Commander in Speech

When I was working for a political consulting - slash - polling boutique in the late eighties a pre-maturing graybeard named Ed Reilly took me out to dinner. The gesture was a sign of thanks for ceding my personal life to the firm and forbearance for the blank checks yet to underwrite battles yet to be waged. (A personal life would claim me before I spent away a career in politics). The son of a Boston firefighter Reilly managed to straddle the line between a rip-snorting unionist and a pedigree kingmaker, spoiling for both fights and the spoils from winning them. Like so many pre-Aaron Sorkin era politicos, Reilly would ride the painstaking obscurity of his polling outfit to fabulous wealth through the Gucci-laced corridors of K Street.

As I remember the dinner was not about feasting on the vanity and self-importance of trade associations but about the eternal flame that draws all young operatives to the heart of the Beltway, world capital of the influence industry. By then Reilly had little appetite for progressive platforms or blue sky agendas. Most of his client-candidates were moderate or split-the-middle Democrats who appealed more to independents than liberals.

It was late '88 and Ed was still smarting over the Lee Atwater-architected trouncing of sensible Michael Dukakis by pumped-up Poppy Bush 41. "Our party just doesn't get it," fumed Riley. "We invite the press into the backs of our campaign planes and buses because we care what they think and say. Then they go hunting for stories that don't exist." The Republicans care about one thing and that's controlling the message: "They don't give a rat's ass what the media thinks -- no invites, no complications."

I'm reliving Reilly's frustration at the insinuation by Newt of the "Grandiose Old Party" that the non-Fox news media are apologists for Obama's failings. The fact the charge packs as much punch now says what?

* That our discourse has barely evolved -- even backslid over the last generation of elections
* That Gingrich is hot, callous, and ravenous -- three helpings that land far and wide of Obama's plate
* That the messengers are shot down before they can squeeze off their debating points

I'll be wondering about the messenger piece as Obama enters through the Congressional Chamber doors for his State of the Union speech on Tuesday. He will be staring openly into the very real perception of playing the co-star on the national political stage. However, in terms of his efforts to yank the spotlight most of those energies will be channeled on his path to the podium. It may seem like the sideshow lies in the fist-bumps, flesh-presses, and cordial waves 'n winks as Obama makes his way to the center of the hall. But actually, most of his energies will be channeled towards that tightrope walk through the superficial entanglements of the pageantry. The fact he'll arrive nearly depleted once he reaches the podium is not the story here.

The address itself will be a slam-dunk. He'll nail the talk down. No flaps in these gusty political headwinds. Even the melody of his speech will be encoded automatically. Energy-wise Obama will give this address in his sleep and even his fiercest adversaries will know he's in prescient control: the commander in speech. In fact he won't just float over the hall -- he'll have his batteries recharging at the same time. But will that electrify his base anywhere as much as his tentative hold on power unifies the opposition? Obama may be a conciliator-pragmatist-moderate. But in his heart of hearts there is a fierce and uncritical belief that his detractors will do the right thing for the country in spite of their hostilities. That unyielding and romantic calculation has cost the country more than the benefit of a second Obama term.

Raising the Debt Ceiling on Inner Drive

In the book The Obamas we confirm the credible assertion that Barack lives in the same town as Michelle and the girls. And even though he can't take the dog for walks he can share the same dinner table at least 5 out of every 7 evenings (baring crises and mid-terms). But the aspiration of family man is one with the sincerity of Barack the soloist:

* The guy whose much more comfortable debating the merits of Constitutional Law than the glad-hander

* The guy more tuned to schools of thought than to the schools that his adversaries' kids just got into

* The guy oblivious to whose dates on what calendar were coming up when the time's ripe to cash in on minting his next round of political capital

We were told by author Jodi Kantor of former Super Bowl parties where guests were invited to crunch pretzels and brewskies. We were told that Barack sat in his assigned chair for the game and never let the affairs of his super bowl party state interfere with the play-by-play or the halftime updates. The President of the United States was on the periphery of a room that he did not work and the evidence is this:

People who would otherwise stab him in the back are now entering through the front. There is no echoing chamber. Even in his own conflict averse party there are no minions, lieutenants, or defenders of the faith. Want to get Joe Biden to shuddup? Make him your veep and you shan't hear a peep. We've gone from the Priceline-like bid-ups on the Lincoln bedroom during the Clinton occupancy to the mothballing of the mattresses and couches. Such is where strange bedfellows come to make exceptions to their unyielding public stances.

