Who Will Emancipate Our Celebrities?

Slavery was outlawed for a century before Martin Luther King, Jr. had a most public dream of the yearning to be free, free at last. But it will take more than the accumulated content of our gross domestic character before our stable of celebrities are released from their iconic obligations to carry the freedom dream for the rest of us.

Certainly progress has been made. Instead of incarceration (fueled by the fears of Caucasians) our celebrities are sentenced to incorporation on the backs of our color blind aspirations (financed by the proceeds of ticket sales, viewership levels, and downloads). But given the choice they would shed for us the posters from their inner children and the billboards from their referencable faces. They really would.

Witness Tiger Woods' pre-meltdown glimpse of earthly. It's beneath the tropical waves with a snorkel in his teeth with no compunction to flash his mug to the coral-nestling fishees because "they don't care who Tiger is."

And why should we sympathize? We do know who Tiger is but you don't see us sunbathing in a private Caribbean fortress. Why should we carry their pain when we've plunked our showered our attentions down on their pageants and play-off appearances? Who gives them the right to wallow behind the draw bridge of their sun castles?

Not us. This is not sour grapes from some clumsy, unintended snub or our Googled identities tossed off the guest list of parties not looking for sponsors. From the gushing and crushing for autographs to the cascading and lambasting of the bum's rush, the price of fame is the most universal valuation of all human transactions. Celebrity is not just a fluid state of hot, bankable media properties.

It's the mecca of recognition. It's an exulted state. On the way up it's you and me on steroids with the winning ticket to kept dreams in this lifetime. Yes, people just like us! On the downward spiral it's a great consolation for score-settling justice seekers. It's comforting the afflicted with the foolhardy pratfalls of the inflated, the craven, and delusional. Feel the loss in cabin pressure as the newly infamous and impoverished gamble away their winnings on addictions unhinged.

We know the inner trials and secret selves of their characters and portrayals better because these fictions hold more truth than the superficial niceties we mix into our surface level chatter. We know in advance to expect the unexpected every time a name actor defies the gravity of typecasting. What reality-based enterprise fulfills that desire? What ritual prepares us for that gratification -- the annual Detroit car show?

Most celebrities are coin tosses and improbable odds personified: the lucky break latched onto their ascent; stars aligning. If they come from fame there's the tell-all peak at the fabled elders as faltering parents. All the privileges and punishments doled out by life in the fishbowl.

It's the very public intimacy of the emotionally-charged celebrity bonding that enables us to know these perfect strangers on a personal level. The connection runs so deep that we source it to their imprints on affiliated movies, TV series, and franchise entertainments. That bond greases newly aquaintenced cast members of these productions -- an extended forest of social networks.

For the celebrity the reciprocal is false. They don't pair up with individual fans any more than we bask in celebrity limelights. The celebrity's assets and their implied responsibilities are one in the same -- the loosely organized aggregates that drop in their tracks and give audience to the attracting star. This arrangement pulls rank on the command of talents that volted their identity into a moldable stardom. That's the third rail for the charmed athletes double-crossed by their double role as model citizens. Not signing up to be one is no defense against the tar and feather stinging of letting down the fan base.

The extended properties of of family fame association is not limited to the playing field of spin the Kevin Bacon degree bottle. It's more basic than the pedigree around the social cachet of blood lines. We look to the chromosomal capacities of media-encoded behavioral modeling. We can't do justice to celebrity worship without acknowledging the marquee role of media as surrogate parent, teacher, and tormentor to all post boomer latchkey babies who ever held an expectation or passed a judgment based on the way a scripted creation bargained on their own behalf.

I distinctly remember the preschool lesson taught by Fred McMurray's wooing of his future stepdaughter in an episode of My Three Sons. Every flavor of ice cream drizzle was the admission price for eligible (uninvited) guardians to step up to the step parent plate. Five years later there would be no such lobbying effort from the future unsecured minefield known as my own private stepfather hell. But it wasn't his failings as a role model that made me flinch. It was the damn TV script that held me hostage to the impotence of childhood.

