Law And More

Amy Coney Barrett Doesn't Want to Be Judged on Faith - But Aren't We All, Including Lack of It

In the context of deciding legal rulings, constituencies may or may decide to "judge" Amy Coney Barrett on her faith. She requests that not happen. She is a Roman Catholic.

But even in that narrow space, she might not be able to escape the reality that in America we are assessed in so many categories based on our faith - or lack of it.

Regarding the latter, the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie is an advocacy group for those w/o association to a formal religion.

Incidentally, in Alcoholics Anonymous, many members refer to that 12-step program as their "religion."

It wasn't until I landed in the WASPY corridors of an Ivy League Department of Linguistics and Literature that I even "knew" I was being "judged" in terms of my then Roman Catholicism. Men backed off from dating me, for instance. They feared what to them were the Church's oddball dogmas about sex and reproduction. One bluntly told me, "I don't want my kids eating out of garbage cans."

By time I finished my doctoral studies, you got it, I was an atheist. My mother, a devout Catholic cried. She judged me harshly.

And, it wasn't until I relocated from the New York Metro area that I got it that "they" were judging me on the assumption that I was Jewish. The irony: I am not Jewish. However, I have endured anti-Semitism. "They" put together my deep Jersey City, New Jersey accent, Eastern European body style and facial features and Middle-Eastern dark completion as "Jewish." And that was and is that. I gave up refuting their contentions. They only smirked when I did.

Along the way, I had joined a Buddhist temple. When I was in the ER in a small town and had to identify a religion, I listed "Buddhism." You bet, I would have welcomed a monk swinging by to ease my physical and emotional woe. From the get-go, I saw myself approached like an alien from Pluto. No, I will never again make that kind of public designation about religion.

Yes, we know that participation in formal religious groups is declining. But, America remains a land of the religiously preoccupied. When I relocated from the East, I confided to a friend back there that I was lonely. Her well-meaning advice: Join a church.

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Ellen DeGeneres - The Puritans Were Onto Something with Public Shaming

"Ratings for last month's premiere week of 'The Ellen DeGeneres Show' plummeted 38% from last year, suggesting the controversy over reports of a toxic workplace – which led to the firing of three top producers – has spilled over into dwindling fan support." - Gary Levin, USA Today, October 6, 2020. 

It is public shaming which is finishing off once-iconic comic and talk show host Ellen DeGeneres. According to Nielsen, last year that first week of the season had an average of 2.67 million viewers. This year it was 1.66 million. 

The Puritans, who established the most powerful economy in the world, were masters at public shaming. Given the effectiveness of that mode of social control, they had almost total control over economic development. Only the mentally unbalanced would have dared not make work their core value.

Then, supposed progress intervened. Shaming was considered wrong. Parents, teachers, bosses and probation/parole officers pivoted to sparing miscreants humiliation. Instead, they "understood." However, that seems to have been another earnest experiment which didn't yield the expected outcomes. 

That seems to be in the process of being tossed. Twitter, documents Axios, has replaced broadcast television as the medium people in America go to for information and connection during crisis.

It was on Twitter that "Replace Ellen" kicked off last summer.

No fools, reformers get it, just as the Puritans instinctively knew, that showcasing supposed wrongs on Twitter (as well as other social networks) produces results. In addition, it's a lot of fun.

There is the old adage that professionals learn the most from failure, not success. A new meme could be emerging that human beings learn to do the right thing from being shamed, not being understood. 

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Cardinal Timothy Dolan Fingers Parallels Between Ginsburg and Barrett

Both Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Amy Coney Barrett have been victims of three of the same kinds of bias. That's what Cardinal Timothy Dolan observes, reports Law & Crime. 

The three kinds of discrimination are:

Faith. For Ginsburg that was her Jewish religion. For Barrett it's Roman Catholicism. U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein expressed in public "concern" about what she perceived as a spillover of Barrett's religious beliefs into her judicial thinking. 

Gender. Both struggled with gender issues.

Motherhood. Given that the legal profession is so demanding, the stigma associated with child-bearing has endured. 

Dolan himself has not met Barrett. However, he notes that he has picked up on his networks praise for both her professional competence and personal character.

What will be interesting for those of in personal branding is analyzing how Barrett presents herself during the U.S. Senate confirmation process. Given the prejudice against women and mothers, if Barrett is warm and engaging she could be written off as a lightweight. But if she is "all business," she could be condemned as "cold" and "lacking human compassion."

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Amy Coney Barrett - Yes, Expect Pile-on of Anti-Catholicism

In The Wall Street Journal, Dominic Green time-travels back to the kick-off of anti-Catholic ideology.

