Triad Today

During last week’s Triad Today program, I uttered the “C” word. I don’t just mean any “C” word, I mean the dreaded “C” word. The one word that makes 2^nd Amendment activists’ blood boil. It happened while our Roundtable panel was discussing what can be done to prevent mass shootings like the ones in El Paso and Dayton. That’s when I commented that no matter how many gun control measures are enacted, they will be ineffective unless accompanied by the “C” word: “Confiscation”. Why? Because there are more guns in America than there are people. Forty million more to be exact. And so, even if you ban the sale of assault-style rifles and semi-automatic handguns, anyone who is hell-bent on killing people need only to beg, borrow, or steal one of the 357 million guns already in circulation.

For the record, I believe in the spirit of the 2^nd Amendment, and I own several guns. Some of them are for home protection and others are collectibles. None of them are assault rifles. That’s because I don’t need an assault rifle, and neither does any other private citizen. Folks on the far right, however, argue that a ban on the sale of such weapons would be, in itself, an assault on the 2^nd Amendment. They say the Founding Fathers gave us the right to bear arms. The problem is that when James Madison wrote the Constitution, a single-shot musket was the weapon of choice, with which the finest marksmen of that era could only kill one person per minute. If a bayonet was affixed to the musket, the shooter might be able to kill two people per minute. In contrast, today’s assault-style rifles “affixed” with high capacity magazines can kill over a hundred people per minute. I hardly think that the framers of our Constitution would have wanted every citizen to own an AK 47. Another popular argument put forth by the Right is that mass shooters are mentally ill, but earlier this month the Washington Post published findings of a 2018 report by the FBI, which found that of 63 active shooter assailants studied, only three had been diagnosed with a psychotic disorder.

Let’s suppose for a moment, though, that folks who cling to these false arguments are suddenly outnumbered, and Congress finally votes on comprehensive gun reform legislation. Let’s say the reform package includes a ban on the sale of assault rifles, universal background checks, registration of all guns, mandatory metal detectors and electronic locking doors in schools and other public buildings, an SRO in every school, and a federal Red Flag law whereby police or family members can petition a court to take guns away from anyone ruled to be a threat to himself or others (at present, only 17 states have a Red Flag law). Such reforms would be meaningless unless they include a plan for confiscating all assault-style weapons and high capacity clips through a national buy-back campaign, along with serious prison time for anyone who doesn’t participate. Then and only then will we have a fighting chance to prevent mass shootings.

So don’t be lured to sleep by the sweet sounds of singular reforms being touted by presidential candidates and grand standing congressmen. Let your representative know that you favor confiscation of all existing assault-style rifles. Don’t be afraid to utter the “C” word because, given the growing number of mass shootings, an extreme solution is the only way to prevent extreme violence.

Spurred by anti-Trump sentiment, the Republican’s so-called “War on Women”, and the #MeToo Movement, women turned out in droves last year to vote in the mid-term elections. The result was an historic number of women winning local, state, and federal offices. Then, during Trump’s subsequent State of the Union address, the House chamber was replete with rows of Congresswomen adorned in all-white outfits to demonstrate solidarity. It was a significant moment for women. But the 2018 election was also significant for another reason. That year, Illinois became the 37^th state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, leaving women just one state shy of the promised land. Unfortunately, no other states followed Illinois’ lead. ERA bills were introduced in Virginia, Florida, and Arizona, but failed to pass. The same thing had happened the year before, here in North Carolina.

The good news is that there is still a path for ratification. Back in 1972 when the ERA was proposed, Congress required that, in order for the Amendment to become law, 38 states would have to ratify within a specific deadline. However that deadline has long since expired. Even so, the ERA can still be revived if Congress votes to extend the deadline again. But is that likely? The answer is “Yes”, if women become the majority in Congress, or if enough enlightened men are elected to both chambers. In either case, a vote to extend the ratification deadline would be almost assured. That’s step one. The next step would be for one more state to ratify. This may seem strange to say, but of the thirteen states still opposed to the ERA, I think North Carolina is the most likely to change course, and do the right thing. For that to happen, we’ll need a few more progressive legislators to invade Raleigh, and they will need to present a compelling argument for giving ERA another look. Fortunately, there is no shortage of reasons for ratification.