As an action-based taxonomist I've found it clarifying to conjugate celebrities as parties (plural) rather than persons (singular). After all just because we're in the same living room, movie theater, or set of headphones that doesn't mean we will ever have firsthand contact or even backstage proximity to the main act. Literally you can apply this framework to the posse of agents, body guards and nannies the celebrity bankrolls to carry our hopes and dreams up the base of the freedom trail. But I think of it more as licenses to build marketing platforms on world-beater legs, a magnetic torso, and a helium-powered head. They dance for you. They play for me. They speak for us -- until they stop checking in -- or worse, act on their own individual desires.

Fame is an abdication of individual freedoms. We fixate on the loss of privacy but that's just the beginning of it. The tycoon-like free pass for hedge fund manager behavior is clearly off limits once sentenced to the gated splendor of the penitentiary of fame. Witness protection is afforded to fat cats. But there is no such thing as a privately-held celebrity. The unspoken bargain between extraordinary soloists and the ensemble of little folks who work for a living is this -- your pity for our favor. The moment the celebrated step over the pity limits is the moment they meet the wrath of the unvarnished crowd. How far can the mighty fall? How low a crouch does it take to be trampled by the wisdom of mobs?

Who Will Emancipate Our Celebrities?

Slavery was outlawed for a century before Martin Luther King, Jr. had a most public dream of the yearning to be free, free at last. But it will take more than the accumulated content of our gross domestic character before our stable of celebrities are released from their iconic obligations to carry the freedom dream for the rest of us.

Certainly progress has been made. Instead of incarceration (fueled by the fears of Caucasians) our celebrities are sentenced to incorporation on the backs of our color blind aspirations (financed by the proceeds of ticket sales, viewership levels, and downloads). But given the choice they would shed for us the posters from their inner children and the billboards from their referencable faces. They really would.

Witness Tiger Woods' pre-meltdown glimpse of earthly. It's beneath the tropical waves with a snorkel in his teeth with no compunction to flash his mug to the coral-nestling fishees because "they don't care who Tiger is."

And why should we sympathize? We do know who Tiger is but you don't see us sunbathing in a private Caribbean fortress. Why should we carry their pain when we've plunked our showered our attentions down on their pageants and play-off appearances? Who gives them the right to wallow behind the draw bridge of their sun castles?

Not us. This is not sour grapes from some clumsy, unintended snub or our Googled identities tossed off the guest list of parties not looking for sponsors. From the gushing and crushing for autographs to the cascading and lambasting of the bum's rush, the price of fame is the most universal valuation of all human transactions. Celebrity is not just a fluid state of hot, bankable media properties.

It's the mecca of recognition. It's an exulted state. On the way up it's you and me on steroids with the winning ticket to kept dreams in this lifetime. Yes, people just like us! On the downward spiral it's a great consolation for score-settling justice seekers. It's comforting the afflicted with the foolhardy pratfalls of the inflated, the craven, and delusional. Feel the loss in cabin pressure as the newly infamous and impoverished gamble away their winnings on addictions unhinged.

We know the inner trials and secret selves of their characters and portrayals better because these fictions hold more truth than the superficial niceties we mix into our surface level chatter. We know in advance to expect the unexpected every time a name actor defies the gravity of typecasting. What reality-based enterprise fulfills that desire? What ritual prepares us for that gratification -- the annual Detroit car show?

Most celebrities are coin tosses and improbable odds personified: the lucky break latched onto their ascent; stars aligning. If they come from fame there's the tell-all peak at the fabled elders as faltering parents. All the privileges and punishments doled out by life in the fishbowl.

It's the very public intimacy of the emotionally-charged celebrity bonding that enables us to know these perfect strangers on a personal level. The connection runs so deep that we source it to their imprints on affiliated movies, TV series, and franchise entertainments. That bond greases newly aquaintenced cast members of these productions -- an extended forest of social networks.

For the celebrity the reciprocal is false. They don't pair up with individual fans any more than we bask in celebrity limelights. The celebrity's assets and their implied responsibilities are one in the same -- the loosely organized aggregates that drop in their tracks and give audience to the attracting star. This arrangement pulls rank on the command of talents that volted their identity into a moldable stardom. That's the third rail for the charmed athletes double-crossed by their double role as model citizens. Not signing up to be one is no defense against the tar and feather stinging of letting down the fan base.

