Republican (Media) Wins!

“Perhaps because Fox continued to dominate the sector both in audience and financial terms, it did not change its formula or experiment with new methods of content delivery.”

(The Pew Research Center, State of the News Media 2012).

In the wake of the election, partisans and pundits on both sides have been opining about what went wrong for Republicans. An emerging narrative in the media is that the Republican Party must change.  From MSNBC to FOX to CNN to The NY Times to The Wall Street Journal, pundits have been calling this election a “wake up call” for the GOP. The electorate has changed, demographically, and the Republican agenda simply isn’t representing a majority any more.

Normally, when an electorate shows its colors on election day, political parties look at the results in order to inform tactical decisions.  New strategies are constructed; corrections and alterations are made.

But I think the Republicans will have a hard time changing because of the incredible financial success of Right-leaning media companies. The financial success of a place like FOX News speaks to its dominance of its own market-share: members of the Republican Party. The Republican Party no longer seems to be led by politicians; it seems to be led by vendors selling product. I know this is a broad simplification—but my point is logistical. I don’t think Republicans are stupid. I think the Party has bought into an incredibly profitable, media business model.

When Balance Becomes The Enemy

Right-leaning media sources such as FOX News have inoculated themselves to correction (or even reflection) because sources like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly encourage their audiences to discredit and disbelieve any other news source.

According to many of the loudest on the Right, every other bit of media is liberal, wrong, and/or downright deceitful.

This is not a small deal. Imagine having a doctor who not only tells you that all other doctors aren’t as good, but that all other doctors are also liars.  What happens when another doctor has a treatment that you actually NEED?  You would be tempted to believe that no one else could help you. 

There's no better evidence than this election.  Many of my Republican friends were SHOCKED that Obama won.  They were absolutely flummoxed.  That’s because somewhere in the past 4-8 years, the core of the Republican Party switched from being members of a party into members of a market.  Right-leaning media audiences are huge and loyal, but they have bought more than the news. Customers have not bought the “most trusted” news; they've bought the ONLY trusted news of the Republican Party.

The News Isn’t Good

Can you blame FOX News, Limbaugh, or the rest?  They have an incredibly profitable business model. From a success point of view, you have to admire them. They have, literally, destroyed the competition. But the collateral damage is to the Republican Party-- and to political debate itself.  

With profits like FOX's, can the rest of the press far behind? 

The day after election night on FOX’s "The O’Reilly Factor," the show posted a fresh poll of their own viewers, asking “Do you believe 'The Factor' has been fair covering the election?”  'The Factor' is the show that had FoxNews regulars (and Republican insiders) such as Charles Krauthammer, Dick Morris, and Karl Rove on the day before the election—all who predicted a Romney win.  On 11/06,  O’Reilly himself said, “Romney will win Florida, I just don’t know about Ohio.”

80% of their audience said “Yes, 'The Factor' had provided fair coverage."

You can’t make a happy toothpaste brusher change his toothpaste.  And until wildly successful news sources such as FOX News and Limbaugh fail as businesses, the Republican Party doesn’t look like it's going to change. There's just too much money to be made.

And that’s bad news for everyone-- especially Republicans. 

image credits: The Pew Research Center, ABC News, and FOX News

Hero Exposes Truth!

Do What You Gotta Do

I can barely read the predictable Lance Armstrong stories.

Basically, everyone is saying:

We are all disappointed.  Sure, none of us is actually surprised that he could’ve dominated so much without doping but it’s still a big bummer.  We’re crushed that it’s actually true.  The guy beat cancer, for crying out loud!  We all got these yellow bracelets.  You have one in a drawer or tacked to a corkboard.  You proudly wore it to a birthday or funeral.  How could Lance have let us down?  We all believed in him!

And, reading these things is depressing because we’re all so damn used to Heroes Letting Us Down.  It’s the same damn story over and over, complete with our collective crestfallen shock and dismay.

Look, heroic people are flawed.  They aren’t perfect and we all know it.  Flaws in heroes actually make them human.  Flaws are complicated, wonderful, and terrible-- an irrefutable fact of existence.  They connect us.

However, Lance Armstrong’s flaw—the need to cheat to win—isn’t actually a flaw.  It’s a cherished value. Lance giving up on fighting the charges of him doping did not expose a “problem” or “mistake” or “failure” on his part—at least, not as a heroic competitor.

That’s because everyone knows: in our culture, you need to cheat to win. 

Don’t crunch up your nose.  You believe it.  I believe it.

Politicians and sales people need to lie to us.  

Bankers need to cook the books.  

Business owners need to do stuff under the table.  

I can relate.  When I drive, I sometimes get in the turning lane and then jump over to the straight ahead lane.  It's freakin' faster, man.  Is it different?  By degrees, yes--but not by anything else.

Success through the back door, a wink, breaking a rule, stretching a truth, getting away with something—it’s what we call "getting ahead."  

The only thing that Lance Armstrong did wrong is that he got caught. And that’s the truth that none of us really wants to talk about.

Photo:  AP

The Sound of Music

My director's notes for the program.

Come see The Sound of Music 

on 23-24 March at North Shore High School, Glen Head, NY.

Life is a movie too…Starring you,

your whole family is the cast and crew...that's a little secret between God and you

        - Stew, from the musical Passing Strange

A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer; it sings because it has a song.

        - Lou Holtz, professional football coach

...there ain't no other way, baby: I was born this way

        - Lady Gaga

No one gets to pick where she is born, to what family, how tall or talented or unlucky he will be. What each of us does with this becomes the drama of our lives. It’s a long series of trials, adventures, risks, and dangers as we try to figure out who we are.

Your life is the story of what you were born to do.