First, there are the obvious disparities that have yet to be corrected, chief among them, the pay gap that exists between men and women. As I noted in a previous column, nationally, white women earn about 80 cents for every dollar a man earns for doing the same job. That statistic falls to 61 cents for black women, and 53 cents for Latinas. Here in North Carolina, women earn slightly better than the national average (about 84 cents for every dollar a man earns), but our pay gap isn’t expected to close until the year 2060.

Second, women have little say in how large corporations are run, or in who gets hired for upper management positions. According to a 2015 report from ThinkProgress.com, there are only 48 female CEOs heading up the top 1,000 companies in America. The trickle-down from those numbers translates to more male executives being hired, who then hire more male executives.

Third, men still write the laws that affect women. Yes, women made great progress during the 2018 mid terms elections, but while they are waiting to win more seats, or for more of their male colleagues to “get woke”, there are injustices occurring every day which could be stopped if the ERA became law.

For example, an increasing number of states are telling women that they cannot have an abortion, even in the case of rape or incest. Speaking of which, there’s even a new law in Alabama that allows a male rapist to pursue custody of the child who was born of his assault. And then there’s the woman in Orlando who, earlier this year had been severely beaten by her husband. While her macho spouse was serving six days in jail, she confiscated his cache of guns, and turned them over to local police for safe keeping, so that her jailbird husband wouldn’t shoot her upon his release. But guess what? The wife was arrested for taking her husband’s guns from the marital home without his permission.

We will never be able to fully eradicate misogyny and prejudice, but these kinds of injustices and disparities would not be tolerated under the ERA. That’s why North Carolina lawmakers need to step up to the plate next year and re-visit the Equal Rights Amendment. Let’s become the state that puts ERA over the top, and gives women what should have belonged to them in the first place.

During this 50^th anniversary month of the Apollo moon landing, I watched a number of NASA-related movies, and while most of them were top-notch productions, it occurred to me that hardly any of the actors actually looked or sounded anything like the real-life astronauts they were portraying. Tom Hanks, for example, neither looked nor sounded like Jim Lovell in Apollo 13, and Ryan Gosling was a total wash-out as Neil Armstrong in First Man, for the same reasons. These anti-doppelganger experiences prompted me to think back on all of the films in which someone was decidedly miscast, and, since we are now obsessed with presidential politics, I thought I’d share my thoughts on some of the more egregious screen portrayals of political figures.

JFK:  To date, dozens of actors have portrayed John Kennedy, including William Devane in Missiles of October, Martin Sheen in the mini-series Kennedy, and Rob Lowe in Killing Kennedy.  But it takes more than a Boston accent to make the 35^th president come alive on screen. Late-night TV host-turned-actor Greg Kinnear did that for me when he appeared in REELZ channel’s The Kennedys. It wasn’t a very good series, but Kinnear made me believe he was JFK.

RFK:  Among the men who have donned flop hair and a Boston accent in trying to portray Bobby Kennedy, were Steven Culp in Thirteen Days, Martin Sheen in Missiles of October, and John Shea in Kennedy. The worst of these was Barry Pepper in The Kennedys. Again, Pepper is a fine actor, but totally miscast as JFK’s younger brother. On the positive side, I thought the most convincing Bobby was Law & Order’s Linus Roache in FX’s RFK. What Roache lacked in cosmetic accuracy, he made up for with his authentic passion.

