knows exactly what I’m talking about and starts cracking up.
Had one of our dopey ideas actually taken off, I’m not sure what would have become of us. It’s nice to think that hey, we’re all friends and the pie is big enough for everyone. That’s a pleasant sentiment until someone thinks they are entitled to your slice. Countless friendships, families, and marriages have been permanently ruined because someone made it to the big time and, rightfully or not, others felt entitled to a taste of the pie. When it’s all over, the lawyers end up rich and everyone else is left to wonder if being right was really worth it.
Hardly anyone recognizes the name Donny Misraje, but he will be a lot more well known after the court case he’s involved in circulates through the media. Misraje is suing a name almost everyone knows, legendary comedy superstar Adam Carolla in a scenario that is a nearly exact copy of the kind of nonsense me and my brother and our friends used to dream up, except unlike our birdbrained ideas the Misraje-Carolla venture actually did become a huge success and made a mountain of money. As it’s so easy to predict, two once-close friends are now letting their lawyers do all the talking.
The personal disagreement that turned into a big-dollar court case involves a podcast. Today, even top of the pyramid names like Howard Stern and Rush Limbaugh earn millions from on line programming. But not long ago podcasting was the exclusive realm of wannabes and pretenders who took advantage of the low barrier to entry and either didn’t have enough talent to make a career in the broadcast industry or whose choice of obscure topics could not attract much of an audience. The nuts and weirdos are still out there, but thanks in no small part to Carolla, the medium is all grown up now and there is a huge field of well produced, very worthwhile programming out there.
The short version of the lawsuit story is that back in 2009 Misraje quit his $230,000 a year job as a video editor to help Carolla produce a podcast. Because a non-compete clause from Carolla’s previous radio contract was in effect, the new venture could not sell advertising or otherwise accept money. For all intents and purposes, everyone connected to the project including Adam Carolla himself, worked as an unpaid volunteer for nearly a year. According to court documents, there was a verbal agreement that Misraje would become a 30% owner in the business once the old contract expired and the operation could generate revenue.
By the expiration of the contract, the podcast was an enormous success and started bringing in oh-my-god amounts of money. What happened next should not come as a big surprise to anyone, but here goes: Carolla and Misraje had different recollections as to what was owed to whom, and since nothing was written down the whole mess ended up in court with all the makings of a celebrity smackdown. The paparazzi and Hollywood gossip shows are going to eat this up.
I have friends who I’ve been hanging around with since I was a college kid. We’re not “Christmas card” or “Facebook” friends. We talk on the phone often and regularly visit in person like real friends do, and have kept it up through many years and major life changes. I would be reluctant to get involved in a business deal with any of them for the reasons Misraje & Carolla so sadly illustrate, but if I were talked into it, I’d want something in writing. I trust my friends to keep their word, but money has a way of making people forget what they agreed to.
Reflecting on my own friends and their importance to me, I conclude that the issue is not deciding under what conditions it’s ok to dump a friend over money. It’s an issue of not mixing money and friendship in the first place. It always starts with the most honest of intentions but hardly ever ends so nobly. It’s sad that we live in a time where handshake deals are an anachronism and almost no business gets done without a lawyer being involved. Even marriages have become quantified in the form of prenuptial agreements.
I’m just an honest, average American working guy with no special legal knowledge. From my perspective I believe that anyone who quits a six-figure salary job to help a buddy get a new business off the ground, then labors for free for almost a year with no promise of a payoff, deserves something for his loyalty once the money starts rolling in. Written contract or not, this seems like basic fairness. Heck, I won’t even ask a friend to help me for an afternoon without at least buying them some pizza.
It’s lost on me why Carolla thinks that he owes Misraje absolutely nothing. Carolla is either not the decent, relatable regular guy I thought he was, or there is more to this story than can be gleaned from the media. I truly want to believe it’s the latter. Carolla must have been fully aware that cutting Misraje out of the deal was going to end the decades-long friendship. I doubt I’ll ever be faced with an analogous defining moment , but if the crazy Magic Fountain Scam starts pumping out dollars, I hope that everyone involved knows right from wrong even if it’s not written down.
Labor Day is the unofficial end of summer and a ready excuse to fire up the barbeque grill, invite everyone over, and fill up with icy cold beer. There’s parades, street festivals, old car shows, and all sorts of celebrations. I spent the three day weekend on my childhood turf of Naperville, Illinois, a big town with a cheerful small town vibe where my parents still live in the same house I grew up in. Naper (rhymes with paper) ville is also the host city for the Last Fling, the appropriately-named finale of the summer where thousands turn out every Labor Day weekend for one last huge summer blast. Next stop: Thanksgiving.
Anyone who is even sort-of paying attention to the world around them is aware that for a whole lot of people, Labor Day weekend was seventy two hours of living with the depressing irony of being unemployed on a holiday that honors working men and women. Beyond them are many others who have jobs but are just barely squeaking by and having great difficulty meeting the bills every month. Those who are solidly employed and living comfortably still have family and friends they care about in one of the former categories. It seems no one is left untouched by weak job market.
