But doesn't the devil make us all "do it"?

I've been thinking about Andrea Yates. In 2001, you'll recall, Yates killed her five children, ranging in age from six months to seven years, by methodically drowning them one at a time in the family bathtub. She claimed she did it to save them from Satan, a claim that last week won her a "not guilty by reason of insanity" verdict in the retrial of her overturned 2002 murder conviction. Now, I don't know whether the homicidal compulsion that took hold of Yates was bred of insanity; unlike, I guess, so many others who've weighed in on this latest verdict, I'm not omniscient. But I am intrigued by the logic used by some people (most of whom, anecdotally, seem to be women) whose analysis is rooted in the following assumption: "In order for a mother to do something like that, she would've had to be insane." In other words, they're reasoning backwards from the sheer gruesomeness of what Yates did--looking at it through the prism of all we know about maternal instinct--and concluding that, by definition, a sane woman could not commit such a crime against her kids.

That logic, of course, has wider application: It suggests that we should judge the sanity of the criminal by the outrageousness of the crime. In which case there are a lot of murderers--our friend Charlie Manson comes to mind--who clearly should've beaten the rap by reason of insanity. (It also suggests that if you're planning to kill someone, you should probably kill several other people, too, then lop off their heads and stuff rutabagas into their neck-holes. It makes you look crazier, and therefore less guilty, in the criminal-justice sense.)

Anyway, this got me thinking about postpartum depression, which has been used as a defense--sometimes viably so--in a number of high-profile murder cases. Now, again, I don't know whether postpartum depression is or isn't a form of insanity, or a legit excuse for murder; the medical profession increasingly seems to think so. But if that's the case--if we're going to cut women a break because of a biologically rooted phenomenon that holds them in its grasp--then I don't understand why similar allowances aren't made for men as a class, who--almost everyone agrees--are more predisposed to violence by nature. If testosterone or that damned Y chromosome actually causes someone to have a lower boiling point, why don't the laws reflect that? Hey, maybe guys should be entitled to "one free murder" before they're subject to the same laws that are applied to women (at least, the ones who aren't suffering from postpartum depression). After all, once you start making distinctions based on what people are biologically programmed to do...where do you stop?

Parent, help thyself.

Here's one of those stories that, on its surface, sounds like a good thing--and a good thing only--but leaves me feeling ambivalent. It describes another facet of American society's ever-expanding attempt to equip parents with resources in the ongoing battle against the sexual predators who live in our midst. As a grandfather to four beautiful, innocent grandchildren, I naturally wouldn't want to see them (or any other children) sexually abused or hurt in any way. At the same time, I am gravely concerned by the vital privacy issues* that have gotten swept under the rug, as a class, since 9-11. Though child molestation has nothing to do with 9-11 per se, the cultural ethos since then has veered sharply away from the individual's right to privacy and sharply toward our overarching right to know virtually everything about the people who live next door, so that we can discern who may pose a danger to the rest of us. Pedophiles just got carried along in the current.

But really, that's a complex debate in itself, and not at all the point of this post. The point of this post is that regardless of where you come down on the issue, this latest effort on parents' behalf embodies self-help** in its traditional, legitimate sense--that is, before the term got bastardized by the folks I talk about in SHAM. The new database to which the article refers gives parents a means of taking action to protect their children. This isn't about whining, or rationalizing, or repeating affirmations, or any of the other elements that distinguish the more familiar SHAM programs. It's about people perceiving a need and doing something about it in order to protect their families.

Pictured above, by the way, is this family's latest acquisition, little Ava, now five months old. As the editorial voice of this blog, I reserve the right to gloat.

* as well as other issues, like freedom of movement and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure.
** which is mentioned specifically in the article.

P.S., THURSDAY AFTERNOON. On a totally unrelated (and possibly tacky) note, SHAM seems have found its way back to Amazon near-respectability--No. 12,416 as I write this. I'll never get this figured out.

Because it's not "what you think." It's how you feel.

First of all, this post makes an essentially inferential/anecdotal argument, so don't bother attacking me on that ground; I concede the point. And I feel compelled to say at the outset that I "have no dog in this race" (the race being the current Israel/Hezbollah conflict), though I'd also have to say my emotional sympathies lay more with Israel. Which makes for a perfect segue here.

If intellect is what really decides what we "think" on any given issue...then shouldn't you expect to see an equal number of Jews writing and arguing on each side of the current issue?* That is, some favoring Israel and some favoring Hezbollah? And shouldn't the same be true of people of Arab extraction? But that's not what you see. The Jewish columnists and letter writers all write in strong defense of Israel. The Arab-sounding names all write in defense of Hezbollah (albeit a softer, more qualifed defense, because in today's America anyone with a name like Mustafa who writes an all-out defense of Hezbollah would be branded an anti-Semite and probably also put on some terrorist watch list). For that matter, shouldn't you expect to see an equal number of Americans supporting bin Laden and Al Qaeda? (And with that question, I probably just put myself on some watch list.) It's a fair question. If the mind is such a wonderfully analytical instrument--if its activities and decisions are truly objective and logical, which is to say, they're not governed by something far more visceral and inchoate--then why do even the most intelligent people come down on the expected side (the self-interest side) of every issue with a strong emotional pull?

Worth pondering.

* assuming, that is, that none of us knows what "universal truth" is. Though a lot of us pretend to such knowledge.

Is there a whistle-blower statute I could invoke?

