Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Second Airplane Dialogue

This is the second conversation I had on the flight between Denver and Houston...

The Image Consultant

There was some bad weather in Houston and, due to the overflow of passengers from delayed flights, our flight was full. One particular guy was especially upset at not getting his first class seat, booked for the original flight. He wound up sitting next to me. After he'd had about 30 minutes to stew over the injustice of having to sit in coach class, he seemed to calm down. I noticed, as I often do, what type of watch he was wearing (it's a weakness of mine). Panerai Luminor Marina. I comment on how nice his watch is because, at a little over $4k, it really is quite nice. In fact, he had the full metrosexual uniform going on, as if the entire Kenneth Cole Fall line just sat down next to me. I make no judgements on that, by the way. Turns out he's an image consultant that works with politician and pseudo-celebrity types.

He notices that I'm reading a copy of Machiavelli's The Prince and we talk about whether it is better to be loved than feared, or the reverse:

Me: So, I'm reading here in this book about being loved versus being feared...or respected. How do you advise your clients on this question?

Consultant: I almost always advise them to work towards being respected. The effort it takes to be "loved" is enormous. People love you when they believe that you love them back. That means you have to care about their sh**. Plus, it leaves your sh** open for them to see.

Me: And I guess that's a bad thing...

Consultant: Look, in the real world, what matters is perception. Ideally, we all would like to believe that who we really are is attractive to others and will help us get ahead. We both know that's not true, at least for most people. My job is to help people show off their positive sides and hold back their negative. It's not about putting on false fronts, like some people think. It's about simply managing what parts of you people see. We do it naturally, but I help them do it better. So, yeah, I almost always advise clients to work towards respect, not love.

Me: You said "almost always". When would you advise love?

Consultant: When it comes to your spouse...there's no amount of image management that can save you there!


Heh. At least the last statement was funny. That guy was a pretty cynical dude. But I don't fault him for his perspective because he articulated, honestly, how I usually tend to operate with people. I manage my image. I put my best qualities on display, hoping that all will see what a great guy I am. I keep others at arms length away...close enough to see those "positives" and be slightly impressed, but not too close. Any closer and it would mean that they see everything else, too. I just don't like people seeing my junk. If I were to ask Jesus the same question, I wonder what He'd say? Originally, I planned on finishing this off with a WWJD moment, but I think I'll write about that next time.

Friday, September 22, 2006

Airplane Dialogue

I did some traveling two weeks ago for my job. When on the road, a little "game" I play to pass the time between long layovers is to see what kind of conversations I can have with strangers. Some people do it because it's natural to them, I do it precisely because it's unnatural. So, on my flight back from Denver, I had a couple of interesting conversations which I will share with all of you lucky readers.

The Lobbyist

To my left sat a lady, on her way back to Washington, D.C. and her job as a political lobbyist on Capitol Hill. One of the default topics of conversation with strangers revolves around our jobs. To help her understand more clearly what I do, I explained that I worked for a non-profit Christian organization and that my specific job was to figure out ways to ethnically diversify our membership. I then told her that I had spent the week in strategy meetings on how to do that. The conversation then made its way to topics of political correctness and the following exchange:

Lobbyist: What do you think about political correctness?

Me
: I just spent a week in meetings where everybody was so conscious of "ethnicity" and so afraid to offend. Am I ethnic because I'm Asian? Isn't everybody of some ethnicity or another? Should I be asked my nationality? Doesn't that imply that I'm not "American"? It's all a bit forced.

Lobbyist
: I think it's important, though. Labeling matters. One of the things I'm working on right now is animal rights legislation. Changing animal ownership laws, for example. We don't own our dogs...they are their own beings. We refer to dogs as "Canine Americans" in order to acknowledge that.


I laughed as if she just told a fine joke, until I realized that she was serious. Then I was just plain stunned. Awkwardness ensues and the conversation dies off. I come home and google the term and this is what comes up. Apparently, there is real effort being expended and real work being done to accomplish this. Wow...simply stupefying. Apart from its importance (or lack thereof) when compared to all the other issues society faces, the term "Canine American" is still not correct enough. In order to properly address my purebred Scottish Terrier, for example, I should refer to her as a Canine
Scottish-American. That term acknowledges her American identity as well as her Scottish roots. Now, that would bring us all a small step closer to solving the troubles that confront us.