Graphic courtesy tradingeconomics.com
Two people very close to me work as customer service reps at different companies. Talking to them would make you think they sit next to each other. The mismanagement, low pay, unattainable objectives that are constantly changing and no one fully understands, abusive customers, and rigid schedule expectations all cumulate into a sense of demoralization. It’s a bit of a joke between us that the only thing worse than working in a call center is working fast food, and even that’s debatable since at least fast food workers score a free burger once in a while. Both of these people are hard working, intelligent, and overqualified for their positions. They both want out very badly. Unfortunately there aren’t many options for them to get out.
How do you climb the ladder when the ladder is a step stool? The psychology is like a shark eating its own tail: A common belief among the un- and under- employed is that there is something wrong with them…being stuck in an unfulfilling low pay job is somehow their fault. They will notice when someone else is doing well and let that amplify their own failures, real or perceived. It’s hard for them to see that there are millions of others just like them, and very few are unmotivated slackers complacent with a dead end job.
My service-rep friends call me at least once a week and the conversation always turns to their jobs and their worry about the future. I get the sense that they don’t want to annoy me with their venting, but it’s ok. Really. Yapping with me for a few minutes seems to benefit them and if it helps them pull through another day of dread on the “cube farm,” then it’s not a big deal for me to indulge them.
I’m one of the lucky few who has a job that is enjoyable, stable, and pays well. It’s not the end of the rainbow. I still have my workplace gripes. Yet every morning when I walk through the door, I thank God for giving me such a sweet deal. The only way I can show my gratitude is to give the boss an honest eight and do what I can to help those who are not as blessed as me. Because to a degree I am insulated from the mental and financial stress of being trapped in a crappy low wage job, I am in a unique position to help others. Mostly they just want to talk. Sometimes I’ll buy them lunch or put a few gallons of gas in their car. I’m not powerful or well connected enough to set them up with something better, so it’s the least, and the most, I can do.
I do not believe any of the chatter about how things are improving. Most of the positive numbers are either cherry picked to cover up the bad news or outright fabrications. Back home in Naperville, my childhood town, there are entire malls that are nearly empty, upscale shops replaced by dollar stores, numerous vacant car dealerships, cash for gold swindlers, payday loan hucksters, and a noticeable increase of homeless people. Naperville is still a great community with uncountable positive attributes, yet it is unsettling to see so many red flags in a city that never had them before. Even in a relatively poverty-free town signs of the real economy are slowly creeping in.
What seems lost in the charts and statistics and political gesturing is the everyday people who are struggling with no visible path out of their situations. It’s a sad statement on the world when a motivated, well-qualified almost-fifty year old accepts a $12/hour job because it’s the only deal they can find. Or when a person who should be well into retirement is working a fast food drive through at nine o’clock on a Sunday night. How far does society have to crack before the system resets itself and opportunity makes a comeback? For many, Labor Day is like the anniversary of a loved one’s death, a reminder of something missing from their lives. These hurting souls find a way to do the best they can with what they have. The rest of us cannot restore their lost income, but we can and should help them keep their dignity.
Editor’s Note: Please check out my other blog articles related to this topic:
I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to reduce the burden I personally place on the Earth’s resources. It’s been an incremental project taking place over many years and has no set end point, nor is it always easy to define how or if a conservation method is effective. I honestly have no idea if everything, or anything, I’ve done has made a difference.
Keeping the planet green and clean should be something we do as individuals because it’s right and good and not because the government or some activist group demands it. There is a place for laws and regulations; how far they should go is another matter. It is a sad reality that we are often compelled by law to do what we should be doing on our own anyway. Do we really need “no littering” signs? Having them implies two false conclusions: One, that those who are inclined to litter will refrain from doing so because a polite little notice keeps them in line; and two, that littering is allowed as long as there is no sign specifically prohibiting it.
This summer I completed upgrading nearly all the lights in my house to high efficiency LEDs. It’s something I’ve wanted for a long time but avoided due to the expense of LED bulbs. The cost of the bulbs has come way down and finally, I can cross this item off my wish list. A big chunk of my household electricity comes from solar panels so I am very aware of the need to make the most of every watt. The only standard bulbs I have now are in lights I hardly ever use anyway, such as in the closets and garage. It is gratifying to reduce my dependence on commercial electricity and the pollution it produces without giving up modern conveniences. I’m still far from being “off the grid,” but I am a lot less on it than the average person.
The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 was signed by President George W. Bush and introduced phased in mandates, the last of which take effect this year. What is sneaky about this legislation is that it technically does not ban anything. It instead imposes energy efficiency requirements that no incandescent lamp could ever achieve, forcing a default switchover to LEDs. I do not like this law mostly because it smells of regulatory “nanny state” overreach, however I have to admit it did have the unintended positive consequence of bringing the cost of LED lightbulbs down. As more people started using them, manufacturing economies of scale kicked in and within a few years LED lights were no longer a high tech, high end luxury item. They are still pricey compared to old-school incandescent bulbs, but within reach for most consumers. The EISA, for all its many flaws, succeeded in accelerating what the free market would have done on its own anyway.