It extends back longer than those oddball Puritans who made their disruptive religion their business. Think game-changer Henry VIII who broke the chokehold that ancient religion had on Europe. 

With the nomination of "devout Catholic" Amy Coney Barrett for the U.S. Supreme Court, that push-back on Roman Catholic beliefs will explode into extreme harshness.

It's unlikely that comics will bring back the old jokes about the preoccupation with human sexual activity. Classic had been the Catholic school's supposed prohibition of girls' wearing shiny patent leather shoes. Those were assumed to reflect the female's panties. Horror.

Instead, anticipate how much the fundamentals of the religion mirror those of the far right. At the top of the list is prolife. That influences every law from abortion to assisted suicide. 

Another issue could be the global power of that religion. Such influence has become suspect. After all, so many modern military conflicts have been triggered by religious ideology.

At one time Catholicism had been one of the most recognizable worldwide brands. Recently, though, its market share has declined. Ever since the Boston Globe broke the story about priest sexual abuse of boys the Roman Catholic Church has been struggling for a comeback. 

Depending on the outcome of the U.S. Senate confirmation process, institutions associated with Catholicism could take a major hit.

So effective could be the attack on that belief system that, for example, members of parishes could lose confidence in the priestly leadership. Say good-bye also to the parish K-8 parish school. No more those cute uniforms trotting around the neighborhood.

Catholic colleges such as Seton Hill, Greensburg, Pennsylvania could lose enrollment. For years, on this blog I recommended that it rebrand as "faith-based." In myriad circles, anything Catholic leaves a bad taste. This is an era when small liberal arts institutions of higher education are on the brink of collapsing. As Boston Magazine reports, that's the new usual in New England. 

The media could ditch quoting worldwide leader of Catholicism Pope Francis on holidays such as Christmas. Replace that with a leader in Buddhist thought. Suggestion: American Buddhist nun Pema Chodron. 

This nomination could be creating the tipping point in the wobbly hold that religion still has on some minds, hearts and pocketbooks in America. During the mid 20th century that power went over the top with immigration. Catholicism seized the opportunity of socializing those newcomers to Americana. In return for that service, the hierarchy demanded rigid conformation to the beliefs. Families with 12 children were not unusual. Barrett has seven children. 

Prediction: This nomination bodes ill for the global Roman Catholic brand. 

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John Tobin, 57 - Loss of Job and Family Dog

The hold on what is considered "normality" is fragile.

It may be even more so in upper class communities such as Shaker Heights, Ohio. In those what is classified as standard involves a hefty and sustained investment of money, beautiful homes, good jobs and well-educated children.

Given that, it's amazing that there aren't more tragic sagas like that of John Tobin, 57.

According to Law & Crime, Tobin had sent an email to his father. In it he instructed his father to call the police. The key was under the doormat. When the police arrived they found four dead bodies. They included John, his wife Regina, and his 15-year-old twin children Natalie and Graham. The deaths of the latter three have been considered homicides. John's death hasn't been classified as yet.

John was no longer employed at University Hospitals. He had been Vice President for Development in the Harrington Discovery Institute. In addition, the family dog had died.

John's father perceived him as depressed. As he should have been. Those had been two significant losses. John probably needed plenty of resources to help him navigate after two rugs had been pulled from under him.

But what happens too frequently when there is loss, be it a job, a death, a divorce, foreclosure, whatever, is the mandate that the human being be "resilient." Since Puritan times that has been the national meme. Sure, things are awful but you will be resilient. Incidentally, that gets society off the hook from parachuting in with myriad kinds of help.

Only recently is the resilience mythology being exposed. The New York Times ran a major piece on the cruelty of that assumption that human beings are wired to withstand every kind of blow. 

I don't know anything about John. But I do know through my career coaching other men and women who have lost good jobs. When I asked them the core question - What story are you telling yourself about this loss - there was one universal answer. Their self-talk was riddled with self-blame. Even if they had been over the top in self-destructiveness (and no one had been) it still didn't occur to them that it takes two to tango. Tragedy rarely if ever has one primary mover. 

The tragedy of the Tobin family symbolizes the lack of an emotional, financial, social and spiritual infrastructure in current American society for processing loss.

In the old days in the old neighborhood (think pre-gentrified Downtown Jersey City, New Jersey) when someone lost a job, neighbors, relatives and the church pushed in. They stayed, until the human being landed work. There was no ambiguity. That was a tragedy. Meanwhile, the rent got paid for the walk-up tenement apartment. The tuition for Catholic school got paid. Hand-me-down clothes glutted the living room. No meal was missed.

