HOW TO STOP AN ARAB PLOT AND GET FIRED .. ANOTHER 'MAD MEN' STORY

   

      I've been fired twice in my life. The first time is worth mentioning only because it taught me how useless logic can be. I was in college at the time and working on a dairy farm. The farmer and I milked a hundred and ten cows at five o'clock in the morning and five o'clock at night, seven days a week. But I could never get up on time for the morning milking, although I was always right on the button at night. So the farmer -- a happy-go-lucky guy whom I liked -- fired me. Which I understood.
     But cows don't care what time they're milked as long as their teats are manipulated regularly. So -- in an attempt to save my job -- I said to him:
     Ya' know, if we could do the milking at nine o'clock in the morning and at nine at night, I'd never be late.
     Are you crazy? he answered. I'm in bed at nine o'clock at night!
     I dropped out of college not long after, figuring I might learn more from farmers than from professors.
     Metaphorically, that is.

     My second experience --years later -- was more dramatic. It stalled a career or two, humiliated an ad agency, infuriated a client, and nearly created an international incident. And, of course, it got me canned.
     Even without sex, that's pretty juicy stuff!
     The client was Xerox Corporation in the era when it was the only company whose machines made copies on plain white paper. (Yes, the late Jurassic period.) It was also one of the fastest growing companies in the world with affiliates and subsidiaries everywhere ... except in the Islamic world. You could travel from Casablanca to Algiers, through Tunis, Tripoli, Cairo, Amman, Riyadh and Damascus and nary a plain paper copy would you find. Only those crinkly, fast-fading, dun-colored, icky-slippery things produced by its competitors.
    Xerox had been boycotted by The Arab League.

     The back story of why is a little fuzzy. But when the company was a pup, it underwrote a series of semi-documentary films about the United Nations, including one about the founding of Israel, If I remember correctly, the films weren't very successful. But the underwriting credit alone was enough for The Arab League -- sort of a Middle Eastern 'mini-UN' -- to impose the boycott. And not unnoticed, probably, was that the chairman of Xerox, Sol Linowitz, was Jewish and prominent.
     In any case, the CEO of Xerox, Peter McColough, desperately wanted the boycott lifted. And he sure as hell wasn't going to unseat Sol Linowitz as a peace offering. It seemed as if McColough -- a Canadian, a Catholic and a liberal Democrat -- was deeply offended by the boycott. as if the Arabs were punishing him personally for having done what his company considered morally right and responsible.
     So out went the word. Lobbyists were dispatched to Washington, Congressmen and Senators were contacted, consultations were held with the State Department. Months passed.
     Nothing happened.
     Other political and diplomatic doors were opened through Xerox affiliates and subsidiaries in other countries. More months passed.
     Still, nothing happened.
     Eventually it became like a proverbial pea under McColough's mattress. He saw the Middle East as a huge potential market: twenty countries with a population nearly equal to that of the United States. It was almost worth wearing a burnoose and a dishdashah for! But he just couldn't crack the boycott.

     Enter the savior.
     He came, as most saviors do, in disguise: a documentary film producer from England who was introduced to the company by a Xerox advertising agency. The man had bona fide credentials; and after being gingerly handed up the chain of command, he reached trhe Xerox vice-president of communications who -- after listening to his pitch -- heard the bells of St. Peters ringing in his ears. This was it! If he could pull it off, he'd be a prince among pretenders! He'd be Peter McColough 'man' forever.
     The Brit proposed to produce a multi-part, non-partisan history of Islam for broadcast on PBS, the Public Broadcasting System. It was (and still is) a great idea and was certainly needed. If any nation were ignorant of Islam, it was ours. The proposed series -- objective and balanced -- would educate and enlighten the American public and be a contribution to international understanding. Who could possibly be against it?
     And there was a kicker. The producer -- although an independent -- was well connected to The Arab League and felt confident that the series would get Xerox off the boycott list. No guarantees, of course. But the promise, if not explicit, was nonetheless implicit and very exciting.
     It was hope amplified by imagination ... like a first date,

     I was brought into the picture a few months later. McColough had already been given an extensive briefing and had enthusiastically endorsed the project, asking for regular updates. The producer was ready to start pre-production, location scouts were standing by, and final contracts were about to be signed.
     But corporate enthusiasm had overcome common sense. Nobody had asked public television whether it would broadcast the series! That's a huge 'Whoops'! And that's why the Xerox vice-president finally let his hot-shot television consultant in on the deal. I had extensive contacts at PBS and knew its strongest stations well.
    But before trying to pull his chestnuts out, I wanted to review the bidding. I asked for everything Xerox had: the full proposal, script outlines, correspondence, memos, legal opinions, etc. Then, as an afterthought, I asked to see the contracts that were about to be signed. I was surprised at how many people had already managed to put their fingers into what promised to be a glory pie.
     Finally, I called a few friends at the BBC to double-check the producer's credentials. They told me he was an 'Arabist' -- an apologist for Arab causes -- but a legitimate and recognized expert on the Middle East. The apologist part was a little worrisome, but not much. After all, how else could he have gotten close to The Arab League?
     So after my first pass, the project looked good. In fact, I was getting enthused about it myself when I was stopped dead in my tracks. Buried deep in the fine print of the contract submitted by the producer, and apparently approved by the Xerox lawyers, was a sentence that gave final script and narration approval to 'appropriate authorities including The Arab League'. The sentence went way beyond the normal 'boiler plate' approval that legally belongs to the broadcaster. It was, in effect, a poisonous plant; inserted with forethought. There could be no other explanation. And whether the producer was a pawn or a conspirator didn't matter. If we went ahead, it meant Xerox would be ceding editorial control of the American public's airwaves to The Arab League. The company could be accused of underwriting propaganda in the guise of education. And all for its own narrow self-interest,
     If word ever got out, Xerox would be pilloried (I avoided the word 'crucified') and humiliated by the American government and its political establishment, by the Israelis, the world-wide Jewish community, and the international press ranging from The New York Times to Pravda.
     The deal had to be killed, and fast.

     Now came the melodrama,
     I called an emergency meeting of those involved and explained why the project was camel dung. There was much wailing, hand-wringing and flagellation. Everybody who'd plunged a finger into the glory pie was now pointing it at somebody else. But I sensed that much of the tribulation was because nobody wanted to give Peter McColough the bad news. In fact, the vice-president of communications, my boss, was flat-out terrified.
     You can guess what happened next.
     I tracked McColough down at a meeting in Phoenix, Arizona. It was seven a.m. his time when I called. He sounded barely awake and grumpy: not a morning person. I told him that the History of Islam project had to be killed, and that going forward would be like sitting on a bomb and lighting the fuse yourself.
     He was so angry he fired me on the spot. Definitely not a morning person.
      I then called the vice-president and told him what had happened. All he could say was: Oh God, I'm sorry. Honest to God. I am. I'm really, really sorry. His tone was dripping with relief that it wasn't him. Nor did he offer to intercede on my behalf. If the messenger were dead, he wasn't about to attempt a resurrection.

