Wanted: highly individualistic team players.

So I'm somewhere over Iowa, en route to Vegas to visit my grandson, when I realize that I haven't yet perused the latest edition of Sky Mall. For the uninitiated, Sky Mall is that large seatback catalog where you can quickly and conveniently buy things that no one needs, for just two or three times what such things would cost at sea level. Sky Mall products vary from the merely absurd (like the flying alarm clock, which hovers over you emitting a shrill sound until you're forced to get up and throw it through a window) to the obscenely self-indulgent (like the Cadillac Escalade golf cart at $13,995, plus optional equipment). Squarely in the "absurd" category is the ever-abundance of motivational trinkets that the Sky Mall braintrust must assume will resonate with traveling corporate honchos, who'll order them for the troops or merely glance at them to get themselves stoked at the start of each new empowered workday.

Among those offerings last night I found a motivational painting, titled "Synergy," which read as follows:

"The strength of the team is in each individual member...the strength of each individual member is in the team."

I leaned back as far as my torturous exit-row seat would allow, pursed my lips and digested that for a moment, and thought, OH COME ON!

I defy anyone, even the author (especially the author) to explain to me with a straight face what that could possibly mean. At best it's a paradox. At worst it's complete gibberish. Sure, it's seductively phrased gibberish, the kind of airy slogan that, were Stephen Covey or Tommy Lasorda to utter it in front of a large corporate audience, would provoke all manner of nodding and cheering and applause. But when you come right down to it, it's a bit like me saying, "A chain is only as strong as its weakest link...and a link is only as weak as its strongest chain." Sounds poetic, even profound. Except...does it mean anything?

(More pertinent question: Does anyone in the land of PMA even care whether it means anything? And if you're a fan of this stuff, do you care?)

Amazing. Just amazing.

Reaping what we sow?

"Be One of Satan's Tools," exhorts the teaser for the new CW show, Reaper.

I guess it's important to have goals.

Interestingly enough, the advance word on Reaper is pretty positive. It appears to be another one of those slickly rendered bits of voyeur-o-trash for which our entertainment industry is famous. The Departed comes to mind. (WARNING: What follows is a 100-percent subjective rant. This is my gut talking, and I make no apology for it, nor offer any pretense of "fairness.") I still have a hard time believing that it's the film that finally won an Oscar for Scorsese; it frankly astonishes me that someone, anyone could deem it the "best picture" made in 2006. In fact, here's an experiment I invite you to perform: Scan the TV listings and see if you can find any of Martin Scorsese's hallmark films* on a channel like, say, TBS, which is going to take out all the profanity and edit or otherwise sanitize the most violent scenes. Tell me if the movie still seems anywhere near as "good." My theory is that we like Scorsese's film work (and Tarantino's and that of certain others directors), because it's a form of pornography. ("Permissible porn," if you will.) Not because the content is in any way "brilliant." We like these films in the same sense that we like to slow down near the scene of a fatal accident, hoping to get a glimpse of blood or brain matter so that we can then turn away in horror (but peek back again before we drive on). They have become not-so-guilty pleasures.

The popularity and critical praise that accrue to this stuff also says something about us, to my mind. We all have our flaws—I probably have more than most people do—but I wonder why we spend so much time reveling in them, as a culture. Today, an astonishing percentage of films and shows and music (and books and video games and etc., etc.) glorify wanton sex and willful violence. That is the all-pervading imagery with which today's young people are growing up. (And then we're shocked, just shocked, when something like Virginia Tech happens.) Add to that an overlay of the narcissism that we've discussed so often on this blog, and consider for a moment: We have, here, an entire generation of young adults who are coming of age amid potent, tantalizing, "well-done" depictions of violence and sex...and who've also been conditioned to regard the world as their own personal playground.

You gotta ask yourself: What do you think they're hoping/expecting to find on that playground?

* Goodfellas, Casino, etc. I exempt Taxi Driver here, by the way, because that may be the one film where the extreme, graphic violence at the end makes sense as an organic outgrowth of the plot. It doesn't feel gratuitous. Taxi Driver, to me, is "about something," unlike most of the rest of Scorsese's oeuvre, which—again, to me—is "about nothing more than violence for its own cinematically absorbing sake."

Shaving away the brain cells.

Have you seen that new commercial that teams soccer star Thierry Henry, tennis phenom Roger Federer, and Tiger Woods? (We don't really need to identify Mr. Woods at this juncture, do we?) Masters of their respective athletic domains, they stride with purpose and potency toward the camera, resplendent in their dark, manly suits; they talk in measured, manly tones, expounding on the wonders of confidence and being in the zone. They talk about how they "don't worry about tomorrow"; that's because it's all in the moment...and this is your moment, and you don't want to screw it up like you normally do. (They don't say that last part, but it's the unmistakable message.)

And the product? Is it investment advice? Monster.com or some other career site? Maybe Match.com? A new line of power suits?

Nope. It's a Gillette ad. It's for razors.

Too much. Even our razors must embody confidence and Empowerment. Gillette spends less time telling you how well the damn thing might shave you than telling you how unstoppable it will somehow make you feel.

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

While I'm in a Sportsthinking mode, I should mention something fairly significant that happened on an ESPN baseball broadcast last week. (And even if you have zero interest in sports, I invite you to at least read the "note" at the end.)

The two commentators, one of whom* was the insufferable Rick Sutcliffe (who appears to be trying hard to dislodge Tim McCarver from his spot as the most unlistenable "color man" in baseball), got into a discussion of late-inning rallies and what it takes to put one together. This drags us into areas that may be unfamiliar to people who didn't grow up around baseball's rhythms, cliches and superstitions. If you're in that category—and you still want a textbook example of how thoroughly, unspeakably dumb it gets at the outer limits of "attitude is everything"—try to stay with me here. I think it's worth it.