When we meet Maria, our beloved heroine in The Sound of Music, she's totally lost. She's preparing to be a nun, but it feels like a bad fit. She loves the nuns and the convent, but she feels incomplete and alone.  Only when she sings on the mountain does she feel like she belongs. “I go to the hills when my heart feels lonely... [and they] fill my heart with the sound of music...” Maria uses her beloved music to turn away from confronting her fears.

Maria, fortunately, isn't allowed to hide. Her mentor, Mother Abbess, pushes Maria from the stability of the convent and into the world. Maria needs to find her place in the world.  Mother Abbess knows that the most powerful enemy in the world is not the Nazis. It's the unwillingness to take important risks. She knows that we must be willing to face the fear of failure with the unending hope of finding ourselves.

Our production of The Sound of Music has a cast and crew filled with searchers. Not all of them are great test takers. They don't all do well sitting in desks all day. Some of them will probably not finish college. But these young people have a lot to give. Some are great musicians. Others can operate a professional lighting board. They can anticipate safety hazards in the dark and look out for each other. They can build a dress. They can use their voices to transport you from your long week to the mountains of Austria, take a text and turn it into something inspiring and beautiful.

Just as it takes a brave mentor like Mother Abbess to imagine what a lost child needs, it takes a brave community to imagine what a generation of children needs. North Shore is facing some tough challenges these days. In business, government, and our homes, the mountains look pretty daunting.  Can we afford to hide?

We dedicate this show to the many kids in our schools who are listening to the sound of their own music:  musicians, dancers, actors, builders, stagehands, seam rippers, runners, point guards, trainers, fullbacks, short stops, painters, chefs, mechanics, designers, electricians, pitchers, goalies, robot builders, poets... all of them. Because these kids were born this way.

Welcome to the third and final piece of 2011-2012, our Season of Change.

Saviors and Scapegoats III

“What we've got here is... failure to communicate.”


I like to reference Cool Hand Luke because it's such a great movie. Seriously, reread this article's opening line in your head with that dude's crazy voice from the film. Hilarious. Anything going wrong at any work place is on display in Cool Hand Luke. That movie ain't about prison. It's about business.

Education is business. Or, at least, that's how we like to talk about it. It's a losing government business, almost as financially stupid as defense. And education has been inching towards the “free market” for years. From standardized test vending to tutoring super-businesses to charter schools, private industry has been making inroads into “public” schooling for years.

Battle lines are drawn here. The teacher unions are against privatizing. Business leaders are against public spending that raises taxes. Liberals tend to be for budget increases in education. Conservatives tend to be for slashing budgets in education. (Disclosure: I am an elected representative in my school's teacher union. And I'm making bank in that gig! Disclosure again: I am not making bank. It's like $350 a year after taxes.)

This is the failure to communicate. We can't talk about better teachers because we can't stop talking about taxes.

Public Education Gets Kicked In the Privates

The debate about taxes, specifically public funding vs private funding, might be the most polarizing political argument in our country. Innovation in schools, like innovation in anything, costs money. Therefore, innovation, change, and growth in the field of education divide people right on the same line as taxation. Which is to say: most people do not seem to favor spending more money on education.

Duh. We've married “improving education” with “raising taxes.” It's like wedding “chocolate fudge sundaes” with “root canal work.” Can you imagine enjoying Ben and Jerry's on your couch while watching a stereophonic HD documentary of a dentist drilling cavities? This is what happens when people talk about improving education. They hear the high pitch drill of higher taxes.

So, the private sector looks like it may get another win. Charter schools, home schooling, industry incentives have all made it to the table. I already mentioned how private companies develop the standardized tests like the SAT and AP. Private answers to public problems have been winning all over our culture. In education, this is probably a good thing, at least in the near term. We might get beyond just talking about taxes and actually talk about innovation.

But long term, the private sector has troublesome issues. As awesomely awesome as the free market is, it runs best on customer satisfaction. In fact, it runs like a champ on the sweetest tooth of satisfaction: immediate gratification.

Put It In My Mouth

McDonald's doesn't do well because people appreciate the nutritional value of its food years after the food is gone. It does well because we eat it and enjoy it right now. No one takes a moment to reflect and say, “Five years ago, I ate an 800 calorie Big Mac instead of a fresh organic salad. (pause) Man, that was smart.” Big oil doesn't run the world economy because it makes long term sense. Using dead animals and plants that are millions of years old to power everything is astonishingly stupid. But who can care when we need to get somewhere in a car?

Doing something that is more expensive and less enjoyable doesn't really float in the free market. We spend way more on diet foods, books, and cosmetic surgery than we do on fitness. Like I've said, teachers must be free to be unpopular, irritating, and completely "unsatisfying" (in the immediate satisfaction model).

The Teacher Brain Drain

So, if the public model allows for those awful teachers I mentioned in part II and the private model works on a system that has trouble incentivizing teachers to be independent of customer satisfaction, what do we do?

I'm working on it. Generally, the private sector has a much better model to increase spending based on good quality. Likewise, the public sector does a much better job of sustaining stability regardless of economic conditions (or quality). I suspect we need to find a way to make public and private play more nicely together. And we need to a lot more imagination, as a country, to get around that corner.

But the radioactive conversation of taxes keeps directing us into the wrong conversation. It's not about HOW we pay. It's WHAT we are willing to pay for.

We need to bravely address the most important fact of education: great teachers make great students.

It's simple. We need well-trained, innovative, cream of the crop, badass, well-paid teachers. We need to entice talented people from the better paying, more respected gigs of our culture and get them in the classroom.

I think we start with tenure. I'd wager that if we do this right and people will be more willing to pay more for education, publicly or privately.

Check out part IV, the final installment of this series, for my thoughts on how to do it.