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Nov
9
Lincoln Chafee
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If I were a Republican, I would have voted for Rhode Island’s GOP Senator, Lincoln Chafee. I really like what I’ve read about him – and I admit that I know little else. Likewise, if I were a Democrat in RI, I’d have voted for the Democratic opponent, Sheldon Whitehouse, simply to get more Dems in the legislature, not because I didn’t like Chafee.
And that’s really the loss the Republicans had visited upon them Tuesday: Americans want to see what the other party can do, or at least folks who think differently, come from a different perspective and shake things up a bit.
By all accounts, Chafee sounds like the kind of politician I’d really admire. And, for much of his career, his neighbor Joe Lieberman was too.
Isn’t it fascinating how Rhode Island and Connecticut share a border and are home to a very conservative Democrat who ran as an Independent, and a very liberal Republican who now may leave his party, yet only one came out a winner – the one who says he’ll still caucus with the Dems?
If those results don’t teach you something about semantics and soul, then you’re just not listening to America carefully enough. Except now? A few folks leftover in D.C. are going to have to.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 11:36 pm November 9th, 2006 in Politics | 4 Comments
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Nov
9
Lincoln Chafee
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If I were a Republican, I would have voted for Rhode Island’s GOP Senator, Lincoln Chafee. I really like what I’ve read about him – and I admit that I know little else. Likewise, if I were a Democrat in RI, I’d have voted for the Democratic opponent, Sheldon Whitehouse, simply to get more Dems in the legislature, not because I didn’t like Chafee.
And that’s really the loss the Republicans had visited upon them Tuesday: Americans want to see what the other party can do, or at least folks who think differently, come from a different perspective and shake things up a bit.
By all accounts, Chafee sounds like the kind of politician I’d really admire. And, for much of his career, his neighbor Joe Lieberman was too.
Isn’t it fascinating how Rhode Island and Connecticut share a border and are home to a very conservative Democrat who ran as an Independent, and a very liberal Republican who now may leave his party, yet only one came out a winner – the one who says he’ll still caucus with the Dems?
If those results don’t teach you something about semantics and soul, then you’re just not listening to America carefully enough. Except now? A few folks leftover in D.C. are going to have to.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 8:36 pm November 9th, 2006 in Politics | Comments Off
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Nov
9
Backlashed and backwards, not barefoot and pregnant; Part II of exclusive interview with Marie Wilson, Founder, President, The White House Project
Filed Under Politics | 4 Comments
Read Part I here.
Evil exists in the form of Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi. How do we know this? Because we were told so. Marie Wilson, of The White House Project, explains in this November 6, 2007 entry on The Huffington Post blog:
It’s as old as Eve and pretty predictable: the power of a woman to tempt us to disaster. Political pundits and candidates have created their own “October Surprise” by identifying the real dangers in this election–not terrorists or nuclear bombs–but two women: Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton.
The latest reason to get out the vote is the threat of Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House (should the Democrats win today) and the frightening specter of Senator Hillary Clinton as president.
Their power continues to be perceived warily, even as it is acknowledged by Pelosi herself that most Americans have no idea who she is, and as Hillary’s polls give her the highest favorability rating of any possible Democratic candidate for ’08. We’ve seen this kind of demonization before. A review of the literature on Elizabeth Dole when she ran for president shows that the press and her own husband (who spread public doubts about her ability to win) took her from a top contender to a drop out within months. More recently, New York Attorney General candidate Jeannine Pirro has been cast as the devil on several mainstream blogs.
Although Wilson says that she sees positivity as women come into political being, in addition to severe responses, the severity of reaction to driven women, or simply women who want to drive, isn’t new. She says backlashes seem to occur in ten-year cycles.
“In the mid-1980s, the backlash got framed as women going back home because they didn’t like the workplace. Well, that wasn’t the case. Then, the second backlash, in the 1990s, was about how working women had more of a chance of getting struck by lightening than getting married. And that was false.
“Now we’re into the next 10 years and we’re into another phase of backlashes. I believe it was Carol Gilligan who said that we’re at the end of patriarchy. Not that its’ all over for men, but it’s all over as a system that assumes that a country has [and has to have] a certain order.” [You can read more about Gilligan's assertions here.]
But how is it, then, that other countries have or have had female heads of state, and the United States is still the bridesmaid?
Wilson points to how the United States, although never highly ranked internationally when it comes to the number of women in power, has actually dropped in status. In January, 2000, the US ranked #24. But, as of October 31, 2006, according to Women in National Parliament, Rwanda ranked first among 189 countries, while the United States came in at #67 in terms of the percentage of elected seats in a single house of parliament held by women.
