Back To The Future

I really have to wonder sometimes where people's heads are at. I'm beginning to think the vast majority of people are cruise controlling their way through their lives, leaving most of their thinking to our government. It's both frightening and discouraging that, as our country limps along, there are so many people who can't formulate linear thought processes in order to make worldview decisions. Learned helplessness perhaps? Or just paralyzing fear. Whatever the reason, older generations are showing the younger generations how in the face of crisis, Americans are great at doing nothing, cutting off their noses to spite their faces or proving Einstein's quote (the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results) to be true.
Case in point: the recent Congressional election in Michigan's 15th district. They re-elected incumbent John Dingell. And he is quite the incumbent. Dingell is 84 years old, he has been in Congress since 1955. Let that marinade for a moment. And then, for those of you who are old enough, reflect on everything politically and socially that has transpired since 1955 in this country. The revolutions that have rocked our population, the wars, the JFK and MLK assassinations, the moon landing, the civil rights movement, the end of the Soviet Union, the technology boom. And then ask yourself how someone who is clearly ravaged by age can aggressively move his constituents through the 21st century?
And that is what I find most disturbing about the voting population of Congressional district 15 in Michigan. That they are so impaired and fearful of the reality bearing down on all of us like a train that they cling to a man who is unbelievably out of date. I have deep reservations about 84 year olds driving, I certainly wouldn't want them making my political decisions for me in Washington. Would America elect an 84 year old president? And how dangerous would that be?
As intelligent and wise as Abraham Lincoln was as a president, even if we had the ability to somehow magically zap him into power in today's world, I would be against it. Yes his morals and ethics were admirable but he'd lack the 21st century savvy that the job requires for our country today. 84 year olds like Dingell have long since retired from their respective careers, their minds aren't in any condition to tackle Washington decisions. And they also lack future perspective. It is reckless and dangerous to the welfare of the American people to put geriatrics in charge of designing and revolutionizing our health care and Social Security systems when many of them won't be around for even a decade of that time. What's their motivation for making sure the systems benefit future generations and not just the ones using the system currently? The answer is none.
At a time when Michigan desperately needs change, the people of the 15th district have decided someone with a 1955 perspective is good enough for them.

Be True To Your Blue Light Special

Growing up in a Rust Belt state, a person learns to say goodbye to those old familiar places. It's a here today gone tomorrow climate. Businesses who can usually get bought out by a conglomerate and those who can't, well they pack and leave in the dead of night. Farmer Jack's, Winkleman's, Mervyn's, Perry Drugs, Arbor Drugs, Montgomery Ward's, the list just goes on and on depending on how old you are. Nationally Sears squeaked through a bankruptcy whole except for the elimination of the Sears Christmas catalog, a Sears staple. When K-mart hit the skids in the 90s, the ship didn't appear that it would make it. It was acquired by Sears a number of years ago and they have both admirably buffered each other since then but survival seems suspect.
Why the American retailer history? Lately I've been feeling a retail based angst which sometimes bubbles up into a momentary retail rage. When you live in an economic wasteland like Michigan is, the past--the failed past--lies in the rubble around you. You're constantly reminded of it. When you're young, stuff like that doesn't bother you that much. You're too focused on running ahead. As you get older, you still keep moving forward but you look behind more often. When I see a K-mart advertisement now, I feel a lot of sadness. K-mart was one of the neatest places to go with my mom when I was eight years old. I could buy (well my mom could) sneakers, a new book, a stuffed animal and even a Coca-Cola Icee (if I was well behaved). My first bike was bought there. I began going to K-mart more regularly after my grandma died a few years back. When she was alive, I would bump into her there from time to time. Older people like routine and stores they can count on for some reason or another and so she was a frequent K-mart shopper. After she passed, I went in just to remember her and of my childhood. At the same time, my discount mass retailer options were beginning to annoy me in the worst way. I had been (practically) forced to shop a few times at Wal-mart, a store that I refuse to give any of money to and those coerced retail experiences only reaffirmed my dislike for the retailer. Target, my usual go-to guilty pleasure, has left me high and dry in recent months, chronically out of stock in the products I need. Plus somehow it has morphed into a nonstop daycare center which makes shopping a test of endurance in the face of supreme aggravation and annoyance. I'm someone who likes to register complaints but in discount mass retail who do you lodge complaints with and isn't it like spitting into the wind? The futility left me even more annoyed, with current economic conditions considered, until I finally realized that retail is picking the lesser of two (or three) evils. So yeah there weren't PowerPoint reasons for me to do all my sundry shopping at K-mart. It's not always more convenient, their prices are comparative with their peers and so is their customer service. But it makes me feel like I'm contributing a little something in memory of a lost childhood memory (plus they have a loyalty card). And it's not like I hoped there would be a stark difference in their competitors' balance sheets because of my absence (because obviously there wouldn't be) but I feel like I'm finally behaving like a consumer on my terms and not as a hostage.