The extended properties of of family fame association is not limited to the playing field of spin the Kevin Bacon degree bottle. It's more basic than the pedigree around the social cachet of blood lines. We look to the chromosomal capacities of media-encoded behavioral modeling. We can't do justice to celebrity worship without acknowledging the marquee role of media as surrogate parent, teacher, and tormentor to all post boomer latchkey babies who ever held an expectation or passed a judgment based on the way a scripted creation bargained on their own behalf.

I distinctly remember the preschool lesson taught by Fred McMurray's wooing of his future stepdaughter in an episode of My Three Sons. Every flavor of ice cream drizzle was the admission price for eligible (uninvited) guardians to step up to the step parent plate. Five years later there would be no such lobbying effort from the future unsecured minefield known as my own private stepfather hell. But it wasn't his failings as a role model that made me flinch. It was the damn TV script that held me hostage to the impotence of childhood.

As an action-based taxonomist I've found it clarifying to conjugate celebrities as parties (plural) rather than persons (singular). After all just because we're in the same living room, movie theater, or set of headphones that doesn't mean we will ever have firsthand contact or even backstage proximity to the main act. Literally you can apply this framework to the posse of agents, body guards and nannies the celebrity bankrolls to carry our hopes and dreams up the base of the freedom trail. But I think of it more as licenses to build marketing platforms on world-beater legs, a magnetic torso, and a helium-powered head. They dance for you. They play for me. They speak for us -- until they stop checking in -- or worse, act on their own individual desires.

Fame is an abdication of individual freedoms. We fixate on the loss of privacy but that's just the beginning of it. The tycoon-like free pass for hedge fund manager behavior is clearly off limits once sentenced to the gated splendor of the penitentiary of fame. Witness protection is afforded to fat cats. But there is no such thing as a privately-held celebrity. The unspoken bargain between extraordinary soloists and the ensemble of little folks who work for a living is this -- your pity for our favor. The moment the celebrated step over the pity limits is the moment they meet the wrath of the unvarnished crowd. How far can the mighty fall? How low a crouch does it take to be trampled by the wisdom of mobs?

Unresolvable New Years Resolutions

So here's the deal with kindness and me.

I don't enter into any exchange of a conditional nature with another from my species without asking what that person wants in return for whatever effort they're making. Sometimes this is a big deal. Most often it's just pocket change variety in the bartering of our daily giving and getting. But I do know that the sustenance of living is made out of something more porous and extended than self-preservation or a dollar earned for a day's labor. It's the energized form of gratitude that reigns whenever I've given something of myself to the betterment and acknowledgment of others. Is the life-giving held within the act or the recognition of it? And if the deal on kindness can't go through without some reciprocal outcome is it really kindness? Could it be a capital need to earn brownie points or accrue membership privileges for cashing in personal IOUs, political capital, or kindness quotas? Some production voucher or credit due reserve? Hey, I gave blood today!

Pure kindness always seemed like a more sincere, less cumbersome, and ultimately more life affirming way to go. It meant not keeping score even though you're in the right game playing for the better team (and for all the right reasons). Not expecting the quid pro quo to kick in is a liberation from the reflexive backscratching that poisons the sincerity of mutual admirations. Random is the roadmap for acts of true kindness. Pay it forward and you'll never look back.

The problem with altruism is that few of us are self-energizing enough to offer open-ended olive branches. When our efforts are spurned or stepped on or taken for granted with the slightest nod to our nobler spirits our quest for kindness can sour pretty quickly. I believe that this conflict was captured exquisitely by Adam Phillips, the author of On Kindness in my favorite 45 minutes of 2009 when he was the guest on the NPR call-in show On-Point. Phillips crashes through the familiar better-to-give-than-receive routine as if we can even agree on originators and receivers, let alone where the generosities lie. The unadorned question he asks is simple and instructive: "if it feels so great to express ourselves through kindness why don't we do it more often?"

