By The People, For The People?

The eyes of the world are focused on Iran where the will of the people is struggling to be heard. Here in Milwaukee the people spoke in favor of a paid sick leave mandate. So what's the difference?

Ubiquitous Obama Adjusts to Evolving Media Universe

While media mavens struggle to figure out how to earn a buck selling the news, the tsunami of changes they face also presents enormous challenges for the folks who make the news. Way back in the last century, when a president wanted to make news he simply walked into the White House Rose Garden and whatever he said was quickly fed to the nation and world via the Associated Press, The New York Times, the major broadcast and cable television networks and a handful of other major media organizations. Occasionally, if the president wanted to speak directly to the public, he would deliver an address to the nation that the networks felt obligated to broadcast live during the post-dinner hours that were quaintly referred to as primetime. But that was then. These days, fewer and fewer people are getting their news from traditional sources. The preponderance of cable news networks, internet news options and the rapid growth of news on demand offered by cellphones and PDAs make it increasingly difficult for our political leaders, not to mention all the others who are competing for our attention, to get their messages out to their desired audiences. What this means is, well, actually we really don’t know yet what this all means. But it certainly means things are changing at an incredibly rapid pace and whatever worked yesterday is out of date before the ink dries on today’s newspapers. There’s a metaphor that has probably outlived its usefulness. Clearly, President Obama has his hands full trying to control the news cycle and get his message out while dealing with a recession, fighting two wars and otherwise running the country. You have to give the guy credit; just this last week or so he managed to announce the nomination of a new Supreme Court Justice, oversee the conditions for GM to declare bankruptcy, ensure that no less than five Congressional committees are moving forward with proposals to reform the nation’s health care system, all before heading off to the Middle East to deliver a speech intended to restart America’s relationship with the world’s Islamic population. Everyone seemed to agree that candidate Obama made remarkable use of the internet during the campaign. But doesn’t that seem a long, long time ago? During his first few months in office, President Obama experimented with a few innovations such as an internet public hearing and distributing his weekly address in video on YouTube. The White House’s efforts to get its message out can sometimes take your breath away. One minute you’ve got NBC News anchor Brian Williams following Obama around for a day winning the president a delicious, fat wet kiss for two nights on the network. Then The New York Times runs a story that gushes about how effectively All The President’s Men (let’s face it, they are mostly men) are working with Congress, especially on health care reform. And you couldn’t turn on a computer the last 24 hours or so without getting invited to […]

Bronx Girl Makes Good

It’s going to be hard to demonize the girl from the Bronx projects. She went to Princeton and Yale Law, served as a prosecutor and corporate attorney, was appointed to the federal bench by the first President Bush and was elevated to the appeals court by President Clinton. Sonia Sotomayor has the kind of back story that lends itself to a delightful “Movie of the Week” portrayal.

Smoke Free Compromise Expected to Pass

The good news is that the Wisconsin legislature is likely to pass a comprehensive bill to prohibit smoking in all workplaces in the state as soon as Wednesday. Yes, that includes all bars and restaurants. The bad news is that the law won’t take effect until July 5, 2010.