Other countries ahead of the USA?
Cuba -#8
Vietnam – #25
Australia – #32
China – #47
and
Iraq – #28
We’re #67, and Iraq is #28. [You can read more on women in politics from the group that produces this ranking here, including archived statistics. More generally, you can read here.]
Sadly, Rwanda, and other countries with gender imbalances in the general population, owe their women’s positions to the death and/or killing of the men. Given the situation in Iraq, the same factor may contribute to its higher ranking as well.
Does this mean, as Shakespeare wrote about lawyers in Henry VI, “First thing we do, let’s kill all the men?” Hardly.
Wilson says that the top countries have at least three things going for them:
1. They have the history of a queen.
2. They have had matriarchical ascension, as with Ghandi. She adds, “We’ve not had that. There are no political families producing women as heir apparents.”
3. And, according to Wilson, most importantly, “the countries that have made women leaders more frequently and in greater numbers have legislated quotas.” Wilson cites South Africa (ranked at #13 ) as a country that implements legal requirements for how many women must be included in the country’s legislature.
To Wilson, there is no avoiding the irony that, “We have said to other countries that they have to have that [the quotas], but we’re adverse to that here.” Global Database of Quotas for Women tracks countries with electoral quotas. Countries that have no such quotas, such as the US, are excluded from the tracking.
Just how many countries have electoral quotas? Nearly 110. But not the United States. [Read here for more information on the quota effort.]
Can the United States’ women do better? Can the United States’ men do better? Can the United States as an entity do better, in accepting and allowing women to be in power? Do we need to do better? Why should we try to do better? And how do we accomplish doing better, whatever the term “better” might imply?
Wilson concludes in her pre-election day Huffington Post blog entry:
I’m not suggesting that a rebellion is needed. But, women should realize their power, and join together. My hope is that women in other countries will serve as an example and lead us to into realizing our own strength. Women in Chile, Liberia and Germany, countries formerly torn by torture and war, have taken on their country’s highest office. Women in Norway constitute about 50% of government positions, about 60% of college graduates, and have enacted a rule that requires 40% of all board seats of publicly traded companies be filled by women.
This year may present just such an opportunity for American women to join together. There are 2,582 women on the ballot across the country seeking seats in the US Congress and state legislature. The only “October surprise” here is the number of women who are hungry for change, and ready to lead. If Americans would stop demonizing our female leaders, and choose power over our fears, women just might turn out to be the best promise our country has.
Up next in Part III: What are the issues important to women and what can you do now, as in, immediately
By Jill Miller Zimon at 6:28 pm November 9th, 2006 in Politics | 4 Comments
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Nov
9
CPN: Sound of Ideas panel say blogs played role; CPN host uses MTB resources unabashedly
Filed Under Politics | 7 Comments
“Thank you for taking my call.” I’m pretty sure I said that, but if I didn’t, well, then, thank you for taking my call.
If you want to hear some very nice things about Ohio’s blogs, you can listen here. It comes after Dan Moulthrop introduces me as someone on the phone, about 30-40 mins. into the show. The guests were David Cohen, political science professor University of Akron Bliss Institute of Applied Politics; Mark Naymik, politics reporter, The Plain Dealer; and Bill Hershey, statehouse reporter, Dayton Daily News. Moulthrop hosted.
Here’s my approximate transcript of the relevant portion:
I asked (on air): “The Ohio Democratic Party hired an online communications director, newly elected State Treasurer Rich Cordray specifically thanked bloggers – what influence if any do you believe blogs had on Ohio’s races and what do you anticipate Internet communications to play in 2008?”
They said: (paraphrased; listen for exact quote)
Cohen: “The blogs impact is increasingly greater. Their assistance with GOTV will only increase.”
Naymik: Blogs are great aggregators of information for campaigns. They help activitists motivate. All campagins are hiring them (bloggers) because you can move the chatter and then the media follows. It’s very much a part of the race. Great tool.
Moulthrop: Meet the Bloggers forum interviews influencers. “I myself have referred to many of those interivews online.”
Hershey: The first thing I do each morning is I go to PD’s Open page and the local blogs. Bloggers are up on everything. They don’t leave a rock unturned.
Not sure who said this: Here in NEO and across the state, blogs are a great source of energy though a still recent phenomenon. There was blogging on the Republican and conservative side – but “the Democratic bloggers and progressives outblogged them.”
And that last phrase is a direct quote, thank you very much.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 4:04 pm November 9th, 2006 in Politics | 7 Comments
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Nov
9
"Oh UGH! Everything is made in China!"
Filed Under Politics | 2 Comments
“Why does that bother you, sweetie?” I asked my youngest as he worked on an art project at the kitchen table, home today for a cold.
