Law And More

Chuck Colson - Role Model for Michael Cohen

Both were a U.S. president's lawyers.

Both were the first of those presidents' men to wind up with a prison sentence.

They were Chuck Colson back in Watergate Days and, more recently, Michael Cohen.

Colson found redemption. In the darkness he turned toward evangelical Christianity, eventually becoming a selfless - and brandname - minister. His obituaries hailed him as a hero. 

Can Cohen also find salvation? The media positioned and packaged the three-year sentence as a long time. But, in reality, three years is short time, especially for a middle-aged man.

The world knows what Cohen stated in public about his crimes against the people. But those of us who inspect our own inner lives wonder what Cohen is saying to himself. If he is telling himself that he really did wrong, then the only way to take that leap into peace is to tell himself that he can and will change. 

A best-selling novel, published last May, chronicles a ruthless wildly successful businessman's walk 0f repentance. At the time, Charles James begins that walk along Route 66 from Illinois to California he is unaware he needs to repent.

But that was what it turns out to be. The psychic change is from aiming to screw over people to lightening their burden in life. The book is "The Forgotten Road" by Richard Paul Evans. 

On the other hand, Cohen can take on the mindset of Shakespeare's King Lear on the heath. He can look at the pickle he is in and conclude he has been more sinned against than sinning.

Those of us who have suffered so much emotional and spiritual torment probably wish upon Cohen the willingness to seek out salvation. Otherwise, as we know from experience, the inner unease can harden into despair. 

Attention is the currency of the 21^st century. Jane Genova helps you get it for products, services, points of view, causes, branding, careers after-50, and college admission.

In addition, this blog welcomes sponsored content.

Free consultation janegenova374@gmail.com

 

Heaven: If It Exists, Will Lawyers Be Allowed In? (George H.W. Bush Wasn't a Lawyer)

A Christian, George H.W. Bush had a firm belief in an afterlife.

What seemed to ease his transition from living to the dying process was his conviction that he would join his wife Barbara in heaven. It worked. According to close friends, he had a peaceful death. 

But that was Bush. That's not the majority of us who have veered off from formal religions and are left to sort through old-line myths about the Next.

Also, there is antipathy about the character of lawyers. If heaven exists, they have to be wondering if they will get passed the gatekeepers, on the first try. Or will they have to file motion after motion?

So, there's the book "Heavens on Earth: The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality, and Utopia." The author is Michael Schermer, columnist for Scientific American. Here the book can be ordered from Amazon.

From the get-go, Shermer shows he doesn't buy Christian mythology. For example, he observes that no one has returned from the dead to tip us off about the Next. Obviously, he rules out Jesus Christ's. According to religious ideology, Jesus came back to life post his death on the cross. 

However, Shermer does point out that 74 percent of Americans believe in heaven (Source: Pew Forum). The rub, of course, is that no one will have this confirmed until death. So, both during this best time of the year and more routine days and nights, we have to live on with no proven-out answer - only our little individual mindset.

Oh, there have been scientific studies. But, science has lost our allegiance. Remember what "they" said about taking antidepressants forever if we had had one clinical depression. Smirk smirk. And what about the firm faith in psychoanalysis? Analysts such as David W. Harder were positioned and packaged for the so-called sophisticated as the Secular Shamans. 

Consequently, what's Next remains a mystery. The upside of that is that we can unleash our imaginations to play out the kind of existence we can enjoy after how difficult life has become on earth.

I envision being in a field surrounded by all my pet children who have died.

We have no time commitments. We just are, together.

There is no more clinical depression. No more earnest therapists like David W. Harder. 

No former college classmates who caused us so much pain.

No more disappointments about client assignments we anticipated which didn't come through.

And, no more regrets.

Those, in my realm of make-believe, are days of heaven. I have much to look forward to. That hope will keep me going. 

Attention is the currency of the 21^st century. Jane Genova helps you get it for products, services, points of view, causes, branding, careers after-50, and college admission.

In addition, this blog welcomes sponsored content.

Free consultation janegenova374@gmail.com

 

When Public Relations Firms Have Public Nuisance Defendants as Clients - The 5 Do-Nows

Here is the article I published today on Odwyerpr.com on how public relations firms have to manage clients' public nuisance litigation.

Being sued for creating a public nuisance automatically brands defendants the bad guys.

Litigation Communications

Making points of law, policy issues, and politics accessible and engaging for the public, media, investors, and more. Complimentary consultation. Please contact janegenova374@gmail.com.

 

Linda Fairstein - The Mystery of Alleged Mistaken Identity

Former Manhattan sex crimes prosecutor Linda Fairstein denies she had been involved in the wrongful incarceration of the Central Park Five.

