Tagged: Ed Garsten
When 2+2=BS
One of the best books I ever read was a slim little paperback thing published in 1954 titled “How to Lie With Statistics,” by Darrell Huff. It was required reading in my “Ethics in Journalism” course at the University of Arizona when I attended grad school there in 1978.
I bring this book to your attention because it should also be required reading for anyone who takes any stock in the myriad of public opinion polls tossed in our faces during this dreadful political season.
Huff warns us, “The secret language of statistics, so appealing in a fact-minded culture, is employed to sensationalize, inflate, confuse, and oversimplify,”
Indeed. If you don’t already know this, polls are not the same as elections. News organizations buy polls to give them something to report, regardless of their accuracy. Polls are also useful for earning publicity for the purchasing news organization because every time the poll is cited in another news organization’s story, the purchasing network, station or publication’s name is mentioned…like the CNN/Wall Street Journal Poll, or the Mad Magazine/Hustler Poll. I made that one up. Doesn’t matter if the polls reflect reality. They can always tout the “margin for error,” to explain away the fact the poll’s results could be full of crap.
Political candidates buy polls to convince voters they’re winning. Corporations purchase polls to prove the world can’t live without their products or services.
It’s all in the wording of the questions. Sure, there can be the simple choice of candidate listed. But then the questions become even more leading. Say, “If Donald Trump wasn’t a misogynistic, lying creep, how much more likely would you be to vote for him?” Or. “How much does the fact that Hillary Clinton may very well be indicted affect your decision whether or not to vote for her?”
A company touting, say, its new miracle product might ask consumers identified as ex-felons, “Agree or disagree that your personal well-being would be enhanced with a product that could completely dissolve the serial number from a weapon used in a crime.”
Huff covers that possibility with the declaration “there is terror in numbers.”
You may recall the polls appeared to predict Mitt Romney unseating Barack Obama from the White House four years ago, only to be handily disproven when actual votes were counted. The polls showed that because those cited were “internal polls” taken for Romney, and paid for by Romney’s organization. Gotta keep the customer satisfied, until poor Mitt let his polls blind him into deciding not to write a concession speech “just in case.” Unfortunately for him, the real poll, known as the election, didn’t square with his self-serving survey and Mitt had to concede to the fact he was unprepared to cogently concede.
This is why I completely disregard any sort of poll plastered on the screen or on the page, no matter the subject. I learned long ago, courtesy Darrell Huff’s 144 pages of truth, the margin for error, is the poll itself.
A remote relationship
Every time this commercial for Comcast/Xfinity’s new voice remote comes on we have to watch. Why? Maybe it’s because it’s campy, a little annoying, but who can fault a spot that spoof’s Rick Springfield’s “Jesse’s Girl”? As it turns out, we upgraded our service the other day, and sure enough it included the voice remote. Oh, it’s a regular remote, but if your fingers or thumbs are too gentle to mash buttons you can hold down the little button with a drawing of a microphone and yell out, “Watch Real Eunuchs of Bombay County!” and the show will magically appear.
Of course, this opened the door to all sorts of mayhem. You can ask the blanket question, “what’s on right now?” A guide will pop up, then it’s up to you to page though hundreds of channels only to realize there’s nothing worthwhile to watch except maybe the Jewish Customs Channel now playing a series called “The Magic Mohel.” Lots of good tips.
Thought I’d challenge the remote’s capabilities by demanding a show featuring politicians that neither grope women nor charge exorbitant fees for telling Wall Street moneymongers what they want to hear. After a moment the message appeared on the screen, “Sorry. That content does not exist.” Some upgrade.
I was really in the mood for a cartoon and verbally requested a classic Bugs Bunny. Deciding it was time to impress me, my TV shot back, “there are only 15,000 Bugs Bunny cartoons. You want one that includes Elmer Fudd, Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, or the one where Bugs and Yosemite Sam get stoned and have a great time repeatedly tripping up Road Runner?” No one likes a smartass TV.
The last straw was when I very politely asked to view an episode of “The Voice” featuring mimes.” Exasperated with my unusual requests the curt, but firm message on the screen made it clear we were no longer on speaking terms. It said something like, “Take your thumbs out of your ass and start pressing my buttons.” That’s freakin’ Comcastic.
Razor Burn
This is a photo of what I saw when I looked up from the book I was reading in the library today. That book was the latest silliness from Carl Hiaasen that opens with a woman who gets in a car accident because while she was driving she was shaving her, uh, girl area. 