Gridlock We Can Count On

If the firework could be choreographed on the percentages then we'd have some positive correlation between unemployment numbers and favorability ratings. Then we'd have an Obama-Romney crash test that the operatives can rationalize. Gingrich is not waiting in the wings. He is fanning the flames of a sunburst as clarifying as a biker weekend tailgating down on a Federal Reserve meeting. See what the 99% elites think of that! What the right-skewing public seeks is the bloodbath that vanquishes the calculation and cleanses the resentments of a white America whose time is past -- except perhaps when it comes to settling American elections.

Obama's been called as many names as he's learned to ignore since the bully-bigots of Indonesia threw rocks at him on his way to school. But the one name he can't ignore is the scorched path between entrance and podium that gets gussied up as Big Gov versus Big Biz. Little Guy versus Small Biz. Taxes on the rich versus sacrifice for all. So long as Obama answers to the name of introvert we're stuck in false choices. It's sealing a deal he never signed up for and is no more prepared to make now than as a school boy in the streets of Jakarta.

So in the end how does Obama justify his second term? America can't forgive temptation neutral technocrats. He could reprise his dress-down of Chief Justice Roberts over Citizen v. United in 2010: The single biggest reason for the side-show status of this season's State of the Union. But as any populist-turned aristocrat like Reilly will tell you: We voters warm even less to knew-all-alongs than know-it-alls.

If the status quo was in friendlier territory, Obama could defend healthcare as a right with the same zeal that Bush 41 got elected attacking abortion and flag-burning. So why does one approach sound like a hail Mary with no time on the clock while the other runs the same clock out by sitting on the same ball? Picking a fight with George Stephanopoulas might keep the drive going. But the best way in is to beat the messenger to the punch of a quiz show called "medical bill in the mail." The answer for us in Massachusetts is that we can pay them off without the help of venture capitalists or loan sharks.

From the front of the envelope to the back of the plane: Thank you, Governor Romney and Chairman Riley.

Occupy Paterno

I've been thinking about the Occupy zones that contain the placeholders of our attentions.  There's no point in these containers if they don't tell a narrative or register an opinion or at least elicit a "See? Made you look" moment from billboards of competing story lines.

One point of reference on last week's Penn State head-linings played to the taking of umbrage: institution swallows its own common decency while its own misplaced pride plays on to restive gallery. I fancied some further riffing before the story crashed (until next indicting-worthy revelations) of an Occupy Paterno movement.

Non Amateur Status

It would free academics from the hypocrisy of pretending to educate entertainment prodigies in the athletic achievement sciences. We send kids in to play kid games and then skim off the extra revenue normally targeted for agents and athletes: amateur status? Not for the for profit side of American Universities. Not even for the private side of Friar Joseph's diploma mill.

If we deign the 21st century the place to be for Gens Z1, Z2, Z3... then why not relegate King Football and his gridiron fortress to the car repair and radiology certification track? That way our generations W, X, and Y can continue to engorge our sports bureaucracies of higher earning. We can reserve a sliver of the largesse for these crash-tested NFL rejects when they need to get a life and the ROTC is broke -- which it will be with or without on-campus occupy movements.

The outrage from the cover-up played to the same script departures we've seen in other bastions of orthodoxy that prefers eating one's own to turning the insiders out. Something about the value of the tribe over the letter of the law: "The news is a shocking surprise to us this week, but it was not news to Penn State," wrote Canuck, my friend and umbrage-carrier.

I know nothing of Penn (either as State, Zoil, or 'n Teller). But I do know that our cultural breadth of awareness is spilling out into the streets of our own Occupy Zones. Just as surely as ADD is the cost of business as usual it is equally true that all those zigzag attention bursts create a much wider awareness circle than existed in the linear world of who-knew-what-and-when insinuations. In fact our very expectations around what passive heresay and active engagement means is rife for a recall election.

Am I saying that I, cyber-citizen, am paralyzed at the neck up by too many calls to action? Maybe. But what I'm trying to hear from this argument is how to teach sound judgement in an age biased towards...

1. passivity masquerading as open-mindedness


2. piety passing for an accurate moral compass reading

No Country for Sanctimonious Saps

Curiously a competing narrative broke in our own email thread from the notion that there was a narrative here in the first place. It was the notion that our cultural media diets could no sooner fast for one news cycle than an army of anchor people would teleprompt us around a random sequence of disconnected events. The upshot? Feel the communion of the traveling news-givers. My pal Pondish is a former reporter and feels only alienation:

"Perhaps this will fade, but I suddenly seem all but incapable of summoning outrage about, well, nearly everything.  More to the point I find it enervating the degree amount of outrage around me.  I joked last week that I was relieved it was election day, and that I was glad we would be choosing a president and put this nasty, divisive campaign behind us.  Likewise, I've been unable to summon much visceral enthusiasm for Occupy Wall Street and have alienated more than a handful of people, having missed that the officially sanctioned response is, "Occupy Wall Street! Fuck Yeah!"  And honestly, the whole Penn State miasma seems to have gone over my head.  I simply don't buy the idea that an entire university needs redemption and soul-searching (although as of today, Obama says it's the entire nation that needs to take a deep look inside) because of someone witness a perverted act in a shower years ago." 