Many recall that high-profile rush to judgment after the female jogger employed on Wall Street was almost beaten to death. At the time Fairstein had been chief of the sex crimes unit in the Manhattan district attorney office. The crime occurred April 19, 1989.

However, many members of the Mystery Writers of America had concluded she was a major player in the conviction.

What's needed is some sleuthing into the past.

Unfortunately, the organization isn't waiting for that mystery to be solved.

It has decided to un-select Fairstein, prosecutor turned mystery writer, as the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master. Earlier it had been announced she had won the honor.

Those who had been chosen in the past include Stephen King. So, yes, the recognition is prestigious. Fairstein, of course, was over the moon. Then the rebellion broke out. It was alleged she helped railroad the five innocent youths into prison. 

Here are more details from the New York Post.

Since Fairstein is smart she can turn this lemon into lemonade. Her next mystery can be about the monster dynamics of public opinion and how the heroine saves the world from this force. Given that her soul will be in it, the book could turn out to be her best.

Attention is the currency of the 21^st century. Jane Genova helps you get it for products, services, points of view, causes, branding, careers after-50, and college admission.

In addition, this blog welcomes sponsored content.

Free consultation janegenova374@gmail.com

 

"The Inventor" Explores Psychology of Deception - Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos

How so many were duped by Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes still remains a mystery. They range from Henry Kissinger to Rupert Murdoch.

Yes, the dynamics and details of the elaborate con were provided by The Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou.

He broke the story in that newspaper.

That was despite how hard Holmes' celebrity lawyer David Boies huffed and puffed to not have the first expose published. Eventually it seemed to tarnish the Boies brand to have been associated with Holmes. Yesterday, he announced he was stepping down from leadership of the law firm he founded Boies Schiller. Here is the coverage in Law.com.

Eventually Carreyrou published the book "Bad Blood." A feature film derived from the book could be released in 2019.

But, the hunger to understand still exists - so much so that a second feature film will also be released about that saga. It's "The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley." The movie will have its debut at Sundance in Utah in 2019. Directed by Alex Gibney, it will explore the psychology of deception. Here are more details from TechCrunch.

A third probe into this kind of collective delusion has been Dan Lyons' book "Disrupted."

Fifty-something Lyons was laid off from his journalism job at Newsweek. To provide employer-paid health insurance for his wife and two young children he grabbed any job he could.

It turned out to be another example of tech startup magical thinking. More a cult than a contrived fraud it made no business sense. 

His next job stop was Gawker. And we all know how "Hulk Hogan v. Gawker" represented the beginning of the end of digital native hipster fun and profit, posing as journalism. 

Will all this analysis prevent the next tech con? The odds are against it. When I was interviewing sources for a book on tech entrepreneurship I asked why was so much money being risked. Most of the time there was no guarantee of reward.

The answers ranged from the anticipation of fast wealth to wanting to be close to the action. Those needs cast spells. That kind of voodoo has become standard. 

Attention is the currency of the 21^st century. Jane Genova helps you get it for products, services, points of view, causes, branding, careers after-50, and college admission.

In addition, this blog welcomes sponsored content.

Free consultation janegenova374@gmail.com

 

Nichol Kessinger and Amber Frey - Was Wife's Pregnancy Tipping Point?

Before wives become pregnant in shaky marriages they should reflect that having a child on the way might have been the tipping point in the murders by Scott Peterson and Chris Watts.

Both did in their pregnant spouses.

Watts also included in that package their two young daughters.

Even in more stable marriages, a pregnancy can cause extreme stress. In my years in recovery, that often has been a trigger for a relapse back into active alcoholism. 

Watts' mistress Nichol Kessinger might also be able to connect some dots on all that. A book could result. Wealth might follow. 

The Daily Mail reports that once Kessinger became aware of the murders she did a Google search on Peterson's mistress Amber Frey. The police tracked down her online inquirers regarding how much Frey made on a book deal and if she became financially comfortable. 

Kessinger likely senses she had a good story to tell.

What the police also turned up is that before the Watts' family went missing Kessinger did a Google search on the mechanics of anal sex. Earlier, she also had began shopping around the internet for a wedding dress. 

But what will sell the book is not so much anal sex and the dashed hopes of a young woman but probably the layers and layers of complexity embedded in Watts' inner wiring. Criminologists will be doing plenty of interviews with Watts, if he doesn't commit suicide in prison or is offed by those who don't like child/fetus killers. 

In addition to his affair with Kessinger, Watts had been involved with a male lover.

Why didn't he prevent the conception of a third child, especially since discovery turned up that the family was experiencing financial distress? Mortgage payments hadn't been made. Before her death, the wife's credit card was rejected when she tried to do an online purchase. 