When I stopped by the local do it yourself emporium to buy my LED lights, the choices were breathtaking. It was somewhat of a surprise that the previously-simple act of purchasing a lightbulb now required, among other technical considerations, an understanding of the Kelvin color temperature scale. Without the helpful charts and working sample lights on display in the store, I would have needed google to figure out that 2700 degrees Kelvin and 800 lumens is the equivalent of an old-school 60 watt incandescent light. I felt kind of foolish for all the time and effort I was spending comparing options and prices. It was, after all, just a lightbulb. I kept telling myself that times are a-changin’ so I had best get used to it and learn the new ways.
LEDs will last tens of thousands of hours longer than their incandescent predecessors and consume a small fraction of energy for the same light output. The theory is this double-benefit will more than offset the higher initial cost of the device itself. It’s not the good deal it seems, especially if you’re on a tight budget to begin with. Spending $5-$50 up front on a single lightbulb under the premise that you’ll earn a profit over the next decade or so isn’t much of a selling point when you also need to buy groceries for your children today.
Even though I have many misgivings about the EISA, now that it is law I want to see it succeed, at least the lightbulb part. Years from now there will be studies and statistics making big claims of how much energy was saved and pollution avoided because of LED lights. But in the same way my individual efforts can’t be quantified, I do not believe meaningful data on the benefits of LEDs will ever be known. Of course, that won’t stop interested parties from both ends of the issue from coming up with something that “proves” their point. LED technology was a long time coming and I’m really glad it’s finally ready for consumer use because my new lights have eased the burden on my solar panels and freed up hundreds of watts I can use for some other purpose. For my personal situation, they are a clear winner even as I know in terms of the bigger picture LEDs are not the magic potion environmentalists want everyone to think they are.
I may be a dreamer for thinking people will do the right thing without being ordered to. It’s a nice thought that hardly ever happens in reality and I can’t resolve the conflict of my dislike for laws that mandate good behavior with knowing many people won’t behave unless the law makes them. There is no easy path to convert philosophy into practical life, other than to do the right thing and take a chance that others will notice and follow along. If living by example is the best teacher, then I hope the class is paying attention.
If all you knew about me was whatever was on my website, you might get the impression that I’m a pretty adventurous, open minded spirit who is always on the lookout for new experiences. It’s easy to forget that a blog article, like a photograph, is just a snapshot. It reflects a truth, but it’s only a moment of truth. There is no context to connect the moment to events that came before and after. It can be misleading because photographers and writers will self-sensor themselves, picking and choosing what they want to reveal. It’s not necessarily dishonest, it’s the nature of the medium.
This past weekend, I went with a buddy to the Chicago Air & Water Show. I’d probably seldom if ever go to Chicago if it were not for him living there. I’m just not a much of a city person. I live far enough away that going there takes some planning and effort, so I have a built in excuse to avoid the place. This time, my friend would not let me be held back by my own obstinance.
The CTA (public transit) bus was not particularly crowded when we boarded. As we get closer to the lakefront and the bus makes its stops, it starts filling up. Our fellow travelers were themselves a microcosm of humanity: The tired-looking construction worker. The old lady with grocery bags. Three sooo cute hispanic brothers, the oldest was maybe six. Two teenagers speaking what sounded like an eastern European language. Several African Americans. Two Asian guys, also not speaking English. One of them had a Chicago Fire Department uniform on. A babbling loud mouth sitting in the back who could be heard across the whole bus. Then there’s me, the basic white guy feeling totally out of his element, and my friend, who is Filipino. The bus stops and driver announces the end of the line. As we file out the door, it occurs to me that I’ll probably never see any of these people again and I have a brief philosophical moment about what fate, good or bad, made me miss. Except for the babbling loud mouth. Never seeing him again has no downside.
Blue Angels over Chicago. Photo courtesy U.S. Navy
A short walk later we behold mighty Lake Michigan stretching out in front of us. There is a wave of humanity almost as impressive as the lake itself following the curve of the shore for as far as we can see. An earth-shaking roar of six F-18 Hornet jets announces the arrival of the U.S. Navy Blue Angels, and it becomes obvious why everyone is here. It’s impossible to fully appreciate the Angels’ skill by watching them on video. The Blue Angels are so good, it almost looks fake. It’s not fake. They really are that good. There are countless picnics and beach parties going on. A girl who appeared to be less than 18 years old was on a large boat in the harbor, barely dressed and dancing in an over-the-top way that, well, uhhm, let’s just say Miley Cyrus could take lessons from her.