One Is Too Many

Today my sister received the news from a childhood classmate that another one of their classmates had passed away and tragically he had taken his own life. She texted me the news and I sat in stunned silence. I used the word 'another' because between the two of us we know ten people that we went to school with who have taken their lives and to us, that number is mind numbing. These were good people who we spent most of our formative years with. The joke tellers, the homework helpers, the laughter sharers and yet in the end none of it seemed to matter or help. Each one of these individuals felt like they didn't have any other options left.
I remember when a high school classmate took his life in the spring of our senior year, it was a jarring wake up call amid the seemingly neverending backpatting and good times that pepper the final year of school. The message that some students feel their life is already set in an ominous stone had broken the Iron Curtain of sheltered suburbia and I remember the message that I took away from it was that nothing last forever and there are always options if you are willing to ask for help. Five years later I lost a friend to suicide, one of the most intellgient and funniest guys I have ever known. In the years since my sister and I have grieved the loss of several more friends and classmates. Lives cut short sometimes without rhyme or reason. Experts claim that there are signs as if there is some kind of formula that needs to be in place before something like this can happen but I can say that without reading someone's mind, it seems to catch us all sleeping and totally unaware. And that is at the base of me and my sister's frustration. There is nothing more we would like to do than help people we know who believe they've run out of answers but how are we to really know? How are we to know who is at risk? There's a common saying that goes you never know what is really going on in someone's home or head and the truth in that statement makes preventing suicide and recognizing when loved ones need people (and professionals) to reach out to them, all the more difficult.

When Is A Journalist Not A Journalist (and other riddles)

There is a scene in the classic Disney movie Alice In Wonderland where Alice happens upon the Mad Hatter and the March Hare. At some point during their tea party centered ravings, the Mad Hatter poses the question to Alice: why is a raven like a writing desk? It's a nonsense question that Lewis Carroll penned in his book. There was to be no answer but writers, scholars and everyday people have created a variety of possible answers to this question meant to have no refrain to echo back. Detroit Free Press columnist (as well as radio personality, author and journalist at large) Mitch Albom tried to answer a similar question in a recent column that began by discussing the recent media dust up between Andrew Breitbart (of ACORN expose fame) and Shirley Sherrod (formerly of the U.S. Department of Agriculture) and video footage that Breitbart released where Sherrod admitted having racist attitudes towards white farmers seeking aid from the department in the 80s. Breitbart did not release a portion of tape that followed where Sherrod says that she went on to help white farmers seeking aid and was glad she did. The mainstream media has since pounced on Breitbart with a number of accusations ranging from race baiting to the issue of truth in journalism.
What Albom was most incensed about was not what concerned me greatest which was the idea of racism and racist attitudes within a department of the government. The government, its departments and various agencies are supposed to be colorblind and treat all of its citizens fairly and equally. The fact that these personal attitudes arose in Ms. Sherrod, even if they weren't acted upon, needed to be addressed and corrected. Personal beliefs and attitudes have no place within the federal government (as the separation of church and state is constantly pointing out ad nauseum). Albom, along with most other mainstream journalists, despise Breitbart for being an outsider who took a page from their own handbook. Albom and his ilk are toiling away at a dying media. The public has become disgusted with the fabrication of truth and facts that has become so rampant in mainstream media and have sought to stay informed through other alternative, less costly methods. Enter Internet media and Internet journalists (among them bloggers like Breitbart). As far as the mainstream public is concerned, mainstream media is a self-serving lot and the beauty of living in a society with freedoms, if you don't like the government mouthpiece press (hello NBC!), you can go elsewhere to spend your cash or create your own press. They can't say the same in Cuba or North Korea. Of course they have bigger problems like surviving national poverty to deal with.
Albom argues in his column that bloggers aren't real journalists (why do I feel a pitch for unionization coming on?) and that Breitbart is dangerous. The truth is the media is still pissed at Breitbart for taking ACORN down and emphasizing the longtime connection between ACORN and their Savior-In-Chief. And the fact that he used guerrilla journalism, something mainstream journalists believe they had patented, against their agendas only enrages them more. And they are going to crush him however long it takes and whatever it takes. That's the oath of the mainstream journalist after all. The following are my musings as I emailed to Albom.