Quinn Emanuel $185 Million Fee - Belief in Protestant Ethic Seems So Schoolgirlish

Quinn Emanuel figures it has "earned" a $185 million fee in its legal work for health insurers who hadn't been paid by the Obama Administration. That number has been calculated on the basis of results. The law firm's work resulted in the insurers receiving $3.7 billion. 

The issue involved, reports Bloomberg Law, is that in terms of hours the fee would come to Quinn Emanuel's earning $18,500 an hour. There are those who object, including litigation funders. 

However, the fee only represents 5% of the results, note supporters of Quinn Emanuel.

At its core, this dispute is not really about high fees charged by elite law firms. That is so boring. The marketplace, including its dynamics during COVID-19, takes care of that. 

It gets down to questioning the Protestant Ethic. That had been woven into a system of beliefs by Max Weber. Essentially the meme is: Work hard. 

Such an ideology - actually almost a religion - dominated Americana since Puritan times. Hard work was valued in itself. Ironically, it still is. Those who sinned or stumbled professionally were advised to "Work Hard." That was the path to salvation.

Currently, that adage is still being touted, in some circles.

Many help-wanted ads on Craigslist, for example, indicate the need for a "hard worker." Yeah, an eye-roll. Professionals who want to get ahead in an organization sense that employer doesn't understand how success happens, is sustained and scaled. 

For players, the Protestant Ethic seems downright misleading. It's obvious that it can be even counterproductive. Looking for the way not to have to work hard can be the real path to wealth - as well as power and influence.

Through inventing the Mac, then the iPhone, Steve Jobs eliminated the need for lots of old-fashioned kinds of work. 

Before that, Ronald Reagan's branding was about not working hard. He came across as confident, a quality needed in a leader.

I landed a communications contract (one hat I wear) by pitching to the prospect a shortcut to boosting rankings on search engines. No, we weren't going to work hard together.

Mouthing platitudes about hard work can seem downright schoolgirlish. Even small business owners, at least those still in business in coronavirus times, understand that the game is about results - the bigger the better, the sooner the better. It's not about hours the workforce plows into a project.

The Emanuel Quinn fee controversy can be a flashpoint in law firm billing. The billable hour can be tossed. It could be replaced by performance-based metrics. 

More generally, parents, teachers, and guidance counselors who tell youth to work hard will have no credibility. As a sometimes career coach, I advise the over-50 unemployed/underemployed I guide to ditch their own hard-work ethos. It's all about what they can accomplish for an employer.

The pitch should be: This is what I can do for you - better and faster than those others competing for work. 

One professional in the real estate loop, after two years searching for a better job, reframed his marketing to just that: Promised results, supported by documentation of those created for other employers over the years. Those were his new marketing materials. Immediately, he received an interview. A prospective employer flew him to its headquarters and hired him on the spot. 

Sour grapes: Too long I worked hard at a doctoral degree that wasn't marketable. Early in the game the savvy owner at a business where I worked part-time recommended I pull the plug. Get a job in media or at a public relations agency, he counseled. I didn't. I assumed my unusually intense hard work would land me one of the few jobs in the field. I limped away from that disaster getting it that betting on the right horse, not hard work, is the key career fundamental. 

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Populism v. Science - PR Giant Hill + Knowlton Parachutes in to Assist World Health Organization (WHO)

Populism has shaken the faith societies once had in science.

The standard course in higher education globally had been the introduction to the scientific method. Evolution was assumed to be a fact. 

The break-down of confidence in science is happening at the worst of times: during  the surge of the coronavirus in myriad nations.

On July 6th, U.S. President Donald Trump announced he's considering cutting ties with the World Health Organization (WHO).

No newsflash, then, giant public relations agency Hill + Knowlton is assisting WHO in establishing establish trust in its messaging about science and well as public health.

In Odwyerpr.com, Kevin McCauley reports Hill + Knowlton is focusing on influencer identification, messaging testing, and development of campaigns. For this it's receiving a $135k fee.

How successful Hill + Knowlton is can save lives - perhaps millions of them. COVID-19 seems to be just getting started.

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America's Romance with Contract Killing - From "Have Gun, Will Travel" Through "The Godfather" to Fascination with Accusations about Steven Williams

America had been founded by a bunch of misfits.

They were outliers in the proper ways of the old country. Most couldn't make a living, never mind just not fit in.

Their oddball mindsets and behavior had been documented by psychologist John D. Gartner in the best-seller "The Hypomanic Edge." It was that out of the box ethos, showed Gartner, which helped created the most powerful economy in the world.

So, it's no surprise that the cult of the criminal has taken hold. The criminal as outlier.

A subcategory of that is the contract killer.

On network television during its golden age there had been from 1957 through 1963 the western "Have Gun, Will Travel."

In "The Godfather," contract killers were a necessary moving part of keeping the family business going.