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Ganja, Gladwell, and Rhett Bomar

What is it with the University of Texas football team and marijuana? Specifically, what is it that makes 20 year old guys like UT's starting cornerback, Tarell Brown, do stupid stuff like get caught with ganja in his back pocket and a handgun on his lap? Actually, the better question would probably be the broader, "What makes all 20 year old guys stupid?". Back to Brown, though...I don't get it, really. It's being reported today that Tarell passed his drug test and didn't actually smoke the weed. Not sure why else a person would have marijuana with him if there wasn't a plan to smoke it at some point. And the gun thing is still a problem. The kid has/had a bright future in football and...we're playing Ohio State this week! C'mon, guys, couldn't the reefer run wait until next week?!?

Malcolm Gladwell, whom I always enjoy reading, blogged about former OU quarterback Rhett Bomar recently. Gladwell seems like a pretty smart fella and he usually writes about stuff so above me that I am too ignorant to disagree with him. But then, he blogs about college football, the NCAA, and Rhett Bomar...which is weird because that's the type of stuff that my friends and I talk about. Draw whatever conclusion you want from that. Back to Gladwell, though. The background story is that a local car dealership "employed" star OU quarterback Rhett Bomar and paid him thousands of dollars over a period of time for work he never did. Bomar got busted and eventually kicked off the team. Gladwell's point is that it is ridiculous for the NCAA to regulate what Big Red Imports chooses to pay to Rhett Bomar for however much or little work he did for them:

Was that sleazy? Of course it was. Was it an underhanded way for a booster to get money to a star player? Totally. But working at a car dealership is not playing football, and football is the only thing over which the NCAA rightfully has jurisdiction.

That's where I have to disagree with my 'fro-headed hero. So long as it exists, the NCAA has every right to regulate how it's member schools compete in it's sports. Bomar's illegal salary directly impacts how OU competes in college football. That's why there are scholarship limitations, to prevent the big, wealthy, attractive state schools from monopolizing top players...thereby making it impossible for the poor, unattractive agricultural schools located in the backwoods from competing.

That's why there are rules that make paying college athletes illegal. It's not just the desire to maintain an "amateur" status (I agree with Gladwell that this is a total sham). It's also to preserve as level of a playing field and a sense of competition that would cease to exist if there weren't rules to prevent payment of college athletes. That's also somewhat laughable, as the term "competitive balance" is as far from what we see on the field each Saturday as can be. But the situation would be even worse without these rules. We'd see schools like Ohio State and UT (whose athletic departments last year brought in over $100 million and $94 million respectively) "hiring" the best players. It then becomes a battle of budgets, not one of skill, training, coaching, and desire. That would be bad. Incidently, I do think that the NCAA is the greediest organization in sports and that it NEEDS to adopt some sort of rule change to share some of its multi-million dollar revenue with the athletes. Abolising the NCAA
is not rooted in reality, either. Instead, we should be talking about some form of monthly stipend given to athletes. Then again, when all is said and done, I'm still an idiot and Malcolm Gladwell did write Blink.

By the way, here's an interesting article from the Indianopolis Star about this issue.

Monday, September 04, 2006

Football Nirvana

Thoughts on the weekend of college football can be summarized with one word..."overrated". No, not the sport. I love college football. This term, when applied specifically to Notre Dame, covers the biggest story of the weekend. If there is such a thing as a human equivalent to Notre Dame football, I want to be that person. Let's use work as an example. How great would it be if everyone thought of you as CEO material, even though you struggle with simple skills that you've supposedly mastered, such as reading and writing? You would show up at the office after lunch, put in just enough work to count it as a half day's effort. At the end of the day, everyone pats you on the shoulder and complitments you on how "gritty" you were to overcome your own lack of ability and actually make it to work at all, not to mention all the way until 5 o'clock. Everyone would also forget that you spread that email virus through the company network when you forwarded the "Lower Intrest Rates NOW" email to everyone or that you mistook the company's biggest client for the pizza delivery boy and forcefully demanded the free packets of parmesan cheese. I'd love that.

Oh, look everybody, that's Notre Dame football! Voted AP #2, yet couldn't tackle and couldn't block for most of the game, trails unranked Georgia Tech at the half and barely wins 14-10. Then, the national media can't stop talking about how good and underrated Georgia Tech was while conveniently forgetting to note that Notre Dame sucks. Wake up the echoes...