On the one hand we all marvel at the beneficent grace and rapture of opening our hearts. On the other hand we're never as kind as we could be and others ... well they certainly clam up before releasing to us the kindness we deserve or imagine others can stroke against our expectant, raw, and receedingly thin skins.

Part of this tension is an inability to acknowledge the cost of kindness or the price of competition. Do we gain directly at the expense of others? If so do we lose some of our humility in the process of objectifying the evil or inferiority of those we intend to defeat, rectify, or ignore? Are all these options even on the table? Is cruelty the counter to kindness or is it neglect?

There are three main forms of creature discomforts that concern me about our species and I'm not sure what questions they raise or hopes they question but I'll give it a try:

1) Incapacity to praise -- I was in California before Thanksgiving and hooked up with an old college friend who gave me a good-natured grilling about the unrelenting encouragement I provided this historian/astrologer/writer/cum scientist of learning about his songs. That approval crashed his boundaries not only around defining his own artfulness but took root in a high-concept uneven-sounding band engineered by my friend's tentative grip on choreographing the movements of planets. The only chart we ever landed on was the composite chart he configured with his own raw inspirations. Was I too quick to praise? Was my appreciation undeveloped? Certainly my intent was for the talent I witnessed to develop as far as the spirit wills it. But years later no second guesses amount to a single moment of torment. Letting praise fester is no healthier than the unburied hatchets that eat us away.

I wondered about the collateral impact of praise, as heartfelt and deserving as it was. Was a wildfire ego trip the raging outcome of a single match stick? I've always been baffled by the scarcity of praise in the world. Positive feedback is no stranger to popular rhetoric. But putting one's finger on the distinguishing features of what makes for praiseworthy strokes is typically in short supply and never goes out of style no matter how un-chic paying a proper compliment can be. The criticism that underpins the achievement of my friend's songs is that they need to be recorded -- not for his sake or mine but posterity -- an objective that becomes less abstract the longer his tunes age.

Prognosis: Regardless of whether our band reunionizes over this man's awesome talents I will continue to praise my peers, students, and inspired works without reservation. I will specify the unique blending of skills, talents, and experience they have created and try to go them one better about where this could lead into new models and collaborations. And I will not bale if I give voice to a ship that takes on more water than passengers.

2) Inability to touch -- I didn't attend mass very often this year. In fact unless I'm with my exemplary Christian son I don't really think about it. About a month ago he was in town for a rare visit and we went to the local Catholic church. The mass was largely unremarkable except for one thing. The sign of peace handshake was cut loose to contain H1N1. All the runny noses, scratchy throats and handi-wipes could not turn the clock back on the welcoming of a stranger's outstretched hand. I'm not saying this as a gregarious flesh-pressing reveler or that one religious tradition is any more guarded than another. My own temperament is reserved, self-contained. But I know the consoling and restorative nature of touch is not present in words, logic, or any brain-heart connection I can access no matter how much I stretch my limbs or torture my own logic.

Prognosis: What would happen if the golden rule applied to handshakes, hugs, caresses, and even inadvertent brushes with the shopper pushing the next shopping cart? If we wished to be touched the way we hold ourselves many of us would never know the comfort of feeling, needing the someone close to us that puts things right. I don't know the answer. I only know that I need to reach out more than I do and that the quandary of intimacy or isolation is a false choice and a self-imposed one.

3) Unwillingness to give in -- I've been told by more than one close friend that I'm a poor negotiator. It's not from an insatiable want of material gains. I can walk away from bounties and winnings and discounts and coveted, shiny prizes. But I can't let go of the nagging feeling that I've negotiated away any mutual benefit an agreement could broker. Part of understanding the difference between what's negotiable and what's a deal-breaker is an appreciation not only of what we need from the other party but what we hold in scarce supply and how much that's appreciated on the other side. Conversely the most stoic of poker faces needs an accurate assessment of a fallback position which includes a supply line to the talents and assets we're incapable of providing to ourselves.

Prognosis: I believe the vogue political term for talking to our enemies is engagement. Well the same holds for the disagreements held between friends. The language of winners and losers is the currency used when pushed. Is that brinkmanship or is that simply the need of knowing where we stand. For most, it seems, uncertainty is a crueler fate than loss.