After the air show we walked to Navy Pier and then Millennium Park, eventually ending up at Buckingham Fountain. The Chicago Symphony was playing. The weather is perfect and we’re having an awesome time. My friend was not done with me yet. We headed over to Michigan Avenue. It was bustling and lively and happening. It was also a place of unsettling contrasts: A homeless guy begging for change; a few steps away is a display window of Rolex watches that individually cost more than what most people pay for a car. By time we got back to my friend’s apartment, we had been on the go for over nine hours, most of it walking. I was beyond beat.
Buckingham Fountain, Chicago Grant Park. Photo courtesy WBBM television.
The aftermath of my kickass cool roadtrip to Chicago was an old refrain for me: I am not by nature an adventurous, open-minded spirit. Like most people, I have my ways and don’t like drifing too far from them. But if I am nagged and pushed into trying something different, I end up liking it. It seems I never want to go anywhere or do anything…until I do. Then I’m all into it.
In my senior year in high school I knew I wanted to go to college but was not ready to leave home. My toughlove, zero-tolerance-for-bullshit dad made it clear that he was not going to put up with me sitting around his house for free while I, in his words, “contemplate the world.” So it was mutually decided I would live at home and enroll at a local junior college. It was a perfect fit: I could keep my part time job, rack up some academic credits, and satisfy mom and especially dad that I had goals and was making real progress towards achieving them. I did not make the connection at the time, but their parental pressure eventually came to its intended conclusion: A little less than two years later, I abruptly announced that I was going to transfer to a four year university and finish my degree. To prove I was serious, I set everything up at my new school before revealing my plans. Mom and dad were somewhat blindsided by my declaration, but very pleased.
Since I’m not the type of guy who goes looking for new experiences on his own, I’m grateful to be surrounded by people willing to push me into them. In all of these situations, I came out better for it. I would not have suggested going to the lakefront with all the crowds and hassles and my general aversion to big cities. But wow, am I ever glad my friend did not give in to my reluctance. The entire weekend was a total blast! And either by coincidence or deliberate parental wisdom, my mom and dad did not allow me to stagnate in my own equivocation about what to do with my young self. They knew I was capable of succeeding so they helped me find a path forward and pushed.
I ultimately graduated from college, got over the hump of entering the workforce, and went about my productive if not unremarkable life. Today, there are no looming big decisions before me that need to be made, or avoided. I am well aware that there are few constants in this world and sooner or later I will probably be faced with a grand opportunity more consequential than spending a fun weekend in Chicago. When that moment comes, I hope I can motivate myself to act, and if I can’t act on my own, I hope someone who cares is nearby to give me a kick over the line.
In the year 1954 Eisenhower was President and some wannabe named Elvis Presley was a barely-discovered singer on the Memphis music scene. Nestled in the frenzy of Cold War buildup, the Pentagon took delivery of their first Lockheed C-130 Hercules transport aircraft. Both the singer and the airplane had something else in common: As with anything new and unproven, no one at the time knew or necessarily cared what their respective legacies would be.
What we know now that we did not know then, and why the average citizen who typically has no interest in military aircraft should care, is that the Hercules would become an aviation legend and one of the few success stories of government spending. It will take off or land on short, crappy, unpaved runways and haul about 40,000 pounds of whatever will fit inside at 330 miles per hour for 2000 miles. It is the only aircraft operated by all five branches of the military. It has been used both to kill people and rescue them from death. The internationally-acclaimed U.S. Navy Blue Angels use one as a support aircraft (“Fat Albert”). There is no shortage of customers for the Hercules. Recently, the Filipino air force added itself to the list of foreign countries that covet the C-130 and collectively buy hundreds of them. In different variations, it is a flying gas pump, freight train, hospital, fire truck, police car, weather station, secret spy den, gun platform, and troop hauler. It can unload cargo without even landing. There isn’t anything it has been asked to do and failed. The Lockheed-Martin C-130 Hercules has no peers.
The only experience I’ve had with a C-130 was when I went with my dad to visit the U.S. Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. They have the “Spectre” gunship version on display. The aircraft, in a word, is sinister. Windowless and dark colored, high speed rotary Gatling guns pointing out one side remove any doubt as to what the Spectre is used for. A few guns on a large airplane do not sound like much, but these things are h-u-g-e. They take up pretty much the entire cargo area and spit thousands of 20 millimeter shells every minute. It’s hard to understand the magnitude of these weapons until you see one in person. That aircraft has a creepy vibe you can sense just by standing there. If I were a bad guy, I would run, run, run, for my life at the very sight of a Spectre, although it may not do any good.
It says something about American ingenuity when a military aircraft that made its debut exactly six decades ago this month is still relevant and in production. The Hercules has been through many upgrades and facelifts, but the basic design from 1954 is still flying strong. Today, a C-130 costs about thirty million dollars before it’s equipped for a specific task. By Pentagon budget standards, that’s coffee change. By everyday taxpayer standards, it’s a lot of money. But thirty million for an aircraft that can do so much and has a service life of over half a century is a pretty good deal by any standard.