LBJ:  Some actors seem to think that being tall, speaking in a fake southern accent, and wearing prosthetic ears automatically morphs them into Lyndon Johnson. Woody Harrelson fell into this trap in LBJ, as did James Cromwell in RFK, and Tom Wilkinson in Selma. Randy Quaid attempted the role in LBJ the Early Years, but he just looked goofy, and, as his character aged, his hair looked like someone painted white-out on it. Thus far, the best Johnson interpretation has come from my friend Bryan Cranston in All the Way, for which he won a Tony before taking his play to the big screen in 2016.

Nixon:  Anthony Hopkins and Frank Langella are world-class thespians, but both came up short in their portrayals of Richard Nixon, Hopkins in Nixon, and Langella in Frost/Nixon.  Hopkins looked nothing like the controversial president and sounded like Hannibal Lecter doing an impression of Nixon. Langella also looked nothing like Nixon, and his speech cadence was way off the mark. Strangely enough, my favorite Nixon was Beau Bridges in TNT’s Kissinger and Nixon. Bridges understood his subject and expertly captured Nixon’s nuances.

41 & 43:  Both George H.W. Bush and son George W. have been memorialized on film. Our 43^rd president was played by Josh Brolin in Oliver Stone’s production, W, in which Brolin’s mannerisms and speech patterns were pretty accurate, although he was nowhere near a dead ringer for Bush. Meanwhile, Brolin’s on-screen dad was played by James Cromwell who neither looked nor sounded like our 41^st president. Being tall wasn’t enough to make us believe Cromwell knew anything about voodoo economics.

Obama:  In 2016, two films were released about a young Barack Obama. Devon Terrell played the lead in Barry, and Parker Sawyers starred in Southside With You. Neither actor looked like Obama, but Terrell at least managed to get the voice right.

The others:  James Whitmore hit a home run with his televised one-man show as Harry Truman, while Ralph Bellamy and Edward Herrmann are captivating as FDR in Sunrise at Campobello and Eleanor and Franklin, respectively. Dennis Quaid also deserves high marks as Bill Clinton in The Special Relationship. Meanwhile, stay away from Tom Selleck’s turn as Eisenhower in IKE: Countdown to D-Day.  He just looked like Magnum without hair. And don’t bother with Sam Waterston’s Lincoln, but check out Hal Holbrook’s two turns as the 16^th president, one in 1974’s Lincoln, and again in 1985’s North and South. He’s even better than Daniel Day-Lewis. 

Finally, my highest praise goes to James Brolin in Showtime’s The Reagans. Brolin made me believe that he was Reagan, and he should have won the Emmy that year.

Thus far, no major films have been made with Trump as the lead character, but if that ever happens, we can only hope that Ryan Gosling doesn’t get the role.

A couple of weeks ago in this column I advocated against setting off fireworks. This week I may be ignoring my own advice by stating the following: Transgender athletes need a reality check, and the transgender community needs to be more tolerant of others. Let’s begin with the reality check.

An increasing number of males who identify as female are competing in high school, college, and international athletic events. Not surprisingly, these trans male athletes are besting the biological females with whom they are competing, so much so that earlier this year Alliance Defending Freedom filed a complaint with the United States Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, protesting the policy of the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference. Connecticut is one of 17 states that allows trans athletes to compete at the high school level without restrictions (this is in contrast with, for example, the North Carolina High School Athletic Association which contends that “a student’s gender is denoted by what is on the birth certificate”). Simply put, female athletes in Connecticut believe that trans male athletes hold a distinct advantage over them, a sentiment that is shared by noted lesbian activist Julia Beck, who told FOX News:

“In many states, men can legally identify themselves as female and gain access to women’s single-sex spaces. Sports is just one institution where men are taking titles, scholarships, and this is a problem. Many women like myself have been pushed out of spaces that WE built—spaces that are intended to include us simply because we acknowledge biological reality.”