Listening to the grievances and demands when the negotiation tables are turned is a source of strength. Even if the other party's sole aspiration is to play the victim card there is a larger stage worth playing to. In the case of Iran that means showing their bad faith posturing to chip away at China and Russia's disengagement. Look at the softening of a U.S. hardline? Obama's overtures to Iran accentuate the political divide between all its internal factions. On a personal level what's the lesson? It's that the open hand absorbs the blows of the closed fist. Only then can any mutually beneficial bargaining begin.

Unresolvable New Years Resolutions

So here's the deal with kindness and me.

I don't enter into any exchange of a conditional nature with another from my species without asking what that person wants in return for whatever effort they're making. Sometimes this is a big deal. Most often it's just pocket change variety in the bartering of our daily giving and getting. But I do know that the sustenance of living is made out of something more porous and extended than self-preservation or a dollar earned for a day's labor. It's the energized form of gratitude that reigns whenever I've given something of myself to the betterment and acknowledgment of others. Is the life-giving held within the act or the recognition of it? And if the deal on kindness can't go through without some reciprocal outcome is it really kindness? Could it be a capital need to earn brownie points or accrue membership privileges for cashing in personal IOUs, political capital, or kindness quotas? Some production voucher or credit due reserve? Hey, I gave blood today!

Pure kindness always seemed like a more sincere, less cumbersome, and ultimately more life affirming way to go. It meant not keeping score even though you're in the right game playing for the better team (and for all the right reasons). Not expecting the quid pro quo to kick in is a liberation from the reflexive backscratching that poisons the sincerity of mutual admirations. Random is the roadmap for acts of true kindness. Pay it forward and you'll never look back.

The problem with altruism is that few of us are self-energizing enough to offer open-ended olive branches. When our efforts are spurned or stepped on or taken for granted with the slightest nod to our nobler spirits our quest for kindness can sour pretty quickly. I believe that this conflict was captured exquisitely by Adam Phillips, the author of On Kindness in my favorite 45 minutes of 2009 when he was the guest on the NPR call-in show On-Point. Phillips crashes through the familiar better-to-give-than-receive routine as if we can even agree on originators and receivers, let alone where the generosities lie. The unadorned question he asks is simple and instructive: "if it feels so great to express ourselves through kindness why don't we do it more often?"

On the one hand we all marvel at the beneficent grace and rapture of opening our hearts. On the other hand we're never as kind as we could be and others ... well they certainly clam up before releasing to us the kindness we deserve or imagine others can stroke against our expectant, raw, and receedingly thin skins.

Part of this tension is an inability to acknowledge the cost of kindness or the price of competition. Do we gain directly at the expense of others? If so do we lose some of our humility in the process of objectifying the evil or inferiority of those we intend to defeat, rectify, or ignore? Are all these options even on the table? Is cruelty the counter to kindness or is it neglect?

There are three main forms of creature discomforts that concern me about our species and I'm not sure what questions they raise or hopes they question but I'll give it a try:

1) Incapacity to praise -- I was in California before Thanksgiving and hooked up with an old college friend who gave me a good-natured grilling about the unrelenting encouragement I provided this historian/astrologer/writer/cum scientist of learning about his songs. That approval crashed his boundaries not only around defining his own artfulness but took root in a high-concept uneven-sounding band engineered by my friend's tentative grip on choreographing the movements of planets. The only chart we ever landed on was the composite chart he configured with his own raw inspirations. Was I too quick to praise? Was my appreciation undeveloped? Certainly my intent was for the talent I witnessed to develop as far as the spirit wills it. But years later no second guesses amount to a single moment of torment. Letting praise fester is no healthier than the unburied hatchets that eat us away.

I wondered about the collateral impact of praise, as heartfelt and deserving as it was. Was a wildfire ego trip the raging outcome of a single match stick? I've always been baffled by the scarcity of praise in the world. Positive feedback is no stranger to popular rhetoric. But putting one's finger on the distinguishing features of what makes for praiseworthy strokes is typically in short supply and never goes out of style no matter how un-chic paying a proper compliment can be. The criticism that underpins the achievement of my friend's songs is that they need to be recorded -- not for his sake or mine but posterity -- an objective that becomes less abstract the longer his tunes age.