One of baseball's conventional wisdoms poses that if you're losing by several runs, what you really need to kick-start your big comeback isn't a homerun...rather, you want a walk or a base-hit. The "reasoning"** here is that having runners on base gives your team a sustainable mental boost, while at the same time demoralizing the other team: It just "looks like the beginning of something." A homerun, on the other hand, is a self-contained event that ends with the bases empty again, so therefore—if you believe the purists—it can actually be a rally killer: After it's over, your team (supposedly) is right back where it started. You will literally hear sportscasters in such situations say, aloud, into the mic, knowing that their thoughts are being heard across America, "A homerun doesn't do the Cubs any good here. What they need is baserunners." But as luck would have it, the impetus for last week's on-air chat was a study of the matter by Elias Sports Bureau.*** (Imagine that! Somebody looked for empirical evidence of something!) It turns out that more late-inning rallies start with homeruns than with walks, according to Elias. And Sutcliffe—who, I concede, must get due credit for even bringing the whole thing up—was stunned by this. Stunned! So was his in-booth partner.

Now, call me ignerint, but I always kinda thought this way: If you're hoping to score several runs, wouldn't it be helpful to get the first one first? So wouldn't it make sense that a homerun, rather than a walk, would be the catalyst in more such rallies? After all, you can get three straight walks and still not manage a run, if nobody does anything after that. A homerun results immediately in, well, a run. Isn't the first run sort of a key ingredient in every inning where teams score multiple runs?

But see, that's not what we're taught. From our earliest days in Little League (or youth soccer, or Pop Warner, or whatever), we're taught that the key to winning is establishing and sustaining the proper frame of mind. We're taught that momentum is contagious, that it feeds on itself; that if you're a ballplayer, and you can look out there and see your guy standing at first base after his walk, and hear the crowd cheering while the organ-meister pounds out those repetitive, percussive rally-riffs...that's what's going to win the game for you. Not hitting balls over fences.

NOTE to those who wonder why I devote so much time to sports: Because this is the very same mentality that makes politicians (a) get on a podium and yell stupid, emotional things like "We're gonna smoke 'em out!"—when they have absolutely no credible plan for achieving same—or (b) declare victory in wars that haven't really been fought yet. I could continue with c through z, of course. It's all bluster, no brains. And it doesn't just lose games. It loses lives.

* The other one might have been Dave O'Brien, but I didn't write it down. It's not important.
** I use the word advisedly.
*** Beloved by stat-addicted fans everywhere, ESB can provide you with the statistical breakdown on just about anything. Ever wonder how many dyslexic, blue-eyed, left-handed pitchers named Stan won their 100th baseball game before their 28th birthday? And then celebrated later at Pizza Hut (where they had the meat lover's special but passed on the endless pasta bar)? Elias probably has the answer.

If a life coach falls in the forest...should you hire him as a guide?

To return to the subject I promised (or threatened) to revisit this past Tuesday:

I can't give you an exact date, but sometime in the early fall of 2005, when SHAM had been on the market for just a few months, I was approached about doing some life coaching.

I will now give those of you who know me personally a few moments to stop laughing, catch your breath and compose yourselves, and then we'll move on....*

Ready yet?

A corporate honcho who'd read my book and was impressed by my recitation of everything the SHAMsters do wrong thought I might be the perfect person to come in and tell his Fortune 1000 company what to do right. He wanted me to work intensively, one-on-one, with senior-level management—taking the pulse of their personal goals, doing a full assessment of their professional responsibilities, helping them better see where the two intersected. He had also looked at my resume and noticed that I'd taught college. "That's essentially what I want here," he said. "I want you to be a mentor to my people. A guide."

When he made the offer, I too laughed under my breath for a moment. Then I told him (sincerely) that I was flattered, and politely declined.

It's not that I'm a person who believes that you necessarily have to have lived things in order to teach them. I think it depends on what we're talking about. In baseball (one of my favorite and oft-referenced realms, as blog regulars are aware), guys who had utterly forgettable careers as players sometimes make superlative managers: Tommy Lasorda, Bobby Cox and Tony La Russa come to mind. Even the legendary Charlie Lau, who batted .255 for his career—that's not very good—went on to become perhaps the most storied batting coach in baseball history. He literally brought about a revolution in the way hitters thought about hitting. Such phenomena haven't gone unnoticed among baseball insiders; some actually theorize that the marginal player's understanding of the inherent futility of a sport in which even great hitters fail seven times out 10 enables him to be more accepting of the various skill levels around him, and thus better for team morale. This same theory would explain why the great Ted Williams was, by all accounts, a so-so manager: He did not suffer fools gladly, and couldn't relate to those who were unable to perform at his level. Which was basically everybody.

In any valid form of life coaching**, however, I'd think it would be important to be able to demonstrate that one has, indeed, "lived" the kinds of things one is teaching/preaching. If life coaching is about anything at all, it should be about figuring life out and navigating its trickiest waters successfully: making appropriate decisions and sacrifices (sacrifices must still be made, even in today's era of Empowerment); weighing the enticing vs. the practical; comprehending and exhibiting good judgment; exercising willpower. It strikes me as important to model that behavior. It strikes me as important to show the people you're mentoring that it's really possible to make sacrifices, to see the big picture, to set priorities and understand which ones are worth honoring and why. It strikes me as important to be able to show people that it's actually possible to live that way, not just talk about it. Because almost anybody can talk a good game. I'm sure that our former hot dog vendor, if he does his homework (and is a natural "schmoozer"), can sound every bit as plausible as the Harvard MBA. But it's sound (and maybe even fury) signifying nothing.