And, now, reports Daily Mail, there could be the possible phenomenon of a 25-year-old in Philadelphia: Steven Williams. Allegedly he could have been contracted to murder four or more people. 

Not that a nation where the vestiges of Puritanism still dominate condones contract killing. It is wrong to take a life (even, some believe, by the state).

But …

Contract killers can make a good buck. That's important in capitalism. Success tends to be measured in money.

In addition, contract killers require a very different kind of mindset than is socialized in Americana. That fascinates.

That's why programming such as "Criminal Minds" which explores aberrant thinking is so engaging. On that series, which is no longer producing new episodes, David Rossi's books on deviant behavior are best-sellers. Youth is drawn to join the FBI because of Rossi's publications. Serial killers read them to find out more about themselves. 

No surprise either, watchers of the legal sector spend lots of time analyzing why ultra successful law partners go rogue. That includes everything from embezzling to sexual misconduct. Why didn't they simply treasure and protect their conventional success?

Likely, real-life researchers of criminal brain wiring, much like the fictional Rossi, are already working on how to interview Williams. So much can be learned. New brandnames can be made.

Conventional thinking is not only boring. As Gartner hammers in the book: It doesn't get a society or individuals very far financially. A popular current show on network television is dark comedy "Good Girls." There traditional Detroit housewives go rogue. Their lives become interesting. They can pay their bills. 

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James Bennett - No Time to Be Sounding Like a Lawyer (especially a tone-deaf one)

There is that age-old adage: It's not what happens to you. It's how you handle it.

According to reports about the publication of the Senator Tom Cotton (R-AK) opinion-editorial in The New York Times, editorial page editor James Bennett did not actually read it.

However, it was on his watch that it had been put on that precious media "real estate" - the NYT editorial page.

Internally at the newspaper and externally on social media, there had been intense backlash.

Those opposing perceived it downright wrong for the NYT to give Cotton a platform for supporting the Trump Administration's sending in troops during the George Floyd protests.

In response, Bennett published a defense in the NYT. Here you can read it.

The tone is that of a lawyer - one who is out of touch with those he or she is attempting to persuade. That is, it its tone-deaf. Juries can wind up "punishing" that lawyer's client. No, they implicitly push back, don't use that tone with us.

The content represents, as in a brief submitted to a judge, a pile on of logical arguments. 

This is a time when the nation's heart is broken. Hope is at a low. 

Perhaps Bennett hadn't been listening in his college Freshman Composition class. What we adjunct professors taught back then was this: We hammered the fundamentals of aligning tone and content with that unique audience and in that particular moment. Timing is everything.

What should Bennett have said?

He could have caved to human fallibility.

That myopia is the central meme in so many Shakespearean dramas. The tragedy of "King Lear" is that the king doesn't even recognize how he set in play his own misery. Instead, on the heath he rants that he is more sinned against than sinning. 

Most of time, most humans are very wrong or partly wrong. Religions and spiritual philosophies from way back when open humans to this reality.

Bennett could have just positioned and packaged himself as yet another fallible human. Then, he could have engaged in the standard mea culpa for any errors in judgment.

In the court of public opinion and the court of law, the remorseful are considered worthy of forgiveness. A recent classic case had been CollegeAdmissionsGate miscreant Felicity Huffman. She has a future in her profession. 

None of that happened in what might go down in history as BennettGate. As Axios reports, Bennett has resigned. Before this crisis, he might have moved on to being the next executive editor at NYT.

Now, if he is wise - which he hadn't seemed to be before - he will lay low. Then he will contract with a top public relations firm for reputation restoration. 

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Pope Francis Imposing Financial Oversight on Procurement at Vatican

"The Vatican published new procurement rules intended to prevent corruption …" - Francis X. Roca, The Wall Street Journal, June 1, 2020.

With increasing scrutiny on all aspects of how the Roman Catholic Church operates, its leader - Pope Francis - has evolved into a kind of Chief Compliance Officer.

Recently he issued rules regulating both vendors and those inside the Vatican doing the purchasing. In addition to deterring criminal activity in transactions, they are intended to add that all-important attribute of transparency.

Among the provisions are:

Barring bids from those with a record for criminal activity or a legal shadow hanging over their heads.

Putting a centralized panel in charge of most transactions

Forbidding nepotism. Those with family ties to the Vatican cannot particulate in the pitching process.

For centuries, the Roman Catholic Church had been among the most powerful and enduring global brands. Currently, it continues to lose market share worldwide. A major driver for that "fall from grace" have been the scandals involving both priests and nuns. They have been convicted of sexual abuse of minors. In some instances, the higher ups in Roman Catholicism have been accused of "cover ups."

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