Prognosis: Regardless of whether our band reunionizes over this man's awesome talents I will continue to praise my peers, students, and inspired works without reservation. I will specify the unique blending of skills, talents, and experience they have created and try to go them one better about where this could lead into new models and collaborations. And I will not bale if I give voice to a ship that takes on more water than passengers.

2) Inability to touch -- I didn't attend mass very often this year. In fact unless I'm with my exemplary Christian son I don't really think about it. About a month ago he was in town for a rare visit and we went to the local Catholic church. The mass was largely unremarkable except for one thing. The sign of peace handshake was cut loose to contain H1N1. All the runny noses, scratchy throats and handi-wipes could not turn the clock back on the welcoming of a stranger's outstretched hand. I'm not saying this as a gregarious flesh-pressing reveler or that one religious tradition is any more guarded than another. My own temperament is reserved, self-contained. But I know the consoling and restorative nature of touch is not present in words, logic, or any brain-heart connection I can access no matter how much I stretch my limbs or torture my own logic.

Prognosis: What would happen if the golden rule applied to handshakes, hugs, caresses, and even inadvertent brushes with the shopper pushing the next shopping cart? If we wished to be touched the way we hold ourselves many of us would never know the comfort of feeling, needing the someone close to us that puts things right. I don't know the answer. I only know that I need to reach out more than I do and that the quandary of intimacy or isolation is a false choice and a self-imposed one.

3) Unwillingness to give in -- I've been told by more than one close friend that I'm a poor negotiator. It's not from an insatiable want of material gains. I can walk away from bounties and winnings and discounts and coveted, shiny prizes. But I can't let go of the nagging feeling that I've negotiated away any mutual benefit an agreement could broker. Part of understanding the difference between what's negotiable and what's a deal-breaker is an appreciation not only of what we need from the other party but what we hold in scarce supply and how much that's appreciated on the other side. Conversely the most stoic of poker faces needs an accurate assessment of a fallback position which includes a supply line to the talents and assets we're incapable of providing to ourselves.

Prognosis: I believe the vogue political term for talking to our enemies is engagement. Well the same holds for the disagreements held between friends. The language of winners and losers is the currency used when pushed. Is that brinkmanship or is that simply the need of knowing where we stand. For most, it seems, uncertainty is a crueler fate than loss.

Listening to the grievances and demands when the negotiation tables are turned is a source of strength. Even if the other party's sole aspiration is to play the victim card there is a larger stage worth playing to. In the case of Iran that means showing their bad faith posturing to chip away at China and Russia's disengagement. Look at the softening of a U.S. hardline? Obama's overtures to Iran accentuate the political divide between all its internal factions. On a personal level what's the lesson? It's that the open hand absorbs the blows of the closed fist. Only then can any mutually beneficial bargaining begin.

Why are We Always Running Out of Context?

There's one place that we all know, understand, and wish a speedy delivery for the folks who don't get us (once we're taken out of it). This single word transcends the subjective machinery used in personal opinion-making. It describes shared understandings that we draw as representative samples (members of groups). The term is context and the phrase it describes is social information. I would have blurted it out sooner except for the routine dismissal or willful abuse of message senders and receivers alike.

Context is in a state of constant observation but it is only invoked when a news-maker is quoted outside its margins by a news distributor. Actively nudging the needle back to within contextual boundaries sounds like a sucker's game. But it's more than a fair hearing, the other cheek turned, or the benefit of the universal doubt. It's more than extending credit to the cashed-out egos of officials corrupted by their addiction to taking credit. It's the relative value of what we know and the assembled piece of ourselves that we bring to the abstract but vital understanding of what the world "thinks."

Context is not ferreted out in absolutes like dollars or power. Even the most deluded brokers and elitist messengers know it's a waste to pay for something no one owns. But that doesn't stop us from flirting with what it might be like to define, map, and measure the media climate in the degrees and dimensions of context.