      The next day, shortly before noon, McColough walked unannounced into my office in New York.
He'd always had a wonderfully warm smile .. which spread across his face as I left my desk to meet him. He looked a bit bemused perhaps, but was in no way embarassed or apologetic.
     Quickly glancing at my watch, I took a chance. I asked whether I could charge him for the twenty-seven hours I'd been fired.
      He pursed his lips, as if thinking it over, and told me if I did, he might have to fire me again.
      I charged him anyway.



                                                 AFTER DINNER MINTS



The Arab League, for reasons unknown to me, eventually dropped the boycott. Perhaps they got tired of handling those crinkly, dun-colored, icky-sticky things.

To my knowledge, no history of Islam has ever been broadcast nationally in the United States. It's a shame because our ignorance of Moslem culture and beliefs, reinforced by mounting reactionary bigotry, is more dangerous than ever.

As the people, the vice-president of communications avoided as many decisions as possible for the remainder of his career. He never told me how he backed out of the deal or who he managed to blame for its failure. Nor did he ever try to bypass me again.

Sol Linowitz resigned as chairman of Xerox shortly thereafter to become Ambassador to the Organization of American States. In 1979, under the Carter administration, he negotiated the turnover of the Panama Canal to Panama.

Peter McColough -- who became a valued friend -- was CEO of Xerox for fourteen years. He died in 2004.
     I will never forget that smile.




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HOW TO FIRE A MOVIE STAR AND GET A JOB ... A 'MAD MEN' STORY.

　


　
     Two silly questions.
     First, do you remember Gregory Peck? Of course you do. Who could forget To Kill A Mockingbird, Roman Holiday, The Big Country, Twelve O’Clock High, The Guns of Navarone and The Yearling?     The man was a first magnitude star!

     Second question: Guess who was afraid of him; deeply and illogically intimidated by him?
     A giant multi-billion dollar corporation, that’s who!


     I’ve written about ’corporate cowardice’ before, but haven’t defined it for fear of sounding trite or banal. Usually it’s nothing more than being afraid to bring bad news to the boss. So it tends to be shrugged it off with a ’So what?’ or a ‘What else is new?’ Which is okay as far as it goes. But what has always fascinated me is the defensive/aggressive kind of cowardice that creates deniability; that’s always ready with a credible disclaimer.
     Let’s call it cowardice in camouflage.

    Around the time of the current ‘Mad Men‘ series on TV, a woman at a New York ad agency called me. She claimed she had a major client who ’needed’ my services as a television consultant. Judy Garland warning bells went off in my head (Clang! Clang! Clang!). Big agencies usually hated my guts because I abrogated their most profitable function: buying TV time for clients. And anytime they could take a shot at me, they did so happily.
     So what’s up with this one? I asked myself. A ’cold call’ from someone I don’t know, a mystery client and an agency that wants to slit its own throat? I figured it was some kind of set-up and reacted with suspicion leaking from my vocal cords..
     But over the next few weeks, the woman persisted with more calls. And I got perversely curious. I wanted to find out what her game was and why she was playing it. So after looking up her agency’s clients and its personnel -- and finding no old grudges or people whose relatives I’d murdered -- I agreed to have lunch with her.
     She chose a restaurant so far from Madison Avenue that not even a phone call could reach it.
     Odd.
     In fact, more than odd.


     She turned out to be a petite blond, kind of cute, in her mid to late thirties. (I’ll call her Joann) And with her -- unexpectedly -- was a big, bearish man in his late fifties: a senior vice-president of The Travelers Companies; the insurance giant based in Hartford, Connecticut. (Let’s say his name was Henry)
     He and I circled each other over pre-lunch martinis while petite Joann smiled and said nothing. I told him what I’d done for other companies; and he told me his CEO had asked him to do ’something prestigious’ on public television (which, of course, was right up my alley). I knew The Travelers had a recognized commercial presence on CBS through sponsorship of The Masters golf tournament: so I angled toward his stated interest and began to describe how I could work with his agency.
     I didn’t get far before he interrupted me.
     I’m not too happy with the agency right now. he said.
     Light bulb! Light bulb!
     I suddenly understood why we were having lunch closer to the South Bronx than I’d ever been or wanted to be This was no attempt to sandbag me … and it had only peripheral bearing on public television. This was a conspiracy to sandbag his own agency!
     How wild , I thought, No, how delicious!


     But wait.
    What was Joann doing there? Didn’t she work for the agency? Wasn’t her presence a direct conflict of interest?
     Yes, of course it was, That’s why two light bulbs went on!
     It was instantly clear that she was part of the deal. Henry wanted to move the account and to steal her at the same time.. Or .. she’d persuaded him to move the account and to take her with him. Whichever it was, it looked ethically questionable .. but not illegal.
     Treason in advertising wasn’t considered a sin in those days.
     Still isn‘t, probably.

     So what they wanted was Henry and Joann together. I wondered, of course, whether she was screwing him; but my instincts said no. And after checking her out with sources of my own, it seemed I was right. She was considered an uptight, straight-laced account executive. It was thought she and Henry had a slightly twisted father/daughter thing, but nothing sexual.
     I believed it; partly because he was about as attractive as Rush Limbaugh.
     So after a week or so of self-debate, I decided to play. It was, after all, a major account and a five-star name. I’d hire Joann whose principal task would be to keep Henry informed and happy. Following some minor negotiation, I had contracts prepared and ready for signature. That’s when Henry threw in a curve ball as a condition of the deal.
     He wanted me to fire Gregory Peck.

\
     Peck had been the company’s television spokesman for five years. During a lull in his acting career, his agent had negotiated a ‘sweetheart deal’ with The Travelers. It paid him a ton of money for not doing much: one or two institutional commercials every year and occasional appearances at company-sponsored events. He was, of course, given luxury accommodations for he and his wife, first-class airfare, limousines everywhere and an expense account that was generous, to say the least.
     And now, despite knowing him personally, despite his having socialized over the years with everyone in top management, and despite having hired him themselves, The Travelers wanted me to fire him.
     It was his stature that frightened and intimidated them, of course, because he was influential far beyond the world of film: president of The American Cancer Society, recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, a fixture of the Democratic Party, a prominent member of Richard Nixon’s ‘enemies list’, etc.
     If the company itself botched the task and Peck took it badly or -- even worse -- said something negative about The Travelers in public, it could be a public relations mess (not to speak of a road block on the career path of whoever botched it.).
     So there it was: corporate cowardice in need of camouflage; specifically in need of a hedge-bet in the form of a young, unknown messenger not quite affiliated with the company who might have misconstrued its intentions or even gone beyond the scope of his instructions: me.
     In a pinch, I could be disavowed, denied and (without a contract) disowned.
     I began to wonder who was sandbagging whom.