Knowing Hiassen I’m convinced the book will evolve into something even more, um, entertaining, but looking at what was in front of me I felt a bit ashamed. A careful look at the selections of books on CD, and instead of enjoying my guilty pleasure, I could have chosen to learn to speak Hindi, French or Turkish or hear a reading of the life and times of Coco Chanel or step by step instructions to debug my laptop or whittle a likeness of Grover Cleveland. All worthy choices, but I’ll stick with Hiassen’s “Razor Girl,” because, well, honestly, I think more than enough people already know how to speak Hindi.
In support of Guido Bruhl
While many voters are in struggling over the POTUS choices, I think back to the 1964 elections: Goldwater vs LBJ. My father hated them both but respected our distinguished neighbor..a man named Guido Bruhl. His son Gunther was a classmate of mine. His wife Christine was a seamstress whom my mother employed from time to time. On election day my exasperated father declared, “I’m voting for Guido Bruhl!” No matter that the excellent Mr. Bruhl was ineligible as he was born in Germany and even wore Liederhosen on occasion. From that time on, each election cycle, when the choices were less than optimal, our family let it be known our support was firmly behind Guido Bruhl. We never bothered to inform Guido Bruhl of this fact, which was a strategic move as he was a very large man with a mustache.
A New Year’s Sermon..and some jokes
Today is New Year’s Day 5777 Don’t look for a ball to drop in Times Square, but perhaps a matzo ball or two will plunk into a shisl of chicken soup. It’s OK if you’re not wearing a silly hat, but it’s OK to wear a yarmulke. Noisemakers? Um..no, unless you want the rabbi to toss you out on your talis. Why are we 3,761 years ahead of everyone else? Ever wait for a Jew to get ready to get in the car? We needed that much of a head start.
Unlike the secular turning of the calendar celebrated with drunken gatherings and other forced frivolity, today, on Rosh Hashanah, we Jews spend the day seriously assessing our lives of the past year and hope to book another trip around the sun by being inscribed in the Book of Life after seeking forgiveness and atonement for our sins 10 days hence on Yom Kippur. That’s the day you don’t eat. You pray and think and hope the other old men in the temple broke the rule long enough to brush their teeth.
When I was younger I never missed a Sabbath or holiday to attend temple. Before we had kids my non-Jewish wife and I attended each other’s services. Then, as life intervened, we stopped, but we never stopped celebrating and respecting our holidays and faiths and teaching our children about them. Indeed, my late mother marveled at my wife’s wonderful matzo balls and tried to pry from her that “secret recipe.” My wife simply deadpanned, “I followed the directions on the box.” She must be great at following directions because they still kick the tushies of those I’ve had in the best Jewish delis.
By the same token, I’ve helped erect and decorate the Christmas tree and my wife makes sure the right number of Chanuka candles are in the menorah. I noticed that this year the two holidays are on the same day. Since Jesus started as a Jew we can celebrate his birthday and..conversion..simultaneously!
There’s not much I can contribute to Easter besides using some Peeps to plug up some holes in our pipes, but my wife puts on an absolutely incredible Passover seder. Yes, we read the entire story from the Hagadah before dinner and have never once missed a year.
The real point is, on this day of reflection, we’re all one. We may have different beliefs about how the world began, who’s running the show or what symbols to respect, but we all want the same things…health, happiness, good things for our families, success and peace and maybe a Dove bar once in awhile. And you must always add humor. We used to joke that a mezzuzah is just a cross without handlebars. Remember that. Be well.
Dart misses target
Personally, I wasn’t happy when they named it the Dart. We had a history. The good part was I passed my driver’s test in my brother’s ’65 Dart. The bad news is when I inherited that lemon during my senior year in college, first I got into an accident that crushed the trunk, then I decided to make a little $$ by offering a rides home and back for Thanksgiving break. The Dart would have none of it. Somewhere on Route 17 in the middle of the Catskills the Dart decided “no mas!” At least for a few hours while it took a long break on the shoulder and mocked me as I sprayed something into the carburetor that was supposed to cure what ailed it. My passengers were not amused and by the time we limped onto Long Island many hours later, they rather brusquely informed me they would find another ride back to school. The Dart appeared to have felt flush with victory at the news its mopey passengers wouldn’t be making the 300 mile return trip, and performed flawlessly on the way back.
One HoJo’s to Go
I have a couple of lasting memories of Howard Johnson’s. One, because of the shape of the scooper they used, the ice cream looked like upside down dunce caps sitting atop a sugar cone. Each scoop not only had that distinct shape, they all also seemed to always be infused with chips of ice because, I guess, of some mandated freezer setting that was totally inappropriate.