The bromide continues:

"Well, sorry, but no.  The state of my soul is pretty good.  I am not culpable or complicit. And neither are you. What happened at Penn State doesn't seem to have deeper meaning or to serve as an indictment of the broader anything."

"We seem to have entered an age where we can no longer separate ourselves from events in the world.  What happens to one of us happens to all of us.  We leave flowers in front of the Apple store (seriously?) because Steve Jobs is dead.  We must instantly contextualize everything, find the storyline, understand What It Means."

Dead Sea Narratives

It's ironic that these forced narratives are happening over social networks and not broadcast networks. Everyone's taking their media cues in the age of long tails wagging old dogs, dead tree industries, and the onset of wholesale media climate change. Are we those splintering factions or the collective beehive? A community unified if only by its disconnected nature.

No matter whose side of which story we're inclined to believe, there's an angle to play, a bone to pick, and an argument to be made about who wins and loses. It's just as interesting that whether the parables address...

(1) child molestation,

(2) codes of silence,

(3) the corruptible role of money in collegiate sports, or

(4) the senility status of its many figureheads

... these models were sculpted from journalism clay. These are the tenets of universal media from biblical tabloid times. Facebook has 800 million unpaid contractors on its payrolls. That's one script few are departing from.

As for my cronies let's just say that a contrarian is someone who'd rather be wrong than be misled: "Don't blame me. I voted for Nader." I can get over the fact that Pondish won't be bringing me flowers. It's too late for Andy Rooney and I'm reasonably certain he laid the same argument to rest at the foot of the JFK Jr. floral parade. My soul is shifting on stable ground whether I donate a new helping of platelets to the Red Cross before Thanksgiving or after.

I'm also all but certain to resist his hair-thinning threshold of the dispassion he speaks. Still, a daily scrub of ego removal and a few trace scatterings of nihilism could keep my accounts more honest. The stories I could tell might not succumb to my own spoiler alerts or the plays I send in.

The main thing I guess is to expect nothing from our world and try to give something back in return. It's not out of altruism or naiveté but the transcendent conceit that our lives do make a difference. What's the catch? Our lot is to figure out what tiny speck of the world that will benefit from our most abundant virtues.

If we greet each morning with that determination can we sideline the demons in us? Or is that the cost for righting the injustices that flourish when the culture anchors our news?

Parse-Snips: Up Close and Impersonal

This remember the Ground Zero Alamo stuff around the Cordoba Mosque has everything going for it: two opposing teams, a murder scene, demagoguery, bullhorns, and a global audience that can say we-told-you-so no matter what's been communicated by which side.

This story's legs are so long that we don't have to wait for the economy to recover, the next spill to evaporate, or the insurgents to reload their rhetorical weapons. But there is one element missing here. And it just may turn out the lights before the next line of stem cells is showing trace elements of salmonella poisoning.

There are no coveted interviews awaiting attention-starved witness-experts of the paranormal infidels. There are no human circus acts posing as brokers between victims and perpetrators. Pending any celebrity appearances there are no book deals or screen rights in the balance. With little chance of a false confession, embarrassing disclosure, or an ingratiating nut bug to keep the cameras rolling, this story has no leading star. Just bit players. But what did we expect? No laws have been broken in the sale of this property.

A Cause Smaller than Ourselves

There are two teams but neither one lays claim to a single magnetic contestant. The mulahs are all too pleased to don their dark road jerseys on our competitive-crazed home turf. But with no stars in the lineup and the nagging potential that both sides have a point, the air time will escape from this balloon long before it pops.

And even if there was a whiff of corruption, it's mired in the intricacies of leasing agreements and zoning restrictions. Not exactly the gavel-pounding foray into a cable news auction for the fuzziest cellphone photo.

The problem with this story is that it's about principles and policies. We expect debating points to be packaged as shouting matches masquerading as contests of ideas. But our attentions will not hold to this level of abstraction. NPR's Morning Edition reported this morning that only 41% of all Americans even knew one of the billion-and-a-quarter Muslims on the planet. It's hard to personalize a story when you don't know the characters.

That's a whole lot of fuel burned for keeping close to home. And that's where those attentions will stay barring the collision of continental shelves set adrift by climate change or the next big militant Islamist outbreak inside our clammy and porous borders.

When We Come Back

A movie deal is still attainable. A self-appointed victim steps forward a year from now to bask in the 10th year anniversary of 9-11. They're onto something and promise to spill fresh explosives on these dying embers.