     But I agreed to do it, and called Peck’s Hollywood agent, a well-respected man who’d been in the business for centuries. He told me that --by coincidence -- he and Peck would be in New York the following week and would be happy to meet for lunch.
     Before I set it up, I insisted that Henry come to New York and wait in my office for the outcome. Joann would, of course, baby-sit him. I also arranged for the unsigned contracts to be in front of him.
     I must say, I had cojones back then..
     On the appointed day, I met Peck and his agent in the dining room of The Four Seasons, one of my favorite restaurants because of its elegance and tranquility. I was anything but tranquil, however, having lost a couple nights’ sleep trying to figure out conversational ‘openers’. (How’s this: Greg, any enemy of Dick Nixon’s is a friend of mine. Oh God, no!)
     The agent looked as I’d expected: a calm and collected old pro. And Peck? A dignified, intelligent and very handsome man. In fact, one of the most distinguished men I’d ever seen. The maitre’d seated us at a corner table and gave us menus. I don’t think I appeared nervous, but I was very close to conversational constipation. So with only an instant of forethought and no plan, I said:
     I’m hoping we can have a congenial lunch today even though Travelers isn’t going to continue its relationship with you.
     The old agent sat back in his chair, nodded once and smiled. Sadly or sagely. I couldn’t tell.
    Well, he said, I’m glad you don’t beat around the bush.
     And Gregory Peck said: So am I. But all good things come to an end. I see they have soft-shelled crabs today.
     And that was it. For the next hour and a half, we chatted about people, politics and French cooking.
    When I got back to the office, Henry looked as if he were about to collapse from apprehension. He was actually pallid. But before he could say anything, I delivered the little speech I’d prepared on the way back.
     ‘Gregory Peck sends his regards and says he will forever hold The Travelers and its management in high esteem.
      Now sign the fucking contract, Henry.’


      And that, Mad Men, is how you fire a movie star and get a job.
　



                                                      AFTER DINNER MINTS
.
　
　
Taking The Travelers account was, as you might imagine, a mistake. Joann turned out to be an incessant whiner and Henry an inveterate worrier. They were perfectly suited to each other. I resigned after eighteen irritating months.

I did earn the company significant recognition for underwriting a documentary series on PBS called ‘Six American Families”. The audience was upscale and sizeable, the reviews were great, and the company was happy about doing something that its Hartford competitor, Aetna, hadn’t.

I never found out exactly why they wanted to fire Gregory Peck. Maybe the CEO’s wife found out he was making more money than her husband.

The Travelers continued sponsorship of the Masters tournament on CBS for years until a clever ad agency -- after creating a red umbrella as the company logo -- rained on it.

　
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ALASTAIR COOKE: MIXED MEMORIES AND CORPORATE COWARDICE

　

　
　
　
　
　
      Someone told me recently that PBS was broadcasting a tribute to Alastair Cooke who -- among his many achievements -- was the host of Masterpiece Theatre for twenty-two years. I knew Alastair -- not as well as I might have -- but always felt privileged to be on a first-name basis with him. That is, until we had a bitter and destructive dispute that ended with him barely recognizing my existence.
     Oddly, we didn’t meet when Masterpiece Theatre was first put together; even though I was heavily involved in its creation. But I enthusiastically endorsed him as its host. He was experienced, urbane, sophisticated and articulate: an elegant patrician who wrote his own material. And he had a sense of humor!
     Them kind don’t come along too regular.

     
     We did meet, finally, two years later when I arranged for Xerox to sponsor ’Alastair Cooke’s America’ on NBC, a thirteen-part documentary series produced and directed by Michael Gill. At the time, Xerox was considered the premier sponsor of ’socially conscious’ programming on the commercial networks. For me it was wonderful and rewarding period. I was representing two major corporations (Mobil being the other) that believed television could enhance, enlighten and broaden peoples’ lives.
     Alastair was thrilled to have Xerox as sole sponsor. It meant the series wouldn’t be cluttered with toothpaste and toilet paper commercials. Xerox commercials would be spaced judiciously so as not to diminish the overall dignity of the presentation. (Remember that word, dignity.) Everything was going smoothly until Alastair told me how thrilled he was that his publisher was printing 15,000 copies (or maybe 25,000. I can’t remember.) of a slick and expensive ‘cocktail table’ book to complement the NBC broadcast.
     Thinking I was doing him a favor, I said that 15.000 copies might be big by book standards, but not by mine. They should be printing five times as many .. ten times! And since he’d be getting fifteen percent of the gross, he should tell his publisher to wake up.
     That was the first time I gave him bad news.
     The publisher, of course, told me to fuck off, thank you very much.
     After the first broadcast, the book rocketed to number one on The New York Times best-seller list. After the third broadcast, it disappeared entirely. Sold out! No books available! It took weeks, perhaps months, for the publisher to catch up to demand. It was a hard lesson, And who knows how many sales were lost.



     After that, I had only peripheral contact with Alastair until a day in 1982 when he phoned to say he was thinking (quite seriously, he said) about suing Sesame Street unless it agreed to drop a character named ‘Alastair Cookie’ on a new segment of the show called ‘Monsterpiece Theatre‘. Knowing I had ties to Joan Ganz Cooney, the head of Sesame Street; he was calling, I suspect, to see if I’d act as a a back-door messenger; an indirect and unofficial channel to deliver his displeasure. Mind you, he didn’t say so. But why else would he call?
     I was horrified. Suing Sesame Street would be worse than suing Albert Schweitzer or Mother Teresa. It would be as if The Masterpiece Theatre Man was attacking all the little kiddies in America! And their mommies!!
     And clearly, patricians didn’t do parody.
     It took a while, but I managed to pacify his ruffled dignity (that word again) by arguing it was an honor not an insult to be so portrayed .. that satire and parody are almost always reserved for people of fame and achievement. Alastair Cookie and Monsterpiece Theatre were, in other words, a tribute not to be trifled with and certainly not to be threatened. Just the opposite. He should be proud of it!
     Privately I was thinking he was way too full of himself.
     But that was that. Other parodies subsequently appeared on television including Mousterpiece Theatre, Disasterpiece Theatre and even Rastapiece Theatre. And not a peep out of Alastair Cooke … or Cookie. Whatever.