My other lasting memory is service that varied from slow..to glacial. A stop at a HoJo on a road trip meant you were going to show up at your destination at least an hour late. But you didn’t really care because that orange roof, the prospect of digging your teeth into a clam roll or hot dog on one of those oddball buns and licking one of those dunce cap ice cream cones represented everything good about America. The service may have been slow, but at least it was friendly. The prices weren’t bad and moms and dads could feel confident they were treating their families to a wholesome meal and clean bathrooms.
I’m thinking about Howard Johnson’s because with the recent closing of the Bangor, Maine restaurant, there’s only one left–in Lake George, New York. That one seems to be doing well but I expect that one day the last HoJo will be NoMo.
Only those of a certain age remember time when there wasn’t a fast food joint at every exit and places like Howard Johnson’s and Stuckeys and Horne’s 
were the oases you hoped would appear around the next bend with their tall signs 
beckoning you from the road for food, rest and yes, their restrooms. I never fell victim to a Stuckeys pecan log roll but guess what, I still have a shot. According to their website there’s a Stuckeys near Indianapolis…that’s within a day’s drive from my home.
Just as Howard Johnson’s hangs on with one last location, one Horne’s restaurant remains in Port Royal, Virginia.
I think the last time I went to a Howard Johnson’s was back where I went to college in Oswego, New York. My then-girlfriend, who’s now been my wife of 43 years, and I, would hop over to HoJo a few blocks from campus to take advantage of their “Double Bubble” drink special, which provided giant alcoholic beverages at college student prices. Even though the college was the town’s meal ticket the waitresses always scowled at us scruffy students and served us only begrudgingly knowing we were not only scruffy, but crappy tippers. Still, for my wife and I it brings back warm memories of our courtship and we still do “double bubble” several times a week at home. I can tell you this..the service is a lot friendlier!
Still, it’s sad to see some of our cultural touchstones fade with time but business is business I suppose. However, I’d give anything to lick one more ice chip -infused dunce cap cone. Fall in Lake George sounds nice.
The art of parting
It’s been a month since I left my laptop and iPhone on my desk, locked my office and walked out of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles for the last time and into retirement. Since then, among other things, I’ve thought about my other workplace exits and how some were better than others.
This one was probably the best. I had it planned for several months so it came as no surprise to my boss, who had treated me royally. My wonderful team tossed me a great lunch, presented me with a basket of bourbon, signed each bottle, and produced several videos that absolutely blew me away ranging from heartfelt expressions of farewell, goodbye, thanks and hilarious wiseass comments–to a collection of outtakes from my standups that exposed me as more than fallible, and they even created a spoof of my infamous “April in the D” song with the words changed to “All Because of E.” It was very hard to keep it together viewing those videos knowing that short of an occasional lunch or drinks, after 11 years I wouldn’t be seeing my second family every day. 
By the time my last day, July 29th, rolled around, I was spent from all the “goodbyes” and actually slipped out of the office with barely a word, swiped my badge for the last time, got in my car and called my wife, telling her “retirement as begun!”
But not every one of my employment exits was quite as, let’s say, smooth. There was the disastrous merger between Time Warner and AOL when I worked at CNN. We knew there would be layoffs but while I was at the Detroit Auto Show my boss took the time to page me (this was 2001) to let me know our bureau in Detroit would “not be touched.” Big relief! For 72 hours. A few days later I had returned from a shoot when my boss called me to let me know he was paying our bureau a visit the next day and that I should arrive and 9am and the rest of my staff should come an hour later. I was pretty obvious I was getting the boot. So I asked him what happened. “Oh,” changed our mind,” was his lame answer. I was pretty stunned and upset, then got it together spending the next few hour giving my staff the news, exchanging a few hugs, a few tears and then started gathering my stuff and put the past 20 years behind me. When the loser came in the next day to give me the official word and have me sign papers re my severance I asked again why the change of heart. He actually said, “now’s not the time.” Huh? Time had run out, and so did I.