Where high school and college athletics are concerned, the primary argument and complaint advanced by the transgender community tends to focus on so-called violations of Title IX. The problem is that Title IX never guaranteed the rights of biological men to compete as women. Instead, Title IX was enacted to guarantee that female athletes had access to the same facilities and opportunities as male athletes. But regardless of how one chooses to interpret and apply Title IX, the fact remains that, for the most part, biological male athletes are stronger and faster than biological female athletes. Even Caitlyn Jenner agrees, telling Piers Morgan that she holds an unfair advantage over the women she plays golf with.  So much for the reality check. Now to the issue of tolerance.

18-time Grand Slam tennis champ Martina Navratilova dominated her sport in the 1980s, and is still considered to be the greatest women’s tennis player ever. She was also a champion off the court, having made the courageous decision to come out as gay in 1981, and then become a fearless advocate for gay rights thereafter. In February of this year, Martina penned a column for the New York Sunday Times in which she wrote:

“It is insane that hundreds of athletes who have changed gender by declaration and limited hormone treatment have already achieved honors as women that were beyond their capabilities as men…It is insane, and it is cheating. I am happy to address a transgender woman in whatever form she prefers, but I would not be happy to compete against her. It would not be fair.”

Martina’s column followed a controversial tweet last December in which she said, “You can’t just proclaim yourself a female and be able to compete against women. There must be some standards, and having a penis and competing as a woman would not fit that standard.”

Following those remarks, it didn’t take long for the transgender community to turn on Martina for speaking her mind. TransActual, the nation’s leading transgender rights group, tweeted “We’re pretty devastated to discover that Martina Navratilova is transphobic.”

TransActual’s tweet takes name calling, labeling, and intolerance to an absurd level, considering the target of its derision. The tweet was also disrespectful to a woman who once risked everything by announcing to the world that she is a lesbian. I had the honor to meet and interview Martina during that difficult time, and back then, despite the stress, she held it together with strength and dignity. Martina is a successful woman who can endure the name-calling and nasty labels, but in today’s overly PC world, not every gay or straight female athlete can afford to speak their mind. In a recent interview with Bill Maher, Dr. Deborah Soh explained why: “I am sympathetic to the other female competitors. They can’t really say anything, but they say things behind the scenes. They can’t say anything in public because they are afraid of being called transphobic.”

It’s going to take some time for the courts and the states to resolve the gender identity dilemma in athletic competition, but until then, the transgender community needs to practice what it preaches, and stop demonizing people for their beliefs. Intolerant is something none of us should identify as.

My Republican father went to his grave in 2010, still blaming me for the outcome of the 1992 election. “It’s your fault that Bill Clinton got elected,” he would say. Dad was referring to my support for Ross Perot, a self-made Texas billionaire who ran as an independent candidate for president against Clinton, the Democrat, and George H. W. Bush, the Republican incumbent. To many, Perot was nothing more than a spoiler who cost Bush the election. “You wasted your vote,” Dad would say. I didn’t believe that then, and I still don’t believe it 27 years later. What Perot accomplished and contributed that year is nothing short of phenomenal, and I can’t help but feel that America would be better off had he been elected. Perot made another run for the White House in 1996, but after a disappointing showing, he dropped out of the public eye. Ross Perot passed away last week. He was 89 years old.

Political junkies and journalists under the age of 50, only know Perot by googling him, but for those of us who covered or participated in the ’92 election, he will be remembered as an unforgettable force of nature, and the most successful third party presidential candidate in history. Yes, I’m aware that Teddy Roosevelt fared a little better in 1912 than Perot did in 1992, but by the time Roosevelt ran on the Bull Moose ticket, he had already served two terms as president. Perot, on the other hand, though widely accomplished, was not a household name when he entered politics.

After having served in the Navy for four years, Perot borrowed a thousand dollars from his wife Margot, and created Electronic Data Systems, which he later sold for over $2 billion dollars. He then started Perot Systems, which he sold for $4 billion dollars. In 1969, Perot traveled to North Vietnam to negotiate for the release of POWs, and ten years later when two EDS staffers were held hostage in Iran, Perot mounted his own successful, private, para-military rescue mission.