Mitch,
With all due respect, your indignation and outrage at Breitbart in your Sherrod column had to be a tad inflated right? Because if not, I'm really shocked that a seasoned journalist like yourself can still look at mainstream media (forgetting the Internet media and blogging for a moment) like it hasn't already permanently sullied itself. Journalism was fact manipulation media long before bloggers like Breitbart were even conceived. Print journalism is nothing but collecting subjective quotes to weave a story and the nightly news is the arrangement of carefully orchestrated sound bites. And though you as a mainstream journalist would like nothing more than to distance yourself from those knock-off journalists known as Internet bloggers (per your column), Internet journalism is the mainstream media's illegitimate offspring, out committing sins of the father so to speak.


I'm 28 years old and it's been like that for as long as I can remember. There hasn't been a time in my life when I took mainstream journalism at face value. And I put Internet media and their journalists through the same sieve. I view both as being equally without merit. I look at someone like Dan Rather and the scandal he created some years back, having to leave his career disgraced because of disregarding facts, and I think about all his years as a journalist and how many other stories he must have dirtied or outright fabricated.

What I'm trying to say is that your anger is 30 years too late and it's misdirected. Breitbart is just the latest manifestation of the world's second oldest profession. If you had said that it was throwing gasoline on the fire regarding race relations in America today or shook your finger (like my father does) at Generation X and said the whole stinking generation is nothing more than a bunch of godless mercenaries with no respect for anyone, I could understand your argument. But Breitbart's and Rather's methods aren't so different. Manipulation through media.

Race to the Bottom: Michigan's Intelligence Freefall Continues

This past week it was announced that Michigan had not made it to the next round of finalists for the coveted Race To The Top education funding that the White House is dangling in front of state governments like a golden carrot on a stick. Immediately Governor Jennifer Granholm issued her standard and underwhelming official statement of disappointment and the finger pointing blame game ensued, most of it laying at the feet of the MEA (Michigan Education Association) union whose political muscle and enforcement ensured that a vague, unaccountable proposal was submitted to Education Czar Arnie Duncan. So once again education in Michigan takes a backseat due to its political officials' disinterest in educating its constituents, its unions desire to keep the status quo and its citizens welcomed ignorance and great interest in only things of a vice nature. In layman's terms, Michigan wants to keep itself stupid for a variety of reasons.
Recently I had to take a certification exam that was made available at no cost to residents who had been laid off from their employers. It was being proctored at two locations, both of which were 20 plus miles away. I called ahead to inquire what I should bring to the test and was told to bring a calculator for the mathematics portion of the exam. Out of habit (from at least a decade's worth of standardized testing experience) I brought several number 2 pencils. I was also told to arrive 15 minutes early for exam instructions. I arrived to find myself the only person under 30 years old in a group of 20. Most of the people taking the test were middle aged men and that wasn't a surprise since most employees in industries that have closed up shop in Michigan and 21st Century America (manufacturing, automotive) are men who are now in career transition. What surprised me was how ill equipped the group was for the exam and I'm not talking about exam content readiness. Right from go, the time the exam was set to begin was pushed back 25 minutes as we waited for one person on the attendance list to show up. The woman was well into her 60s and offered no apology for holding up the class when she eventually wandered into the class. The proctor didn't seem to care either. The exam was starting to feel like a graduation open house. Show up whenever. Two other people, who were nursing students, brought calculators and the same amount brought pencils. The standardized exam answer sheet, known as the trusty Scantron form used in schools K-12, colleges and skill certification exams nationwide, was handed out. That's when the disconnect happened. Myself and the two nursing students were the only ones who knew how to fill out a Scantron form. A middle aged melee ensued as people began to react to the Rubik's cube that was handed to them. It's actually a pretty self explanatory form but the proctor still spent the next 20 minutes guiding the class through filling out the preliminary info on the Scantron (name, DOB, etc).  What takes 20 minutes to say? Well plenty when everyone talks over the proctor! I was astounded at how the minute the proctor said she would explain, everyone piped up seemingly repeating over and over how they didn't know what this was and oh, did they mention that they don't have a pencil? Well they don't. The proctored exam had turned into chaos.
I hung my head in my embarrassment since essentially this generation (and, gulp, the generation preceding it!) is running the state. No wonder the state is the mess to end all messes that it is. We used to snicker at the kids that showed up the first day unprepared for school. No writing tablets, no paper, no pencils or pens. They just sat there expectantly waiting for it to magically appear before them. Now it all makes sense because their parents are showing up to Life every day completely unprepared. No problem solving skills, no active listening abilities, none of the responsibilities assumed when you become adults. They show up empty handed and empty headed looking expectantly at the person in front of them, waiting to be handed supplies, their marching orders, essentially their lives.