Actually there is one duality at play that the tiny advertiser in us readily grasps: do I stop and listen or continue on what I was already going to tweet ... um ... do? Attention is the unit price of social information. Once the sale is recorded the next question is this: What filtering do we apply or purge from the lenses we affix to our own world views?

Influence-peddlers focus on the purge. It's a sanctionable way to steal a close election. It's the flickering moment where an uncommitted voter is open to persuasion. And that flicker will not extinguish because marketing itself would cease to exist without it. And that flicker can be magnified to a blinding high beam when the skillful marketer frames a self-selecting argument around the banded comfort zones of message receivers. How do we know we're on the receiving end? Do we end more firmly ensconced in our conclusions than when we began? That's a sign that we are surely running low on context. Another surefire sign: the permission we give ourselves to parade our own muses. The current phrase for this is "social media."

To the contrary social information is not about us. It is about the world and the tar and stuffing and back story that sticks to what each old topic brings to the table of each new day. It's the piece of gum just waiting for a ride on someone's feet. What will today bring in the life of bringing Tiger out of the Woods? Is it that he is the once heir apparent uber-superstar-letes from Babe Ruth up through Michael Jordan? Is it the interchangeable nature of sponsors and the celebrities with which they share top brand billings? Is this another indication that individuals and corporations should now be judged as equals under the law? Is it that Tiger was toppled by his own natural control freak similarly to Martha Stewart's jail bird song? Is it the Eliot Spitzer fall from grace where the role model carriage falls especially hard on tonal deaf ears? Pick your narrative.

But don't apply it to my fifteen minutes of fame. Apply it to the fifteen minutes of every news cycle that we use to process the fame-worthiness of others. We'll never run short on context within a jury of our peers.

Why are We Always Running Out of Context?

There's one place that we all know, understand, and wish a speedy delivery for the folks who don't get us (once we're taken out of it). This single word transcends the subjective machinery used in personal opinion-making. It describes shared understandings that we draw as representative samples (members of groups). The term is context and the phrase it describes is social information. I would have blurted it out sooner except for the routine dismissal or willful abuse of message senders and receivers alike.

Context is in a state of constant observation but it is only invoked when a news-maker is quoted outside its margins by a news distributor. Actively nudging the needle back to within contextual boundaries sounds like a sucker's game. But it's more than a fair hearing, the other cheek turned, or the benefit of the universal doubt. It's more than extending credit to the cashed-out egos of officials corrupted by their addiction to taking credit. It's the relative value of what we know and the assembled piece of ourselves that we bring to the abstract but vital understanding of what the world "thinks."

Context is not ferreted out in absolutes like dollars or power. Even the most deluded brokers and elitist messengers know it's a waste to pay for something no one owns. But that doesn't stop us from flirting with what it might be like to define, map, and measure the media climate in the degrees and dimensions of context.

Actually there is one duality at play that the tiny advertiser in us readily grasps: do I stop and listen or continue on what I was already going to tweet ... um ... do? Attention is the unit price of social information. Once the sale is recorded the next question is this: What filtering do we apply or purge from the lenses we affix to our own world views?

Influence-peddlers focus on the purge. It's a sanctionable way to steal a close election. It's the flickering moment where an uncommitted voter is open to persuasion. And that flicker will not extinguish because marketing itself would cease to exist without it. And that flicker can be magnified to a blinding high beam when the skillful marketer frames a self-selecting argument around the banded comfort zones of message receivers. How do we know we're on the receiving end? Do we end more firmly ensconced in our conclusions than when we began? That's a sign that we are surely running low on context. Another surefire sign: the permission we give ourselves to parade our own muses. The current phrase for this is "social media."

To the contrary social information is not about us. It is about the world and the tar and stuffing and back story that sticks to what each old topic brings to the table of each new day. It's the piece of gum just waiting for a ride on someone's feet. What will today bring in the life of bringing Tiger out of the Woods? Is it that he is the once heir apparent uber-superstar-letes from Babe Ruth up through Michael Jordan? Is it the interchangeable nature of sponsors and the celebrities with which they share top brand billings? Is this another indication that individuals and corporations should now be judged as equals under the law? Is it that Tiger was toppled by his own natural control freak similarly to Martha Stewart's jail bird song? Is it the Eliot Spitzer fall from grace where the role model carriage falls especially hard on tonal deaf ears? Pick your narrative.