Ross Perot was tough-minded and business-savvy, but he was best known for his plain speaking and oftentimes humorous phrasings. During their three-way debate in October, 1992, Perot stole the show from Bush and Clinton when he uttered his now famous warning about what would happen if Congress passed NAFTA:

“We have got to stop sending jobs overseas. It’s pretty simple. If you’re paying $12 an hour for factory workers, and you can move your factory South of the border, pay a dollar an hour for labor, have no health care, have no environmental controls, no pollution controls, and no retirement, and you don’t care about anything but making money, then there will be a giant sucking sound going south.”

In fact, Perot was the only candidate who made the economy and our growing deficit a central focus of that campaign. And while history will show that Perot got nearly 20% of the popular vote in 1992, that doesn’t tell the real story of his rise to prominence, and how much of a threat he posed to Bush and Clinton early on. Lest we forget, after Perot officially entered the race in February, he quickly became the front runner, and by June he was still in the lead, polling 39% to Bush’s 31%, with 25% for Clinton (source: NYT, 6/11/92). But less than one month later, Perot suddenly and mysteriously dropped out of the race. His official reason for the pull-out was that he believed the Democratic party had become unified, and he didn’t want to hurt Clinton’s chances. Only months later did we learn the real reason for Perot’s retreat. He cited multiple sources who told him that Bush’s campaign was plotting to disrupt his daughter’s wedding by, among other things, distributing lewd, doctored photos of her. Bush’s press secretary denied Perot’s charges and implied that the Texan was crazy. Nevertheless, the Perot wedding went off without a hitch, and Ross’s daughter, who had known nothing about the threats against her, urged her father to re-enter the race. Despite a winning debate performance, however, Perot was never able to regain his earlier momentum, and he finished third on election day.

We’ll never know what kind of president Ross Perot would have been, but we know what kind of a person he was. He was a dedicated husband and father, a fair and courageous employer, a military man who hated war, an unlikely, plain-speaking politician in the Harry Truman mold, and a candidate who wasn’t afraid to tell us the truth. Sorry, Dad, but I have no regrets for voting for Perot in 1992. As far as I’m concerned, the Bush and Clinton supporters wasted THEIR vote that year. R.I.P., Ross.

Following the first round of debates between and among 20 Democratic candidates for president, Donald Trump proclaimed that the 2020 race was already over. It may be the first thing he has ever said that isn’t a lie. That’s because with the exception of a few comments by Washington Governor Jay Inslee, nearly every word uttered during last week’s bifurcated debates was far left, far out, or far off-base from what mainstream America cares about or supports.

What specifically spurred Trump’s tweet was when the Thursday night debate group all raised their hands to affirm that they would provide free healthcare to undocumented and illegal immigrants. The President wrote, “All Democrats just raised their hands for giving millions of illegal aliens unlimited healthcare. How about taking care of American citizens first? That’s the end of the race.”

In fact, the Democrats seemed to be at odds with their own philosophies.

For example, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand and others support Medicare For All. But three years ago when Bernie first calculated how that care would be paid for, we weren’t taking in over 100,000 illegal immigrants every month. Now, by the time a Medicare For All advocate can be sworn into office, we’ll have an additional 2 million illegal immigrants to care for, in addition to the 12 million already here. That doesn’t just skew Bernie’s numbers, it screws Bernie’s numbers.

And what about Kamala Harris’ show-stopping line when her competitors were shouting over top of one another? Said Harris, “Hey guys, America does not want to witness a food fight. They want to know how they’re going to put food on their table.” She received a huge and well deserved ovation for that reality check. But no one asked her to square that remark with a vote that House Democrats took the day before, when they allocated 4.5 billion dollars to care for detained children who came here illegally. So much for Harris’ “food on the table” quip, because, as it turns out, there are 15.5 MILLION American children here legally who are living in poverty, and who don’t have enough food or proper medical care. Suddenly, Trump’s tweet, “How about taking care of American citizens first”, seems more relevant.

