Road rage with an unexpected twist

Apparently "Use your blinker!" are fighting words for some easily afflicted with road rage these days.

Being an ex- New Yorker, I am often not shy about sharing my opinions though I tend to be polite and I try to avoid confrontations. You never know who you will encounter. Obviously with the amount of road rage reaching epidemic proportions fueled no doubt by a perception of entitlement and anonymity, this is not so easy. I once had an aggressive young guy flip me off because he mistook my gesture indicating for him to go ahead of me (open hand palm side up and parallel to the ground) as menacing. Yet another young guy once challenged me to a fight because he assumed I was honking my horn at him incessantly when in fact it was the car behind me. No matter.

Yesterday I barked "use your blinker" at a miscreant driver in a black PT Cruiser. It wasn't really aggressive nor friendly; just matter of fact. I will accept some responsibility here. I am less than enthusiastic about the quality of driving here. Speed limits and stop signs are ignored. Drivers often seem preoccupied with their cell phones or ipods. California is becoming more like Brazil where people go on the red and stop on the green. Then again I am not the guardian of the highways so perhaps my comment was gratuitous.

Here are the circumstances: I was at the top of Mar Vista Hill here in Los Angeles. Cars were lined up two or three deep at each street leading to a four way intersection. For the most part, people were respectful, waiting their turn and moving on.

But Mr. PT Cruiser,the car to my immediate right, decided he didn't have to wait. In his self absorbed mind, it was completely his right to cut in front of others because he is somehow more important than the rest of us mere mortals. I really didn't really care because I was almost at my destination and I had other things on my mind. As he pulled through the intersection, I eased my foot off the brake and my car slowly started to roll forward, edging out but traveling perhaps no more than two or three feet. I had fully expected that he would continue to go straight. Mr. PT Cruiser turned towards me and glared. And then he slowed in the middle of the intersection, as if uncertain what to do.

Then the miscreant decided to turn left onto my street. There was no indication via his blinkers or hand signal. I immediately hit the brake and there no contact whatsoever. But the guy continued glare at me and muttered something that I could not hear. As he passed my car, I looked at him through the open window and literally said "Try using your blinker". Now for some those might be fighting words but for me it was an admonition fueled by frustration. But I thought nothing more about it.

His visage reflected some confusion. Perhaps he could not hear or misunderstood what I said.

When it came to my turn at the intersection, I pulled through and headed down the hill towards Venice Boulevard.

Something did catch my eye in the rear view mirror. Apparently Mr. PT Cruiser wanted to address this issue in person. So the miscreant executed a fully illegal u-turn. Clearly he was bent out of shape and intent on venting to me in person. However there were other cars behind me and Mr. PT Cruiser would have to wait his turn once again to get through the intersection. I proceeded down the street, stopping completely at yet another stop sign at the next major cross street.

At this point I checked my mirror again and the PT Cruiser was racing down the hill, absolutely obsessed with catching up to me which he did... just as I employed my right hand turn signal and pulled into the parking lot of my karate dojo.

Now I study karate and am a martial artist or at least someone who aspires to be one. I started late, about five years ago and am now preparing for my brown belt test in kenpo, one of the most aggressive forms of karate. I do not wear my gi on the street nor do I look to use my newly learned skills. Being a martial artist means many things including one really big one: you do NOT need to fight.

So Mr. PT Cruiser pulled into the parking lot behind me. The lot was full of my fellow students heading into the dojo for the Saturday afternoon class. I saw the driver with another look of confusion which quickly turned to surprise as I collected my gear.

By the time I got out of my car he was gone. Apparently his zeal for addressing the situation mano a mano changed dramatically when he realized where he was. My guess is that the hot head had no interest in picking a fight with someone who could AND would fight back.

I do wonder what all this rage is about and from where it comes. My sense is that civility is slipping by the way side as Americans mirror what is happening in the zeitgeist. People are angry, perhaps over the lack of control that they exercise over their own lives. And god knows we have plenty of examples of people behaving badly. We have an administration that thinks nothing of politicizing everything and lying and sending innocent men and women off to war to perpetuate their lies. We have corporations stealing from their share holders and from their clients. We have a media which is not doing its job. So if there is a breakdown of civility and social order on grand scale, where the greater good is ignored to the benefit of a greedy few, why no sense of entitlement on a more personal scale?