Why will they have waited a year?
Will their story be riddled with inconsistencies?
Are the retainers of their own legal teams riding on these answers?

The vetting of that process is not to be an interview topic because it compromises the talent and the networks: "It's a very defined underworld of behavior that people really don't talk about," says a former storybroker in the News merchant piece by Sheelah Kolhatkar running in the current issue of the Atlantic.

It's also the one history lesson of competitive politicking that bears repeating.

We conclude with a new term and three of its casualties:

The competifying of politics

1. - Thoughtful debate ("you have a point")
2. - Just punishment ("debt to society")
3. - Win-win situations (the "greater good")

Parse-Snips: Up Close and Impersonal

This remember the Ground Zero Alamo stuff around the Cordoba Mosque has everything going for it: two opposing teams, a murder scene, demagoguery, bullhorns, and a global audience that can say we-told-you-so no matter what's been communicated by which side.

This story's legs are so long that we don't have to wait for the economy to recover, the next spill to evaporate, or the insurgents to reload their rhetorical weapons. But there is one element missing here. And it just may turn out the lights before the next line of stem cells is showing trace elements of salmonella poisoning.

There are no coveted interviews awaiting attention-starved witness-experts of the paranormal infidels. There are no human circus acts posing as brokers between victims and perpetrators. Pending any celebrity appearances there are no book deals or screen rights in the balance. With little chance of a false confession, embarrassing disclosure, or an ingratiating nut bug to keep the cameras rolling, this story has no leading star. Just bit players. But what did we expect? No laws have been broken in the sale of this property.

A Cause Smaller than Ourselves

There are two teams but neither one lays claim to a single magnetic contestant. The mulahs are all too pleased to don their dark road jerseys on our competitive-crazed home turf. But with no stars in the lineup and the nagging potential that both sides have a point, the air time will escape from this balloon long before it pops.

And even if there was a whiff of corruption, it's mired in the intricacies of leasing agreements and zoning restrictions. Not exactly the gavel-pounding foray into a cable news auction for the fuzziest cellphone photo.

The problem with this story is that it's about principles and policies. We expect debating points to be packaged as shouting matches masquerading as contests of ideas. But our attentions will not hold to this level of abstraction. NPR's Morning Edition reported this morning that only 41% of all Americans even knew one of the billion-and-a-quarter Muslims on the planet. It's hard to personalize a story when you don't know the characters.

That's a whole lot of fuel burned for keeping close to home. And that's where those attentions will stay barring the collision of continental shelves set adrift by climate change or the next big militant Islamist outbreak inside our clammy and porous borders.

When We Come Back

A movie deal is still attainable. A self-appointed victim steps forward a year from now to bask in the 10th year anniversary of 9-11. They're onto something and promise to spill fresh explosives on these dying embers.

Why will they have waited a year?
Will their story be riddled with inconsistencies?
Are the retainers of their own legal teams riding on these answers?

The vetting of that process is not to be an interview topic because it compromises the talent and the networks: "It's a very defined underworld of behavior that people really don't talk about," says a former storybroker in the News merchant piece by Sheelah Kolhatkar running in the current issue of the Atlantic.

It's also the one history lesson of competitive politicking that bears repeating.

We conclude with a new term and three of its casualties:

The competifying of politics

1. - Thoughtful debate ("you have a point")
2. - Just punishment ("debt to society")
3. - Win-win situations (the "greater good")

True Concessions

I only found out in my last visit to Western Mass that my son didn't understand literally or figuratively what the expression "to hold one's nose" meant or how it was an effective tool for soldiering on under squalid conditions or rising above a stench or two. It also applies to my vote this week for Martha Coakley in her historic loss to a fire-breathing majority of Commonwealth voters.

Lawn signs, local campaign offices, and rallies in the common are the more redemptive side of robocalls, negative ads, and the thunderclapping of cable political theater. I never saw a single Coakley sign and was reminded of this when Senator-elect Brown recounted seeing a homemade sign done in his honor on a truck stop through an unfamiliar town.

It is equally telling that Coakley spent the majority of her concession defending how busy her bustling team was every step on the precipitous slide from primary day to the election. We weren't complacent she seemed to be saying. We just weren't very effective. I can count on one nostril the number of Democrats I know that talked about meeting her, seeing her, or even voting for her. What us couch-fuming Baystater grumps all saw was the frontrunner taking to the air with the clock running out. Not surprisingly most of those hail Martha passes were picked off by underwhelmed Democrats who cheered the very same applause lines before the last voting cycle.

We on the receiving end witnessed dueling ads of her team's abysmal media-making. That playbook featured alternate warm, fuzzies coupled with some uppercut Brown bashing. How does that play out in real time? The following sequence holds even less merit than it does attention:

* Before ad: Who's Martha?
* Warm fuzzy: I'm warming to Martha
* Brown bash: To like Martha is to despise ... (who is he again?)
* Post Brown bash: Thanks for deciding my vote (and insulting my intelligence...)