Meanwhile former Texas congressman and RFK-wannabe Beto O’Rourke said, if elected, he would enact a “War Tax” which would be imposed on all non-military families to help care for veterans who return from “future wars”. Future wars? That’s as wacky as Bernie pledging to allow convicted murderers and rapists to vote WHILE they are in prison. Or how about Marianne Williamson, a spiritual adviser to Oprah, who told the debate audience that she would beat Trump with love. Hey Madame Moonbeam, I think 20 other women are already in court about love-beating right now.

Then there was the contest between O’Rourke, Cory Booker, and Julian Castro to see which one could speak the most Spanish at the most inappropriate times.They did it to impress Hispanic and Latino folks at the Miami debate venue, but what about the mainstream majority they claim to covet? According to the American Community Survey, only 13% of American families speak any Spanish at home, so how is randomly breaking into a foreign language going to endear the Dems to the 87% who ONLY speak English?

The objective of Democrats should be to deny Donald Trump a second term, yet while the debaters on stage criticized the President, very few said anything to attract his voting base. Harris did take on Trump for bragging about low unemployment, saying, “He [Trump] points to low unemployment. Yeah because people are working two and three jobs. In our America, no one should have to work more than one job to have a roof over their head and food on the table.” That’s the kind of tough talk that we need from whoever hopes to stand alone on a debate stage with Donald Trump, and take him to task. It is, however, now painfully obvious that Joe Biden isn’t the person to do that. During the televised debate, he constantly slurred and stumbled over his words. He stopped in mid-sentence on two occasions and pretended he was out of time, rather than finish another incoherent thought. And he couldn’t even effectively apologize for or defend his own past positions while serving in the Senate, and as Obama’s VP.

In my February 19 column, I predicted that Kamala Harris has the best chance to break the glass ceiling in the Oval Office. After last week’s Democratic side show, I’m still convinced of that, so long as she doesn’t veer off too far into the left lane. Moreover, nominating Kamala may give us our only shot at getting Trump on the same public stage with a real prosecutor. Seeing her take Donald apart could change a lot of minds, and draw a big audience. Of course, a love-beating might do well in the ratings too.

Next week we celebrate our 243rd anniversary of independence from Great Britain. A few weeks earlier, we celebrated Memorial Day, where we honored men and women who had made the ultimate sacrifice. I’m as patriotic as the next guy, but over the years I have come to dread these and other holidays, and I can explain my disdain in one word: Fireworks.

Despite what we see in old movies, war is not glamorous. It is not glorious, and it is almost never necessary. And so there’s a morbid kind of irony about the fact that we honor those who died in war, by firing off a barrage of mortars and rockets designed to recreate the violent sounds of war.

In my neck of the woods, fireworks are shot off by neighbors in their back yards, and by so-called professionals who are hired by the city to punctuate community gatherings. During a previous Independence Day fete, the combination of private and municipal rocket fire caused the windows of our house to vibrate, and the constant barrage of scud-like missile activity also caused our rescue dogs to shake uncontrollably, and become so upset that they suffered with GI difficulties for two weeks. Meanwhile, the noise disrupted bed rest at area nursing homes and retirement complexes, and wildlife fled from their limited wooded habitats, and ran nervously into on-going traffic, where at least one deer met his doom. These are all too common scenarios across the country, and are of particular interest to Chapel Hill-based Noise Free America.

NFA acts as a clearinghouse for noise complaints, and as an advocate for a ban on fireworks altogether. In a 2014 email exchange with NFA Director Ted Rueter, I learned that noise wasn’t the only problem resulting from our annual Independence Day fireworks displays. Serious injuries and deaths also occurr. That year, those included three small children and an infant who died in a Philadelphia house fire, which had started when a firecracker was thrown onto a sofa on their front porch. And then there was the man from Michigan who lit some fireworks which then flew back into his chest, killing him. Ted also mentioned another man who blew his arm off while using fireworks. It’s no wonder that Rueter referred to the 4th of July as a “deadly and very disruptive holiday”.