The U.S. Coast Guard (which, by the way, also has an August birthday) is the only branch of the U.S. military that includes saving lives and property as one of its stated goals. They’ve been doing it with honor since 1790, and in 1958 they added the C-130 to their inventory. It’s hard for me to buy into the idea that an inanimate object can be a hero, but there are an untold number of people who need no persuasion as they know they are alive today only because a Coast Guard C-130 saved them from peril when nothing else could. Whether it’s a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico, an oil spill in Alaska, a ship wreck in the Atlantic, or a medical emergency at the South Pole, almost nothing assures survivors that things will get better soon like the comforting sight of a mighty four-engined, white and orange U.S. Coast Guard C-130 arriving on the scene.
We hardly ever hear of the government getting something right because, honestly, they hardly ever do. Government incompetence is so common, it’s become a late night comedy show punchline. Most citizens are not as much against paying taxes as they are against wasting it on nonsense and graft. Even me, as a devout Libertarian, would whine a lot less about my tax bill if I had some confidence that I’m getting a good deal for my money. But fair is fair, and when the government does actually get something right, they deserve credit. The Lockheed-Martin C-130 Hercules is more than just a good deal, it’s the “Elvis of Airplanes”: A beloved, timeless legend that performs flawlessly and will be revered long after the last one makes its final landing, which is not expected until the 2030’s. By then the Hercules will have been in service for eight decades.
As cool as Elvis was on his own, he still needed his guitar to help sell the act. And so it is too for the real, human heroes who use the C-130 to do so many incredible things. Any military person knows having well-tested, solid equipment is essential to completing the mission. I expect to get back to Dayton, Ohio one of these days. When I do, I’m going to pay Hercules a visit. The old bird is never going to swing its hips to crowds of swooning fans, but there are plenty of military veterans and survivors of disasters who know what the headline act will be when it really matters.
The fun and fireworks of Fourth of July celebrations are long fizzled out and I count myself among the many who are not ready to admit the unofficial end of summer is only a month away. As the ubiquitous back to school advertisements foretell, yes, the calendar always gets its revenge. It’s the cycle of life we grow accustom to even if we don’t necessarily like it.
For last spring’s high school graduates, it’s much more than a perennial change of the season. It’s their dwindling days of having a legitimate claim to childhood, of not having to worry about anything serious, of living under the close protective cloak of parents and teachers. Within the next few weeks, their lives will change abruptly and things will never be the same. They’ve just completed a major life goal; I can’t really blame them for wanting to party, cut loose, and not give a damn about anything for a month or two.
I refer to the summer after high school graduation as “Senior Summer.” It occurs only once in a lifetime and is both a carefree joy and a sad, long goodbye as friends who have known each other for years and together shared many important experiences drift apart and go their separate ways to college, the military, a job, or mom’s basement. Sincere albeit naïve platitudes of keeping in touch will be offered and accepted, but it’s not going to be anything like the halcyon final scene of the classic hit musical Grease, when the kids graduate and begin their Senior Summer by happily singing about how they’ll “always” be together. The places and people that our young lives revolved around for four years quickly become just photos in a yearbook.
Years ago I had an occasion to stop by my old high school during my own Senior Summer to drop off a library book I forgot I still had. Being summer break, the place was empty and kind of creepy. Even though I knew the physical layout of the building in great detail, an odd feeling nonetheless came over me: “I don’t belong here. Naperville North isn’t my house anymore.” The school where I felt welcome and comfortable as a student walking the bustling halls laughing with my friends just a month or so earlier now made me feel like I was wandering around a stark alien spaceship. I just wanted to finish my business and get out of there. It felt terrible having an aversion to a place that was such a big part of my life and held many warm memories, but I knew I had checked out and moved on.
The emotional pain of leaving a familiar sphere of faces and places does have a big upside: As much as it may upset young people to let go of the only world they know, the opportunity for new and exciting experiences is breathtaking. The errand to drop off the library book was my reality check. It unnerved me at the time, but summer is fleeting and that fall I started college. I had a chance to study topics I liked and not what was chosen for me. In what can only be described as an amazing case of being in the right place at the right time, I applied and was hired for a job at a popular radio station. I had zero experience but it turns out I was a natural for yapping on the radio. No one was more shocked than me when my weekend/overnight program pulled in more listeners than some of the prime-time big shots. New friends, new school, and a new job that was a hundred times cooler than whatever my peers were doing to make a buck. All this happened less than a year out from graduation.
Teens going through their Senior Summer and feeling equal amounts of pain and joy have a difficult time grasping the idea that there is a big, inviting world out there just dying to meet them and give them a chance to make a difference with their fresh ideas. Like nearly all who came before, they will ultimately navigate through the churn of heavy feelings and doubt and learn that leaving the cocoon of high school –even if they don’t think they can handle it– has a higher purpose. It’s an essential part of the self discovery process.