I'm sure this is pure coincidence--well, I'm pretty sure, anyway--but I can't help noticing that since my critical post about Amazon late last week, SHAM's Amazon numbers have gone into free fall: from No. 21,000 (which ain't great, but at least indicates a smattering of sales here and there) Friday afternoon to a current No. 222,000 (which verges on oblivion). With the exception of a two-day period right after the dawn of 2006*, the book hasn't been at such a low ebb since the month before publication, when pre-orders first began drifting in.

Somebody asked me if I thought it was possible that Amazon could actually be burying orders for SHAM. Nah, I said. Amazon would never do such a thing. After all, that would be unethical.

* when, come to think of it, I was also giving Amazon a lot of grief over Dr. Phil and his new book.

I kill, therefore I am?

Question: How do we justify feeling compassion for a person who is "trapped" by sadness (i.e. depression, etc.) and not for a person who is "trapped" by violence (e.g. Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, the guy in Florida who killed Jessica Lunsford, etc)? Yes, of course, as a practical matter, I know that the end results are different, that depressed people don't usually hurt others (at least not directly). But that's not the point. If the argument here is that much of this is biochemical in origin (or at least in predisposition, as science increasingly suggests), then might not the mechanisms be much the same in both cases? Some folks find it necessary to cry. Some folks find it necessary to kill.*

Understand, I'm not saying I buy into this--at least for the purposes of this post. I'm just making an observation. Seems to me you can't have it both ways. If you're going to argue that people with clear behavioral histories like Manson's have a choice about being violent (i.e. an "obligation to control their aggression"), then don't depressed people also have a choice about being depressed, and shouldn't they therefore be expected to "control their melancholy"? On the other hand, if you're going to make every effort to help people who are depressed, why aren't you showing similar understanding to our pal Charlie?

Enlighten me, please....

* Taking things a step further, researchers even think they may have found an "infidelity gene" that causes promiscuity in women.

It is the author's prerogative to whine on Fridays in summer.

It's a slow day (summertime Fridays historically being dead days in the publishing industry, which adjourns en masse to the Hamptons or Fire Island) and I'm feeling crabby, so I thought I'd reflect a bit on my book's shabby treatment at the hands of Amazon...thereby reverting to the conspiracy theories that alienated some readers a while back. Like I said...I'm crabby.

Though SHAM made its official bookstore debut on June 21, 2005, it had of course become available for online pre-ordering months earlier. I've talked to Amazon a number of times about their handling of me and my book; this was back when they would still talk to me (a pipeline that slammed abruptly shut last December when I began going after Dr. Phil and Love Smart in this blog). Right off the bat I was annoyed by the appearance of a highly negative "customer" review several weeks before SHAM, to my knowledge, had even shipped. If that review was based on anything at all, it would've had to be based on one of the advance "review copies" my publisher, Crown, had sent out, which were intended exclusively for use by book critics and professional columnists.* Not only were significant changes made in the final version of the book, but it's common Amazon practice to wait until a book has a chance to get into people's hands before running readers' opinions of it (good or bad). To me, that first Amazon review smacked of subterfuge--like, say, a plot from some faction of the self-help community, which was well aware that SHAM was coming. Crown made its case to Amazon and, in fairness, that review did get removed.

Of far greater concern has been the matter of the Spotlight reviews for SHAM--and this is an area where Crown and I have had very little success at getting cooperation, or even a reasonable explanation, from Amazon. At one point an Amazon rep told me they like to "rotate" the Spotlight reviews to give readers a "fair sampling" of comment on this or that new book. Oh really? In SHAM's case, I was assigned a 1-star Spotlight review by "real name" reviewer Susan Wise Bauer in early July (she wrote it on June 25), and it has remained fixed in place ever since. To date, the Bauer review has accumulated 170 out of 196 "helpful" votes. My second Spotlight review, by "Jersey Tomato," is almost as damning (two stars, plenty of rhetorical fang), has been in place uninterrupted since the second week of August, and has accumulated 80 out of 102 "helpful" votes. In the aggregate, those numbers represent a remarkable positive-feedback ratio. One has to feel that at least some potential buyers were swayed by the (apparent) strength of that criticism.

Which, I suppose, would be fine...if it was legit. In fact, those two rip-me-a-new-one reviews, with their extraordinary feedback ratings, are altogether incongruous with the general reception given SHAM. Formal reviews (The Wall Street Journal, Publisher's Weekly, Booklist) were almost uniformly glowing. Even on Amazon, the book boasts an overall reader rating of 3.5 stars. Shouldn't, then, at least one of the Spotlight reviews be positive? Especially since Amazon likes to, you know, "rotate" the reviews to reflect a "fair sampling" of customer opinion? How did two terrible reviews get anointed as Spotlights...and then win a near-total vote of confidence from Amazon readers?

On the other side of the spectrum we have the Love Smart page and its own well-documented irregularities--almost every one of which has benefited McGraw and his book. And you wonder why I'm suspicious?** And crabby?

* To be clear about this, I have no problem with paid reviewers writing reviews. That's their job, and one assumes they bring a fair amount of intelligence and discernment to the table (though not always, as the Washington Post's mistake-filled review illustrated). But it strikes me as unfair to allow supposed customers to crucify a book when--in fact--the odds that they actually read it are between slim and none.
** Needless to say, self-help books are huge money-makers for Amazon, and for publishers in general. There is, then, a strong incentive for them to not want to kill (or participate too lustily in the killing of) the golden goose. (My agent and I worried for a time that we wouldn't get any major publisher to bite on the project.) This same phenomenon also means that McGraw and his ilk have an awful lot of clout with Amazon.

On the plus side...

...Robert Allen found me another new job. You know, it's nice to have such a tireless advocate in my corner.

In fairness...she also has a very pretty guitar.