“Ohhhh…” He oozed with gritted teeth frustration while the colored sparkle glue oozed onto the art project he was creating at our kitchen table.
“I just don’t like things made in China! Like my old journal in kindergarten. That was made in China too. I just don’t like all this China stuff.”
Can you imagine my horror? Me – who majored in Chinese and wanted to go to China when Beijing was still closed? With a son who already has a negative connection to the very idea of China?
The art project he’s working on is from Creativity for Kids, which happens to be an Ohio-based company. We have three of the same project, Butterfly Bedroom, all received as gifts and placed on reserve for sick days just like today (yeah, we get to the television and computer and gameboy and gamecube too but I’m saving that for later; right now we’re both working in the kitchen, listening to classical music, about which he just said, “Hey, don’t I know this?” and indeed he does – we listen to a lot of classical music in my house and I just turned down an offer to my fourth grade daughter to attend a Christina Aguilera concert – and had to gently tell the parent who asked why I really wasn’t being judgemental about the no decision).
Creativity for Kids is a great story and was bought by Faber-Castell. But yes, everything about those butterfly bedroom kids – made in China.
What are you gonna do on a sick day with three of the same gift collecting dust in a closet?
By Jill Miller Zimon at 3:54 pm November 9th, 2006 in Politics | 2 Comments
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Nov
9
My Last Day
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The blue plastic bag sat alone, its see-me-in-the-snow color dimmed by splattered car dirt.
“Could you reach down and pick it up for me?” I asked my daughter, concerned that my bathrobe might slip away from my hands as I clutched closed the opening. I kissed her goodbye as the school bus rolled to a stop and scuffed back down the driveway and into the house.
One lone newspaper dangling from my fist.
Everything changed on November 8th, we know that. In Ohio, Democrats gave the country a color-mixing lesson, along with several other states. No one knows exactly what it means, but the USA looks a lot less monochronomatic now.
In the blogosphere, calls to watch out, don’t mess up, don’t forget the little folk and we’ll be watching you stream through wifi networks.
And in my house? The last orange bag.
Today, November 9th? No orange bag. Just one blue one.
Sigh.
I’m going to miss that bag and what it contained. Some days, its contents made me smile and scream and laugh. Many days, I took a scissors to those contents. And once a week, the contents of that bag ended up in yet another bag, my family and I finished with both.
I never have figured out how it is that the orange bag kept its contents drier than the blue bag. Puddles poured out of the blue on rainy days, but the orange? Airtight.
And then, some days, there were no bags. The naked contents sunbathed in the driveway, side by side or, some days, puzzled in my morning haze, I’d stare at the place they should have been and then remember to check the mailbox.
I made the decision on Sunday, October 15th. My resolve has never waned, although I’ve spent plenty of time lamenting how I feel I have no other choice. I complain too much. Why should I be paying for something that makes me so miserable?
Of course, that’s hyperbole – or something. The newspaper doesn’t make me miserable. I just have very high expectations for it, which I’m not altogether convinced are even that high, or even too high.
Regardless, the Plain Dealer stopped meeting my expectations – or, I should say, my expectations came to be, when I read something or observed something about the paper that disappointed me, “Oh well – that’s the Plain Dealer for you.”
That’s no way to honor a contract. So I terminated mine.
I’ve continued with my subscription for as many years as I have because I chastised others for living in Cleveland, even being natives of Cleveland, and not getting the paper of record. I grew up in a house that always had at least one newspaper and sometimes more. I also love writing letters, I have since I was a kid. And it was a letter to one of the PD’s Sunday Magazine essay writers that turned me into a freelance writer – for which I even get paid occasionally. Editorial Page Director Brent Larkin accepted and published the very first piece of writing, an op-ed, I’d ever submitted for pay and publication. I’ll never forget that.
The rip that helped the bottom fall out was the PD’s endorsement of Issue 3. I still don’t know a lot about politics, politicians or the newspaper industry. But I’ve made many excellent, good faith efforts to learn, to ask questions, to write responsibly about what I’ve observed and what more I want to know. And I’ve written before about all the PD folks with whom I’ve been in contact. I give them nothing but thanks for their time spent with me or on me and my questions.
But on Sunday, October 16th, I wasn’t looking to see whether the PD would endorse Issue 3, Ohio Learn and Earn. I wanted to read why they would endorse it. What did they find good about it, exciting about it, hopeful about it. What did they find mitigated the negative aspects of it? Because Issue 3 – that was something I’d worked hard to learn about, very hard. And yet I still believed, and I still believe, that I have a few things to learn from newspapers and professional journalists. Not believe. I know.