This past weekend I went to visit my adopted niece because she is going off to college in a few weeks and I don’t expect to see her again before Christmas. I’ve known this young lady since she was born and I could sense her worry. “Chris, I’m so nervous about this,” she admitted, nearly in tears as she hugged me tightly.I said the only thing I could think of, unrehearsed from the heart. “You’re going to have a great time and amaze yourself and everyone with all the good you are capable of.” That wasn’t me saying something insincere just to be polite. I really do believe in her, maybe more than she believes in herself at the moment. Next year will be her brother’s turn. He is a highly motivated, dynamic kid and I’m certain he too will do very impressive things once he is freed from the limitations of high school.
It hurts to watch young people stress out over things we older and wiser folks know will pass, but there are some situations we cannot or should not bail kids out of. All we can do is smile and understand and assure them that joy and pain often come as a matched set. In my June 17, 2014 article I mentioned that the greatest trait of strong people is they know they are loved. It’s the most powerful and important feeling we can impart on our kids when we launch them into the world as brand new adults to figure out for themselves that the end of Senior Summer is the beginning of a bright and promising future .
Call it pride, misjudgement, or just plain looney, I can’t figure out why a certain element of people will dramatically claim they were wronged and in the process of trying to make everything right, they become a party to making it worse.
Foolishly letting themselves become hapless ringmasters of their own very public circus, they realize only after the tent collapses that if they had just laid low and kept their mouth shut, the embarrassment and damage would have been mitigated if not eliminated outright. Assuming, of course, they had a legitimate gripe in the first place. In many of these situations, the only “problem” is the one the self-appointed victim created.
For today’s cautionary tale of looney, I present entertainer Barbra Streisand, who went off the hook when a photographer incidentally included her house in an aerial photo. The photo was buried in a collection of many thousands of pictures of California coastline geographic features publicly available on line. When Babs found out, she quickly lawyered up to have the photo purged from the internet. The lawsuit and ensuing media coverage resulted in exactly the opposite of what she was trying to achieve: The photo became a huge draw. Prior to Streisand’s childish meltdown, it had been viewed less than ten times, and that included web page hits from her own attorney. After the Hollywood paparazzi caught the scent of the lawsuit, the image pulled in over 420,000 views in less than a month and is to this day still widely copied and reposted.
This spectacle of incredibly poor foresight was the genesis of the Streisand Effect, a term coined to describe what happens when someone tries to erase something from the internet and the attempt epically backfires to spawn a high-profile storm of attention that, but for the effort to get rid of it, would have never occurred. The inaugural Streisand Effect incident was back in 2003…social media did not exist, the internet was still an emerging platform, and digital cameras were big dollar luxuries. Had Streisand stuck to opening her mouth only when singing, the aerial picture of her house would have been just another obscure web page with single-digit popularity. Not only did she ultimately lose her legal case (along with the ton of money spent on it), she became an eponym for the ages for more than just her singing talent.
The year 2003 is ancient history in internet time. Today, it would seem to be a common assumption that everyone has a greater awareness of the possibility that unwanted information is difficult to erase. It only takes a short trip to YouTube or any one of the hundreds of comedy websites to figure out that the assumption is totally wrong. There are infinite gigabytes of people doing things that they would probably not do if they knew it would end up on line. As if that were already over the top, there are still other more-guts-than-brains types who know full well their gags will live forever in cyberspace because they are are purposely uploaded by the participants themselves.
It’s one thing to be upset when something is released by others that was not intended for public consumption, it’s quite another to let the genie out of the bottle yourself. By doing so, one forfeits the right to complain about it later. Hardly a week goes by when an amazing act of dumbassery flashes across the net in mere moments, then realizing what they have done, the perpetrator makes a vain attempt to backpedal out of the mess, which serves only to make the mess bigger and more popular.
As Ms. Streisand’s now (in?)famous example teaches us, there are very few purely innocent victims of internet embarrassment. And of those who are, many bring further damage unto themselves by going on a fool’s errand to remove the offense. Much of the “humiliation” out there is manufactured by the humiliants…if that’s a real word.
Putting anything about yourself on the internet is a lot like getting a tattoo: It stays there forever so you better really, really make sure it’s what you want. Young people in particular lack this level of discretion. The internet hasn’t been around long enough to fully know what the extended effects of immortalizing adolescent misadventures will be, but there can’t possibly be any lasting benefit of a digitized half naked teenager holding a can of beer, especially a decade or two down the road when they have kids of their own.
A recent European Union court ruling that everyone has “the right to be forgotten” means google and other search engines are legally required to remove links upon request if the person to whom the link refers to does not want to be found on line. Those wishing to take advantage of this new right may want to consider that they risk being sucked in by the Streisand Effect. There is already a cottage industry of websites based outside the jurisdiction of the E.U. dedicated to exposing what google will not. You’ve been warned.