This is one reason why I have so many quibbles with folks like Dr. Laura, who have not themselves lived the kinds of straight-arrow lives that they want their disciples to live, yet who are oh-so sanctimonious in attacking anyone who missteps. I'm not talking so much about hypocrisy here as I am about reality. Or maybe achievability. If it's difficult-bordering-on-impossible for human beings to actually live the kinds of lives that so many gurus urge on us—if they haven't even been able to live that way, despite knowing what they supposedly know!—then where do they come off talking about it, for-profit, almost as if it's a push-button affair that reduces to "10 ways" or "9 steps" or "7 habits" or whatever?

And finally, speaking of affairs, I find it hilarious that the second oath under ICF's "Professional Conduct with Clients" reads as follows: "I will not become sexually involved with any of my clients." Out of 12 rules in that particular section of the overall Code of Ethics, that one appears second? Ahead of "I will not knowingly exploit any aspect of the coach-client relationship for my personal, professional or monetary advantage or benefit" and "I will respect the client's right to terminate coaching at any point during the process"?

Been having a bit of a problem in that area, have we, now?***

* "Train wreck" may be too melodramatic a term to describe my life in the overall, but suffice it to say that if there's a poor choice to be made, I've probably made it. At least twice. (I'm using "choice" in the commonly understood sense here.)
** which is to say, not the way most of it is perpetrated now.
*** See pp. 116-117 of SHAM for a short but worthwhile expansion on this theme.

"Your Honor, I plead innocent by reason of testicles."

I don't think I'm likely to make additional cyber-friends with this post, and I may well lose some of the few I've got now. So what else is new.

See, I basically have no problem with women who "want it all." We all want it all. In that most whimsical, Utopian corner of our brain (the same corner that also imagines us hoisting the trophy as MVP of the World Series or having roses thrown at our feet on Broadway or accepting kudos, and that very nice check, in Stockholm), we want a life without trade-offs and sacrifices and compromise. A life without either/ors. We want to be able to come to that fork in the road and "take it," as Yogi Berra famously said. I dare say, we want a life of full and unabridged Empowerment.*

I understand that. I've been there. Some would say I never left there.

What I question is when, in addition to wanting it all, women want to have it both ways. They want to be regarded as "just like a man" in some areas, yet also seek special protections for being women in others. And they go on to mount a "well-reasoned" argument for same.

I am mindful of such things on this glorious pre-autumnal morning because of one Sophie Currier of Brookline, Mass. Currier, a Harvard med student, petitioned the National Board of Medical Examiners for a time-out during her nine-hour medical licensing exam** so that she can breast-feed her 4-month-old daughter. The board said no. Currier went to court; the court said no. Now she's on her way to the highest tribunal in Massachusetts, the State Court of Appeals. One would assume that if she loses there, she moves to the Supreme Court (of course, there's no guarantee the latter Court would agree to hear the case). Some say this could be another one of those watershed moments in the battle for women's rights. (Incidentally, Currier is not the woman shown in the photo, above...and is that woman, whoever she is, breast-feeding, like, a 7-year-old?)

But really now—once and for all—would someone please tell me, what is the argument that underlies "women's rights"? Is it:

A, that we should all be treated fairly and equally under the law? "A human being is a human being, period"?

Or is it:

B, that women deserve special accommodations in certain areas because of the fact that they're biologically women?

I don't think you can mount a logically consistent defense for both A and B. In the case at hand, if you want time-out to breast-feed, you're arguing B. Oh, you can couch your argument in terms of A; that's what Currier did: "Men do not have to put off their careers because they are feeding a child." But you don't really want equality; you want inequality in your favor. You can't argue A by saying, "Well, men are lucky, they don't have to worry about this, so therefore, in order to make things even-Stephen, I need time-out to breast-feed." Because the very act of giving you that time-out is an accommodation that recognizes a fundamental difference between the sexes. Good-bye argument A.

Lemme throw something at you. After all, I'm a man, and that's what we do: throw things. Which is really where I'm going in this section. Suppose I said to you, "Isn't it true that men have a lot more testosterone than women? And further, because of testosterone, among other things, isn't it true that men are more naturally inclined toward physicality, even aggression, than women?" You'd probably say yes, right? You'd agree that men—by nature—are more predisposed than women to resort to a violent solution (or at least are quicker to give up on diplomacy). And, for the record, you'd have science on your side (at least as we currently understand it). Well, if that is true—if aggression is as much a physical part of a man's nature as, say, Currier's breasts are to a woman's nature—then, using pretty much the same logic that she's using in her case against the Medical Examiners, couldn't I say, "Well, since my threshold of violence is much lower than a woman's, shouldn't the laws reflect that fact? Shouldn't laws against violent felonies be more forgiving when a man commits the crime—yanno, just to make things even-Stephen?" Maybe the laws against domestic abuse should give a guy a freebie on the first battering, whereas the violent woman goes straight to jail. Hey, we want everything to be "fair," right?

Think that would fly at NOW?

Seems to me we either go for true equality—all the laws and rules are precisely the same for everybody, no matter what; no quotas, exemptions, accommodations, etc. (which means we might even have to throw out the ADA)—or we start breaking society down on a case-by-case basis, examining every single aspect in terms of how that aspect relates to the inherent physical nature of the people governed and affected by it. One way or the other.

====================================
P.S. THURSDAY, 4:30 p.m. Part 2 of my rant on life coaches comes tomorrow.
====================================

* In fact, I could go on and on about how it's precisely because of Empowerment (and some of the other bright ideas that came out of self-help) that so many of the social movements that sprang up over the past several decades have goals that aren't even self-consistent (and in some cases, reduce to absolute nonsense). But I didn't want to move that far off-point today.
** which, to be clear, is the exam she must pass in order to formally be declared a doctor and take the job that awaits her at Massachusetts General Hospital.