But after I read the endorsement, nearly three-quarters of the page long, all I could think of was, “That’s it? That’s all you’ve got to endorse something so obviously driven by developers and racetrack and horse interest, for such a small portion of Ohio, for such a potentially life-sucking activity as gambling, via such a poorly reasoned editorial.”
You can read if for yourself here, but, after acknowledging that there will be social costs, and saying that the positives outweigh the negatives, and asserting that other parts of Ohio are against it because it would do so much for NEO, the editorial says, “the best argument for Issue 3 is the strong support it would provide to a state system of higher education desperately in need of a funding infusion.”
That in fact might be the best argument, but Issue 3′s conception of what that support would look like and how it would operate failed to reach any minimal standard of acceptability. And the PD’s failure to understand, explain, accept and assert those failures put me over the edge.
The editorial sealed my no more deal, after it talked about the economic upsides, even with how the public will have to keep tabs on how Issue 3 is implemented, and concluded, “The biggest payoff, however, will come to young Ohioans whose college dreams can be fulfilled, without miring them in nightmarish debt.“
Anyone who has read the amendment would know that what is in the constitutional amendment that would put slots in nine locations and then perhaps casinos in two, only here in Cleveland, ever, unless there’s another constitutional amendment, simply does not equal the payoff envisioned or suggested by the PD. Now, they may be privy to other information that made them feel secure that passage of Issue 3 would do a lot of good, as the ads promised, but none of that information – including references to accounts and points being accrued by kids once they’re born and so on – were ever made public. There was a draft document from the Regents that you could load as a PDF from the Vote Yes website, Ohiolearnandearn.com, but otherwise? No other specifics – not in the amendment itself.
Again, if you were a businessperson and a lawyer consulting on such a deal, could you really recommend it to your client?
I don’t think so. At a minimum, I’d make them go back to the drawing board.
And so, I did it. I cancelled my subscription.
It took me a while to make the call. I procrastinate a lot but on this, I knew I couldn’t procrastinate forever.
Less than one week after that editorial appeared, on Saturday morning, October 21, I spent nearly 20 minutes on the phone with a lovely gentleman at the PD, Rick. He said it was the most time he’d ever spent gathering information about why someone was cancelling their subscription. Let it be known that the automated voice messages that try to route you to where you need to go to get help from the PD don’t include the topic of cancelling your subscrioption.
After a long chat, Rick had to choose something from a list or fill-in a reason as to why I was cancelling. We agreed on the following, “Deterioration in quality.” And I think that adequately reflects how I feel.
I’m missing the blue bag already. I’ve even sensed that in some small ways, it’s gotten better in the last week or two (except for that dang third endorsement of Judge Joan Synenberg who, as I knew, would win – thank goodness). Regina Brett’s column asking for input on how to help the PD came within days of my blogging about cancelling. I doubt that was more than coincidence but clearly, I’m not alone in my impressions.
Sigh. Yup, I’m going to miss that blue bag. But I think that cancellations and well-reasoned explanations for cancellations will make the PD work harder to figure out what it should be these days.
I can’t think of what the opposite word of deterioration is – renovation perhaps? I’ll be looking for that, online and in the coffee shops and other places where I can find the PD.
Never say never.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 1:18 pm November 9th, 2006 in Politics | Comments Off
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Nov
9
CPN: Sound of Ideas panel say blogs played role; CPN host uses MTB resources unabashedly
Filed Under Politics | 7 Comments
“Thank you for taking my call.” I’m pretty sure I said that, but if I didn’t, well, then, thank you for taking my call.
If you want to hear some very nice things about Ohio’s blogs, you can listen here. It comes after Dan Moulthrop introduces me as someone on the phone, about 30-40 mins. into the show. The guests were David Cohen, political science professor University of Akron Bliss Institute of Applied Politics; Mark Naymik, politics reporter, The Plain Dealer; and Bill Hershey, statehouse reporter, Dayton Daily News. Moulthrop hosted.
Here’s my approximate transcript of the relevant portion:
I asked (on air): “The Ohio Democratic Party hired an online communications director, newly elected State Treasurer Rich Cordray specifically thanked bloggers – what influence if any do you believe blogs had on Ohio’s races and what do you anticipate Internet communications to play in 2008?”
They said: (paraphrased; listen for exact quote)
Cohen: “The blogs impact is increasingly greater. Their assistance with GOTV will only increase.”
Naymik: Blogs are great aggregators of information for campaigns. They help activitists motivate. All campagins are hiring them (bloggers) because you can move the chatter and then the media follows. It’s very much a part of the race. Great tool.