     Then, unfortunately, came golf.
     Without my knowledge, he approached Xerox with an unwritten proposal (a definite no-no in my book) to produce a television special on the history of golf. He was obsessed with the game (really obsessed!!)and was once quoted as saying he thought golf more ’awesome’ than politics. He himself would write, direct, produce and narrate; and he confidently predicted it would be unlike anything ever seen on television.
     The vice-president of advertising for Xerox -- a well-meaning guy rather easily swayed by fame -- bought it; and the Xerox ad agency got an agreement from ABC to broadcast it.
     I was totally bypassed --and kept in the dark -- until a year later when Alastair delivered the final cut. Then Xerox asked me to screen it. With the request came some mumbo-jumbo explanation for bypassing me. So why tell me about it now, I wondered? Had the ad agency -- which probably organized the end run around me in the first place -- somehow screwed up with ABC? Why would they ask me to look at something that was signed ,sealed and delivered: a done deal?
     I called Xerox minutes after seeing it. They’d clearly been waiting by the phone.
     We can’t show that, I told the vice-president.. It’s awful. The critics will kill Cooke and roast us for sponsoring it.
    You really think it’s that bad? He asked.
     It’s worse than bad. It’s way below broadcast standards. Have you seen it?
     Yes, I didn’t think it was very good.
     How about the agency?
     They didn’t think it was very good either.
     (Translation in corporate-speak: Man the lifeboats! )
     And ABC?
     We haven’t shown it to them yet.
     Well, I guarantee they’ll reject it. It’s disjointed, confusing, poorly shot and badly edited .. the works. Alastair’s so obsessed he can‘t see the forest for the trees. I mean .. him standing in a wooden barrel half-naked trying to hit a golf ball? Holy Shit! You’re gonna’ have to eat it because nobody’ll put it on the air.
     Jesus Christ!! he said bleakly. I’ve got six hundred thousand bucks in it!! (which I imagine would be about $1.5 million in today‘s dollars).
     I could almost see him wringing his hands,. As I said, he was a well-meaning guy, but he tried to ignore trouble when he could and usually panicked when he couldn’t.
     And then, finally, the worst and most frightening prospect of all occurred to him.
     Oh my God! he said. Who’s going to tell Alastair?
     I wanted to say: You made the deal, you unmake it. But I’d seen ‘corporate cowardice’ before ( the subject of a future blog) and knew that ugly things sometimes go with the territory. I’d have to be the ’heavy’.

      Alastair was not only stunned when I gave him the news, he was deeply hurt. This was as important to him as anything he’d ever done .. perhaps more so. We argued about it for hours in his apartment on upper Fifth Avenue. He wanted to appeal to higher authority; but I’d already cut him off at the pass. I told him I’d screened the program for top management at Xerox (a lie) and at ABC (not a lie). Fred Pierce, president of the network, had seen it and agreed with our decision.
     So the entire project was scrapped. Alastair felt I was not only the messenger but the message itself. He never spoke to me again. And I couldn’t really blame him.
      I’d killed his favorite child.

     Nearly ten years later, I attended a black-tie gala at the State Department to celebrate the 20^th anniversary of Masterpiece Theatre. With one notable absence, everyone was there: actors, producers and directors, representatives of British broadcasting, ambassadors and cultural attaches, Mobil big-wigs, public broadcasting’s elite, everybody. And as you might expect, Alastair was the principal speaker.
     He gave a lengthy, witty and -- of course -- literate speech in which he indirectly and quite subtly took credit for just about everything except the birth of Christ. Or so it seemed to me. Everyone loved it .. but I thought that poor old Alastair -- like so many other prominent personalities -- had become the victim of his own mythology.
     But now -- grown older and a bit wiser -- I take a different view


     He was without doubt a journalist/broadcaster of monumental stature. He hosted Masterpiece Theatre for twenty-two years, bringing his insights and observations to countless millions of Americans. He was also heard for fifty-eight years by Great Britain and the English-speaking world on his ‘Letter from America’ radio series. He wrote for diverse newspapers, journals and magazines, and produced books and television programs of enlightening quality.
     And he was human. That’s what most tributes fail to penetrate: he was human. And a few mistakes, a few egoistic misjudgments, and an occasional touch of arrogance, in a long lifetime of achievement are not only understandable but inevitable. They make the mythical man palpable and more real; in fact, fallible .. and thus in the end even more admirable
     So now, much too late, I do wish I were still on a first-name basis with him. I would have learned far more than I taught.
　
　

                                                    AFTER DINNER MINTS

Alastair’s cocktail table book eventually sold more than two million copies and made him a rather wealthy man. But with true Methodist prudence, he never gave up his rent-controlled apartment on Fifth Avenue.

The ‘notable absence’ at the Washington gala was Herb Schmertz, ex-vice president of Mobil, who contributed enormously to the birth, growth and health of Masterpiece Theatre. He had apparently become persona non grata at Mobil and the company must have insisted he not be invited.
     It was yet another example of corporate cowardice, with a twist.

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COUPLING LINDSAY LOHAN AND ADOLPH HITLER ... WITH HELP FROM TIGER WOODS

　
　
     Here’s a puzzler for you: what do Hosni Mubarak, Charley Sheen, Eliot Spitzer, the United States government, Ted Haggard, Mel Gibson, Adolph Hitler, Leona Helmsley, Tiger Woods and cute little Lindsay Lohan have in common?

     
     Answer: they’re all victims of their own mythology.


     When individuals are powerful, rich or famous (PRoFs), they tend to believe what they’re told about themselves. The people who do the telling are usually friends, admirers, sycophants and subordinates: an ‘inner circle’ that acts as a protectorate, so to speak, deflecting criticism and rationalizing bad behavior. So what the PRoFs receive -- day after day, year after year -- is sympathy, tolerance and praise. And praise, to paraphrase a famous dictum, corrodes; absolute praise corrodes absolutely.
     Especially with egos the size of, say, Charley Sheen , Mel Gibson, Tiger Woods and little Lindsay Lohan.
     Sometimes the corrosion is subtle .. as when a corporate officer quietly sucks up to the CEO’s wife. Other times it’s absolute .. as when a Charley Sheen abuses everybody in sight; and then tries to justify it. That’s the ‘shoot yourself in the foot’ brand of corrosion; identical in conceit to the wildly oblivious remark made by hotel magnate Leona Helmsley: ‘Only the little people pay taxes’.
     That is the stuff of which legends are made .. and jail terms.


     But there are also other kinds of corrosion: most commonly the “It can’t happen to me’ variety. That’s when someone is UP for so long that DOWN no longer seems a possibility. Tiger Woods and his infidelities, John Edwards and his Argentine girlfriend, Eliot Spitzer and his hookers, and Ted Haggard with who knows what … fall (appropriate word) into that category. Mind you, they know when they’re wrong. How could they not? But the influence of their enablers -- all those sycophants and supporters, agents and managers -- has made them feel as if they can do no wrong. Not that they’re above the law. No, no … of course not! But they are different, aren’t they? Almost everyone says so. And almost everyone has always said so.
     So they eventually forget where and what they came from and begin to think they’re living in a separate universe; an alternative reality in but not quite of the real world. And in some sad and sorry ways, they’re right.
     Do you suppose Hosni Mubarak’s cabinet warned him that the Egyptian people were profoundly unhappy with him? I doubt it.
     Did the German general staff remind Adolph Hitler -- even gently -- that Napoleon’s armies died at the gates of Moscow and that his were facing Stalingrad in winter? I doubt that too.
     And how come Mel Gibson’s inner circle didn’t insist to him that (duh!) anti-Semitism isn’t exactly de rigueur in Hollywood and that the Holocaust really did happen? Were they too busy drinking his booze?
      As for Lindsay Lohan, a talented and unresolved child, I suspect her handlers and hangers-on didn’t start ringing their hands in despair until it was too late or until the ganja ran out. Her career has certainly been ruined and most probably her life.
     Because like all the others --whether giants of history or here-today-gone-tomorrow personalities, -- she came to believe her own mythology.