My guess is that this guy learned nothing from this encounter. For the rest of us, the lesson remains: better to err on the side of civility and avoid confrontation. You never know who you will encounter and what skills (or weapons) they possess.

Barry Bonds and the home run record

I'm really saddened but not surprised by the hostilities aimed at slugger Barry Bonds. Whatever happened to due process?

As a baseball fan I'm more than a little interested in this. On one hand there seems to be a preponderance of circumstantial evidence to suggest that he juiced up but I'm holding off judgment until the facts are in and we have indisputable proof that he took steroids (though I do know that taking steroids does not enhance hand-to-eye coordination or bat speed, both of which are integral to power hitting--if they did we'd all be home run hitters).

On the other hand, methinks this is all part of a larger issue: the erosion of the game by the owners to entice fans. They did everything they could to expand the fan base. They wanted home runs and high scoring games. But in doing so, they played a little fast and loose with their own rules and my guess is that this dance with the devil allowed the steroids thing to happen and thus bit them in the ass big time.

They lowered the pitching mound 6 inches in 1968. They've been bringing in the fences for years. God knows how many homes runs Ruth, Aaron, Mays or Mantle would have hit in these smaller ball parks. They added teams, expanding the leagues but diminishing the talent pool. They probably juiced up the ball--I have no proof of this but it would be impossible to prove if it were a systemic (officially sanctioned) problem which it no doubt was. And they really had no drug policy until recently. Mark McGuire, who seems to have escaped most fans wrath, was taking androstenedione, an over-the-counter muscle enhancement product. While legal for use in MLB, it had been banned by the NFL and IOC.

To be really clear, the game has always had players who pushed the boundaries of acceptable behavior from drugs (amphetamines including greenies), alcohol, gambling and so on. Baseball has always turned a blind eye towards these miscreants until the damage becomes too severe for even them to ignore. For example, there was officially sanctioned cheating with the spitball which was only outlawed in 1920 only after Ray Chapman was killed by an errant spitball (though certain pitchers like Burleigh Grimes were grandfathered and allowed to continue using it) and I think it safe to say that doctoring the baseball in some way, shape or form (I hear sandpaper is the tool of choice) is still prevalent today.

So for me, this focus on Barry is sort of a non issue. I suspect there are a few things going on here, none of which I find attractive or meaningful. One, a lot of this is because he is black, fairly intelligent and his own man--"an uppity black man" at that. For many this is nothing more than an excuse for the closet bigots among us to take aim at an important sports figure.

Secondly, this is an opportunity to take part in America's favorite blood sport--eviscerating an icon. One of the great American themes is that this is a land of opportunity which allows one to determine one's own destiny. We celebrate those who rise above us. Our popular culture wills us to put people on pedestals and then allows us to relish the opportunity to rip them apart and bring them back down to earth with us mere mortals.

Real baseball fans know the record was compromised years ago--not by Barry Bonds or any one player--but by the leagues and team owners themselves.

The Pledge of Allegiance--Another Refuge for Scoundrels

The recent news of the Supreme Court case involving the pledge of allegiance, more specifically the "Under God" clause brings back my last memories of high school--and I regret to write that they were not pleasant ones.

I was the junior and senior class president of the 1972 class at Fox Lane High School in Bedford New York. The mind reels at how that happened since I was not the most popular guy in the school but I somehow managed to get elected twice, the first year as a write-in candidate. I was earnest in my duties and tried to conduct myself in a proper way, though I now realize I wasn't always as successful as I would have preferred. Our class did come together in an era marked by divisiveness and was indeed a special group acknowledged even by faculty members. I am glad to have played a very small part of that but the credit really goes to my classmates.

The Vietnam war was drawing to a close--within a year I would be in the last lottery of the draft--and events were already under way which would bring about the end of the Nixon Presidency. We had a fairly politically-active school with earth day celebrations, anti-war protests and the like. Of course political passions raged mightily on both sides.

Earlier, in ninth grade I made the decision to continue not to recite the pledge of allegiance. Although Vietnam was in full conflict, this was not so much of a anti-war statement as it was a separation of church and state issue. For a variety of reasons, I always felt uncomfortable with the "Under God" clause that was introduced during the Eisenhower Administration, specifically to address the Soviet Union and its "godless" communism.