Whatever made him assume he could get away with murder? Frequently, that has been a collective psychosis among frustrated husbands. Divorce just doesn't resonate with them. Or, it seems a dumb option. 

Kessinger could have unique insight into the many facets of Watts. 

Attention is the currency of the 21^st century. Jane Genova helps you get it for products, services, points of view, causes, branding, careers after-50, and college admission.

In addition, this blog welcomes sponsored content.

Free consultation janegenova374@gmail.com

 

Film-Maker Jay Roach - Yet One More Interpretation of the Fall of Roger Ailes

Outsized media genius Roger Ailes will live on among the ambitious and creative. Like film-maker Jay Roach they will find material in Ailes rise and fall to create or enhance their own Brandnames.

Currently for the stars playing in the Roach movie the stakes are high. That's what Hillary Busis introduces in her article in Vanity Fair. For example, John Lithgow depicts Ailes himself.

Most of us will pony up the ticket price to see the movie because we are eager to find out how Ailes, his loyalists, and his enemies are portrayed. No human being is really knowable. So it's interesting to reflect on how others position and package the minds and hearts of celebrities like Ailes. 

Busis' round-up of characters in the movie does not include Ailes' personal public relations representative. That was Bob Dilenschneider.

In many ways a dead ringer for Ailes, Dilenschneider was outed by the media for purchasing $15,000 in advertising promoting a vanity biography of his client.

The trouble was this: That bio had been published a year earlier. Duh.

Also, the promotion was perceived as a stratagem to distract from Gabriel Sherman's negative take "The Loudest Voice in the Room."

However, the caper backfired, boosting interest in Sherman's book. Here is the media analysis of all that. 

So, one wonders if Dilenschneider is part of the movie. In Sherman's book he makes a cameo appearance. His firm provided an internship to Ailes' pre-teen son Zack who arrived for duty in a limo. At Ailes' memorial, Zack, then all grown-up, defended his father against the allegations of sexual misconduct. 

Attention is the currency of the 21^st century. Jane Genova helps you get it for products, services, points of view, causes, branding, careers after-50, and college admission.

In addition, this blog welcomes sponsored content.

Free consultation janegenova374@gmail.com

 

Bullying the 65+ - One for Congress

Somehow we made it through multiple economic downturns, including the whopper of 2008.

We did what it took to accommodate a workplace gone tech.

Many of us came from under debt.

Yet, some economists and many financial planners have been labeling us "Brand Dumb."

Come 65, announces the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis, 40% of us who are middle class will tumble into poverty. Read all about it in MarketWatch. 

That assumes we're relying primarily on Social Security. After we receive our 2.8% boost in the monthly payment, the average benefit will be $1,461.

Annually, that will total $17,532. Well, the supposed experts concede, that puts us way over the official government threshold of $12,060 for poverty.

However, the experts reply with this: Even at $17,532, many of us will be living in poverty.

But, will we? Or, more to the point, are we?

There are plenty of those in America 65 and over whom I coached who are living a fulfilling middle class life on their Social Security. They are doing that because they made it their personal finance business to adjust and keep adjusting to cost of living realities. 

For example, they knew to sell the family home when the real estate market was near the top. No, many of them haven't been caught in what could be another housing bust, especially in the northeast.

They shed a few tears about leaving all they knew but did the deed: They relocated from high priced locales to much lower priced ones such as Sierra Vista, Arizona, and Youngstown, Ohio. Renting isn't cheap but they know how to shop around in Landlord Nation. 

That's reality number-one.

Reality number-two is that not too many of us are winging it on Social Security, alone.

As The New York Times reports, more than half of us plan to or are already working beyond 65. Some have no intention of retiring at all.

In fact, the two age groups - 65 to 74 and 75 and older - have the fastest rate of growth in the U.S. labor market. That's why I have been a busy career coach for those over-50 who are determined to continue to earn income from work. The aging recognize that full retirement was their dad's and mom's game. A career path may end at age 65. Working rarely does in the current time.

No, we're not dumb. 

And, collectively, we should send this collective message to the economists and financial planners: We won't be bullied into assuming we played it all wrong during our peak working years.

Then and now there were problems. Often big ones, such as the collapse of our industry or medical bills.

But, we have emerged as The Scrambling Generation. Here is my guide, free to download, on how to make a buck, no matter what  Download Outwitting ageism.

And here is my e-book, also free to download, on how to keep finding the exit out of our comfort zone. 

Meanwhile, Congress should be investigating the tactics by professionals trying to establish reputations for brilliance or developing new business - at our expense. You bet, I will testify.

Coaching and Thought Leadership Ghostwriting about Issues Associated with Aging.

Complimentary consultation, sliding scale fees. Please contact Jane Genova at janegenova374@gamil.com.