     Now let’s get serious.

     What about an entire government? Does the same pattern hold true? After all, don’t we regularly elect a new government? We choose new leadership; with entirely different people gaining power, position and influence. So can they seriously believe in their predecessors’ myths?
     Can there be such a thing as serial self-deception?
     Well, as the simplistic Mrs. Palin would say, you betcha’


     Take Iraq as an example. (Pakistan and Afghanistan qualify too.)
     And let’s forget all that crap about nuclear threats and weapons of mass destruction and terrorist training camps: the hard sell that sold the American body politic on military intervention. We know now it was all smoke: no nuclear threat, no WMD, no terrorist camps.
      But what about bringing democracy and stability to a long-oppressed people?
     That’s a goal Bush embraced and Obama has affirmed. He‘s promised to get us out of Iraq and to leave behind a safe, stronger and more democratic country.. So will that promise be real or will it prove to be a serial myth: something we’ve been telling ourselves for so long and so often that we now believe it?
      Well, I have a little story that bears on the issue.
     
      In the year 1097, the first Crusader armies reached the Bosporus on their way to recapture Jerusalem from the ‘infidels’. The Byzantine Emperor in Constantinople, Alexius, (himself a man of demonic dimensions as inhuman as Hitler‘s), told the Crusade’s leaders that two factions had been struggling for control of Jerusalem in a seemingly endless battle for supremacy in the Levant.
     They were the Shiites and the Sunnis.
     That was nearly a thousand years ago.
     And we think we’re going to leave behind a stable and peaceful society? We, the United States of America, are going to miraculously erase a millennium’s worth of hatred … heal a millennium’s worth of wounds!
     If that’s not being victimized by your own mythology, I don’t know what is.
     What we will leave behind is yet another genocidal war between Shiites and Sunnis who’ll be joined in a merciless menage a trois by the Kurds (who only want to secede and to pump oil).
     What we leave behind, in fact, will be chaos … because of our own self-deception.

     But please don’t misunderstand me. We need myths. We really do. We need a Paul Bunyan and a John Henry, an Abe Lincoln and a Mohammed Ali, a John Kennedy, an Amelia Earhart and a Patrick Henry. We need them all … because they carry truths about honesty and courage and human value. But above all, we need to realize that myths about ourselves are always distortions .. and must be tested in the bright light of common sense. Just plain common sense.
     Look. Pakistan has always claimed it needs massive American aid -- meaning weaponry mostly -- to maintain the balance of power on the Asian sub-continent and to counter the threat of an invasion by India. And we seem to have bought that rationale for decades. We’ve poured in countless billions of dollars. But now?
      An Indian invasion? You must be kidding!!     Why would one of the world’s healthiest economies want to take over a violent, sectarian, corrupt, poverty-ridden, lawless, illiterate, inhumane, dissected and diseased society? It defies common sense.
       India needs Pakistan like the Russian Mafia needs an attorney general.

     So yes, institutions and governments, like individuals, can and do become victims of their own mythology … more often than we realize or want to admit.
     And it’s so sad.
     I mean …who could have dreamed that Martha Stewart, Barry Bonds and the Roman Catholic church had so much in common?
　
　


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Until next time … when I’ll be remembering Alastair Cooke in a somewhat revisionist way,
　
　
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　http://keywestwind.blogspot.com. Comments and criticism are welcomed.

BLACKMAILING MASTERPIECE THEATRE (PART TWO) ... AND THE WHTT NETWORK. GUESS WHAT THAT STANDS FOR.

　
　

     To write succinctly about real-life relationships -- whether between people or between institutions -- is difficult, to say the least. There are too many subtleties and gradations, too many nuances to be considered; not to mention feelings that can be bruised and countless memories subject to dispute
     So what am I doing here .. placing myself nakedly in harm’s way?
     Well, I’m reconstructing how the strange relationship between Mobil and public broadcasting managed to survive; and how Masterpiece Theatre thrived despite public television’s paranoia and resentment toward its most prominent underwriter. It wasn’t easy and it involved some really low blows (a few of which were thrown by me).
     In early 1970 it was my hope that the launch of Masterpiece Theatre would go smoothly because PBS, the network, and WGBH, the originating station, were both new to national networking; and Mobil, the underwriter, was totally new to public television. It seemed an agreeable and comfortable match.
     I was kidding myself!


     I’d recommended that Mobil commit a large advertising and promotion budget to the series, knowing it would be essential for success. Mobil, meaning my boss Herb Schmertz, agreed. ( A portion of that budget, I should add, would go to my company.) Then Schmertz got a call either from an executive at WGBH or from Hartford Gunn, the new president of PBS. He, the caller, stated that since PBS was the national broadcaster, PBS should control advertising and promotion. Translation: give us the money. We’ll spend it more wisely.
     I balked big time at that, but agreed to fly to Boyne Mountain, Michigan, for a national meeting of public television ad/promotion managers; and for an introduction to the new PBS director of those activities, a woman named Larsen (I think) who was hired from somewhere in the federal bureaucracy. I tried to keep an open mind, but to say the people there were cool toward me would be an understatement. Studiously polite, yes. After all, I represented big (albeit oily) bucks. But friendly and eager to cooperate? Not a chance.
     And Ms. Larsen? Wow!
     She was pleasant enough .. but over dinner on my second night, she told me she considered herself uniquely qualified for her job. She said --and I swear this is true -- that she could bring total objectivity to the task because she had never owned a television set!!!
     Holy shit, I said to myself, I gotta’ get out of here.
     In retrospect, I shouldn’t have been surprised. When the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) was established in 1967 as an ‘overseer’ of the public system’s growth and health, its first appointed president was John Macy, whose prior job was head of the Civil Service Commission. Shortly thereafter, my good friend Lewis Freedman, the brilliant producer of Hollywood Television Theatre, told me he’d had a dream about Macy. In the dream, Macy was asked what the difference was between running the civil service and running CPB.
     He thought for a moment and said: ‘Well, really ..not much.’.
     At that instant, Lewis said, the dream became a nightmare.