Janet Zweig ain’t Karen Finley

The breaking news from Milwaukee’s City Hall Tuesday was that the Common Council voted, by a lopsided 12-2, to approve the public art installation for E. Wisconsin Avenue designed by Janet Zweig. The tempest in a teapot didn’t boil over and Mike Brenner did not even have to resort to defecating on the lawn of any alderman who opposed the project. The threat, he says, was a conscious decision to throw fuel on the fire of the controversy to focus attention on the importance of supporting Zweig’s project. Ald. Joe Dudzik, who, along with Ald. Bob Donovan, ultimately voted against the project, went for Brenner’s bait. He left a message on Brenner’s voice mail daring the provocateur to make good on his promise, thoughtfully leaving his home address. Brenner, being the creative guy he is, recorded a remix using Dudzik’s phone message and posted it on his web site. Well, boys will be boys. Now I really have to move on from the Brenner-Dudzik, err, pissing match before you get the impression that the Zweig piece coming soon to Milwaukee’s downtown is some kind of creepy, offensive concept with the potential to embarrass our fair city. History is full of examples of high-concept art intended to shock and/or disgust, often referencing urine or feces. Who can forget Karen Finley’s creative use of chocolate or the incredibly self-indulgent Andres Serrano even going all the way back to Marcel Duchamps’s celebrated and controversial urinal of 1917. Zweig’s public art for the Instructional Technology Center, Santa Fe Community College. It invents and writes a new line of text, displayed on a mechanical “flip-disk” sign every time someone passes through. Sorry to disappoint, but Janet Zweig’s art is none-of-the-above. Janet Zweig is a Milwaukee-born artist who has built a national reputation developing the kind of interactive art that engages without offending. Take a look at the current issue of Sculpture magazine for an overwhelmingly positive examination of her work. The process that culminated in her being chosen for this project has been going on for years, at least since 2002. Milwaukee Magazine’s Bruce Murphy does a nice job of reviewing the history and, bless his soul, contextualizing the current flare-up. Zweig seems to have bent over backwards to avoid offending anybody. Her use of old-fashioned flip-disk technology, the kind associated with signs at rail stations, introduces a type of interactivity to her work that is refreshingly modern without appearing pretentious. And she plans to involve local artists and others in the work as a clever way to return some of the funds to the community. The lion’s share of the $300,000 cost is coming from the federal government and the $60,000 city contribution goes exclusively to local folks. Hard to find anything to complain about, right? Well, not so fast. I’m not an expert on art but my gripe with the proposal is that it doesn’t appear to be public enough. As engaging as the concept seems, I believe that one strength of the […]

One more reason to respect Iowa

“I’m almost ready to up and leave Iowa and move back to Minnesota,” one woman said angrily. “There’s something about it happening in the heartland that has got to accelerate this process for the whole country,” said another. On April 4, the Iowa Supreme Court overturned the ban on same-sex marriages, giving lie to the myth that Iowa folks are strictly conservative. Some would say they are, indeed, Progressives. Whatever your take on the same-sex marriage issue, the court’s web site had 1.5 million viewers on the day of the decision. The court’s seven members made it a unanimous decision. I have a beautiful niece, one of several. Not only is she highly intelligent, she is a hard-working and has for many years supported herself. She is loved by her father, her mother, her sister, and her devoted partner, Annie. My niece is a lesbian. In the building I occupy are several gay and lesbian couples. They come and go like other occupants, off to shop or walk their pets. One of the gay partners is a well-respected judge in our county court system, and I volunteered for his re-election campaign. If you placed these couples (or individuals) in a crowd, you’d never be able to identify their gender preference. For instance, is that fellow over there gay, the one dressed in a suit and tie? Yes, he is. He’s a parole officer. His partner works for Milwaukee’s Health Department. And the lady in the flowered suit and fashionable shoes? Oh, she’s one of our State Representatives. She’s a lesbian. The aforementioned judge and his partner throw a big Halloween costume party each fall. It’s a blast. That said, no one swings from the chandeliers brandishing sex toys. At the last one I attended, the guy I was standing next to was dressed as a Milwaukee police officer. A gay chap, he really is a Milwaukee police officer. Milwaukee has churches friendly to gay and lesbian couples. In the summer, the city celebrates Pride Fest and I can think of no place in town that would single out lesbian and gay couples as “unwelcome,” though Pride Fest is sometimes picketed by those who think their way is the only way. We have a center for “Gay Arts,” but it isn’t the art that’s gay, it’s the artists who produce it. I have a lady friend who, after an unsuccessful heterosexual marriage, partnered with a woman. When one of their mothers died last year, the two of them steered her wheelchair through small town Iowa, in a “Race to Beat Cancer,” event. Together, they grieved over their loss. A teacher gal pal married and raised a fine son who is currently serving in Iran. When her child rearing days were over, she left her marriage to live with a woman who leads a blues band. She told me she knew early on that she preferred the company of women, but societal pressures directed her toward a heterosexual marriage. Incidentally, the lady […]