In political consulting college they teach you that going negative only works when your base is anchored and the alienations you seed reverberate in the fears and doubts of the fence-sitters you're attempting to peel away. In the case of Brown v. Coakley the uncommitted middle were mostly brand loyal Democrats who thought little of not having voted in the primary -- let alone for Martha.

What Can Brown Do For Us?

And what of Senator Brown and his lovely daughters? In the same week that we've lost campaign finance reform, Air America, and the myth of a receding recession his unopposable punch was the assertion that Massachusetts has its own Obamacare. Why should we be bankrolling the blue dogs who held out for medicaid subsidies?

Here's another campaign fundamental they drill into hired guns in training: a negative that's not responded to becomes grounded. The corollary here is that a negative with grains of reality becomes gospel truth. That reality cuts deep enough to trip any get-out-the-vote drive lacing up its campaign boots.

Third Party Singular

Now that the fumes have settled the biggest looming gorilla in our national closet remains the non-starter third party response.

Response to what?

To our incapacity for bonding with our incumbent two parties. Truly the window is closing so fast that we're now throwing rascals out on the tops of corpses that have yet to exhume. Sharing our job insecurities with politicians is great for theatrics and impossible for enacting real change (READ: the right to bear sickness without going broke).

Certainly it's a safe bet that a fiscally conservative and socially liberal candidate from neither party could poll a solid 20% just by announcing. But the real value is that these disenfranchisees wouldn't have voted if that candidate didn't exist. The left is out for lunch. The right is out for blood. But the party I'm envisioning is not out for tea.

True Concessions

I only found out in my last visit to Western Mass that my son didn't understand literally or figuratively what the expression "to hold one's nose" meant or how it was an effective tool for soldiering on under squalid conditions or rising above a stench or two. It also applies to my vote this week for Martha Coakley in her historic loss to a fire-breathing majority of Commonwealth voters.

Lawn signs, local campaign offices, and rallies in the common are the more redemptive side of robocalls, negative ads, and the thunderclapping of cable political theater. I never saw a single Coakley sign and was reminded of this when Senator-elect Brown recounted seeing a homemade sign done in his honor on a truck stop through an unfamiliar town.

It is equally telling that Coakley spent the majority of her concession defending how busy her bustling team was every step on the precipitous slide from primary day to the election. We weren't complacent she seemed to be saying. We just weren't very effective. I can count on one nostril the number of Democrats I know that talked about meeting her, seeing her, or even voting for her. What us couch-fuming Baystater grumps all saw was the frontrunner taking to the air with the clock running out. Not surprisingly most of those hail Martha passes were picked off by underwhelmed Democrats who cheered the very same applause lines before the last voting cycle.

We on the receiving end witnessed dueling ads of her team's abysmal media-making. That playbook featured alternate warm, fuzzies coupled with some uppercut Brown bashing. How does that play out in real time? The following sequence holds even less merit than it does attention:

* Before ad: Who's Martha?
* Warm fuzzy: I'm warming to Martha
* Brown bash: To like Martha is to despise ... (who is he again?)
* Post Brown bash: Thanks for deciding my vote (and insulting my intelligence...)

In political consulting college they teach you that going negative only works when your base is anchored and the alienations you seed reverberate in the fears and doubts of the fence-sitters you're attempting to peel away. In the case of Brown v. Coakley the uncommitted middle were mostly brand loyal Democrats who thought little of not having voted in the primary -- let alone for Martha.

What Can Brown Do For Us?

And what of Senator Brown and his lovely daughters? In the same week that we've lost campaign finance reform, Air America, and the myth of a receding recession his unopposable punch was the assertion that Massachusetts has its own Obamacare. Why should we be bankrolling the blue dogs who held out for medicaid subsidies?

Here's another campaign fundamental they drill into hired guns in training: a negative that's not responded to becomes grounded. The corollary here is that a negative with grains of reality becomes gospel truth. That reality cuts deep enough to trip any get-out-the-vote drive lacing up its campaign boots.

Third Party Singular

Now that the fumes have settled the biggest looming gorilla in our national closet remains the non-starter third party response.

Response to what?

To our incapacity for bonding with our incumbent two parties. Truly the window is closing so fast that we're now throwing rascals out on the tops of corpses that have yet to exhume. Sharing our job insecurities with politicians is great for theatrics and impossible for enacting real change (READ: the right to bear sickness without going broke).

Certainly it's a safe bet that a fiscally conservative and socially liberal candidate from neither party could poll a solid 20% just by announcing. But the real value is that these disenfranchisees wouldn't have voted if that candidate didn't exist. The left is out for lunch. The right is out for blood. But the party I'm envisioning is not out for tea.