     It’s not exactly hot news, of course, that the non-profit world and the corporate world have never sung in perfect harmony. Many non-profits tend to consider themselves on a higher (but lower paying) plane of integrity; working as they do for the public good. Mere commerce is, well, mere commerce. Back then, in fact, I often came away from meetings with public television representatives with the impression they considered themselves always and inevitably on the side of the angels. That’s why I began to think of PBS (privately,) as the ‘WHTT Network’; the initials stand for We’re Holier Than Thou.
     Hartford Gunn didn’t contradict my impression, Plucked out of WGBH Boston to become the first president of PBS, he decided to headquarter the new network in Washington, D.C., right down the street from CPB. He consulted with me before making the decision and I begged him to put its headquarters in New York or Los Angeles where he could draw on an established talent pool. Barring that, I told him, Des Moines, Iowa, or French Lick, Indiana, would be wonderful. No-one would ever want to visit, and he could do whatever he chose. He chose Washington where the available talent pool was Ms .Larsen and others like her and where the network would be subject to the same political pressures as its supposed protector, CPB.
     So much for my opinion.


     Nonetheless, after a few more ‘skirmishes’ about broadcast times, credits for Mobil and promotional tactics, Masterpiece Theatre debuted in January of 1971 under the very competent WGBH producer, Christopher Sarson. Our first offering was a pot boiler called ‘The First Churchills’ starring John Neville and Susan Hampshire (who also starred in ‘The Forsyte Saga’ and always looked as if she had a head cold.) Mobil controlled the advertising and promotion which --fortified by superb graphics from the designer Ivan Chermayeff -- was strong and tasteful; and the host, Alastair Cooke, was able to camouflage the program’s flaws with astute and urbane commentary.
     To be honest, our strategy was to start with our weakest drama so as to learn some lessons about our promotional approach and then to follow it with the big guns: Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Hardy and James.
     But surprise! Surprise! The critics liked ’The First Churchills’ and so did the audience which was tiny by commercial standards but sizeable by public broadcasting standards. So we were off .. and if not running, then at least shuffling along hand in hand. Sort of.

     For the next two years, Schmertz, Sarson and I (and from time to time others representing public broadcasting) traveled to London to screen and to search for future Masterpiece Theatre properties. The BBC was delighted to see us because we were establishing a new American market for their productions..
     But I suspect Sarson was always uncomfortable with Mobil having a ‘say’ in the program choices. And if so, he was partially correct . The air belonged to public television and Mobil had no right to meddle with its legitimate prerogatives.
    On the other hand, Sarson understood that no-one wants to hear in the morning that he or she missed a good program the night before. Mobil controlled the advertising and promotion, and thus public awareness of what was coming up. So it was perfectly reasonable for Schmertz and I to screen future programs (Even the ones that were rejected, like ‘War and Peace‘ with Anthony Hopkins? Nobody ever asked that question.) We could also constructively advise and consult, if not consent, on content and scheduling. That, I believe, was the unspoken understanding to which all parties agreed. And miraculously, all parties usually agreed on which material would fit best into Masterpiece Theatre!!
     That is, until ‘Upstairs/Downstairs’ (U/D) came along..


     Here’s what happened:
     The CEO of Mobil, Raleigh Warner, had a friend who saw it while vacationing in England. He later called Mr.Warner who called Herb Schmertz who called me.
     So the next time we were in London with Chris Sarson, we tracked it down at London Weekend Television (a commercial broadcaster!) and screened the first few episodes of a potential 65 or 70.
     Schmertz liked it;
     Sarson didn’t.
     I loved it. I thought it was brilliantly produced and performed, and perfectly attuned to the values and ambiance of its era. I wanted it on Masterpiece Theatre, period. Double period..!
     A week later Michael Rice, the new general manager of WGBH (Calderwood was long gone) told Mobil it wasn’t suitable for Masterpiece Theatre and to forget it.
     So suddenly both Sarson, the producer, and his station management were against broadcasting it. And then, somehow, PBS got into the act and concurred. And finally, CPB, which should have been minding its own business, joined the active opposition. At the same time, I was passionately arguing in its favor; but to no appreciable effect.. ‘Upstairs/Downstairs‘, I was told time and again, was
                                     … too British
                                     … too narrow.
                                     … too superficial
                                     … too much like a soap opera
                                     … too obscure
                                     … too maudlin.
                                     .. . too slow … and so on.

     Suddenly I had an insight (about time, no?): this argument might not be about Upstairs/Downstairs’ at all! With the forces of public broadcasting acting as if Mobil were plotting to overthrow the United States government, maybe that’s exactly what they’d come to believe. After all, if Mobil got “Upstairs/Downstairs’ on the air, it would look as if it were calling the shots. It would be as if an oil company, God forbid, had taken over de facto control of the public air. PBS’ independence would be destroyed and its virginal integrity violated..

   
     Shit! I thought. I just want it on Masterpiece Theatre.

   
      But if suspicion and paranoia were really what it was all about, I reflected, so be it! There’s only one way to deal with it.. Let’s test out how deep it goes. Let’s see whether money talks and integrity walks.
     The next time we were in London, I arranged a luncheon with all the naysayers. I didn’t invite Schmertz because I wanted him to be able to veto my strategy if it back-fired. The lunch was properly polite until I started lobbying for U/D for the umpteenth time.
     One of my guests quickly stopped me: Why aren’t you hearing us? ‘Upstairs/Downstairs’ is a dead issue. I mean, really dead.
     Okay, I said, how about this? How about we broadcast a few episodes to see if people like it? If they don’t, end of story. But let’s just test it, for Chrissake!
     I think it was the CPB guy who then said: Whaddaya’ mean ‘we‘? What's 'we'? And where’d you get the brass to think your programming judgment is better than ours?
     And there it was. The voice of the WHTT Network, with all its smug superiority. We’re Holier Than Thou! We, not you, are on the side of the angels.
     And there was I .. totally fed up and ready to unleash the attack dogs.
     I replied as quietly as I could: Well if we’re really at the end of our rope on this subject, then let me tell you one thing. If you refuse to broadcast ‘Upstairs/Downstairs’, I will kill Masterpiece Theatre.
     The statement was so bold it silenced the table.
     Finally, someone said: Don’t be silly. You don’t have the right to do that!
     Don’t I? Well I named Masterpiece Theatre, I told them. And after it was on the air for a year, I copyrighted it because you guys didn’t have the foresight to do it. I own it .. understand? And since the music, the graphics, the set and even Alastair have become totally identified with it …guess what?
     Again the table went mute until someone said:: That’s blackmail.
     Maybe so, I thought, but it’s not really blackmail until you pay it.