Today I heard Cheyenne Kimball do her thing (which appeared to be "singing," though I'm still not sure) on one of the morning shows. She was dreadful. This is not a matter of opinion or taste,* because I'm not talking about the song she chose to sing or the general style in which she sang it. I'm talking about, among other things, the fact that she was flat--ear-hurtingly off-key--on most of her purported high notes. I'm talking about the fact that midway through, she got lost in the music, such that she was at first slightly behind the beat, then just ahead of it, in a clear attempt to overcompensate. I suppose one might argue that Kimball was doing this intentionally, as part of her "aesthetic"--but, you know, we're not talking here about someone like, say, Diana Krall, who's a serious songstress, knows her way around the music, and can produce special, original vocal stylings. We're talking about a (just barely) 16-year-old nymph whose chief musical attribute seems to be that she's cute as a button.

This is of interest because so much of what we see in pop culture skews our sense of what's worth admiring, and therefore, too, what we try to emulate. We don't even know how to "self-actualize" anymore, because we have so few models of what genuine "actualization" even is. (Consider that in 2003, NBC named Ms. Kimball, then 12, "America's most talented kid"!) So, young people who aspire to singing greatness see someone like Kimball and think, "Hey, I can do that!" (In truth, they couldn't do much worse.) We have no coherent standards anymore. We buy albums because the singer is cute. We buy books because the writer is well-known from his or her activities in some other enterprise, even when the other enterprise is criminal in nature. We bestow obscene wealth upon Hollywood types who adapt movies from video games and Disney rides.

Kimball's debut CD, just out, is titled The Day Has Come. Not for you, Cheyenne. Not for you.

* I spent "my first life" as a jazz musician (sax, flute, clarinet) in New York City and environs, circa 1967. I was also the featured soloist in various collegiate ensembles during my years at Brooklyn College. I may not be John Coltrane, but I know when a singer is off-key.

Then again...

...we males have been known to exhibit a weakness for carrying around items that are just slightly pricier than bats or even most handbags....

(see previous post for origination of this thread)

Calling a Spade a spade?

Speaking of "the content of our character," I have a question apropos of one of today's lead features (again) on AOL. It informs site visitors that if they really want to "turn heads" this summer, there's no better way than by appending a new $500+ Kate Spade or Gucci handbag to your arm (or how 'bout both arms, if you really want to turn heads?) We all fall prey to this: We all want to "turn heads" in one way or another... but .... why? Seriously. Whence this need to attract the attention of others? Especially through a means as (ultimately silly?) as a handbag? Is it just an extension of the peacock effect, where we want to show off our colorful feathers? It would not seem so in the example given here, inasmuch as peacocks do it to draw the attention of the opposite sex (or so we're told, no one having actually interviewed a peacock on the subject, to my knowledge). I'm fairly certain women don't carry expensive handbags hoping to impress men, most of whom wouldn't know a Louis Vuitton from a Louisville Slugger, and could care less anyway. So, what gratification--what self-benefit, if you will--is there in having other people merely look at us, especially when they're not really looking at us, per se, but at something we're carrying?

One day some years back, my wife and I were straphangers on the New York subway. Now, my wife just may be the least image/status-conscious woman I have ever known. But she does have That Shoe Thing* that seemingly links all women at the molecular level. That day on the train, she glanced down and said to the very frou-frou young woman who sat beneath us, "Oooh, cute shoes." The woman smiled. Knowing how competitive females are, I asked my wife later if she felt strange about giving another woman, especially that kind of woman, kudos in that manner. She replied, "Why? I said the shoes were cute. What's that have to do with her...?"

Feedback sought. By the way, pictured here, for the benefit of male readers, are (left) a Louis Vuitton handbag, retail about $595, and (right) a Louisville Slugger bat, retail about $29.95.


* Though to her credit, she buys hers in places like Payless and DSW.

Lord deliver us from self-help? (Psalm 2)

Yesterday, we set the stage for a discussion of Al Sharpton and his National Conference and Revival for Social Justice. By the end of that post, we'd made our way back to the leaders' decision to attack large black churches for fomenting a spirit of "self-help" among their parisioners.

A critical distinction is needed here. The self-help that Al Sharpton and friends savaged at their June convention is not the brand of self-help that we critique in this blog. In fact, it's the exact opposite: It is real self-help. This probably calls for a clarification about the use of the term. As I explain in SHAM, self-help did not begin its life as a synonym for psycho-babble. The phrase actually has a long and distinguished tradition of usage in connection with far more reputable practices, notably in the realm of law. Legal self-help refers to a variety of situation-specific remedies that are available to a complainant directly (i.e. without involving lawyers or courts). This is a deeply entrenched facet of American jurisprudence that--in marked contrast to what we usually discuss in SHAMblog--has always been about action, not words. Included in this class of remedies are any number of formal, step-by-step procedures designed to bring about lawful satisfaction for the individual, on his own. They enjoy full courtroom standing, should they later be challenged by those on the receiving end. America's most familiar legal instruments often contain so-called self-help clauses. Depending on the state in which you live, your auto loan may stipulate your banker's right to simply come out and retrieve your car the minute you fall behind on payments. He does not need a sheriff or a warrant to do this; he simply gets in your car and drives away. That is legal self-help. Legitimate mental-health professionals also use the term self-help to describe steps taken by those with mental and emotional illnesses to lead richer, more independent lives.