Moulthrop: Meet the Bloggers forum interviews influencers. “I myself have referred to many of those interivews online.”
Hershey: The first thing I do each morning is I go to PD’s Open page and the local blogs. Bloggers are up on everything. They don’t leave a rock unturned.
Not sure who said this: Here in NEO and across the state, blogs are a great source of energy though a still recent phenomenon. There was blogging on the Republican and conservative side – but “the Democratic bloggers and progressives outblogged them.”
And that last phrase is a direct quote, thank you very much.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 12:04 pm November 9th, 2006 in Politics | 7 Comments
Print This Post
Nov
9
"Oh UGH! Everything is made in China!"
Filed Under Politics | 2 Comments
“Why does that bother you, sweetie?” I asked my youngest as he worked on an art project at the kitchen table, home today for a cold.
“Ohhhh…” He oozed with gritted teeth frustration while the colored sparkle glue oozed onto the art project he was creating at our kitchen table.
“I just don’t like things made in China! Like my old journal in kindergarten. That was made in China too. I just don’t like all this China stuff.”
Can you imagine my horror? Me – who majored in Chinese and wanted to go to China when Beijing was still closed? With a son who already has a negative connection to the very idea of China?
The art project he’s working on is from Creativity for Kids, which happens to be an Ohio-based company. We have three of the same project, Butterfly Bedroom, all received as gifts and placed on reserve for sick days just like today (yeah, we get to the television and computer and gameboy and gamecube too but I’m saving that for later; right now we’re both working in the kitchen, listening to classical music, about which he just said, “Hey, don’t I know this?” and indeed he does – we listen to a lot of classical music in my house and I just turned down an offer to my fourth grade daughter to attend a Christina Aguilera concert – and had to gently tell the parent who asked why I really wasn’t being judgemental about the no decision).
Creativity for Kids is a great story and was bought by Faber-Castell. But yes, everything about those butterfly bedroom kids – made in China.
What are you gonna do on a sick day with three of the same gift collecting dust in a closet?
By Jill Miller Zimon at 11:54 am November 9th, 2006 in Politics | 2 Comments
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Nov
9
My Last Day
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The blue plastic bag sat alone, its see-me-in-the-snow color dimmed by splattered car dirt.
“Could you reach down and pick it up for me?” I asked my daughter, concerned that my bathrobe might slip away from my hands as I clutched closed the opening. I kissed her goodbye as the school bus rolled to a stop and scuffed back down the driveway and into the house.
One lone newspaper dangling from my fist.
Everything changed on November 8th, we know that. In Ohio, Democrats gave the country a color-mixing lesson, along with several other states. No one knows exactly what it means, but the USA looks a lot less monochronomatic now.
In the blogosphere, calls to watch out, don’t mess up, don’t forget the little folk and we’ll be watching you stream through wifi networks.
And in my house? The last orange bag.
Today, November 9th? No orange bag. Just one blue one.
Sigh.
I’m going to miss that bag and what it contained. Some days, its contents made me smile and scream and laugh. Many days, I took a scissors to those contents. And once a week, the contents of that bag ended up in yet another bag, my family and I finished with both.
I never have figured out how it is that the orange bag kept its contents drier than the blue bag. Puddles poured out of the blue on rainy days, but the orange? Airtight.
And then, some days, there were no bags. The naked contents sunbathed in the driveway, side by side or, some days, puzzled in my morning haze, I’d stare at the place they should have been and then remember to check the mailbox.
I made the decision on Sunday, October 15th. My resolve has never waned, although I’ve spent plenty of time lamenting how I feel I have no other choice. I complain too much. Why should I be paying for something that makes me so miserable?
Of course, that’s hyperbole – or something. The newspaper doesn’t make me miserable. I just have very high expectations for it, which I’m not altogether convinced are even that high, or even too high.
Regardless, the Plain Dealer stopped meeting my expectations – or, I should say, my expectations came to be, when I read something or observed something about the paper that disappointed me, “Oh well – that’s the Plain Dealer for you.”
That’s no way to honor a contract. So I terminated mine.
I’ve continued with my subscription for as many years as I have because I chastised others for living in Cleveland, even being natives of Cleveland, and not getting the paper of record. I grew up in a house that always had at least one newspaper and sometimes more. I also love writing letters, I have since I was a kid. And it was a letter to one of the PD’s Sunday Magazine essay writers that turned me into a freelance writer – for which I even get paid occasionally. Editorial Page Director Brent Larkin accepted and published the very first piece of writing, an op-ed, I’d ever submitted for pay and publication. I’ll never forget that.