     A month or so later, after WGBH had reconsidered its position,, PBS made one final attempt to kill the series. It said we were paying too much for it. So I ‘persuaded’ London Weekend to cut the price, promising that Mobil would make up the difference in a future deal. Which it did. No-one in public broadcasting ever knew.
     When, at last, it went on the air in 1973, ‘Upstairs/Downstairs’ became a Sunday night phenomenon all across the United States. It brought a new and broader audience to public broadcasting and won an EMMY as Best Dramatic Series four years in a row; something no drama had ever achieved.. (Under pressure from the three commercial networks, the nominating rules were then changed so it could never win another.)
     And so now, I must offer a dual confession.
      I was bluffing all along. I couldn’t possibly have killed Masterpiece Theatre. I’d invested far too much of myself into bringing it to life.
     And I lied! I never copyrighted the name; and apparently no-one ever checked. To my knowledge, it has never been copyrighted. And Mobil, thank God, didn’t overthrow the government. But it did put a splendid and deserving series on the air.
     So I offer no apologies and live with only a few (mild) regrets.

　
　
　
                                                 AFTER DINNER MINTS


Stan Calderwood, who had been head of marketing for Polaroid, lasted only six months at WGBH. His successor, Michael Rice (the only person who ever called to congratulate me on the success of U/D) didn’t last much longer.

Herb Schmertz was offered early retirement shortly after a new CEO took over at Mobil. Wisely, he took it. I think he was far too smart and certainly too flamboyant for his new superiors.

Chris Sarson resigned shortly after the U/D battle. Rumor had it he left because of it; but I doubt that. He had other irons in the fire and went on to create and produce a fine children’s program at WGBH called ‘Zoom!’ It ran for six good years.

Oddly, John Macy and Hartford Gunn, champions of bureaucracy, both died in the same year: 1986.

I remained a consultant to Mobil after Schmertz retired, but the company’s culture was changing and its commitment to worthwhile projects was sliding toward the conventional rather than the innovative. So I quit. Years later, after it merged with Exxon, it stopped underwriting public television entirely.


WGBH replaced Chris Sarson with Joan Wilson, a wonderful woman who always considered Schmertz and I collaborators rather than adversaries. She was supported by the steady and wise WGBH president, Henry Becton. When Joan died prematurely in 1985, her responsibilities were given to Rebecca Eaton in whose capable hands they still reside. Before Rebecca agreed to take the job, I advised her to keep it for five years and then move on. That was twenty-six years ago.
      So much for my opinion.

     A final irony? The BBC is producing a re-make of ‘Upstairs/Downstairs’ and PBS is scheduling it on ‘Masterpiece’ without debate. What a surprise!

     Please spread this blog around to anyone who might like or dislike it. The link is http://keywestwind.blogspot.com. Thanks to all. 

BLACKMAILING MASTERPIECE THEATRE ... AND WHO THE HELL IS FRANK GILLARD???

　
　
          Masterpiece Theatre had its 40^th birthday in January and almost nobody noticed. But I got nostalgic about it. So just for fun, I went to Wikipedia and was told that the original idea for Masterpiece Theatre -- now the longest running drama series in TV history -- came from a man named Frank Gillard. Then I went to the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) website and learned that Christopher Sarson was ‘the founder’ of the series.(Note the singular)

         Well, I said to myself, I’ll be goddamned!! Or maybe I’ll just be gob smacked!!
         Success, as everyone knows, has many parents; failure none. And I understand there are often different truths within the framework of success. In fact, I’ve always been willing to make allowances for exaggeration, shading, semi-truth and charitable interpretation. But I’m not willing to warp the truth beyond recognition.
         So it’s time to set the record straight and to unbend a few historical abuses.
         Christopher Sarson was not ‘the founder’ of Masterpiece Theatre. Not even close. But he did contribute a great deal to its start-up and to its early success. More of that later.And who the hell is Frank Gillard?
         I never heard of him and I was there. In fact, I named Masterpiece Theatre and was one of its three principal founders. (Please note the plural.) The other two were Stan Calderwood, then a senior executive at station WGBH in Boston; and Herb Schmertz, the newly-appointed Vice President of Public Affairs for Mobil Corporation.

       And here’s my true version of how Masterpiece Theatre was born …. and nearly died in its adolescence when the forces of public broadcasting adamantly and dogmatically rejected a series Mobil (meaning Schmertz and I) had found and wanted to broadcast. In the end, and after a long and bitter battle, I virtually ‘blackmailed” the series onto the air, It was called ’Upstairs Downstairs’.
        But more of that later too.
        It all began in early 1970 when Stan Calderwood, in a meeting arranged by Mobil‘s ad agency, asked Herb Schmertz whether Mobil would be interested in underwriting a 13-part BBC adaptation of Henry James’ ‘Portrait of a Lady’ starring Richard Chamberlain. Chsmberlain, before moving to England, had been wildly popular in America as the star of the ‘Dr. Kildare’ series on NBC. Calderwood believed that the James adaptation, combined with Chamberlain’s marquis value, might be celebrated as enthusiastically as the ‘Forsyte Saga’ which was shown on various educational TV stations (principally in New York and Boston) a few years before.
        I was a consultant to Mobil at the time and, as it happens, was looking for an opportunity for the company to gain a presence on public television’s first national network, PBS, which was to be created in October of that same year. But I doubted this was the opportunity.
        For one thing, despite all the hoopla, far more people talked about ‘The Forsyte Saga’ than ever watched it: and for another, almost nobody watched Kenneth Clark’s famed ‘Civilization’ series despite its splendid reviews and intellectual cachet. And both came from the BBC.
        Still, Schmertz and I agreed that we should at least look at ’Portrait of a Lady’. Which we did along with Calderwood and Peter Roebeck, the Beeb’s distributor in the United States.
        We were shocked. The show was worse than bad. It was terrible.
        Yet during four or five hours of (painful) screening, it came to light that a number of other ‘serial dramas’, as they were then called, were already in the BBC’s vaults. Maybe, just maybe, we thought, there might be more here than meets the eye (excuse the pun).
        So off we flew -- under Roebeck’s wary eye -- to London where lo and behold … we found the mother lode: wonderful BBC television adaptations of novels by Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Thackeray, Balzac, Thomas Hardy, Thomas Hughes, two more by Henry James and more.
        What to do with it all was obvious and almost spontaneous. Instead of Calderwood’s modest proposal, we said, let’s create something entirely new: a full season of dramatized novels by great writers!! In truth, the idea just seemed to emerge by itself. It came from each of us and from none of us.
         Within weeks, we’d closed the deal between Mobil and WGBH which, in turn, closed the deal with Roebeck. We’d already agreed that we needed to package the programs in a unique way and would also need to produce ’wrap arounds’ to introduce and conclude each program. I suggested ’Masterpiece Theatre’ as a working title until someone could think of something better. No-one did; so to my surprise, the title stuck.
        It was then that WGBH assigned a member of its staff, Christopher Sarson, to be line producer on the project. Chris, a likeable and very affable Englishman, was responsible for designing the final package, picking the theme music, the set, etc. In fact, it was probably Chris who suggested employing Alastair Cooke as host, although I can’t remember exactly. I do recall Mobil asking my opinion and my being enthusiastic about the possibility because I’d seen Cooke many times on ‘Omnibus’, a CBS Sunday afternoon program on the humanities. He struck me as perfect: urbane, sophisticated and articulate.