I'm not certain I went around announcing my reasoning and I understand if some people might have been confused by my conduct since I was involved in the anti-war and earth day movements. But my singular objection to the pledge was about the co-mingling of government and God, not some deep seated hatred of the US. My father taught us that we could be patriotic while disagreeing with the government; it is our duty as engaged and responsible citizens. Loving your country does not require absolute fidelity.

So in September of 1971, in a rare moment of absolute clarity, maturity and decorum, I along with the vice-president of the class marched up to the principal of the school Paul Runge to discuss something of significance: the morning announcements. My obligations as class president included delivering the schools news along with the pledge of allegiance each morning. I could not in good conscience do so.

Since my lack of enthusiasm for the pledge was pretty well known, I suspect some of my classmates thought I would make a grand gesture or statement like rewriting the pledge in classic sixties political prose as one of the previous class presidents had done before he was unceremoniously ripped away from the microphone. I chose no such protest. The vice president and I agreed that she would do the morning announcements (and she did handle this responsibility magnificently I should add). I was quite proud of what I thought was very responsible behavior on our part and thought that would be the end of it.

Well, not quite.

Being class president at a small school like Fox Lane has its rewards, sort of like being the proverbial big fish in a small pond. I graduated with some academic honors (earned no doubt from one too many ceramics classes) and a few awards. One award was the Alan Adair Award, named for a well-respected teacher who, as the Irish like to say, had all the gifts but for the gift of years. I had the pleasure of studying with his widow and to this day I appreciate the fact that they chose to bestow this award upon me.

Another award came from an American Legion Post (from the Robert Crandall American Legion Post in Bedford Hills) for citizenship--I admit this was something of a surprise but I was in every sense a good citizen. I took my civic responsibilities seriously and I worked hard for my fellow students, specifically fostering an atmosphere which allowed for an alliance of the seemingly disparate groups that made up our class. I would learn later that their definition of citizenship ran contrary--and I suspect still runs contrary--to mine.

A week or two after graduation I got a phone call from the principal Runge. He had a serious problem to discuss which required my presence at a meeting at Fox Lane High School.

It seems that someone had written a letter declaring that I was a communist, which seems to me to be an odd accusation in 1972. I sloughed it off though I did spent all of five minutes trying to figure out who would make such an absurd and gutless accusation. I don't really know for sure but I had a few classmates whose parents were active in the John Birch Society including one who used to live down the street from me so I always imagined it was one of them. No matter. Typically, they had such strong character and certainly the courage of their convictions that they chose NOT to sign the letter. What is it about the integrity of the right wing lunatic fringe that compels anonymity? This was the act of a completely gutless human being.

Looking back I saw no real need to address this preposterous allegation from an anonymous source. I assumed the responsible adults involved would see it for what it was and do the right thing, for this was now 1972. After all McCarthyism had supposedly ended 16 or so years before but man was I wrong. Perhaps I should have known better since I had some first hand experience in this matter.

A small digression: my father Hugh Deane was the victim of a blacklist in the 1950s. Born into a conservative Republican family in Springfield, Mass., he was a descendent of Francis Cooke of the Mayflower and the explorers William Clark and George Rogers Clark. He was a man who loved American history and his country. He was also a summa cum laude graduate of Harvard, class of 1938.

My father was a journalist who, in a series of articles in the early 1940s, wrote that the communists were prevailing in China because they had won the countryside. He spent years in China and later moved onto to Japan where he met my mother but earned the enmity of General Douglas MacArthur by predicting that the General would go into Korea. Being prescient had its liabilities and my father was accused of being part of the group that "lost China" and having communist sympathies during the witch hunt of the 1950s. He was called before the McCarran Committee where he offered them the Fifth Amendment. He had nothing to hide but he simply would not cooperate with a group of blood thirsty jackals who stomped all over the Bill of Rights while they went about searching for communists under every bed. McCarthy and his cronies offered up the politics of fear and, as some of you may have noticed, politicians in his party have been running on it ever since.

In the 1960s my father was very much involved in the anti-Vietnam war and civil rights movements, which definitely ruffled some feathers locally. Our phone was tapped. We received many angry letters and phones calls, all shockingly anonymous. So it is quite plausible that this anonymous letter was a direct or indirect result of his political activities.