What has got Sharpton and like-minded leaders so upset, then, is that black America, increasingly, is resorting to real self-help: specific and effective action, driven by personal need, to achieve individual goals. A growing number of black Americans have--literally--helped themselves. Either they've done this on their own, without social programs and other assistance, or they've gotten to the point where they no longer require the assistance to get by. Either way, they're self-sufficient now. Beyond that, they've assimilated. In most phases of life, they have become Americans--period--rather than black Americans. (And isn't that the realization of Dr. King's vision of men being judged by the "content of their character" rather than the color of their skin?) But for that, the likes of Sharpton and Jackson, instead of praising them, accuse them of betrayal. With no apparent sense of irony, the leadership at that Dallas conference was chastising successful blacks and their churches for throwing the commonly available excuses out the window and pulling themselves up by their bootstraps; better that they remain mired in victimization-based dogma (the kind of self-help this blog does attack). So: Why would black leaders want their followers to forsake genuine self-help (which is all about personal choice and initiative and life-changing behavior) for the artificial kind (which is about talk and hand-wringing and finger-pointing, followed by more of the same)?

Isn't it obvious? As prosperity inexorably crosses racial lines, such that 60s-style demagoguery becomes more and more outdated, black leaders have been suffering a slow but steady attrition of power. They're not as relevant as they once were...and they don't like it. (Part of the reason they don't like it--taking things one step further--is that they're losing some of the considerable sway they once held in political circles.) The traditional black leader wants blacks to continue to view life as being rigged against them; to continue to abdicate responsibility for all that goes wrong, and surrender their destiny to someone else. Specifically, TO HIM.

(Note to Messrs. Sharpton, Jackson, et al: Remember: "God helps those who help themselves.")

Lord deliver us from self-help? (Psalm 1)

People often ask me for examples of how self-help has damaged America as a whole. In other words, they want me to document my book's subtitle: How does self-help make us helpless?

Late this past June, at a three-day event called the National Conference and Revival for Social Justice, a group of (self-appointed) black leaders committed much of their time to publicly flogging, of all things, America’s black churches. More specifically, the so-called "mega-churches."* The Dallas event took shape under the aegis of Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, and also featured the Rev. Jesse Jackson, controversial Harvard ideologue Cornel West, and about 100 others. In the "others" category was the Rev. Frederick Haynes III of the Friendship-West Baptist Church in South Dallas, who, despite his lower national profile, set the tone for the event when he thundered, "The message of many churches has been co-opted by American capitalism!" In its story on the conference, AP summarized the black leaders' gripe thusly: Too many of the largest churches had "abandoned Jesus' emphasis on social justice to preach a gospel of wealth and self-help."

Hmmmm. So self-help is the culprit, eh?

Some background. By almost every measure, blacks as a class are doing better today than did their predecessor generations. In 1959, fully 55 percent of American blacks lived in poverty. By 2003, according to the Institute for Research on Poverty, poverty among blacks had dropped to just over 22 percent (incidentally, the approximate poverty rate for America as a whole during the 1950s). Now, a 22-percent poverty level is nothing to crow about. But clearly great progress has been made. It follows that greater numbers of successful blacks are worshipping literally and figuratively at the altar of the free market. They no longer feel chained to the victimhood of days gone by. Nor do they feel compelled to see all that goes wrong in their lives through the lens of racism, because they've come to accept that things go wrong in everyone's life. You deal with it and you move on. It further follows that some of the larger, more prosperous black churches have adjusted their tone accordingly: They spend less time singing dirges about The Cause, and more time celebrating the vast opportunities to be had in latter-day America.

Naturally, this annoys the hell out of Sharpton and his fellow demagogues, whose franchise has always been in cultivating a class of forever-victims that blindly follow victim-based thinking and vote the party (usually Democratic) that reinforces it.

Tomorrow, we'll make a few key distinctions--about precisely what kinds of self-help Sharpton et al are talking about. (Hint: It's not the kind we attack in this blog.) Then we'll look more deeply at the cultural genesis of all this and what it signifies for self-help, minorities, America, and maybe even you.

* A mega-church is defined as one that boasts an average weekly attendance of 2000 or more worshippers and tends to draw from a wide area. Such churches also tend to be more well-funded, and preach to a somewhat more financially solvent base, than "regular" churches. At least 65 such black churches exist nationwide.

I guess Tony was limited by his beliefs.

"MY MARRIAGE was on the rocks and I was at my lowest point. I took the technologies I learned from Tony and learned that I was only limited by my beliefs. Thank you for helping me to become a more loving husband."

So asserts one Marion Miller, sales rep from Middlebury, Indiana, in the headline testimonial from the latest in TR's seemingly endless series of SHAMspams to those of us on his mailing list.

What I would ask is this: If Tony is so good at showing ordinary folk how to recapture the magic in aging, passion-challenged relationships...why was he not able to bring those same "technologies" to bear in his own life? It wasn't that long ago that when TR spoke the phrase "my wife" at his seminars and on instructional videos, he referred to someone named Becky--his mate of 15 years*--rather than his current wife, Sage. In those days, Sage wasn't even Sage yet, but rather Bonnie, and she had a husband of her very own, named John (Lynch). You may be thinking, "Hey Steve, we all learn from our mistakes. Later on, if we want to share that accumulated wisdom with others, it's not fair to throw those mistakes in our faces." I agree. That's why in some ways I can feel a bit** more sympathy for someone like Dr. Laura, whose most glaring indiscretions are several decades behind her. (Though there are plenty of things to fault her for in the years since...and her sanctimonious tone is a little hard to take, given her personal history.) But in Tony's case, the situations we're talking about weren't that "early." He was 40 years old, and obviously well into his motivational career, when seized by the need to unburden himself of Becky. So for him to strike the pose he strikes nowadays in his relationships materials seems a bit--shall we say--ballsy?