The idea of anyone running to their attorney over something as mundane as a distant, indistinct picture of their house seems quaint compared to what is easy to find on line these days. The trifecta of lack of sense, lower standards of acceptable behavior, and a digital camera in everyone’s pocket has busted the door open to all kinds of crazy, a lot of which the involved parties are actually proud of…for now. On the cosmically small chance Babs Streisand reads Twenty First Summer and doesn’t like this article or the photo that goes with it, I’m betting this time she will keep her lawyers out of it and quietly move along.
If in my own moment of crazy I am memorialized on the Web, I promise not to say anything to anyone. I’ll just fade into the background and hope the whole ugly deal is lost in a sea of other people’s foolishness.
There is a well known story by American author Loren Eiseley (1907-1977) that goes something like this:
“There was an old man who would take a walk on the beach every morning before he began his work. One day, he was walking after a big storm had passed and found the vast beach littered with starfish as far as the eye could see, stretching in both directions. He noticed a small boy approaching. As the boy walked closer, the man could see that he was occasionally bending down to pick up an object and throw it into the sea. The boy came closer and the man called out, ‘Good morning! May I ask what it is that you are doing?’ The young boy paused, looked up, and replied ‘Throwing starfish into the ocean. The storm has washed them up onto the beach and they can’t return to the sea by themselves,’ the youth replied. ‘They will die, unless I throw them back into the water.’ The old man replied, ‘But there must be tens of thousands of starfish on this beach. I’m afraid you won’t really be able to make much of a difference.’ The boy bent down, picked up yet another starfish and threw it as far as he could into the ocean. Then he turned, smiled and said, ‘It made a difference to that one!’” (adapted from The Star Thrower, 1969, 1977).
Numerous versions of this story are floating around out there, but the lesson is the same: Very few of us will change the world for everyone, but one person can make a difference to someone, and to that someone it’s a very big deal.
In 1991 Cathy was a middle aged working mom with four kids who earned a modest living as a call center service rep at a large company. A few blocks up the street from her office was a well worn and austere apartment building used for low income senior housing. Owned & operated by a local faith-based charity that clearly had more good intentions than money, nobody would choose to live there unless the alternative was a cardboard box by the railroad tracks.
One day Cathy recruited a coworker to help her deliver a chair to a friend over lunch break. They pulled up to the senior housing building in Cathy’s beat up old minivan with a large padded recliner chair crammed in the back. The coworker was a strong, young twenty-something male specifically chosen to provide the muscle needed to lug the heavy piece up several floors to an apartment door in a dark hallway.
A weak old lady answered the door and warmly hugged and greeted Cathy. As they entered, the lady candidly mentioned, “I think I had a little accident in the bed.” There is no delicate way to describe it: Wall to wall, floor to ceiling , the place smelled, literally, like shit. The young guy set the chair near the window; it looked out of place as the only decent piece of furniture in the entire apartment. He waited uncomfortably while Cathy helped the lady change in the other room and hoped they didn’t know that he knew about the wretched, disgusting funk in the air. His courtesy of feigning ignorance was pointless since there was no possible way not to notice the “accident.” There was some idle chit-chat, and the pair of coworkers headed for the door. On the way out, Cathy tells the old lady, “I hope you like your chair. I’ll come by later and finish cleaning up. You’ll be ok till then.”
On the short trip back to the office, Cathy explained to the visibly puzzled young man that she met the old woman months back through a random encounter at the store and simply “adopted” her. At the end of the workday, Cathy returned to the dumpy apartment to take care of her friend; he went to his clean, odor-free home in a nice neighborhood.
Star-throwers are hard to spot because they deliberately avoid being noticed. Like mysterious little spirits, they quietly go about performing good deeds. The boy on the beach didn’t say anything about what he was doing until someone asked, and Cathy did not disclose the true purpose of the lunch hour chair-moving mission to her young helper until the topic could no longer be avoided.
Nearly everyone at some point in their life has helped others. Lots of people are habitually helpful, but not everyone is a star-thrower. True star-throwers go beyond doing something nice once in a while. They instinctively see stars that others miss. In a world that is so difficult for so many, stars should be easy to find like the beach in Eiseley’s parable. But in the real world they can and often do hide in plain sight. People in need may mask their difficulties, be too embarrassed to ask for help, or be in denial that they have a problem. More likely, many of us don’t want to notice the stars all around.
Loren Eiseley teaches that the need is far greater than one person can handle and admonishes lazy bystanders through the character of the old man. Sooner or later the boy must stop throwing starfish. He feels sorrow for all those he did not get to and guilt for leaving them behind but knows that at least some of them are safely back in the water. Compare that to the attitude of the old man, who not only saw no higher purpose in throwing starfish to begin with but also has the nerve to tell the boy that it’s better to let them all die than to save just a few.! Uncharitable people often use this twisted logic to explain away their lack of compassion. It’s easy to say the job is too big and assuage one’s guilt for not even trying than to give one’s best effort and know it would have mattered to someone. Mocking others for doing what you are too unmotivated to take on yourself is an old bit.