So, a couple of weeks after graduation in 1972, I wandered into a meeting at Fox Lane High School woefully ill-prepared for what was about to ensue. I assumed that reasonable people would look at this anonymous letter and see it for what it was. So I went into that meeting alone. Perhaps my father thought I could handle this but, as I've come to believe, he may have found the process far too painful a reminder of his own difficulties. I can only remember Principal Runge and a couple of representatives of the American Legion Post attending though there might have been others.

There were no pleasantries exchanged: I was immediately accused of being a communist by the Legion Post representatives--so much for due process! They showed me the letter, handwritten far too neatly to be the penmanship of a classmate. It could only have come from the hands of a parent who knew far too well what they were doing. The senior legion post member kept alternating his focus, attacking me and then berating his associate for giving the award to a "commie". He was clearly irritated and zealous.

And though I'd like to report that Principal Runge made a principled stand on my behalf, I'd be lying. He caved in completely and pathetically, joining the Greek chorus of the interrogators, grilling me about my activities. They asked me about my views of the war, my views on patriotism ad nauseum. And they kept asking me, "Is it true you don't say the pledge of allegiance?" I answered honestly. "No! But..." and they somehow found a way never to let me explain or finish a sentence.

They did not want to hear what I had to say. I've seen kinescopes of McCarthy and his bullying tactics, alternately attacking and berating his victims and thereby preventing them from waging a defense. He was a bully and so were these guys sitting across from that day. One of the legionnaires kept repeating the question again and again. I remember Runge even volunteered answers for me, confirming once again that I did indeed not say the pledge. Of course he completely neglected to share the context of our previous conversations on the matter. He was a callow human being, absolutely and completely spineless. I'm told the board of superintendents finally figured that out and later showed him the door.

Back to the meeting at Runge's office: they kept waving this letter in my face as if I had committed some horrendous crime. But they were the ones behaving badly.

History is full of grotesque examples of man turning on man. There are few things uglier in the human condition than betrayal. I've read Arthur Miller's The Crucible. I've also seen "On The Waterfront" which I believe is a veiled justification for Budd Schulberg's and Elia Kazan's "cooperation" with the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and their naming of names. I recognize that people respond differently to life's pressures, though I admit I have little tolerance for quislings and informers. My father was more sympathetic to those who named names during the McCarthy period. He was asked to inform by the FBI and refused to do so. He understood the tremendous pressure to capitulate and therefore he only asked that they recognize what they did. That's pretty generous from a man who was deprived of earning a living for the better part of 10 years.

However at Fox Lane High School in the summer of 1972, there were no such pressures in that room. There were just a few confused, dim cowards masquerading as bullies who thought they understood the meaning of citizenship while they trampled all over it. It was my introduction to those among us who claim to be "patriots" but who are often the very first to violate those freedoms they are supposed upholding. My guess is these clowns never read the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. For them, I had the right to a political point of view as long as it coincided with theirs.

So, I was fighting a losing but honorable battle. I looked at Principal Runge and asked him if this would impact my graduation or my high school record. He shook his head. I crumpled the letter and threw it to the floor. Then I headed out the door but stopped. I turned and offered them each half the peace sign, one after another. Thirty five years later, that digit is still raised.

Ad Agency personnel who don't want to receive ads...

I work in advertising, specifically production of television commercials for ad agencies and their clients.

One of advertising's dirty little secrets (or uncomfortable truths) is the fact that many advertising agency personnel (creatives and production) do not like to receive solicitations from those of us a little further down in the food chain. This, of course, despite the fact they work in the ADVERTISING business. And that the account they work on was invariably the result of a business development person at the agency soliciting business or, to be more precise, advertising their services to a client.

So I was more than a little perturbed when I saw this from an agency producer on Wheresspot, an advertising email list:

"To all of you sending unsolicited emails regarding your services for hire: As much as your company may be a potential resource, please do not send unsolicited emails off list. It is not fair to vendors that do pay for classifieds and actually does you a disservice by creating a negative impression. I love to learn about new vendors, but not via unsolicited emails... Thank you."

In other words, don't bother me.

Now I have to admit I'm more than a little uncomfortable with this evolving paradigm that somehow allows agency business development folks to solicit--how else do they get THEIR clients?--while the agency creatives and producers seek to immunize themselves from vendors. For me this is both naive and perhaps more than a little arrogant.