If the running back's a viper, he's gotta pay the piper.

Just heard OJ's lawyers on GMA talking about how "there are suspicions that the tape may have been altered," and that we need "credible" evidence that the menacing voice on the tape is, indeed, Simpson's.

Now where have I heard that sort of stuff before?

Already I can see the new defense rallying cry taking shape:

"If the tape quality's s**t, you must acquit."

Apropos of all this, I do have some questions.

1. Do they rent white Broncos out of McCarran?

2. Where was Mark Fuhrman last week, anyway?

3. Why did OJ's hotel accomplices have all those weapons in the first place? Did the Juice have a hot tip that the real killers of Ron and Nicole were hiding out somewhere at the Golden Nugget?

4. Can you extradite jurors? If so, OJ's legal team might want to start the paperwork going to bring in, at the very least, that alternate from the murder trial who reportedly said she'd have a hard time believing he did it, "even if I saw it on video."

Your judicial dollars* at work....

Incidentally, have I mentioned before that at one time, by far the biggest draw on the Sportsthink banquet circuit was OJ Simpson himself? The Juice placed particular emphasis on the importance of integrity and a never-say-die attitude. True story.

* And bear in mind, this is from someone—meaning me—who's a staunch supporter of defendants' rights, and who generally thinks the pendulum has swung way too far towards the "victims' rights" end of the scale. Personally I think there has to be something we can arrest Nancy Grace for. Just because.

Tune in, turn on, hire a coach.*

Yesterday morning I taped a show for NPR on life coaching. I'd been battling a really bad cold for five days, but despite my gravelly voice and my general disinclination to talk to anyone, let alone a reporter asking about life coaches, it turned out to be a good discussion. My interviewer, Chris Berdik, had a number of delving questions that clearly sought to plumb the social dynamic responsible for today's coaching craze. And craze is very much the word. This post will be Part 1 of a two-part series of reflections sparked by yesterday's NPR taping.

If you've read SHAM, you know that I have three basic objections to life coaching, as it's currently practiced in the U.S. of A. I'll cover that terrain briefly here, but this is one case where, if you're interested in the topic and you haven't read my book (shame on you!), you should do so—focusing on Chapter 6.

First and foremost, life coaching is among SHAMland's growing roster of self-ordained sub-specialties. ("Hey, honey, guess what! I had an epiphany this morning... I'm...a life coach!") Coaches often lack the credentials that you'd expect to find in people doing the type of high-level consulting coaches do (for easily $400 an hour or more). No enforceable uniform standards exist for becoming a life coach; it can be a simple matter of printing business cards and getting a web site up and running; then you start making phone calls. The organizations that really should take a strong stand on such matters, the International Coach Federation (ICF) and the International Association of Coaches (IAC), generally wimp out when it counts most. They're voluntary fraternal bodies that offer their own certification programs but have no true enforcement arm. The worst they can do is kick you out of the club. And in practice, they tend to take a "live and let live" approach to other members of the breed, going out of their way not to give the trade a black eye. (Provision 3 in the ICF Standards of Ethical Conduct says, in part, that coaches will "respect different approaches to coaching.") The bottom line is that the coach you get could be a Harvard MBA with a dozen years of experience in Fortune 500 America...or some dude who was presiding over a ballpark hot dog concession six months ago (though you won't see that on his resume). One of the most telling and darkly comical facts I unearthed while researching SHAM was that, as I would write on page 114, "many of the top Web sites that offer life coaching also give the visitor the option of becoming a coach." (Fairness compels me to note that I do think we're gradually/grudgingly going in the right direction, towards more uniformity and professionalism. That still doesn't validate the coaching phenomenon itself, in my view.)

Second, the certification problems may stem from the fact that there’s no consistent body of knowledge that coaches draw upon in devising their coaching systems and rendering their coachly diagnoses and judgments. We still don't really know: What does good coaching consist of? What should it consist of? Here too, the major organizations fudge, stressing the importance of being "respectful" of all methods and ideas.

Third, some coaches come perilously close to practicing medicine without a license. In the interest of impressing a client with their "professionalism" and "seriousness," they may administer the very same diagnostics you'd expect to get from a licensed psychotherapist: MMPI, Myers-Briggs, thematic apperception, etc. Then they'll offer some all-knowing pronouncement on what may be "holding you back in life." Worst of all, confronted with a client who may have genuine personality maladjustments, they wing it—what else can they do?—applying their armchair, half-assed methods to real behavioral problems that call for earnest, formal intervention. (Though provisions 19 and 20 in that same ICF charter require coaches to refer clients to other professionals when advisable, is the hot dog vendor-cum-life coach even capable of recognizing an authentic psychological issue when he sees one?)

But the more I think about it, the more it occurs to me that there's really a much bigger problem with coaching that's seldom mentioned, even in that now-and-then piece by some business magazine that promises its readers a "no-holds-barred look" at the phenomenon. It has to do with this whole Empowerment zeitgeist that makes runaway best-sellers out of laughable books like The Secret:

Coaches will not bite the hand that feeds them. Almost universally, they let the client set the agenda. Coaches start from the premise that their job is to help you get to wherever you say you want to be—perhaps, to help you "follow your dreams."

Or let's let the ICF itself tell it: Under "philosophy of coaching," the organization says it

"adheres to a form of coaching that honors the client as the expert in his/her life and work and believes that every client is creative, resourceful, and whole. Standing on this foundation, the coach's responsibility is to:

* Discover, clarify, and align with what the client wants to achieve
* Encourage client self-discovery
* Elicit client-generated solutions and strategies
* Hold the client responsible and accountable."