The rip that helped the bottom fall out was the PD’s endorsement of Issue 3. I still don’t know a lot about politics, politicians or the newspaper industry. But I’ve made many excellent, good faith efforts to learn, to ask questions, to write responsibly about what I’ve observed and what more I want to know. And I’ve written before about all the PD folks with whom I’ve been in contact. I give them nothing but thanks for their time spent with me or on me and my questions.
But on Sunday, October 16th, I wasn’t looking to see whether the PD would endorse Issue 3, Ohio Learn and Earn. I wanted to read why they would endorse it. What did they find good about it, exciting about it, hopeful about it. What did they find mitigated the negative aspects of it? Because Issue 3 – that was something I’d worked hard to learn about, very hard. And yet I still believed, and I still believe, that I have a few things to learn from newspapers and professional journalists. Not believe. I know.
But after I read the endorsement, nearly three-quarters of the page long, all I could think of was, “That’s it? That’s all you’ve got to endorse something so obviously driven by developers and racetrack and horse interest, for such a small portion of Ohio, for such a potentially life-sucking activity as gambling, via such a poorly reasoned editorial.”
You can read if for yourself here, but, after acknowledging that there will be social costs, and saying that the positives outweigh the negatives, and asserting that other parts of Ohio are against it because it would do so much for NEO, the editorial says, “the best argument for Issue 3 is the strong support it would provide to a state system of higher education desperately in need of a funding infusion.”
That in fact might be the best argument, but Issue 3′s conception of what that support would look like and how it would operate failed to reach any minimal standard of acceptability. And the PD’s failure to understand, explain, accept and assert those failures put me over the edge.
The editorial sealed my no more deal, after it talked about the economic upsides, even with how the public will have to keep tabs on how Issue 3 is implemented, and concluded, “The biggest payoff, however, will come to young Ohioans whose college dreams can be fulfilled, without miring them in nightmarish debt.“
Anyone who has read the amendment would know that what is in the constitutional amendment that would put slots in nine locations and then perhaps casinos in two, only here in Cleveland, ever, unless there’s another constitutional amendment, simply does not equal the payoff envisioned or suggested by the PD. Now, they may be privy to other information that made them feel secure that passage of Issue 3 would do a lot of good, as the ads promised, but none of that information – including references to accounts and points being accrued by kids once they’re born and so on – were ever made public. There was a draft document from the Regents that you could load as a PDF from the Vote Yes website, Ohiolearnandearn.com, but otherwise? No other specifics – not in the amendment itself.
Again, if you were a businessperson and a lawyer consulting on such a deal, could you really recommend it to your client?
I don’t think so. At a minimum, I’d make them go back to the drawing board.
And so, I did it. I cancelled my subscription.
It took me a while to make the call. I procrastinate a lot but on this, I knew I couldn’t procrastinate forever.
Less than one week after that editorial appeared, on Saturday morning, October 21, I spent nearly 20 minutes on the phone with a lovely gentleman at the PD, Rick. He said it was the most time he’d ever spent gathering information about why someone was cancelling their subscription. Let it be known that the automated voice messages that try to route you to where you need to go to get help from the PD don’t include the topic of cancelling your subscrioption.
After a long chat, Rick had to choose something from a list or fill-in a reason as to why I was cancelling. We agreed on the following, “Deterioration in quality.” And I think that adequately reflects how I feel.
I’m missing the blue bag already. I’ve even sensed that in some small ways, it’s gotten better in the last week or two (except for that dang third endorsement of Judge Joan Synenberg who, as I knew, would win – thank goodness). Regina Brett’s column asking for input on how to help the PD came within days of my blogging about cancelling. I doubt that was more than coincidence but clearly, I’m not alone in my impressions.
Sigh. Yup, I’m going to miss that blue bag. But I think that cancellations and well-reasoned explanations for cancellations will make the PD work harder to figure out what it should be these days.
I can’t think of what the opposite word of deterioration is – renovation perhaps? I’ll be looking for that, online and in the coffee shops and other places where I can find the PD.
Never say never.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 9:18 am November 9th, 2006 in Politics | Comments Off
Print This Post
Nov
9
CPN: Sound of Ideas panel say blogs played role; CPN host uses MTB resources unabashedly
Filed Under Politics | Comments Off
“Thank you for taking my call.” I’m pretty sure I said that, but if I didn’t, well, then, thank you for taking my call.
If you want to hear some very nice things about Ohio’s blogs, you can listen here. It comes after Dan Moulthrop introduces me as someone on the phone, about 30-40 mins. into the show. The guests were David Cohen, political science professor University of Akron Bliss Institute of Applied Politics; Mark Naymik, politics reporter, The Plain Dealer; and Bill Hershey, statehouse reporter, Dayton Daily News. Moulthrop hosted.