When I agreed to help move the chair, it never entered my mind that doing an ordinary favor was going to result a lesson that I would remember for years and years. I later lost contact with Cathy but her sense of humanity and kindness and showing love to God by showing love to others will never leave me. There are so many stars. Like the boy on the beach, Cathy knows she will never save all of them. The apartment building is still there. I seriously doubt the old lady is alive. She was in her late 70s or early 80s at the time. This incident happened twenty three years ago. Either by luck or divine intent two souls were both in the right place at the right time and again proved the old man wrong. A Star-Thrower made a difference to a poor, sick, elderly lady who was tossed back into the life giving sea so she would not whither and die on a beach.
In 1973 the end of the Vietnam War was near after going for ten violent years. As thousands of soldiers came home, many were welcomed back as heroes, while others were the target of high profile protests and derided as willing conspirators in a hugely unpopular war. A common attitude among returning veterans of the time was that they did not want attention of any kind, negative or positive. They just wanted to go back to their ordinary civilian lives and be left alone.
Also in 1973, singer Elton John released a song called Daniel. It became a hit, and is still very popular over forty years later. It’s about a disabled vet who wants to leave his difficult experience behind and find a quiet place to be himself. The story is told from the perspective of Daniel’s younger brother. It does not self-identify as a “Vietnam song,” yet it softly describes the sentiments of nearly every returning combat veteran. In just a few minutes, Elton John encapsulates the thoughts of so many who have endured so much. Daniel, the character, is not just one person.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tB7gskqXFgw
Due to the political climate and the proliferation of recorded music and radio, more music came out of the Vietnam era than any war before it. Very little of it was positive. Someone having no prior knowledge of the war could listen to the music of the time and easily conclude that it was a very divisive period for the United States. There was a lot of frustration, disappointment, anger. The protest songs were the loudest voice in a divided nation.
The voice that was not being heard was that of the soldiers sitting in mud pits watching their buddies get killed by the hundreds. No one was singing to comfort them or give them a cultural outlet for what they were going through. That would not come for another three decades. In 2003 the war in Iraq was going full blast and country singer Toby Keith released the single American Soldier. It is a story about military guy who, like his fictional comrade-in-arms Daniel, wants to go about his life with no fanfare or attention. Unlike Elton John’s approach, the meaning of Toby Keith’s composition requires no guesswork.
Two songs released thirty years apart that take widely diverging paths to essentially the same conclusion. So what else is different between Elton’s and Toby’s interpretations? The answer is not about two individual songs. The Iraq war was never truly embraced by the civilian public, but unlike Vietnam no one held anything against the men and women sent to do the dirty work. We as Americans grew up a lot in those three decades. We learned to see the difference between those who order the war and those who actually fight it. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars were the catalyst for dozens of popular patriotic songs that would have never been conceived in the time of Vietnam.
If music is a reflection of the culture that created it, then something transformative happened between Vietnam and Iraq/Afghanistan. Protest songs still exist today but do not attract anywhere near the attention they received in the 1960s and 1970s. Pro-American songs (mostly country) consistently hit the top of the charts and are used for TV commercials, sporting events, and political rallies.
It is said the power of music is that it can make us feel something. I think that is only half of the equation: We also create music because of how we feel. Many years after Vietnam ended, Elton John’s song writing partner Bernie Taupin explained that he got the idea for Daniel in 1972 after reading a magazine article about how Vietnam vets who came home wanted nothing more than to fade into normal life. It effected Taupin so much that he turned that feeling into a song that is still commonly played nearly two generations later.
So does music give us feeling, or do we put our feelings into music? This chicken-or-egg argument misses the point. The answer is: Both. Music is a mode of communication. The artist says something through their song with the intention of influencing his or her audience to form an idea or opinion that might not have occurred otherwise. The musician wants to get inside our heads. That is the entire purpose of any art.
What sets music apart from other art forms is its universal appeal and staying power. Very few people attend live theater productions or art galleries, but almost everyone likes some form of music and probably owns recordings. And long after playgoers and art gallery junkies have left the building, digital technology gives music fans the advantage of being able to listen favorite songs any time they want.
The idea for this blog article came out of a story I’d heard that Daniel was actually about Elton John’s real-life brother and how much it hurt Elton when Daniel had to go live in the warmer climate of Spain for health reasons. It did not take much googling to figure out what I had been told about this song was 100% urban legend. As I read further, the true back story of Daniel came alive. The reality was far more compelling than the legend.
The Elton John/Bernie Taupin team is not known for making strong political or social statements in their music. Heck, they are not even Americans! Yet they were moved to create a quiet acknowledgement of what Vietnam vets were going through. It sparked my interest enough to study their art more closely and discover for myself what they were trying to say. Over my lifetime I must have heard Daniel a million times and didn’t think much of it. Now that song will never sound the same to me the again. Well played, Elton: You got inside my head.