Thinking (the Cable Would Not Come) Outside the Box

I was not raised in the Christmas tradition.

I didn't grow up with that uninvited house guest that camped illegally under Christmas trees of yore. The burglar scrooge charged with breaking and entering was not so much an unwelcome villain as the batteries not included; the post assembly part of the toys outsourced by Santa and the Elfs to the bumbling parents who give instructions but can't seem to follow them.

Not only do my Neanderthal mechanics compromise all D-I-Y home improvements and quests to IKEA for end tables. They also jeopardize the geeky gadgets that unhandy knowledge managers like me are supposed to hit out of the office park.

By the time I'd retraced every false move along the installation path I was positive I had mistaken a power cable for a plastic bag taggie. I should have been consoled if not vindicated when I got back the following message from "Monty A" of the "HP E-Mail Technical Support Team." Monte's reply arrived nearly an hour to the moment I dispatched my New Year's SOS to tech support re: HP Deskjet F4480 All-in-one printer:

I understand from your E-mail that you don’t receive USB cable.

Marc, I would like to inform you that the all-in-one devices, including your HP All-in-One printer, are not shipped with a USB cable. Initially the all-in-one devices were shipped with a USB cable but the majority of the customers complained that they did not need the printer cable for the reasons listed below.

1. Many customers already have a cable and do not require another cable.

2. Many customers use their all-in-one product as a standalone fax and/or copier and do not require a cable.

3. Many customers require a specific length of cable to fit within their physical work environment. If a cable shipped with their All-in-one product and did not meet their needs, they would have to buy another cable.

Wow. Apparently in the US of A there are no longer any US of Bs nestled in the packing foam air pockets of any HP deskjet boxes. The message nuancer in me had to concede a deft display of double-talk from the Deskjet Kings.

Monty continues:

Since the cost of the printer cable is more, customers had to unnecessarily bear the cost of the USB cable which would in turn increase the cost of the product. Taking all the reasons listed above into account, HP decided not to ship a USB cable with the all-in-one products. This allows customers to purchase the printer cable, if needed.

Holy moley, mealy-mouthed purchaser wipes the dull glaze from his post holiday mug and concludes:

* Us desk-jetters are a restless bunch. We all insist on a divergent range of distances for trailing a printer to our desktoppers. No calculation by the manufacturer is apparently elastic enough to handle the lengths we'll go to situate our hardware.

* Gee if I'd only taken a collection back in 1987 for every 9 volt AC unit shipped with an answering machine there might be enough spare landfill for all the bulbous, parched monitors left out on the curb with today's Christmas trees.

* The all-in-oners don't need another USB clogging their memory ports. I should turn to the index in the manual to see about faxing all those scans to the cloud where no one can hear U SB, least of all Monty A.

In the end we all get what we deserve:

1. A second trip to the retailer for presumptuous consumers like me (that can't help but jumpkick us down the path to economic rebootery).

2. Printer plugs that now join the hallowed stocking grounds of "peripherals" like backup drives, CD burners and ear bud warmers that never grow long in the Blue Tooth.

3. And to the winner HP gets to pocket the spoils. Now if they could only degrade the pins that connect the components they market they could sell us replacement cartridges on those frayed, scorched, and twisted printer cables.

That would be thinking and shipping outside the box.

Thinking (the Cable Would Not Come) Outside the Box

I was not raised in the Christmas tradition.

I didn't grow up with that uninvited house guest that camped illegally under Christmas trees of yore. The burglar scrooge charged with breaking and entering was not so much an unwelcome villain as the batteries not included; the post assembly part of the toys outsourced by Santa and the Elfs to the bumbling parents who give instructions but can't seem to follow them.

Not only do my Neanderthal mechanics compromise all D-I-Y home improvements and quests to IKEA for end tables. They also jeopardize the geeky gadgets that unhandy knowledge managers like me are supposed to hit out of the office park.

By the time I'd retraced every false move along the installation path I was positive I had mistaken a power cable for a plastic bag taggie. I should have been consoled if not vindicated when I got back the following message from "Monty A" of the "HP E-Mail Technical Support Team." Monte's reply arrived nearly an hour to the moment I dispatched my New Year's SOS to tech support re: HP Deskjet F4480 All-in-one printer:

I understand from your E-mail that you don’t receive USB cable.

Marc, I would like to inform you that the all-in-one devices, including your HP All-in-One printer, are not shipped with a USB cable. Initially the all-in-one devices were shipped with a USB cable but the majority of the customers complained that they did not need the printer cable for the reasons listed below.