In other words: It's your ledge, pal. You wanna dive off it, we'll help you work on your jackknife.

Maybe it's just me, but it would seem that if you tell a coach, "You know, I’ve been in middle-management for 10 years and I've got a nice house and this great, stable marriage...but what I really want to do is tour with a garage band!", that coach probably should do what a good friend would do: ask what you've been smokin'. Too many coaches won't ask. They won't tell you, "Hey, schmuck...if you have to, buy a guitar and soundproof your basement so you don't drive the wife crazy. But keep your day job." Because their job is to take the client's goals as a "given." And, while my management/garage band example is intended to be extreme and absurd, that really underscores the problem, because most forks in the road are far more subtle. They involve "minor" changes of course that may have huge consequences—not just for the individual, but for those who count on the individual (and whose interests figure only peripherally in the minds and MOs of the average coach).

Oprah and Wayne Dyer notwithstanding, Empowerment isn't necessarily a good thing. It depends on what you're feeling empowered to do. As long as we're talking about jumping off ledges here, I'm going to use a silly, but apt, analogy. Back in my days at Brooklyn College, LSD was all the rage. Though I didn't use (honest), and I didn't even know more than one football buddy who tried it, I did know plenty of other students who dropped a tab now and then. They'd tell me that—up until the moment when they became totally paranoid and crashed—they usually felt omnipotent. There was nothing they felt they couldn't do! This was especially true if they dropped the acid as part of a mind-altering cocktail in combination with speed or some other form of upper. (Yes, college in the era of Viet Nam was an interesting time.) The stories you hear about students jumping out of windows because they "thought they could fly" are not entirely urban legend.

See, they felt empowered.**

More to come....

* For the benefit of those born after 1975 or so, this is based in an expression attributed to the hippie psychologist Timothy Leary: "Tune in, turn on, drop out." It was an exhortation to throw off the shackles of orthodoxy and "expand your mind."
** Again, to be fair: Sometimes the fatal acts took place during the come-down, in response to wild delusions of being chased by raging minotaurs or some such. But the point holds: Any break from "realistic reality," whether it's fostered by omnipotence or paranoia, can be disastrous.

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P.S. TUESDAY, 1:25 p.m. Someone has contacted me off-blog to ask why I drew my examples from one coaching body (the ICF) and not the other (the IAC). It's a fair question, but it was not an intentional oversight. Anyway, it prompts me to ask readers to check out the IAC's own "Ethical Principles"...and tell me if you've ever read more gobbledygook concentrated in one Web page. Is it well-meaning gobbledygook? I have no doubt. I trust that these people are quite sincere in what they say. But what are they saying? And would you really expect them to say anything different? "Coaches will maintain high standards of competence in their work." Now there's a shocker. "Coaches will uphold standards of ethical conduct that reflect well on the individual coach as well as the profession at large." I have another suggestion. How 'bout, "When possible, coaches will avoid having bowel movements on the client's carpet or pulling the wings off small birds in full view of clients' children, should such children happen to be in the room." If you ask me, both stipulations are critical to ensuring those high standards.

"Ahmed, do we have the orange jump-suit in a 46-long?"

I thought that yesterday's post on Islam might ruffle some feathers, especially after one of our newly come regulars said he'd posted the link on several Islamic sites. So today I open the mailbox attached to my own professional site (steve@journalismpro.com, as shown in my Blogger profile)...and lo and behold, there's an email from Alisalim_Sheikh20071@charter.net. And the subject line—all caps—says I WILL APPRECIATE YOU GET BACK TO ME. Naturally I figure it's one of our peace-loving Islamist friends, informing me that I've been put on the same list with the likes of Salman Rushdie and those Danish cartoonists. In truth, it turns out to be another one of those 'Net scams, where somebody with a huge overseas account and some incomprehensible banking snafu is willing to send me $10 million provided only that I show my good faith by wiring him $20,000 first.

Too much.

Just so you know: Normally I'd never divulge the email address of someone who contacted me off-blog, but I make an exception for people involved in con games, wire fraud, grand larceny and other assorted felonies.

Keep your fatwa off my jihad, or you'll never see your intifada again...

...and a few more thoughts on Islam, the religion of peace.

(Please allow me this one final post on terrorism—for now, pending new developments—and then we'll move on to something more germane to the nominal subject of this blog.)

I've been doing a lot of reading lately about terrorism in general, so-called "radical Islam" in particular. (I'll explain the so-called in a moment.) I began with the 9/11 Commission Report, examining it closely, including footnotes, and then trying to chase down the original source material where possible. This was not always possible, of course, because much of that material remains classified or otherwise unavailable. But even those fruitless efforts usually led me to eye-opening information. I've also been reading the work of Peter Bergen, arguably the nation's foremost "lay" expert on terrorism[1], and have looked up and digested just about everything produced on the subject (for public consumption) by Richard Clarke, George Tenet, Jessica Stern, John Esposito and others.

It is terrifying reading, on the whole. And that's because Islam—as it was apparently meant to be practiced—is a terrifying religion. (The word itself translates to "surrender to the will of God.")

Esposito and other apologists for Islam point out that America's Christian right hasn't exactly been a beacon of tolerance and good will, either. That is true. The contention that Hurricane Katrina was just a little reminder from God about His stance on abortion and gays was unsettling—if not obscene—to most of us, I think.

But Islam is a special case of scary.