The Jell-O "Curse" - Bill Cosby as Spokesperson Was Least of It

Public relations representatives and marketing communications experts warn clients about the downside of human spokespeople and influencers. 

The human kind, as opposed to a made-up mascot, can get involved in all sorts of scandals.

The classic example had been Bill Cosby. America's Dad had been the face of Jell-O.

However, that actually was a small part of the "curse" which has plagued Jell-O.

In the new book "Jell-O Girls: A Family History," Allie Rowbottom chronicles how the purchase of the Jell-O patent in 1899 had brought down extreme suffering to her family. 

It had been her great-great-great uncle who bought the patent for $450. Twenty-six years later it was sold for $67 million.

Along with the wealth that created for her family in LeRoy, New York, there has been a sustained history of premature deaths, suicide, alcoholism, drug use, sexual abuse, mental illness, and a predisposition to cancer. In connecting the dots, Rowbottom theorizes that the boredom generated by privilege helped bring the family down. 

It was Allie's mother Mary who began a memoir about the curse. But she died relatively young from cancer before getting all that organized. So, Allie took that up as a mission.

When a child Allie's mother had been sexually molested by teenage friends of her brother, raped by a cousin, essentially ignored by her parents, and did lose her own mother to cancer when very young. Later she suffered from hysteria, had bouts of drug use and alcoholism, spent time in a psychiatric facility, and was betrayed by her husband.

As Allie tells it, Jell-O has also inflicted a cultural curse on America. After World War II, its commercials reinforced the role of women as stay-at-home housewife and caretaker. Serving creative versions of Jell-O was positioned and packaged as helping those women be perfect in that role.

Later, low-calorie Jell-O was part of the ethos of extreme body consciousness by females. Allie herself got caught up in that and had to receive treatment for an eating disorder. 

In addition, the one-time corporate home for Jell-O - General Foods - also became cursed in complacency. After Philip Morris purchased it to diversify into food, eventually The General, as it was called, was gutted. Later the parts of it which were marketable were merged with Kraft. 

Of course, this isn't the only chronicle of the peril of wealth. In fact, with all the recent suicides in BigLaw, one might wonder if there is any correlation between the high compensation and self-destructiveness. 

Attention is the currency of the 21^st century. Jane Genova helps you get it for products, services, points of view, causes, branding, careers after-50, and college admission.

In addition, this blog welcomes sponsored content.

Free consultation janegenova374@gmail.com

 

$400k Bonuses, Jones Day, and the Peter Thiel Saga

Sure, Jones Day paid bonuses up to $400k to the 11 former U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) clerks.

And, sure, that has become a story in itself, and, according to Tony Mauro at Law.com, not an entirely positive one.

But, likely Jones Day doesn't give a damn. When The Washington Post broke the story that one of its partners Don McGahn was representing the Make America Great Again campaign, planet earth went off its axis. Jones Day didn't seem to blink. 

Some question what Jones Day and other law firms are buying with those large bonuses and is it worth it.

Jones Day has hired 47 former SCOTUS clerks since 2102. But, even with all that, it couldn't get its client Sherwin-Williams a review by SCOTUS of its conviction for creating a public nuisance through lead paint in Santa Clara, California.

Now, Sherwin-Williams, along with the other defendants which had been convicted in that bench trial, will have to pay multi-millions in abatement fees. In addition, the door is wide open for the filing of similar lawsuits in other counties and states. Here is Forbes on that. So much for the return on an investment. Client Sherwin-Williams could become the setting for the play-out of the next type of tobacco or asbestos litigation. Nice job, Jones Day.

In addition to the issue if former SCOTUS clerks are worth the big bonuses is the question if such a monetary reward boxes them into a career path that could be unduly limited. 

In his bestselling book "Zero to One," multi-billionaire Peter Thiel recounts how he applied for and was turned down for two SCOTUS clerkships. At the time, the Stanford University JD was beyond devastated. Now, he seems to smirk.

Without being pushed off that career path, he probably wouldn't have gone on to co-found PayPal and more. Incidentally, as Mauro points out, the SCOTUS chief justice only earns $267k annually and associate justices $235k. 

Meanwhile, with his much larger earnings, Thiel has had as much or more influence as SCOTUS. That included funding the "Hogan v. Gawker" breakthrough litigation. In addition, he financially supports conservative ideology. In photo ops he was sitting right there, near U.S. president Donald Trump.

Can the bonus game be blown up? Clients can do that by refusing to do business with law firms participating in the payout. The slogan can be: Remember Sherwin-Williams.

 

Litigation Communications

Making points of law, policy issues, and politics accessible and engaging for the public, media, investors, and more. Complimentary consultation. Please contact janegenova374@gmail.com.