Here’s my approximate transcript of the relevant portion:
I asked (on air): “The Ohio Democratic Party hired an online communications director, newly elected State Treasurer Rich Cordray specifically thanked bloggers – what influence if any do you believe blogs had on Ohio’s races and what do you anticipate Internet communications to play in 2008?”
They said: (paraphrased; listen for exact quote)
Cohen: “The blogs impact is increasingly greater. Their assistance with GOTV will only increase.”
Naymik: Blogs are great aggregators of information for campaigns. They help activitists motivate. All campagins are hiring them (bloggers) because you can move the chatter and then the media follows. It’s very much a part of the race. Great tool.
Moulthrop: Meet the Bloggers forum interviews influencers. “I myself have referred to many of those interivews online.”
Hershey: The first thing I do each morning is I go to PD’s Open page and the local blogs. Bloggers are up on everything. They don’t leave a rock unturned.
Not sure who said this: Here in NEO and across the state, blogs are a great source of energy though a still recent phenomenon. There was blogging on the Republican and conservative side – but “the Democratic bloggers and progressives outblogged them.”
And that last phrase is a direct quote, thank you very much.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 9:04 am November 9th, 2006 in Politics | Comments Off
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Nov
9
"Oh UGH! Everything is made in China!"
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“Why does that bother you, sweetie?” I asked my youngest as he worked on an art project at the kitchen table, home today for a cold.
“Ohhhh…” He oozed with gritted teeth frustration while the colored sparkle glue oozed onto the art project he was creating at our kitchen table.
“I just don’t like things made in China! Like my old journal in kindergarten. That was made in China too. I just don’t like all this China stuff.”
Can you imagine my horror? Me – who majored in Chinese and wanted to go to China when Beijing was still closed? With a son who already has a negative connection to the very idea of China?
The art project he’s working on is from Creativity for Kids, which happens to be an Ohio-based company. We have three of the same project, Butterfly Bedroom, all received as gifts and placed on reserve for sick days just like today (yeah, we get to the television and computer and gameboy and gamecube too but I’m saving that for later; right now we’re both working in the kitchen, listening to classical music, about which he just said, “Hey, don’t I know this?” and indeed he does – we listen to a lot of classical music in my house and I just turned down an offer to my fourth grade daughter to attend a Christina Aguilera concert – and had to gently tell the parent who asked why I really wasn’t being judgemental about the no decision).
Creativity for Kids is a great story and was bought by Faber-Castell. But yes, everything about those butterfly bedroom kids – made in China.
What are you gonna do on a sick day with three of the same gift collecting dust in a closet?
By Jill Miller Zimon at 8:54 am November 9th, 2006 in Politics | Comments Off
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Nov
9
My Last Day
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The blue plastic bag sat alone, its see-me-in-the-snow color dimmed by splattered car dirt.
“Could you reach down and pick it up for me?” I asked my daughter, concerned that my bathrobe might slip away from my hands as I clutched closed the opening. I kissed her goodbye as the school bus rolled to a stop and scuffed back down the driveway and into the house.
One lone newspaper dangling from my fist.
Everything changed on November 8th, we know that. In Ohio, Democrats gave the country a color-mixing lesson, along with several other states. No one knows exactly what it means, but the USA looks a lot less monochronomatic now.
In the blogosphere, calls to watch out, don’t mess up, don’t forget the little folk and we’ll be watching you stream through wifi networks.
And in my house? The last orange bag.
Today, November 9th? No orange bag. Just one blue one.
Sigh.
I’m going to miss that bag and what it contained. Some days, its contents made me smile and scream and laugh. Many days, I took a scissors to those contents. And once a week, the contents of that bag ended up in yet another bag, my family and I finished with both.
I never have figured out how it is that the orange bag kept its contents drier than the blue bag. Puddles poured out of the blue on rainy days, but the orange? Airtight.
And then, some days, there were no bags. The naked contents sunbathed in the driveway, side by side or, some days, puzzled in my morning haze, I’d stare at the place they should have been and then remember to check the mailbox.
I made the decision on Sunday, October 15th. My resolve has never waned, although I’ve spent plenty of time lamenting how I feel I have no other choice. I complain too much. Why should I be paying for something that makes me so miserable?
Of course, that’s hyperbole – or something. The newspaper doesn’t make me miserable. I just have very high expectations for it, which I’m not altogether convinced are even that high, or even too high.
Regardless, the Plain Dealer stopped meeting my expectations – or, I should say, my expectations came to be, when I read something or observed something about the paper that disappointed me, “Oh well – that’s the Plain Dealer for you.”
That’s no way to honor a contract. So I terminated mine.