This isn't a question of my being "close-minded to the religious traditions of other cultures." Not when those traditions include beheadings and public stonings—recent ones. Not given the austere and inhumane document that is the Sharia, the official code of Muslim behavior and justice. Not when leading clerics uphold, as an integral part of their faith, the mandate to kill non-believers. In truth, it's hard to interpret the Qur'an itself, which dates to about 610 AD[2] and is the basis of Islamic worship, as anything but a "friend or foe" ultimatum in which infidels have two options: conversion or death.

Which brings us back to "radical Islam" and my use of the so-called, above. Mainstream U.S. politicians have spent the years since 9/11 tap-dancing around an uncomfortable truth: that "radical Islam" is not quite as radical as we'd like to believe. Indeed, we misuse the phrase "radical Islam," as if it refers to some bizarre, renegade variant of the "real Islam." On the contrary, the people who fall into the category of "radical" Islamists are merely literal Islamists—which is to say, orthodox Muslims, who follow the religion as it was intended to be followed, if you take the Qur'an at its (chilling) word. They are no more "radical" than the Pope is a "radical Catholic." Or, one might say they're "fundamentalists" only in the same sense that Jerry Falwell was a Christian fundamentalist: They practice a literal version of their religion. (Consider the meaning of the word fundamental. It refers to the essence of a thing, a thing in it irreducible state; the "primary or original" idea.) Now, Falwell might have been overbearing and patronizing and intolerant; he might even have been guilty of feeling self-satisfied when bad things happened to those who, he believed, were outside God's circle of love. But I don't think he felt called upon to act on his intolerance; he was content to leave the punishment component to God. Somehow I don’t picture Jerry Falwell setting car bombs, or putting on a black hood and decapitating anyone, or taking pilot's lessons so that he could crash a commercial jet-liner into the middle of San Francisco's Gay Pride Parade.

You'll hear people say that Islam is a religion of peace. The Qur'an does call for peace and brotherhood among fellow Muslims; oh yes, without question, there's lots of stuff in there about how lovingly and respectfully Muslims are supposed to treat other Muslims[3]. But it is a gross and, I think, intentional distortion—rooted in political correctness and that recent American desire to "be inclusionary" to all[4]—to imply that the Qur'an instructs Muslims to love, or even tolerate, non-Islamic peoples. (The media are complicit here, and for similar PC reasons.) That is simply untrue, based on the logical inferences to be drawn from my readings. And while the Qur'an can be a puzzling, frustrating document whose twists and turns sometimes defy reconciliation, the accepted translations of certain key sections seem clear. Here's one:

"Mohammed is Allah's apostle. Those who follow him are ruthless to the unbelievers but merciful to one another."

Or there's this section, with its cold-blooded—and highly pertinent—visual: "When you meet the unbelievers in the battlefield strike off their heads..." (And you wondered why they seemed so fond of that tactic, eh?)

The simple fact is this: Islam, at its unadulterated core, does not expect its worshippers to live in civilized fashion among people who aren't Islamists. And if American Muslims are content to live side by side with those of us who worship other faiths (or no faith), it is because they have abandoned Islam—the essential Islam—not because they're the "true apostles" of it. They are Muslims in much the same sense that my wife, who calls herself a Catholic, believes in both "choice" and birth control, and even wants the Church to disseminate relevant information in impoverished lands. The real Muslims are the ones taking flying lessons and trying to cut deals for yellowcake.

It's hard for me to imagine anything more frightening than a 7th Century theocracy in possession of 21st Century weapons. I don't know what we can do, or should do, about it. But I ask again: How can we just let it go?

[1] Some would argue that Bergen has an agenda, as he is more closely linked to the American right wing.
[2] But like most things here, it's not as simple as that. 610 is when the revelations from God/Allah to the Prophet Mohammed (the name has various spellings) are said to have begun.
[3] though that obviously hasn't stopped the Sunnis and Shiites from trying to kill each other at every opportunity.
[4] Especially the Muslim community in America, who, as noted, largely take a "reform" view of Islam.

And there ya have it.

This morning, GMA's Chris Cuomo is interviewing Helen Fisher—noted anthropologist and a particular expert on the biological underpinnings of love—about a forthcoming National Geographic special, "Inside the Living Body." They're talking about the physical processes that culminate in what we experience as feelings. Cuomo asks her to expand a bit on specifically which aspects of love are chemical. Fisher replies as follows:

"Well, first of all, everything is chemical."

Later in the interview, in response to whether such notions take the magic out of love, Fisher says, "The body is chemistry—and the mind puts the love into it." There are several levels of meaning to that carefully measured remark, I think. First off, it's a nice way of saying that we use our minds to adds layers of extraneous nuance to something that's a purely physical process. (It's important to say such things nicely, to not sound too cold and clinical about matters of the heart on a show like GMA, which plays to a largely female audience. And me.) But even that's a cop-out of a sort, because let's face it, the mind obviously is part of the body. Fisher says as much elsewhere in her written work, though again—perhaps wary of backlash from the Hallmark set—she tends to underplay such notions. The mind is a living, organic thing, subject to the same physical processes as the rest of the body. The mind is also, therefore, "chemical." Thoughts, quite literally, are chemical byproducts. Therefore, from the strict standpoint of science, it makes little sense to set up a dichotomy between the two.