Saying Goodbye in the Big Ten is Never Easy

I spent the whole weekend mulling (and sulking) over Tom Izzo (Michigan State's Men's Basketball coach, a titan of the Big Ten and kindly king of East Lansing, Michigan) and his impending departure to greener pastures, to the tune of three million dollars more/yr greener. Apparently the Powers That Be at the Cleveland Cavaliers is a MSU grad and what he wants is Izzo. Izzo had quickly pointed out to the media after MSU was knocked out of the Final Four earlier this year that he wasn't going anywhere. That more money was a laughable motivator and he was staying put in East Lansing. I usually don't believe such statements. Coaches are marionette puppets and their strings are pulled solely by money. They're also incredibly bad actors so they say a lot of stuff but there is a clear disconnect between their mouths and their brains that makes them extremely unbelievable. But with Izzo, I really believed him. He is treated like royalty in and around Michigan State University and is heavily respected and admired in the sports world around the state and across the country. His integrity shows and he has never been one to shirk blame when it's due.
It began as ugly rumors a week ago, then news came that his family had taken a trip down to Cleveland, then he met with his team at Michigan State. Then nothing. The silence spoke volumes and Spartan fans knew that the Izzone (the student section at the Breslin Center) was living on borrowed time.
It's hard for me to wish Izzo well in Ohio. Naturally I'm bitter. I had to endure many U of M Wolverine fans rubbing their hands together gleefully and it's like a knife in my back every time. But he has been with Michigan State since 1983 and with so many talented players returning in the fall, he is essentially throwing the team and the school's basketball program under the bus. Which is why it stings so much, it's so uncharacteristic of him. Michigan State will lose their recruiting power and their dominant position in the college basketball arena. Plus for myself, an alumni, this is a deja vu situation going back almost a decade to when coach Nick Saban left the Michigan State football program to go to the NFL. He failed miserably and went back to the college level to coach for Louisiana and he began another wildly successful career stint. I feel very strongly that this may be Izzo's future. He expects a lot from his players, starting with respect and drive. His college players have always been eager to oblige but at the professional level, the athletes attitudes are much much different. They are getting paid either way and many remain undisciplined and do not like father figure coaches reading them the riot act for poor performance on or off the court. I think, like Saban, Izzo is a niche coach. His area of expertise is at the college level, there's no shame in that but coaches have to recognize their limitations. They also have to recognize gift horses when they are looking them in the mouth.
It feels like Izzo will leave State on a sour note which is a terrible way to address a school and a student body that has given him so much. And it's hard for me to not feel betrayed and angry. There's a right and wrong way to exit a team and school and I hope Tom Izzo remembers that first and foremost