Interestingly enough, Robbins first met each of his wives at one of his seminars. No doubt he unleashed his personal power on them.

* The marriage of Tony and Becky Robbins was officially dissolved in June 2001. The precise timing of his relationship with Sage remains a topic of some dispute, and has been the subject of at least one major (and ultimately successful) libel suit on Robbins' part.
** But just a bit.

"Your Honor, my client has been diagnosed with IBTCOOYWD...intermittent beat-the-crap-out-of-your-wife disorder..."

Question: If road rage is a disease--a manifestation of what doctors are now calling "intermittent explosive disorder," or IED--then why aren't other forms of violent behavior (or, more specifically, other patterns of violent outbursts) similarly classified? A recent study of 9000 people found that almost one person in 20 was afflicted with IED, which causes you to act as you might expect someone to act, based on the name of the disorder. But what I don't quite understand (and what none of the write-ups on this latest development makes clear) is why researchers are limiting their focus to rage that occurs in a moving vehicle. Why isn't your garden-variety rage--the stationary kind--also a disease? Especially since they're saying that IED has biochemical origins. And if indeed rage is a disease, or is about to become one with the next study, I don't understand how society (in particular the criminal-justice system) will accommodate that latter-day truth, differentiating between those who are sick and those who are simply criminal. One in 20 is a lot of enraged people.

We don't want to second-guess the experts, but some of the specifics are telling. IED is more prevalent in men than women, and tends to start at age 14, which (I'm sure this too is pure coincidence) happens to be when puberty kicks into high gear. The bottom line, then, seems to be this: Men have more explosive tempers than women. I for one am shocked.

Though I say that with tongue-in-cheek, well-known Harvard Medical School epidemiologist Ronald Kessler described himself as "blown away" by these findings. He was quick to add, in a word of comfort to IED sufferers, "You don't have to blame yourself for it--it's a biological thing." Empowerment may be the flavor of the day, folks, but Victimization remains alive and kicking.

Size matters.

There's a commercial running now--for NutriSystem, I believe, though it could be one of the other diet-in-a-box plans; the specifics aren't really important here. What is important is the gist of the ad, about how this wondrous new meal plan enabled the featured spokeswoman/model to lose a substantial amount of weight, such that she is now a "size 4 again!"

There are several implied (if not overt) messages to this ad campaign. Number One, that it's inherently desirable to be a size 4. Number Two, that lots of "everyday women" are size 4s--and indeed, that being a size 4 is something of a natural state among young women, that is until you let yourself go all to hell (often after that most unspeakable of misfortunes, childbirth) and balloon up to, oh, an 8. Number Three, that what society (translation: a man) really wants in a woman is for her to be a size 4. In case you think I'm "reaching" a bit with Number Three, the ad explicitly hammers home that very notion at the end by having the woman toss a sly grin to the camera and purr, "I feel soooo sexy...." [Unspoken but unmistakable implication: "I was not as sexy when I was a size 6, or an 8, or..."]

Here we have more symbolic proof of how the "self-improvement" industry seeks to "enrich" and "empower" women through a nonstop, totally unfair assault on their psyche, sense of personal peace and, yes, self-esteem. (Hey, just because I don't buy into the pop-psych myth that potrays "positive self-esteem" as the be-all-and-end-all of successful living, that doesn't mean I think it's good for people to be beaten down. Especially if it's being done for exploitive purposes.) In order to sell you their products, they first have to make you feel crappy about the woman you see in the mirror now. What better way to do that--in an instant!--than to imply that if you're not a "size 4," you (quite literally) don't measure up? Especially considering that the average American woman nowadays wears a size 11 to 14 in most clothing.

Along the same lines is a feature touted on AOL's welcome page yesterday morning. You may not be able to view this content if you don't have AOL--I'm not sure how that works--and they may or may not have taken down the link by now, but when I logged on yesterday, the front-page teaser depicted a woman, who appeared to be in darned good shape as it is, doing "countertop push-ups" in an effort to regain her "pre-baby body." Click through to the main story (which, of course, is linked to all sorts of related advertising) and you can see even more clearly that this woman has no visible pregnancy-tummy. Whatsoever. In fact, she has no visible body fat. Anywhere. So what "pre-baby body" is she trying to regain, exactly? (I guess this woman needs to be a size zero to feel sexy again.) You might rebut that, "Well, they're showing her After, not Before." And in fact, it's something of an axiom in advertising that, if you're promoting your product or service in a medium where attention spans are very short (e.g. television or "the online experience"), you have to go with your best visuals and only your best visuals, because the consumer's first reaction is everything. On TV or the Net, it's not like it is with print; you don't have time to let viewers sit down with those full-page Before-and-After spreads and absorb the full weight, as it were, of what you're telling them. You hook 'em right away or you lose 'em. Thus the images you use must connect instantly, and in an appealing manner. Thus again, even if you're marketing to an audience that is somewhat out of shape (as most Americans demonstrably are*), you can't actually show women who are all that out of shape in making your pitch. You have to show women who already look like the idyllic image you're trying to communicate, the sexy mood you're trying to set. Thus, yet again, if you're going to show Before-and-Afters, the women in the Befores can't be too far "out there." And since the women in the Afters are expected to look even better, this naturally means that those women end up resembling Miss Universe contestants.

So yes, maybe these ads make a certain perverse sense in strict marketing terms. That's still a very sad truth for women. Because the end result is that such campaigns further reinforce the already culturally entrenched notion that no matter how slim you are, you're still not slim enough. And call me cynical, but I think the industry is pretty happy that way. After all, the more content you are with the way you look now, the worse news that is for people trying to get you to "fix" yourself.