Furthermore, the body is a self-contained unit in which the cellular/chemical activity never ceases. Thus it could be said that I've been evolving towards writing this post, or even putting this stupid red bicycle right here*
b
ever since my Mom and Dad conceived me in the early summer of 1949. And further—since I inherited my biological footprint from my parents, who, of course, were products of the same chemical continuum—it could be said that the red bicycle in the above sentence was inevitable ever since they were born. And on and on before that.... **

I was watching an MSNBC investigation recently in which scientists mapped areas of the brain in serial killers. The researchers highlighted ways in which those "Abby Normal"*** brains seemed to be wired differently from those of the rest of us, and yet were strikingly similar to each other. This is a very controversial area of forensic medicine that has many critics due to the clear implications for the criminal-justice system: If all killers are, in effect, "brain-damaged," how can we justify imposing extreme forms of punishment? It's like the controversy over executing the mentally retarded. I've seen other studies that document important differences in neural activity in left-brained people vs. right-brained people, including one recent report that even links such biological hard-wiring to political tendencies. And we won't even get into the latest theories on hard-wired differences between males and females.

My wife and I argue about these topics all the time; she takes the orthodox, went-to-Catholic-school view of free will. As I told her just the other day, I could still be wrong, but my growing sense is that within the next century, probably sooner than later, science will establish that everything that happens to us, every day, down to the smallest details of life and even the most transient "feelings," is caused/governed by some antecedent event that made the latter event inevitable. Everything is chemical. (The ongoing Genome Project already has made numerous quiet contributions to this endeavor.) At some point, then, society is going to have to grapple with the idea that free will—choice—simply does not exist. Oh sure, we "make decisions" all the time. But those decisions are foregone conclusions, set in motion, quite literally, eons ago. We are no more in control of anything we do than a rose bush is in control of which blossoms bloom when, how big they grow, etc.

I doubt that society will ever accept any of this. There are certain things you just can't say in America, even when they're true (assuming I'm proved right, of course). There's too much at stake, and we're too heavily invested in our "ideals," notably free will and all that flows from it: individual responsibility, good vs. evil, and, yes, "personal empowerment." But it just kills me sometimes that most people would rather cling to an ennobling falsehood than shrug their shoulders and accept the validity of a more prosiac (but ultimately more enlightened) truth. Especially since none of this makes a damn bit of difference in how you live your life. You're still gonna do what you're gonna do. You're gonna do exactly what you're gonna do; what you must do. But you don't know what that is, in advance.... So, at least on a personal, day-to-day basis, what's the big deal?

* I've been informed that those who view SHAMblog via some versions of Firefox will not see a bicycle, but just a mid-sized red "B." Apparently that's because Firefox doesn't translate the "Webdings" font, which is what I used to make the bike.
** Yeah, there are some leaps of faith in this post. I've left out a lot of steps, like the considerable direction-altering impact of the interplay between any unique Self and its environment, including other Selves. But if you read my previous remarks on determinism and free will, and/or Google the subject, you should be able to fill in the blanks. Some of our regulars hate when I go off on these tangents, so I'm trying to keep it reasonably short here.
*** That scene still cracks me up. And if you have to ask...

A few impolitic thoughts on a somber morning.

If you read this blog often—and especially if you Google some of my prior work for the Wall Street Journal, National Review, American Enterprise and elsewhere—you know my general feelings about America, 9/11 and the war on terror. I also served, for a time, as publisher of American Legion Magazine, the official voice of the American Legion, which is the nation's largest veterans' organization. I don't think anyone can question my bona fides as a patriot or an American.

But nations are composed of people. And I happen to believe in the unique value of every individual Self.* Which is why, as I watch these grim commemorations year after year—as I hear the so-called "9/11 Families" trumpet the singular nature of their grief anew, year after year—I can't help feeling that there's something wrong here.

In New York City, today's observance of the sixth anniversary of the attacks will be the first to take place somewhere other than Ground Zero itself. Citing the safety risks of having tens of thousands of attendees milling about amid the continuing work on the half-billion-dollar 9/11 memorial, Mayor Michael Bloomberg decided some months ago to move the event to nearby Zuccotti Park. As Bloomberg told CNN just this morning, "The place where we used to hold the ceremony is now a construction site." The plan sounded eminently reasonable—but little in the aftermath of 9/11 has been governed solely by reason. A coalition of families protested, threatening to boycott the official observance and hold one of their own as a renegade operation, if you will. A compromise ultimately got worked out—mourners will be allowed to visit Ground Zero during the ceremony—but not before family members spewed more of the strident rhetoric that has typified the families' conduct since the unprecedented horror of Sept. 11, 2001.

The public battle over the venue for today's observance was just the latest in the endless series of controversies that have engulfed the former site of the Twin Towers as perniciously as the inferno that once engulfed the actual buildings. Most recently, the 9/11 Families were upset over the presentation of victims' names on the eventual memorial. At every twist and turn, bereaved families have claimed the high moral ground, demanding to be heard. It is a precedent they set originally by seeking a more generous scale of federal compensation for the deaths of their loved ones.

My own inclination is to say what politicos like Mayor Bloomberg (a man with someday presidential ambitions) doubtless feel they cannot say: Enough already. Enough....

Though the 9/11 Families argue that it's unseemly to diminish their losses, I submit that it's just as unseemly to uphold these deaths as somehow more meaningful than all others. Even on 9/11 itself, the 2,979 documented victims of the terror attacks were not the only people to leave us: Thousands of other Americans died that day, including about four dozen victims of "more conventional" homicides** who were denied their customary acknowledgment due to the horrific events at the three terror sites. Dozens more died in tragic accidents. Indeed, on any given day, about 6,500 Americans die. Those lives are of no less consequence than the several thousand that ended all at once at Ground Zero. If 9/11 was a national tragedy of unprecedented scope, the magnitude of the personal tragedy was no worse for any given family than any other death. I would think that the grieving process actually was made easier in this case by the atmosphere of national mourning, whereby, in essence, all Americans attended each victim's funeral service.