Unfortunately, fireworks related tragedies are not a recent phenomena. In 2017, the National Fire Protection Association reported that over 18,000 fires were caused by fireworks. Those included 1,300 total structure fires, 300 vehicle fires, and 17,000 other fires. That year, fireworks caused over $43 million dollars in property damage, and at least eight people died. Not surprisingly, more fires are reported on the 4th of July than on any other day of the year, and fireworks account for half of those fires.

According to a 2016 report by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, hospital emergency departments treated nearly 12,000 people for fireworks related injuries, including 26% who were children under the age of 15, and 40% who were under the age of 20.

And, as if we didn’t have enough to worry about, now there’s a new kind of danger involving fireworks. In 2017, Forbes reported a rise in people flying their drones in the airspace just above fireworks displays. When rockets collide with drones, the latter can cause the former to detonate off target, and can force hazardous debris down onto unsuspecting spectators.

In addition to producing noise and causing fires and injuries, fireworks are also increasingly causing environmental damage. As cited by a May, 2019 article in ThoughtCo., studies by the EPA show that chemical residue from fireworks is polluting lakes, ponds, and even contaminating ground water. That, in turn, negatively impacts on the health of humans and wildlife alike.

Because of noise, air, and water pollution, commercial as well as consumer fireworks displays should be banned, with the caveat that localities can issue special permits for venues that aren’t near a residential area, don’t border on a body of water, and where qualified technicians use non hazardous materials.

Let’s face it, nothing particularly patriotic or even appropriate about shooting off fireworks in celebration of Independence Day, Veterans Day, or Memorial Day. Surely we don’t need to be bombarded with the sounds of war when pausing to recognize our freedoms or the sacrifices of our veterans. A simple parade, display of American flags, a brass band, and some small sparklers are more than adequate to present a safer, quieter commemoration. I just can’t imagine that anyone who died in battle would feel good about the injury, death, and damage caused by fireworks on his behalf. That kind of senseless loss only serves to dishonor those we seek to honor.

Last month, Abigail Disney, granddaughter of The Walt Disney Company co-founder Roy Disney, appeared on Capitol Hill before the House Financial Services Committee, for a hearing on workers’ rights. Ms. Disney’s Congressional testimony followed her very public criticism of Disney CEO Bob Iger’s $65 million dollar per year salary, which is a whopping 1,424 times what he pays his average employee. And while Iger may be the new poster boy for CEO excess, he has plenty of company in the pay gap arena.

Thanks to a 2017 addition to the Dodd-Frank financial reform act, corporations must now disclose not just the salary of a CEO, but the ratio of his pay compared to that of a median employee salary, and the figures are staggering. On average, CEOs now make 361 times the salary of their employees. Of course, many top executives (including some here in the Triad) far exceed that national average pay gap between boss and worker. The Winston-Salem Journal’s Richard Craver recently reported on local CEO earnings and found that, for example, Hanesbrands CEO Gerald Evans makes 1,392 times the salary of his median employee, a ratio that rivals that of Disney’s Iger.

In its defense, the Disney Company told CNN’s Katie Lobosco that so long as employees can support themselves, then the level of executive pay should be irrelevant. But it is very relevant, and not just at Disney. That’s because families across America are still struggling to make ends meet.

“We have chased large swaths of Americans into a box canyon, and then blamed them for being trapped,” Abigail Disney told Congress, adding that Iger’s pay has a “corrosive effect on society.”

Of course, the pay disparity problem is nothing new, but it’s also never been this pronounced or perverted. In 2017, Fortune.com reported that CEO compensation had grown by 930% since 1978. However, during that same period, Executive Paywatch, Inc. says that average worker wages have been stagnant.

“This immense inequality is a crisis for our economy and our democracy, and we need legislative action at the local, state, and federal level to address it,” said Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison as cited in Craver’s article.