Industry apologists have told me that they're out to "inspire" women to "look and feel their best." I'm sorry, that doesn't cut it. Why does a woman need to be rail-thin in order to "look and feel her best"? Accordingly, why does a spokeswoman need to be rail-thin in order to be deemed an inspirational role model? Is nothing less than the ideal acceptable? (And, to repeat, who ever said size 4 was the ideal? In whose universe?) In truth, how many women, real women, with real bodies and real pregnancy bellies, could look like that AOL model, no matter how hard they tried? Most important, how many rhetorical questions can a guy ask in one post? So I'll stop now....

* and remember, none of these advertising pitches is about fitness or health. It's all about vanity. They don't care one iota about whether you have "healthier tomorrows." They're just out to extract as much money as possible from you today.

The purpose-driven wife?

Incidentally, skepticism of Mrs. McGraw (No. 2*) and her motives is not confined to naysaying, curmudgeonly types like myself. Here's a dissenting take on her from inside the very Christian-faith movement that Robin McGraw increasingly purports to represent. (She likes to position herself as a leading voice for, and perhaps the most recognizable public face of, the Women of Faith.) The writer expresses the same cynicism about Robin's book deal that I voiced in yesterday's post, then goes on to confess deep reservations about the latter-day (highly profitable) blending of Christianity and pop-psychology as a whole.

You wonder (or at least I do): Is Robin trying to "glom onto" the movement launched by such contemporary pop-culture clerics as Joel Osteen and Rick Warren?)

* In addition to the Google references in the link, see SHAM pp. 72-74.

Why not just be honest and call it "Inside My Wallet...."?

This September 12, the world will be treated to the better-living philosophies of one Robin McGraw, as embodied in her new work, Inside My Heart: Choosing to Live with Passion and Purpose. So far as I can tell, the author's chief credential for becoming (is there any doubt?) one of the nation's foremost self-help gurus seems to be that she's married to Dr. Phil McGraw, whose chief credential was that he ran into Oprah during the course of some legal difficulties she had a while back, and the two hit it off, and Winfrey decided to give him a regular slot on her show. This represents the third foray into self-help publishing by a member of the Family McGraw, the other being a series of books for teens by son Jay, whose own chief credential seems to be that he was the product of an intimate act between Phil and Robin. (And could someone please explain to me why the official Amazon listing for Jay's book, Closing the Gap, includes the phrase "Jay McGraw is hot!" as a parenthetical addendum to the book's actual title?)

What cracks me up even more, though, is this line, from Robin's bio on the Dr. Phil web site: "Robin has also been one of the most sought after new authors within the publishing world..." Yes, Robin, and why do you think that is, exactly? For the sheer poesy of your writing? Just how "sought after" do you think you'd be, if you didn't happen to cohabit with Dr. Phil? The language of the formal announcement of Robin's deal with Nelson Books, as well as the description of her forthcoming book in Nelson's 2005 Annual Report, strongly suggests that the publisher was--in effect--licensing the use of the McGraw name merely for the purpose of creating some book, any book, which Nelson figured to be a best-seller. It doesn't sound like there was much of a concept for this project, prior to the signing of the deal. Though I haven't seen the proposal--if there was one--it wouldn't surprise me if the "negotiations" for this singular property went as follows:

Agent: "OK, look, I've got Robin McGraw here. She wants to do a book."

Nelson: "Cool. What's it about?"

Agent: "You ask too many questions. You want Mrs. Dr. Phil's name on the cover of one of your books, or not?"

Nelson: "Sold.... Um, how much...?"

Moving along, here's the "book description" for Inside My Heart as it now appears on Amazon:

"In Inside My Heart, Robin speaks directly to the heart of every woman and challenges her to recognize and develop her unique role to lead her to satisfaction with herself, her profession, her family and anything she strives after."

First of all, that is sloppily--make that horribly--written. "...recognize and develop her unique role to lead her..."? "...strive after"? I'm not even sure it makes sense. (Then again, when was making sense a priority in SHAMland?) More to the point.... Folks, as most of you know, I've been doing this for a while now, and I'm not sure I've ever seen a more naked and flagrant statement of the publishing mentality that goes, "Hey, let's just throw in all the generic promises we can think of--something's bound to resonate with the idiots who buy our books." Whoever wrote the line* even ended the sentence by saying, basically, "...and don't worry, even if we didn't specifically mention it here, if it interests you, it'll be in the book...." Again, I'd have more respect for them if they simply said, "In Inside My Heart, Robin McGraw uses every buzzword and cliche she can think of in a patent attempt to be all things to all women, thereby extracting another $24.99 from you and depositing it (or its royalty percentage, anyway) directly into the bank account of the McGraw family."

(Meanwhile, somewhere in this great land of ours--Minnesota? Florida?--"Dr. Marilyn R. Barry" is warming up to write another glowing review...)

* which appears to have been lifted from, or at least "inspired" by, the verbiage in Robin's bio.

An offer you can, and should, refuse.

There's something else in Robert Allen's latest solicitation that I'd like to address, and it's of sufficient moment that, in my view, it deserves a post all its own.

Toward the end, as he rouses to his finish ("the close," in sales parlance), Allen falls back on another of those "SHAM Hall of Fame" statements that's often said as though it were some timeless profundity and is never challenged: "For you to get different results in your life," he writes, "you've got to do something different." (Try it sometime during conversation: Wait for the appropriate context, then make the remark in any random crowd of people and watch the heads nod enthusiastically around you; you may even get an "Amen!" or two.) You'll more often hear this with the emphasis reversed: "If you keep doing the same thing, you'll get the same results." Or, in its strongest form: "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results." This last, by the way, is usually attributed to Albert Einstein (though others trace it back to a Chinese proverb), which just goes to show you, nobody's perfect. My point being that regardless of the exact verbiage or the pedigree of the author, this is one of those latter-day cultural givens that "everybody knows"...and, like most things everybody knows, it's incontestibly false.