        Thus on January 10, 1971, Masterpiece Theatre was born -- almost at the same time as PBS -- as a collaborative effort of Mobil and of WGBH. None of us had even a hint that it would become an iconic institution. But it certainly did .. and the people who made it happen -- and who brought ‘mini-series’ into the American vocabulary -- have never received due credit.

        So thank you, Stan Calderwood, although I doubt you‘re still with us; and thank you, Herb Schmertz, who’s retired and living in the New York area. You created Masterpiece Theatre .. not Chris Sarson who contributed a great deal at the beginning and not Frank Gillard who -- although once a senior radio executive at the BBC -- nobody (and I mean NOBODY) connected to the project ever heard of.
        And what I want to know is … how can I ever trust Wikipedia again? And how can you?
        I guess the old axiom is true: ‘Don’t believe everything you read.’ Especially on the internet.


 

         Okay, I’ve run out of steam. So in my next blog, I’ll describe the war over ‘Upstairs Downstairs’, and public television’s deep-seated and self-destructive distrust of the corporate world. At the time, I should have sensed it coming.
          Finally, the winner of ‘The Tackiest Street In America’ contest wasn’t even a street. It was a question.
           A friend from upstate New York wrote:
                                 “Does an aisle in Walmart count?”            She will receive the full sized statue of Andrew Dice Clay dressed as a Degas ballerina as soon as I receive her money order for shipping and for transportation and hotel costs for the dresser.
           Until next time. Spread this blog around to friends.. Or enemies. The link is

　
　

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'The Tackiest Street In America Contest': Nominations Are Open

     I live in Key West, Florida, whose main street, I'm sorry to say, is probably the tackiest street in America. I could be wrong, of course, because ours is a country with lots of tacky and I can't pretend to have seen it all .. or even a large part of it. Which is why I've decided to solicit nominations for the honor, to be measured again my own Duval Street. Whoever submits the winner -- which will be judged by an impartial panel I'll control with an iron fist -- will win either a life-sized statue of Andrew Dice Clay dressed as a Degas ballerina or a free hunting trip with Dick Cheney. The choice will be his/hers.
     Now for the sake of clarity, I should define 'tacky'. Tacky doesn't necessarily mean dirty or broken down, although each might easily accompany it. Tacky does mean tawdry, tasteless, cheap and exploitive. Golly gee ... think of Sarah Palin. And if you don't care to do that (and who could blame you?), think of John Edwards.
       Please note that I have no political biases.
      And that is Duval Street: two lanes that run for less than a mile from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean; two lanes than are tawdry, tasteless, cheap and exploitive; two lanes that are a testimony to municipal dysfunction and indigenous greed.
      I recently counted forty-seven T-shirt shops on Duval. Forty-seven! Some of the more tasteless shirts displayed in their windows said:

         I Pee In Pools

         I'm no gynecologist,
              But I'll Take A Look.

          My parents said I could become anything,
                So I became an ASSHOLE.

           I shaved my balls for this?

      Of course, every shirt boasts Key West as its source, as if asserting that it reflects the values of the city and its residents. And once inside the shops, one finds even subtler slogans of Key West like ..

           Fuck You, You Fucking Fuck

      But that's not all. In addition to the T-shirt sellers along this miserable mile are forty-one .. count 'em .. forty-one bars! You think I'm kidding? No, in fact, I'm not. (Live music begins blaring at ten in the morning.) There are also two strip joints, a 'gentlemen's club', an on-street escort service, a nudie bar, and an assortment of chain operators: a Hard Rock Cafe, a Fat Tuesday, a Banana Republic, Coach, Express and two drugstores whose sales of headache remedies must surely account for the majority of their business.
       And finally, to bottom out this stretch of 'Keys Sleaze', we're confronted with aggressive street peddlers, merchandise hustlers, pushy panhandlers, and abusive drunks who caroom along the sidewalks like horizontal avalanches.

       I accept that some tacky ambiance can be expected in a tourist town. And Key West is certainly a tourist town: a tiny, two by four-mile island that hosts nearly two and a half million people a year, with over one million of those (all on Duval) staying just for the day, buying a margarita or two and an overpriced T-shirt, maybe having a burger and then urinating enough to nearly overload our municipal waste system. And of those, almost nine hundred thousand come off cruise ships that arrive in the morning and leave by sunset.
       But now hear this! At this very moment, our greed-besotted leaders are considering an expansion of the Key West ship channel to handle the newest cruise ships: the behemoths that carry 5000 passengers and 2500 crew .. which I'm told are to be followed by a second generation of giants that carry 10,000!
       Can you imagine what Duval Street and its surroundings will look like when and if that happens? Can the diversity of this beautiful little island survive under the weight of, say, another million and a half people a year?

       The answers could be suggested by history because Key West has consistently shown itself to be the most short-sighted city in the United States; a city that was once the richest per capita in the country and thirty-five years later was the poorest.
      In the 19th century, it was the center of the American cigar industry, producing some 100 million cigars a year. Shortsighted labor policies caused the industry to abandon the island and move to Tampa. Then it became the largest producer of green turtle in the nation .. that is, until the turtles were hunted to near extinction. The same thing happened to its flourishing sponge industry which imploded, and most recently to the thriving shrimp fleet which shrank to nearly nothing as a result of over-fishing.
      In other words, just about every asset Key West has enjoyed has turned first to gold and then -- driven by blind greed -- to dreck.
       Today it still has magic, with pictureque old neighborhoods and buildings shaded by flowering trees and blossoming bougainvillea as beautiful as anything to be seen anywhere. It still draws and welcomes writers and painters and sculptors and musicians and playwrights (and everyone else) to its gentle climate and to its even gentler tradition of tolerance for all.
        But Duval Street has become a metastasizing cancer spread by the greed of the landlords, bar owners, shop keepers, tour operators, politicians and bankers who believe that any new business is good business and who continue to argue that more is always better.
       They do nothing to control the cancer or to treat it in any way. And they ignore the symptomatic and ominous complaints of tourists -- on whom the city dependa almost entirely -- who swear they'll never return.
       So the reason I nominate Duval Street as the tackiest street in American is not because it's tacky per se, but because of the tawdry leadership, the compulsive greed and the tunnel vision of those who, every day, permit it to corrode and to poison an otherwise wonderful place.
         Okay, nominations are now open to all.




p.s.- To be fair, a handful of very good restaurants still survive on Duval Street; and on the upper end of the street there are still a few tasteful shops and art galleries. How long before they become T-shirt shops? Who knows? And more to the point, who cares?
         As always, comments positive or negative are welcome.