Let's be clear: not every solicitation is inappropriate or gratuitous. Some contain information of a product or service that is germane. And if it isn't how hard is it to hang up, throw out the mail or hit the delete button?

Sales are the life blood of any business. Sure there are some vendors who do it better than others and some folks are less restrained than others but agency personnel can't have it both ways.

I do know agency producers are generally innundated with vendors (director, post and efx houses, music shops etc) and perhaps they feel overwhelmed but that is part of their job. Most experienced and thoughtful producers deal with it by throwing out the gratuitous reel or deleting the offending email.

But not all producers. To paraphrase TS Eliot, all the world's problems are created by those who think they are important. Some agency producers have inflated views of themselves, acting as barbarians at the gate, holding court and allowing some vendors access while denying others. Some of these folks are the by-products of the production purges that took place on the agency side during the late 1980s and 1990s when agencies weaned themselves of savvy, experienced and higher paid producers and replaced them with glorified secretaries or assistant producers.

Others argue they are too busy. Or they pretend to be busy. As a producer on the production company side, I have often had to do my job AND either assist or actually perform the agency producer job because the agency producer on the jobs was either incompetent or overwhelmed. In my view, an overwhelmed producer is someone who just doesn't know what they are doing. And now these "producers" are training the next generation of agency personnel. Oh boy!

So what is a vendor to do? What do agency produces and creatives respond to?

In the old days (think 1980s) before voice mail, security guards, overworked agency personnel and email firewalls it was possible to walk the halls of ad agencies to accost creatives or contact a producer by phone all with the intent of setting up a screening or arranging a meal (or drinks) to introduce a new company. It was the responsibility of the agency producer to know that current resources or new vendors would benefit their creatives and clients in a constantly evolving and competitive advertising landscape. They understood this.

Not today. Now that is virtually impossible. Agency personnel are either over worked or overwhelmed. Job titles and responsibilities have shifted. No one has time for meals or drinks these days. As one vendor noted, "There is just very little chance to introduce new talent to agency creatives. Everyone is overworked and does not have the time for screenings. Sure you can spend a lot of money advertising or doing PR but it seems that AD people are immune to those methods. So how do we work in this new landscape? How does a producer CD, AD, CW want to be approached with talent?"

There is no easy answer. As my friend Perry Schaffer noted, "Bottom line: repping - like every other job in this business - not for the meek or faint hearted!"

But the irony (and hypocrisy) of those in advertising agencies seeking to opt out of being advertised to is just a little bit too much to ignore. Shame on them.

NY Times OP-ED ''A War We Just Might Win,'' by Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack

What is going on with the New York Times? Enough is enough!

Don't you think the clowns at the NY Times have done enough to perpetuate the lies and deceit of this administration on Iraq without printing such an intellectually dishonest July 30 Op-Ed piece by these two disingenuous self promoters?

In case you hadn't heard, apparently these two clowns got the supervised US military tour where they spoke to hand picked military personnel and civilians undoubtedly echoing the administration line. As noted by Glen Greenwald at Salon and others at the Huffington Post, Pollack and O'Hanlon suggested things are going well in several provinces after visiting for a couple of hours each and while spending every night safely ensconced in the Green Zone. That kind of research would not fly in journalism school (at least the school I went to) but apparently it is sufficient for the NYT editors. Did it not occur to any of the folks at the Times (Editorial Page editor Andrew Rosenthal for example) to question their credibility here?

But even more problematic: these two pretended to be critics of the war even though both supported it initially. Pollack was on air repeatedly defending the invasion (at least Tom Friedman had the good sense to shut up). And both supported the surge.

How did the folks at the Times miss these simple facts? Anyone who doesn't have his head in the sand knows this but they still printed this tripe.

Once again the NYT allowed itself to be a mouthpiece for a morally dishonest administration and its minions. They blew it with Judith Miller. They blew it by not publishing the Bush story on domestic spying. My guess is the election outcome would have been significantly different is the Times had brought this story to print before the election (when it was in fact fully vetted). Now this.

In my view the NYT and Editor Bill Keller are in part responsible for the moral and ethic vacuum in Washington. They, like many other journalists, simply did not do their job.

Perhaps Murdoch should buy the Old Gray Lady and put us all out of our misery. At least then we will understand the bizarre politics of the editorial page and the editors.