One even suspects that, had a shocked and guilt-ridden Washington not rushed in to quell the pain—had more time been allowed to pass, such that we might assess matters with greater perspective—far less money would have been paid to these families, who ultimately received sums averaging $2.08 million. As the RAND Corporation noted in its analysis of federal largesse following 9/11, "The government response went far beyond that seen in most disasters." What was the rationale for that largesse other than hyper-emotionalism? As some asked back then—albeit mostly in whispers—why pay money to these families and not the families of those who perished, say, in Oklahoma City?

Who determines when a death is sufficiently tragic to warrant recompense from on-high?

Leaving sentimentality aside, and with the notable exception of first responders, most of those who died on 9/11 were not mythic figures or even heroes in any true sense of that overused word. They were simply victims, martyred in that instant when the paradigm of daily life in America changed forever. They were everyday citizens, hard-working and devoted to their families—just like you and me. And, like you and me, they had their flaws. Maybe they drank too much or told too many lies. Maybe they uttered an ethnic or racial slur now and then, among like-minded friends. If the law of averages applies, at least a few of them cheated on their taxes or their spouses.

The bottom line is that these were people, not gods or metaphors. They were glorious in their humanity...but no more so than the rest of us. They could be forgiven their human faults—perhaps even loved for them—but no more so than the rest of us. They are, therefore, no more entitled than any other American to have their names etched indelibly in the national consciousness. The private meaning of their lives was not elevated to hallowed status by the public nature of their deaths. Where, after all, is the monument to the loving husband and father murdered while working a second job delivering pizza? Where is his $2.08 million?

The 9/11 Families would do well to keep in mind: You make a life neither more valuable nor memorable by bullying others into valuing and remembering it.

* That is one reason why I am so contemptuous of self-help, as practiced in the U.S.: It perverts the very concept of "self" and "individuality."

** In making this assertion, I'm using the daily national average of 46 homicides here (5.6 per 1000 population). I did not research specifically how many murders occurred on Sept. 11, 2001.

SHAM creates lies. We correct them.

In assembling material for the blog, I'm always hesitant to quote from SHAM, especially if I'm quoting myself in a way that seems self-congratulatory. To do so, I feel, is to come perilously close to satisfying the entry requirements for that erstwhile New Yorker fraternity, "Writers in Love with Their Own Words."*

Thing is, the other day I got an email from somebody asking a question about Suze Orman, and that email sent me scurrying back to SHAM to check something I'd said about her. I soon found myself on page 62 of my book, where I read lines I'd long-ago forgotten writing. They were lines that, as much as anything, illuminate the folly of the SHAMscape.

I had written on page 62 about how, in The Laws of Money, the Lessons of Life, Orman chose, as her very first law, this:

"Truth creates money, lies destroy it."

I can actually hear her declaiming the line on Oprah,* those wild eyes of hers ablaze with manic intensity (as per photo). I can see Oprah's well-coiffed audience hanging on Orman's every word, applauding without any prompting from the APPLAUSE sign. And, I can see Oprah herself nodding and smiling, as if her guest has just shared an incredible cosmic truth, and Winfrey is oh-so-pleased with herself at being the one who's brought such enriching wisdom into their otherwise-benighted lives.

Except...is it a truth? Can Orman really be saying that honesty can be depended upon to create more wealth and success than dishonesty? I don't think it takes an incorrigible cynic to raise an eyebrow (and an objection or two) here. In fact, we have at least a minor, anecdotal bit of refuting evidence from no less a source than Orman herself. She has often spoken of how one of the reasons she went into finance in the first place was that she'd watched her dad—a hard-working, honest man—lose his shirt in a series of star-crossed entrepreneurial ventures. Beyond that, has Orman never heard of the Mafia? Sure, the Mob had its comeuppance, but that took half a century, during which time many honest ventures went belly-up. The Mob, in fact, made a literal killing off many of those honest ventures, driving at least some of them out of business (and at times depositing their proprietors deep beneath the murky waters of the Hudson River). And let's face it, you needn't go to that end of the spectrum to find disreputable conduct in American commerce. What about Enron? Though Enron, too, ultimately toppled like the house of cards it was, for a good while there, Enron's "lies" sure made lots of money for lots of people. Hell, the patriarchs of some of the nation's most celebrated families amassed their fortunes, at least in part, through practices far worse than the mere telling of lies. Or maybe Orman needs to be reminded of the way American business was routinely done, at its upper echelons, before the likes of Sherman and Magnuson-Moss. New scandals continue to make headlines each week.

Truth creates money, lies destroy it is one of those pleasant, diverting SHAMland slogans that desperate people desperately want to be true. They will rally around it, and pay vast sums of money to have a guru like Suze Orman repeat it to them over and over, thereby sustaining their hopes and dreams, and fueling their visions of a just society in which the righteous prosper and the wicked are punished. But it ain't that simple, folks. Never was, never will be. And that's the inescapable, underlying problem with all of SHAM (the movement, not the book). In an effort to provide a happy-faced view of living, where all is good and possible, the self-help movement grossly (and knowingly) oversimplifies the mechanics of life, distorting "truth" to the point where it has no meaning and/or validity. [See: The Secret.]

Put more simply: The self-help movement lies. (This is particularly true of its Empowerment wing.) It lies because it cannot succeed by selling a realistic view of life and living; it cannot succeed by making appropriate distinctions between possibility and probability, between what can happen (i.e. the exception) and what usually happens (i.e. the rule). Which brings us back to Suze Orman and her very first law of money. In placing such bold emphasis on truth, Suze Orman was being misleading at best, untruthful at worst.

Ironic, don't you think?

* The magazine would highlight instances where well-known writers had used the same phrases, sometimes even the same exact series of sentences, over and over in different works.
** where she appeared many times. Like most top SHAMmers, Orman owes no small part of her success to Oprah's sponsorship.