But don't apply it to my fifteen minutes of fame. Apply it to the fifteen minutes of every news cycle that we use to process the fame-worthiness of others. We'll never run short on context within a jury of our peers.

Walking the Talk

Today is the birthday of former news jock, PR executive, schoolteacher, current education wonk and lifelong pal Robert "Pondish" Pondiscio. Pondish was born with the gift of gab. He could start a discussion at the crack of the dinner bell in a firehouse. He could create situations with his patter that wallflowers like me could only have blossom in a file cabinet.

Unlike chatty academics he never used his gift to talk over or around the people he engages. Unlike the more plain-spoken folks he's inclined to side with (and sometimes speak for) he doesn't hang on the porch or in the hood in order to shoot/chew the breeze/fat. To this day Dish in a stupor can talk rings around most communicators in their most lucid moments of peak caffeination.

One life-changing decision he made that inspires great pride in me was his career change from managing media narratives to planting seeds as a grade school teacher in the South Bronx. In addition to math, reading, personal etiquette and crowd control he was probably the closest model that many of his fifth graders came to a daily paternal presence. He put his poverty where his mouth was -- to the tune of seeing his earnings cut by more than half of his former pay rate. Austerity was not a forced vocation for Pondish. Attracting public stares or peer disapproval would not have made this decision harder. Knowing Dish, it might have greased the wheels some.

But no outside influence eases the internal pressures that come with students lacking basic knowledge skills: "I would leave work every day with tire tracks on my back..." Pondish defines the mission and the missionary by what's left "undone" at the end of each school day. He describes how extensive dysfunction begets compassion fatigue and the soft bigotry of low expectations.

His experience was captured at the close of his public school chapter in an interview called "A Teacher's Tale" with Business Week, a former employer. In addition to the war stories there are stellar insights here into the adjustments needed to transition from a corporate culture to a giveback career. You can also catch up with his education policy pulse-taking at his Core Knowledge Blog.

Happy birthday, Dish. Long may you testify.

Walking the Talk

Today is the birthday of former news jock, PR executive, schoolteacher, current education wonk and lifelong pal Robert "Pondish" Pondiscio. Pondish was born with the gift of gab. He could start a discussion at the crack of the dinner bell in a firehouse. He could create situations with his patter that wallflowers like me could only have blossom in a file cabinet.

Unlike chatty academics he never used his gift to talk over or around the people he engages. Unlike the more plain-spoken folks he's inclined to side with (and sometimes speak for) he doesn't hang on the porch or in the hood in order to shoot/chew the breeze/fat. To this day Dish in a stupor can talk rings around most communicators in their most lucid moments of peak caffeination.

One life-changing decision he made that inspires great pride in me was his career change from managing media narratives to planting seeds as a grade school teacher in the South Bronx. In addition to math, reading, personal etiquette and crowd control he was probably the closest model that many of his fifth graders came to a daily paternal presence. He put his poverty where his mouth was -- to the tune of seeing his earnings cut by more than half of his former pay rate. Austerity was not a forced vocation for Pondish. Attracting public stares or peer disapproval would not have made this decision harder. Knowing Dish, it might have greased the wheels some.

But no outside influence eases the internal pressures that come with students lacking basic knowledge skills: "I would leave work every day with tire tracks on my back..." Pondish defines the mission and the missionary by what's left "undone" at the end of each school day. He describes how extensive dysfunction begets compassion fatigue and the soft bigotry of low expectations.

His experience was captured at the close of his public school chapter in an interview called "A Teacher's Tale" with Business Week, a former employer. In addition to the war stories there are stellar insights here into the adjustments needed to transition from a corporate culture to a giveback career. You can also catch up with his education policy pulse-taking at his Core Knowledge Blog.

Happy birthday, Dish. Long may you testify.