let’s get small

It’s been another terrible week for newspapers. Four Michigan cities will soon be without dailies; Reuters reported yesterday that Conley Media is cutting the Monday editions of the Waukesha Freeman and the West Bend Daily News (what will they call it now?); Cox Publications is cutting about 245 jobs at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution; Hearst Corp. is relieving about 200 employees of their positions at the Houston Chronicle; the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is likely to see another round of layoffs very soon as well. These cuts represent staff reductions of 10 to 30-percent at their respective institutions, outpacing even the grim overall decline in American jobs exponentially. This is just one week, not even worse than last week, or the week before. We all get it. The newspaper iceberg is melting faster than polar bear habitat. Many journalists I talk to now have shifted their thinking from wondering when flood will subside to setting up their music stands on deck. This latter carries a certain air of tragic nobility, but it’s really a crying shame. Even iconic Madison newsman and WPRI think-tanker Marc Eisen seems unable to move beyond the mathematics of hopelessness. And that, if you have followed his illustrious and dedicated career, is not a good sign. Think about it: if the very people who hold our best hope for preserving journalism have given up, then what chance do we have? It’s time to think small In the now-notorious TIME Magazine article from February 5, 2009, former managing editor Walter Isaacson proposes that a micro-pay system for accessing online news content could help to rebuild plummeting newspaper revenue and decrease journalism’s reliance on the will and whims of advertisers. Regrettably, the article has been widely dismissed by many in the industry who are dead certain that readers will not pay for content. I beg to differ. We willingly pay for premium television, for cell phone service, for high-speed Internet, for satellite radio, for GPS service. We buy music on the web. We pay monthly subscription fees for web-based services and to download books to our Kindles. There was great resistance to all of these things at first, but in the end, appetite overtook the reluctance to pony up. I don’t understand why it would be different for news, which has never been consumed in such quantities as it is today. But despite how obvious it seems to me (and other, far more qualified minds), this thinking is widely dismissed by the dwindling journalism community itself as over-simplistic. “People will still find a way to steal it” is one argument, as is “Someone will always be willing to provide it for free.” So what? What about the thousands of pirate music sites you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting? As far as I can tell, the fact that people will continue to steal music didn’t keep iTunes from selling $3.4 billion worth of songs, 99-cents at a time, in 2008. That’s an $840 million increase over 2007, despite the […]

The Yin and Yang of Economic Recovery

It was like a week-long stimulus package for political junkies. First, President Obama’s appearance on NBC’s Tonight Show made him the first sitting president to appear on a late night talk show. Not really a historic event of epic proportions but Jay’s ratings spiked and that accounts for something. Then the president’s 60 Minutes interview, his second in two months, provided him with another platform to take his message directly to the American people. This kind of audience isn’t something to be taken lightly but he still wasn’t done. By the time of his Tuesday night primetime news conference, also his second since taking office, even strong supporters were wondering if Obama was risking overexposure. Yet today, Obama is on the internet responding to questions from the public. The president appears to be one of the nation’s greatest sources of renewable energy, outdoing even that tiresome cartoon rabbit as he keeps going and going and going. Drawing on FDR’s successful fireside chat strategy but updating it for the 21st century, Obama seems to combine the legendary communications skills of Ronald Reagan with the policy acumen of Bill Clinton. Clinton was good at appearing at ease and in control of the facts but Obama’s performance is in a class all by itself. He makes mistakes, for sure, but even an East German judge would award him at least a 9.7 given the degree of difficulty. Few people actually understand the intricacies of the financial system, let alone know how to fix it. But we expect our leaders to. We judge them on the critical measures of competence, confidence and commitment, and Obama has earned high grades on all three. During the campaign, Obama was often labeled as a rock star and John McCain tried to make this into a negative. But we want to be infatuated by our leaders as long as they also demonstrate the energy and ability to attend to our needs. Obama’s greatest strength has been his ability to walk this fine line; inspiring while occasionally chastising, showing intelligence without appearing wonkish, and working hard enough to appear focused without appearing to strain under the pressure. I know it’s only been two months but we live in a society with little patience. Some people on the right and the left made up their mind about Obama a long time ago and probably won’t change under almost any eventuality. But the president’s popularity and, to a great extent, his success will depend on the response of the critical mass in the middle. It is way too early to assess the success or failure of the Obama presidency. But on the critical metric of public confidence you have to give the guy credit. He seems in charge, he seems to have a plan and he seems to be up to the challenge. The naysayers are apoplectic about how much debt the federal government is amassing. Well, duh! But Obama has not been blind to this problem and has returned time […]

It’s time to change the conversation

Newspapers are too often confused with news. But if the container no longer works, it's time to find one that does. This is a re-post (with additions) of an earlier story.