When I left The Detroit News, it was to take the job that morphed into the one I held at FCA. The automaker was starting its first blog (2005) and the head of PR wanted an autowriter to manage and ghost write it for him. Cool job. I had been looking for work for a bit and six months prior had accepted a job at the rival Detroit Free Press but the News hated having their autowriters poached by the competition and gave me a huge raise to stay. So I did, but I still hated it there and kept looking. when the FCA job came through I jumped at it but never got a chance to give notice quite the way you should. While covering the annual auto industry conference in Traverse City, Mich., I called in a story we would be breaking, but I was flummoxed to find it wasn’t in the next day’s paper. That was the last straw for me after putting up with three years of what I thought was questionable and unethical editing decisions. What no one knew was that I had already sealed the deal on my new job so I had nothing to lose when I exploded in the media room at the conference, slamming down the phone and declaring, loud enough for all to hear, “screw it! I quit!” Of course it took only two breath’s time for that revelation to reach my boss back in Detroit who was not pleased to hear of my impending departure from a reporter at the Free Press. Oooops. They tossed me a goodbye thing anyway..maybe to make sure I was really leaving!
My favorite exit was from my part-time job as a stockboy/cashier at a department store on Long Island when I was in high school. Part of my duties was as the “bargain broadcaster,” announcing in-store sales from time-to-time as well as letting the shoppers know when the store was about to close. I shared the announcing duties with a friend who had a big, big voice. It was our last night on the job, and then we were headed Jones Beach to celebrate. But my friend and I were not what you would call “model employees.” He had been fired, twice, and I was laid off once. It was his turn in the booth to announce the impending closing of the store. He had to say, “Attention S. Klein shoppers. When you hear the bell, it means the store will close in 10 minutes. Please bring your purchases to the nearest cashier and check out.” Then the security guy named Bill would ring the bell. However, since it was our last night, my friend, whose name I am protecting, decided the announcement should be a little more, um, emphatic so he changed it. “Attention S. Klein shopper. When you hear the bell, it means the store will close in 10 minutes. Please bring your purchases to the nearest cashier and check out. SO BILL, RING THE EFFIN’ (he said the real word) BELL SO WE CAN ALL GET THE HELL OUTTA HERE!” We hit the exit before security could propel us by our belt loops out onto the hot, asphalt parking lot.
What I learned over the years is no matter what the circumstances of your departure from a job, always leave on the best terms possible. In all cases, except for the department store thing, I made sure I shook the boss’s hand, left a nice, positive goodbye note to my co-workers and removed any rotting deli from my desk drawers.
DTW to JFK to BOS to CDG to LHR to STFU
You’ve seen those people. You may be one of them. You know. Inveterate airport code posters on Facebook or Twitter. “Hey! I’m LGA to HNL for a fabulous 2-week vacation.” I always thought that a person willing to reveal their absence should add the helpful information, “so go ahead and rob my house. Just got a new 75-inch TV. Best to take it out through the garage. Don’t worry. No one will be home for the next two weeks.”
But it’s not only vacationers. It’s business travelers. I suppose it’s a way of broadcasting you’re traveling the world on the boss’s dime and that makes you one cool ass guy or girl. It really doesn’t. It broadcasts the fact that you’re deluded into believing people will be jealous of you because you spend much of your life on an airborne tube stuffed with people who smell bad and try to pound a steamer trunk into the overhead bins.
I don’t think I’m being paranoid by never posting on social media that I’m away from home. Believe me. My “adoring” public can wait for the photos until I return and my home and family aren’t sitting ducks for whatever mayhem this crazy world has in mind.
As for the ego trip of letting the world know that I’m traveling the world? Please. Given the conditions of air travel today I would think it much more prestigious to boast about traveling in complete comfort in a shipping container in the depths of the cargo hold of a Great Lakes coal hauler.
So if I see a post from you that’s nothing more than a string of airport codes I’ll just figure it’s a cry for help. Perhaps the code you need to post is SOS.
Justifiable Shopper-cide
Almost two weeks into my voluntary unemployment, called, “retirement,” I’ve become all too familiar with a life form I’ll call DDS, “death deserving shoppers.” These are shoppers whose eyes are fixed-focused on their phones, whether plying the aisles of a store or navigating their way around a parking lot. Their eyes never leave their phones, even as they walk, blissfully blind about the possibility that oncoming vehicles will turn their smartphones, and bodies, into instant speed bumps. Where we once had the expectation that pedestrians would look both ways before crossing a roadway, and give way to cars and trucks that could impair their ability to reach their destination alive, now the DDS simply dive in, figuring the squeal of brakes, a flipping finger, maybe a horn honk would validate their selfish supposition motorists will do anything to work around them without causing fatalities. Actually, if you are, or know a DDS, you should know we motorists don’t care about avoiding your fatality. We are simply averse to all the paperwork.
edLINES 