Let's leave aside the fact that the axiom basically contradicts another cornerstone SHAM concept: the value of dogged persistence and "never giving up!" What about the fact that over time, people typically get better at doing "the same thing," and therefore reap entirely different "results"? What about the fact that people may be ahead of the curve, and thus "the same thing" that bombed a few years ago becomes "the hot new thing" today, when society catches up? Sometimes it's a matter of having the right stage on which to do the same old thing. One sort of hates to use a lowbrow illustration from sports, but the example that comes most immediately to mind is Dwyane Wade's response to reporters who seemed agog at his electrifying performance in the 2006 NBA All-Star game. Asked, more or less, whether he considered his heroics proof that he'd "arrived," Wade replied, "I'm just doing what I always do. I was in the right place at the right time."

If I had more time to put this post together I'm sure I could cite myriad recent case histories of products, services, whole artistic movements and the like that took years if not centuries to find their audience or otherwise gain traction.... Yeah, I realize that you, Mr. or Ms. Specific Individual, would prefer not to wait centuries to see your dream realized. But you get my point. You never know when these things are suddenly going to "click." In fact, the core notion behind the strategy Allen invokes in his email--"if at first you don't succeed, try something different"--is the bane of inventors and visionaries everywhere. On the other hand, you seldom know when the quest is hopeless until it's far too late. I'm reminded of the late Mario Puzo's struggle to find a publisher for his manuscript about a mob family called the Corleones, back in the late 1960s. Unimaginable as it seems today, he was famously rejected by dozens of publishing houses, reportedly including several houses twice. "Nobody would take me," Puzo once said in an interview. Finally Putnam offered him a paltry $5000 advance and we all know what happened next. The Godfather (book and movies) didn't just chronicle one aspect of American (sub)culture--it forever changed the culture as a whole, from the way we speak to the way we perceive the complexities, inconsistencies and gray areas of human behavior. The 1972 film, for which Puzo also wrote the screenplay*, is on every major reviewer's short list of the "best American movies ever made"; on imdb (internet movie database) it has held the number one rating, as the best American film ever, for as long as I've been using the site. Should Puzo have given up after rejection number 15 or 20 and "tried something different"? Hey, some might argue that he should have. But I'll tell you one person who definitely doesn't know the answer: Robert Allen. Nor do Tony Robbins and Dr. Phil.

You see, I don't dispute the premise behind Allen's statement: that there almost surely comes a point in most folks' lives when it would be to their advantage to abandon the path they've been on in order to try a new path. But the dilemma here is the same as it is throughout SHAMland: No guru can tell you when your specific time is, or what your new path should be. And no one-size-fits-all program can even provide much useful insight as you try to find personally relevant answers to that enigma. That is an area in which you must, indeed, help yourself....

* Director Francis Ford Coppola is given a co-writing credit.

"I found you a new job."

That's the subject line of an email I received this past weekend from Robert G. Allen, who has carefully and cannily positioned himself as America’s foremost wealth builder (though I'd think that honorific more properly belongs to someone like, say, Warren Buffet). Allen is a man we've met before, apropos of his partnership with Mark Victor "Chicken Soup" Hansen.

It turns out--here's a shock--the thing about the job is a bit misleading. What Allen really found for me is his "simple, yet proven strategies for generating multiple streams of unlimited income." Much of the rest of the pitch, which goes on for 11 printed-out pages, appears to have to do with activities you perform online, though Allen never quite describes his magic formula. (Naturally. Because that's what he hopes to sell me.) He does tells me I'd better act quickly: This is such a special, "time-sensitive" offer that I have just one hour to respond. To drive home the point, the email includes its own little "Invitation Clock Count-Down," which dutifully ticks away the seconds as you read. Now, the email arrived in my inbox on Saturday, July 1, at 11:57 a.m; I happened to be online at the time. I opened it and scanned it briefly, curious about what my wonderful new job might be. Then I logged off and busied myself in 4th-of-July-weekend miscellany. So you'd think that my window of opportunity would've slammed shut at around 1 p.m. Saturday. Right? Well guess what! I opened it again this morning and read it word-for-word...and discovered that I'd been given a whole new hour to respond! In fact, I've opened the email several times since then, and lo and behold, the clock starts over on each and every occasion, dutifully ticking down from about 57 minutes, 45 seconds*. I therefore assume that at least in my case, this amazing offer never expires. I get a fresh hour every time I open that email! What a colossal stroke of good fortune!

FYI, I've been lucky before with Allen and his pal Hansen. In my post of November 29, linked above, I talked about the promotional campaign for their co-authored book, Cracking the Millionaire Code: Your Key to Enlightened Wealth. The ad copy for the $23 book offered an astonishing $4,900 worth of free bonuses--but those goodies were available "TODAY ONLY! This offer will EXPIRE AT MIDNIGHT Pacific Time—TONIGHT. So be sure that you don't miss out.” I checked several times when I wrote that blog item, and again now just before I wrote this one, and my luck ongoes: The same offer is still running, a full seven months' worth of tonights later.