Why Walmart Really Sucks

The bloom has finally come off the Walmart rose for me. It took longer because I'm not a sheep who takes social stands whenever prodded by the mainstream media. I'm saddled with student loans and a severely anemic economy that is hemorrhaging what few jobs there are left. If I took social stands on everything, I'd be out on my arse, living under a bridge somewhere.
I am a huge fan of the show The Simpsons, I know the intrinsic details of it better than most people and definitely better than most all the members of my gender. There is an episode where Homer gets a job at a store mirroring Walmart appropriately called Sprawlmart. The show goes on to mock Walmart and poke fun at the legal troubles they have had regarding labor and treatment of employees. The adage that there is some truth behind every joke is supported by this episode. While we have laws in this country regarding labor codes and regulations that should be followed, most of the hand wringing and bemoaning about Walmart in the mainstream media has more to do with social axes to grind--mainly their disgust at Walmart's history, the Walton family and the corporation's conservative leanings as well as their largest demographic of shoppers: conservative, rural Americans who support the military, the NRA and the blue collar way of life. The arch nemesis of the elitist media. Oddly enough no one is wringing their hands over the objectification of women employees at Hooters or their physical requirements for their employees. So I've come to learn that it's all relative to what the media deems hang wring worthy. That being said, out of touch employees with socialistic expectations is one thing but discriminatory corporate practices and similar behavior by management that keeps women out of management positions because of antiquated, backwoods notions about a woman's place (barefoot, pregnant, at home cooking, yada yada yada) is quite another. More to the point, the latter is AGAINST THE LAW. Another adage comes to mind about how for every rat you see, there are ten you don't.
About four or five years ago shopping at Walmart was so much fun. Seriously. I was in college and a person could decorate their apartment, buy groceries and toiletries while saving a bundle. Coupon savings on top of huge price cuts on thousands of items is a joyous thing for anyone who is on a budget. And it was all under one roof with many different brand choices offered! Comparison shopping which was an arduous task became a thing of the past. Walmarts started popping up all over the place. No one could match their prices, they were Godsends whether you were in the middle of nowhere or the middle of a bustling metropolis.
I got the party line from social standers in my life when mentioning that I shopped at Walmart. Sometimes I made an issue out of it like when a guest at a family event blurted out 'only white trash shops at Walmart!' in front of me and sometimes I let it slide. Last time I checked this was a free country and if an employer isn't treating their employees right, you have the right to up and leave. I've worked for plenty of companies who treated their employees like indentured servants and the nightly news was never loitering around outside wanting to hear my grievances. Most everyone's employer is imperfect, that's what binds together the train wreck known as the collective American workplace.
While in college, I heard it through the grapevine (through friends who interned at big consumer product companies) would give Company X a price point at which they would sell their product. There was no negotiation about that price point. If Company X didn't want their product sold at that price, hard cheese. Then Walmart wouldn't carry their product all all. Weird, I thought, but if Walmart's objective is a low price no matter what then the real winner was the consumer.
I then moved to a location where there were relatively few Walmarts in close proximity and I started shopping elsewhere or on the Internet. About a year ago, I was once again situated in a Walmart friendly area and began shopping there again. I went there during the summer and fall for a military care package I was putting together and for a back to school package I was putting together as part of a program for lower income students in nearby districts. What I found was really shocking. To me Walmart had always meant lower prices without compromising quality. What I found was another Target, another Kmart, another Meijer. The items that were cheap in every respect. Cheap price, cheap quality. Recognizable brand names were regularly priced, the same as any other store in its category in the toiletries and school supply departments. There were no big deals. Depending on the coupon, the item could be brought into a decent price range but nothing praiseworthy. You got a deal on something that had reduced quality which isn't a good trade off in most scenarios.
A few months after that, I began big cost cutting moves due to being laid of from my job. I took a trip to my local Walmart to see what items were good deals. Armed with an envelope of coupons and a shopping list, I started working my way through aisles. First thing I noticed is that the shopping baskets that made it convenient to pick up more than a few items without having to get a bulky cart were gone. I had inquired about the baskets whereabouts at an urban and a suburban Walmart. At the urban WM, they said they were all stolen and they weren't going to replace them. At the suburban WM, the excuse was simply that they didn't offer them to shoppers anymore. Nothing more than a sly marketing ploy to force shoppers to either fumble like a nervous footballer player with more than three items in their arms or relent and commandeer a cart with the standard single erratic wheel, filling it with a lot of unnecessary items. Very clever WM.
What I found on said trip to WM: Cosmetics department was amputated from the rest of the beauty/toiletries department and banished along with hand lotions/sun care to the other side of the store. The regular prices of cosmetics mirrored the prices found at Rite Aid. Right coupons at the right time brought their prices into a reasonable range but that's not the point with WM. The point is their regular prices were supposed to outshine all of their competitors. There are only four facial skincare lines carried at WM and their prices twin Rite Aid's. A lot of shelf space is taken up by WM's private label Equate. "Rollback" prices are a joke and scarce to find.
Diversity in selection of hair care brands is no more. Two items had lower price points than most other chains but that was out of at least 30-40 items. Presentation of products was awful even for a discount mass retailer. It looked like a dump truck backed up to the shelves and unloaded the products with the pull of a lever and the employees left the products as is. When I worked in retail, there was such a thing as fronting (pulling product from the back to fill in gaps where customers had picked up items to purchase). That way everything on the shelf looked nice and uniform. Fronting is the least of WM's product problems.
Lastly, and most noteworthy, is Walmart's policy on MasterCard debit card use as an acceptable means of payment. WM has told MC sorry there is no more room at the inn. I had heard years back that WM and MC were at odds over usage fees, neither side wanted to cover them. I guess in the end WM called MC's bluff and denied them at the door.This is where the runaway ego alarm should be sounding. When a discount mass retailer bars the door to one of the country's largest credit card companies, someone needs a reality check. When their weekend sales flyer pales in comparison to its peers' robust circulars, it shows a secure cockiness.
And I guess that is the lesson learned here. Runaway egos, when it comes to the well being and rosy outlook of a company, end in calamity. Because when WM plateaus and then declines, which is a 'when' not 'if', what will become of the concrete behamouths they have constructed spaced ten feet apart? WM already stands as a symbol of the mythology behind the idea of a true discount mass retailer.