1. Many customers already have a cable and do not require another cable.

2. Many customers use their all-in-one product as a standalone fax and/or copier and do not require a cable.

3. Many customers require a specific length of cable to fit within their physical work environment. If a cable shipped with their All-in-one product and did not meet their needs, they would have to buy another cable.

Wow. Apparently in the US of A there are no longer any US of Bs nestled in the packing foam air pockets of any HP deskjet boxes. The message nuancer in me had to concede a deft display of double-talk from the Deskjet Kings.

Monty continues:

Since the cost of the printer cable is more, customers had to unnecessarily bear the cost of the USB cable which would in turn increase the cost of the product. Taking all the reasons listed above into account, HP decided not to ship a USB cable with the all-in-one products. This allows customers to purchase the printer cable, if needed.

Holy moley, mealy-mouthed purchaser wipes the dull glaze from his post holiday mug and concludes:

* Us desk-jetters are a restless bunch. We all insist on a divergent range of distances for trailing a printer to our desktoppers. No calculation by the manufacturer is apparently elastic enough to handle the lengths we'll go to situate our hardware.

* Gee if I'd only taken a collection back in 1987 for every 9 volt AC unit shipped with an answering machine there might be enough spare landfill for all the bulbous, parched monitors left out on the curb with today's Christmas trees.

* The all-in-oners don't need another USB clogging their memory ports. I should turn to the index in the manual to see about faxing all those scans to the cloud where no one can hear U SB, least of all Monty A.

In the end we all get what we deserve:

1. A second trip to the retailer for presumptuous consumers like me (that can't help but jumpkick us down the path to economic rebootery).

2. Printer plugs that now join the hallowed stocking grounds of "peripherals" like backup drives, CD burners and ear bud warmers that never grow long in the Blue Tooth.

3. And to the winner HP gets to pocket the spoils. Now if they could only degrade the pins that connect the components they market they could sell us replacement cartridges on those frayed, scorched, and twisted printer cables.

That would be thinking and shipping outside the box.

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.

Parse-Snips: "And I Mean It"

Much has been made about the Skip Gates / Cambridge Police imbroglio. The biggest drama in the aftermath of the press conference is of its diffusion -- not the completely predictable, almost mechanical, escalation of indignation between two sparring partners (and they are partners). I tip my hat to Obama's calibrated apology: I'm not taking any of it back but I did get in over my head. In the moment where the fear-harboring swells into the shouting match Crowley, Gates and the President were all consumed by passion and that's the boundary-smasher.

The spectacle was ripe for picking because:

(1) It was unscripted -- it wasn't about health care. Obama could have been just as easily asked about the newest wave of settlements in the West Bank. He could have struck the same tender chord of authenticity by invoking his parental instincts about his own daughters in harm's way. And everyone would have gone on talking about how a veto-proof Senate needs bi-partisan support for health care reform to pass.

(2) Obama departed from his game -- rather than the arbitrage he favors over the triangulations of the Clinton/Bush era, he put himself squarely in the middle -- not as arbitrator but victim. The third-person ID on "any one of us would have been angry" begged a color-based stencil. Yes, racial profiling is a fact of American life. So is pigment justice as the surest race to the bottom of any policy debate on race.

(3) Narrative tells itself -- The race card is runner-up only to the cult of celebrity and sex for marquee media value -- "if you want a crowd, start a fight" [and] keep the camera rolling long enough for the barkers to mount their soap boxes. There's no nuance necessary when the questions are so black and so white. Or are they?

In one corner we have the institutional clout of law enforcement teamed with the sensitivity training of a post white supremacist world view. In the other the venerable brand of glittering brains and policy-speak of towering Harvard backed with every unfinished agenda on the social left that gives voice to the "world's most opinionated zip code." Yes, try undressing those vagaries and then convince the scorekeeper there's a scoreboard big enough to hold all the debating points.

Full disclosure -- Obama and Skip go back together? Well the Cambridge cops should be on a first name basis with the streets they patrol. The block of the reported break-in is lined with the residences of sleep-deprived, prestigous, self-important Harvard professors.

The more substantive misstep to my thinking was Obama's stretch of self-conferring credibility. Here's the line:

"I have also pledged that health insurance reform will not add to our deficit over the next decade - and I mean it."

Without delving into GAO reports, GAAP principles, or lies and damn lies let's look at the face of this: Part of the reason the man is so comfortable in his skin is that he can perform a feat that evades the vanity of elected officials. He can identify himself as a third party -- a major survival skill for anyone needing to function in a leadership role without compromising their own integrity. When Bob Dole referred to himself as Dole it sounded like we weren't going to have Nixon to kick around any longer. When Obama does it we float to the ceiling of the press room and undergo an out-of-body experience.