But back to the promotion at hand. Early on, Allen is uncharacteristically, perhaps unwittingly, forthright, saying he's "on the prowl" for new buyers. (You have to wonder about his choice of words. Is Allen that oblivious to the predatory connotations? Could this be something Freudian? Or is he so smug about all this that he's almost thumbing his nose at his prospective buyers?) He also asserts that "Time and time again, I've proven to America that my strategies work." This may be a bit of an overstatement. Clearly he did not prove his case to MSN Money writer MP Dunleavey, who tracked Allen and his disciples and found that in one recent year, he only fell about 1000 short of creating the 1000 new millionaires he'd promised to create at the beginning of the year. Dunleavey also discerned problems in Hansen/Allen's "Millionaire Hall of Fame," some of which we examined in even greater detail back in November's post.

Undaunted by any of this, Allen has packed his latest solicitation with plenty of big promises and empowerment bluster. For example: "You have everything it takes to break the mold of an average income earner--but you just need to decide to do it." First of all, since Allen has no idea who he's mailing to (if he did, he'd certainly never mail to me), the you is nothing more than a generic placeholder. What he's really saying is everyone has "everything it takes to break the mold of an average income earner etc." He pairs this with the observation that you just need to "decide" to do it, which by now faithful Shambloggers recognize as that old chestnut about how it’s all mental, there are no limits, you can do anything you put your mind to, blah blah blah.

But interestingly enough, it doesn't take Allen long to tiptoe back away from his "anyone can do it!" assurances. After giving space to several success stories (one of whom, "Greg. W." of New York, in his "first-ever deal," is "acquiring a $5.7 million 91 unit apartment building for $4.25 million using none of my own money"**), Allen throws in a disclaimer in literal fine print: "Remember: I will always be up front and honest with you [ED. NOTE: you will?], the amount of success you may have will depend upon important key variables. These experiences are not typical. You may not be as successful as these testimonials show." So wait--you mean, I'm not likely to buy a $5.7 million apartment building at a 25 percent discount my first time out of the box...?

Allen spends some time describing his self-imposed internet challenge: “Sit me at Any Key Board [sic] Of Any Computer In The World With Internet Access, And I Will In 24 Hours, Earn At Least $24,000 CASH!” He then recounts the compelling story of how, “with camera’s [sic] rolling,” he once sat at a computer and proceeded to rake in $96,532.44 in 24 hours. This was well beyond the $24,000 ($1000 an hour) he had promised to generate. I would say this: I know that Robert Allen earns serious money. Dunleavy estimated that he makes roughly $3 million a month from his seminars alone. But $96,000 a day is also, roughly, $3 million a month. Why would someone go through all the trouble and expense of traveling from place to place, incurring the considerable overhead of seminars, if he could simply sit down at “any computer in the world with internet access” and generate a cool $3 million a month? Why would he ever leave his house? Heck, why would he ever take his fingers off the “key board”? I am somewhat reminded of that old line about psychics and shamans and the like: If they really have the power to do what they claim, why are they earning money in $20 and $50 increments, serving a single nervous client at a time? Why aren't they down at the track, betting on sure things?

Let me be clear about something. I do not assume—nor should you—that just because an offer sounds fabulous, it is fraudulent. I happen to agree with Allen and Tony Robbins and many of the other gurus in one sense, which is that too many of us forfeit the game before it’s ever played: We think that something sounds so fantastic that we dismiss it out of hand—“oh, that’s too much to expect’ or “oh, that would never happen to me." By default, therefore, we allow others to attempt, and sometimes achieve, those fabulous dreams. One reason why most of us will never be president, after all, is that we never even try; we leave that opportunity to others. But the fact is—and this is key—statistically speaking, even if every eligible citizen did try to become president, only one such American would succeed every four years. So it is with offers like Allen’s. I’m not saying they’re too good to be true for anyone. Allen’s anecdotal case histories may be legit. I’m saying that they cannot, by definition, be good for everyone. Especially since these wealth-building schemes are often competitive in nature, pitting one aspiring millionaire against the rest of society. We can't all bid successfully on that foreclosure down the street. (And if we all do bid, it will drive the price so high that it loses its advantage as a wealth-building tool.)

So if these offers are bogus, it isn’t just because they promise wonderful things. They're bogus because they break down under even the most cursory logical analysis. They’re bogus because they draw unwarranted generalizations from anecdotal data that may be suspect to begin with, and their methodologies have not been validated in any kind of scientific, systematic way. They're bogus because, often, they don't even meet the most minimal standards of internal consistency. They're bogus because they incorporate devious shtick--like the time clock that restarts at 57-and-some minutes every time you open the ad.

Finally, here's an interesting page on real estate gurus as a class, with Consumer Reports-like ratings, by one John T. Reed. (Fairness compels me to note that Mr. Reed is an investment expert in his own right who has authored numerous books on real estate in particular. You may wish to keep that in mind as you read what he has to say.) I give his site no special endorsement here except to say that Reed apparently has put a fair amount of effort into it...and it's a pretty good read. Mindful of the law about republishing a libel, I hasten to add that I am in no way vouching for the authenticity of the information Reed presents. However, he says some awfully inflammatory things about some awfully visible, awfully powerful people, and has been awfully well represented on the Net for some time now (Google him and see for yourself)--all of which leads me to believe that if the info he presents it not basically true, he'd have been hauled into court (awfully fast, no doubt), ordered to cease and desist, and slammed with all kinds of punitive damages for defamation by now.

* Why not a full 60 minutes? I have no idea. But I'm sure there's a very good marketing-related reason for it.
** I wonder too about this "is acquiring" business. Out of the hordes of people whose lives Allen has touched (or she he implies), doesn't he have anyone to feature in his brochure who's actually closed on the deal?