I’ve continued with my subscription for as many years as I have because I chastised others for living in Cleveland, even being natives of Cleveland, and not getting the paper of record. I grew up in a house that always had at least one newspaper and sometimes more. I also love writing letters, I have since I was a kid. And it was a letter to one of the PD’s Sunday Magazine essay writers that turned me into a freelance writer – for which I even get paid occasionally. Editorial Page Director Brent Larkin accepted and published the very first piece of writing, an op-ed, I’d ever submitted for pay and publication. I’ll never forget that.
The rip that helped the bottom fall out was the PD’s endorsement of Issue 3. I still don’t know a lot about politics, politicians or the newspaper industry. But I’ve made many excellent, good faith efforts to learn, to ask questions, to write responsibly about what I’ve observed and what more I want to know. And I’ve written before about all the PD folks with whom I’ve been in contact. I give them nothing but thanks for their time spent with me or on me and my questions.
But on Sunday, October 16th, I wasn’t looking to see whether the PD would endorse Issue 3, Ohio Learn and Earn. I wanted to read why they would endorse it. What did they find good about it, exciting about it, hopeful about it. What did they find mitigated the negative aspects of it? Because Issue 3 – that was something I’d worked hard to learn about, very hard. And yet I still believed, and I still believe, that I have a few things to learn from newspapers and professional journalists. Not believe. I know.
But after I read the endorsement, nearly three-quarters of the page long, all I could think of was, “That’s it? That’s all you’ve got to endorse something so obviously driven by developers and racetrack and horse interest, for such a small portion of Ohio, for such a potentially life-sucking activity as gambling, via such a poorly reasoned editorial.”
You can read if for yourself here, but, after acknowledging that there will be social costs, and saying that the positives outweigh the negatives, and asserting that other parts of Ohio are against it because it would do so much for NEO, the editorial says, “the best argument for Issue 3 is the strong support it would provide to a state system of higher education desperately in need of a funding infusion.”
That in fact might be the best argument, but Issue 3′s conception of what that support would look like and how it would operate failed to reach any minimal standard of acceptability. And the PD’s failure to understand, explain, accept and assert those failures put me over the edge.
The editorial sealed my no more deal, after it talked about the economic upsides, even with how the public will have to keep tabs on how Issue 3 is implemented, and concluded, “The biggest payoff, however, will come to young Ohioans whose college dreams can be fulfilled, without miring them in nightmarish debt.“
Anyone who has read the amendment would know that what is in the constitutional amendment that would put slots in nine locations and then perhaps casinos in two, only here in Cleveland, ever, unless there’s another constitutional amendment, simply does not equal the payoff envisioned or suggested by the PD. Now, they may be privy to other information that made them feel secure that passage of Issue 3 would do a lot of good, as the ads promised, but none of that information – including references to accounts and points being accrued by kids once they’re born and so on – were ever made public. There was a draft document from the Regents that you could load as a PDF from the Vote Yes website, Ohiolearnandearn.com, but otherwise? No other specifics – not in the amendment itself.
Again, if you were a businessperson and a lawyer consulting on such a deal, could you really recommend it to your client?
I don’t think so. At a minimum, I’d make them go back to the drawing board.
And so, I did it. I cancelled my subscription.
It took me a while to make the call. I procrastinate a lot but on this, I knew I couldn’t procrastinate forever.
Less than one week after that editorial appeared, on Saturday morning, October 21, I spent nearly 20 minutes on the phone with a lovely gentleman at the PD, Rick. He said it was the most time he’d ever spent gathering information about why someone was cancelling their subscription. Let it be known that the automated voice messages that try to route you to where you need to go to get help from the PD don’t include the topic of cancelling your subscrioption.
After a long chat, Rick had to choose something from a list or fill-in a reason as to why I was cancelling. We agreed on the following, “Deterioration in quality.” And I think that adequately reflects how I feel.
I’m missing the blue bag already. I’ve even sensed that in some small ways, it’s gotten better in the last week or two (except for that dang third endorsement of Judge Joan Synenberg who, as I knew, would win – thank goodness). Regina Brett’s column asking for input on how to help the PD came within days of my blogging about cancelling. I doubt that was more than coincidence but clearly, I’m not alone in my impressions.
Sigh. Yup, I’m going to miss that blue bag. But I think that cancellations and well-reasoned explanations for cancellations will make the PD work harder to figure out what it should be these days.
I can’t think of what the opposite word of deterioration is – renovation perhaps? I’ll be looking for that, online and in the coffee shops and other places where I can find the PD.
Never say never.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 6:18 am November 9th, 2006 in Politics | Comments Off
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