That's what's so shocking about the "and I mean it" part. That's the kind of defensive posturing I'd expect from a more shrill and less assured pol. It begs the question: what if you don't really mean it. The health care deficit water should be carried more presumably by HHS Secretary Kathy Sebelius or Joe the Biden: "And he means it," might have taken Obama's pledge one step closer to echo chamber gospel. But the 'crats are a squirmy choir regardless of the sheet music or the talking points.

For the good of the country I hope the next time the health care debate is not about Obama that the President doesn't personalize his candor or have those Senate lions let their donor base decide on the compromises that are baked into the final signing of the 2009/10 Universal Health Recovery Act.

On second thought I hope Obama reconsiders and does make the battle about himself. Like Reagan he's more popular than his policies. But no one but himself will be asking to face this kind of crucible; his allies because they believe he's irreplacable and his enemies because he scares them so.

For a punishment-happy republic as ours it is ironic and sobering how little sacrifice we have come to expect from our leaders. But is their cowardice that hard to question in the pursuit of our own narrow interests?

Parse-Snips: "And I Mean It"

Much has been made about the Skip Gates / Cambridge Police imbroglio. The biggest drama in the aftermath of the press conference is of its diffusion -- not the completely predictable, almost mechanical, escalation of indignation between two sparring partners (and they are partners). I tip my hat to Obama's calibrated apology: I'm not taking any of it back but I did get in over my head. In the moment where the fear-harboring swells into the shouting match Crowley, Gates and the President were all consumed by passion and that's the boundary-smasher.

The spectacle was ripe for picking because:

(1) It was unscripted -- it wasn't about health care. Obama could have been just as easily asked about the newest wave of settlements in the West Bank. He could have struck the same tender chord of authenticity by invoking his parental instincts about his own daughters in harm's way. And everyone would have gone on talking about how a veto-proof Senate needs bi-partisan support for health care reform to pass.

(2) Obama departed from his game -- rather than the arbitrage he favors over the triangulations of the Clinton/Bush era, he put himself squarely in the middle -- not as arbitrator but victim. The third-person ID on "any one of us would have been angry" begged a color-based stencil. Yes, racial profiling is a fact of American life. So is pigment justice as the surest race to the bottom of any policy debate on race.

(3) Narrative tells itself -- The race card is runner-up only to the cult of celebrity and sex for marquee media value -- "if you want a crowd, start a fight" [and] keep the camera rolling long enough for the barkers to mount their soap boxes. There's no nuance necessary when the questions are so black and so white. Or are they?

In one corner we have the institutional clout of law enforcement teamed with the sensitivity training of a post white supremacist world view. In the other the venerable brand of glittering brains and policy-speak of towering Harvard backed with every unfinished agenda on the social left that gives voice to the "world's most opinionated zip code." Yes, try undressing those vagaries and then convince the scorekeeper there's a scoreboard big enough to hold all the debating points.

Full disclosure -- Obama and Skip go back together? Well the Cambridge cops should be on a first name basis with the streets they patrol. The block of the reported break-in is lined with the residences of sleep-deprived, prestigous, self-important Harvard professors.

The more substantive misstep to my thinking was Obama's stretch of self-conferring credibility. Here's the line:

"I have also pledged that health insurance reform will not add to our deficit over the next decade - and I mean it."

Without delving into GAO reports, GAAP principles, or lies and damn lies let's look at the face of this: Part of the reason the man is so comfortable in his skin is that he can perform a feat that evades the vanity of elected officials. He can identify himself as a third party -- a major survival skill for anyone needing to function in a leadership role without compromising their own integrity. When Bob Dole referred to himself as Dole it sounded like we weren't going to have Nixon to kick around any longer. When Obama does it we float to the ceiling of the press room and undergo an out-of-body experience.

That's what's so shocking about the "and I mean it" part. That's the kind of defensive posturing I'd expect from a more shrill and less assured pol. It begs the question: what if you don't really mean it. The health care deficit water should be carried more presumably by HHS Secretary Kathy Sebelius or Joe the Biden: "And he means it," might have taken Obama's pledge one step closer to echo chamber gospel. But the 'crats are a squirmy choir regardless of the sheet music or the talking points.

For the good of the country I hope the next time the health care debate is not about Obama that the President doesn't personalize his candor or have those Senate lions let their donor base decide on the compromises that are baked into the final signing of the 2009/10 Universal Health Recovery Act.

On second thought I hope Obama reconsiders and does make the battle about himself. Like Reagan he's more popular than his policies. But no one but himself will be asking to face this kind of crucible; his allies because they believe he's irreplacable and his enemies because he scares them so.

For a punishment-happy republic as ours it is ironic and sobering how little sacrifice we have come to expect from our leaders. But is their cowardice that hard to question in the pursuit of our own narrow interests?