More Work To Do

Barack Obama won by applying solid community organizing fundamentals to a national campaign. He built an extremely loyal and disciplined network of staff and volunteers, developed an extraordinarily smart strategy and rode the combination all the way to the White House. Wisely, he is now applying those principles to help ensure that his national agenda gets the grassroots support it needs to succeed. Mobilizing the Obama nation in support of his budget and his agenda is a no-brainer. Developing grassroots organizations to advance real change locally is equally important and shouldn’t be overlooked. Energy? Education? Health care? Jobs? What happens locally matters! It really, really matters! Governor Doyle, very much like President Obama, has seized on the challenging economic environment to include ambitious yet responsible, forward-looking yet, dare I say, necessary reforms in his proposed state budget. And critics, just like the ones opposed to the President’s budget, are complaining that the budget process isn’t the right way to advance a policy agenda. Well, it seems to me that such an argument is the last refuge of a minority party. Disagree with a particular proposal? State your case and make your argument. But the budget process is exactly the right time to ensure government is doing the things it should be doing. We certainly know that obstructionists have used the budget process to block things they oppose. So let the debate begin and let it be public and lively. The state legislature’s Joint Committee on Finance will be in town to hear what you have to say next Wednesday. Is there something in the proposed budget that you love or hate? Here’s an opportunity to be heard. My personal favorite is the proposed ban on smoking in workplaces. It’s about time Wisconsin workers didn’t have to risk their health by showing up on the job. And there’s no doubt that reducing tobacco’s impact will result in real savings in health care costs so don’t tell me this doesn’t belong in the budget. And here in Milwaukee my attention is riveted by the proposed MORE jobs ordinance. This common sense proposal would extend hiring standards to include developers who receive more than $1 million in financial support from the city. In other words, if developers are going to accept handouts from city taxpayers they damn well better be willing to hire a certain percentage of qualified city workers and pay them the prevailing wage appropriate to that job category. The opponents apparently believe in corporate welfare without any strings attached. I like what the New York Post had to say about the AIG mess; “Not So Fast, You Greedy Bastards!” Interestingly, the Common Council is expected to take up the MORE proposal on the same day as the local Joint Finance hearing. So I’ll be rushing to State Fair Park after raising the flag at City Hall. So that’s my two cents for today. By all means, let’s support the President’s national agenda but let’s also show that we care about what […]

Riders on the Earth Together

Watching Brett from Baghdad

New York Times Baghdad bureau chief James Glanz has filed a wonderful first-person report on watching the Jets-Bills game last Sunday from a war zone. It turns out Glanz has rooted for the Packers his entire life; his dad covered the team for a Madison television station. So, amazingly, he uses the piece to approach the question of what Brett Favre is doing playing for the Jets, not as an expert or even a sports journalist but as a fan. He compares the sensation of watching football from Iraq to what it must feel like to observe life on Earth from Mars. Glanz shares the experience of explaining football to an Iraqi soccer-loving colleague whose cell phone keeps ringing with requests for help understanding the shoe-throwing at President Bush incident. It’s a great read. And now for something completely different. By now you’ve probably heard that Caroline Kennedy is being considered for the Senate seat being vacated by Hillary Clinton. Nobody’s asked me, but I’m all for it. Perhaps it’s appropriate that I disclose my close, personal relationship with Miss Kennedy. One of my earliest memories was seeing pictures of Caroline and John, Jr. when they were kids living in the White House. As young as we were (you see we are virtually the same age), I realized then and there that Caroline and I would be married some day. Caroline Kennedy was my first crush. Things haven’t quite worked out as I imagined back then. She ended up marrying some milquetoast named Edwin Schlossberg. Edwin Schlossberg? So our paths may have diverged but I haven’t forgotten about her. I’d notice when she’d turn up on television promoting a book or stepping up to the plate to address the challenges facing the New York City school system. (I have the greatest respect for Sr. Joel Read but she ain’t no Caroline Kennedy!) And my thoughts were with her when her brother died so tragically in that plane crash in 1999. That left her as the sole keeper of the Camelot flame and I knew we’d hear more from her in time. I know that some will protest that she hasn’t the credentials to step into such an important office. What nonsense! Like her mother and much of the rest of her family, she has been extremely active in public affairs though without the high profile normally associated with political candidates. Her books, including variations on her father’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Profiles in Courage,” show her high regard for public service and her management of the Kennedy image demonstrates the gravitas and political savvy that bode well for her ability to serve the Empire State. Fare thee well, sweet Caroline, for I harbor nothing but good wishes for you. And if you happen to tire of that Schlossberg guy, give me a holler!