Ms. Disney believes she has a solution to the pay gap problem. In a recent op-ed piece for the Washington Post, Abigail said that top executives like Iger should redirect 50% of their annual bonus money to their employees.

“When he (Iger) got his bonus last year, I did the math, and I figured out that he could have given personally out of pocket, a 15% raise to everyone who worked at Disneyland, and still walked away with $10 million dollars.”

Of course, any suggestion that includes redistribution of wealth will be met with fierce opposition in both chambers of Congress, by members who believe that just about any course correction is tantamount to socialism.

“Yes, managers have a fiduciary obligation to their shareholders. But they also have a legal and moral responsibility to deliver returns to shareholders without trampling on the dignity and rights of their employees,” Ms. Disney told Congress.

In other words, capitalism and salary reforms can co-exist, and, for proof, we need only look to Switzerland, where, in 2013, 68% of voters there passed the “Popular Initiative Against Abusive Executive Compensation Act”, which bans golden parachutes either at the point of recruitment or severance. The result? According to the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report, Switzerland has the highest average wealth per adult in the world. So why haven’t Americans done something to reduce the pay disparity ratio between us and our CEOs? Author Matt Taibbi offers a possible explanation, saying, “In a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.” OK, then, so we just need to get organized, and vote our economic interests instead of our political preferences. The Swiss did it, and we can too.

Sometimes social justice is just a voting booth away, and sometimes we can be inspired by our neighbors who live thousands of miles away. It’s a small world after all.

 
 

The Justice Department recently announced that it was planning to investigate giant tech companies for antitrust violations, but what it should really investigate is how those companies violate the public trust, especially Facebook, who has repeatedly had dirty hands when it comes to a variety of ethics issues, ranging from privacy to politics.

On the privacy front, Facebook has been lax for many years. In 2014, for example, over 11,000 users joined a European class action suit against Facebook for failing to protect their private data. Given that litigation and other complaints, you’d think that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg would have self-regulated his empire. But four years later he was still fighting the same battles. That’s when the FTC opened an investigation to determine Facebook’s possible role in facilitating the sharing and selling of private information belonging to 50 million users, to political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. Meanwhile, that same year, Fortune.com reports that several users sued Facebook for illegally collecting logs of private phone calls and text messages.

On the political front, Facebook was, at best, an unwitting party to the hacking of our 2016 presidential election. It should have been enough for Zuckerberg that the Trump campaign spent the bulk of its $90 million digital ad budget with Facebook, but, according to Yahoo News, the tech wizard also accepted over 3,000 ads from a Russian company. He also allowed countless anti-Hillary fake news stories to be posted by Russian operatives, which, according to WIRED.com, helped Trump raise $250 million dollars in online campaign contributions from people who believed the fake news was true. The posting of disinformation is one reason that Robert Mueller handed down 37 indictments to thirteen Russian nationals, and three Russian companies who directly or indirectly influenced the 2016 election.

Thus far, Zuckerberg has escaped prosecution for aiding, abetting, or otherwise tacitly assisting individuals, companies and campaigns who violated the personal privacy of millions of people, and hacked our last presidential election, so I suppose he thinks he is invincible. Otherwise, he would have acted quickly to delete a recent video post of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appearing to be drunk during a press conference. Video of Pelosi had been expertly edited to make the Speaker look like she was slurring her words, but a side-by-side comparison proved that the video had been doctored. YouTube immediately took down the fake video, but Facebook left it up where it soon went viral, thanks in part to Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani. When asked by CNN’s Anderson Cooper why Facebook didn’t remove the video, Monika Bickerts, Facebook Vice President of Product Policy and Counterterrorism said, “We think it’s important for people to make an informed choice about what to believe.” She also argued that leaving the doctored video up for everyone to see would spur public discussion. I’m pretty sure her lame response would have been different if someone had posted a fake video of Zuckerberg acting drunk.

So there you have it, folks. Facebook thinks it’s too big to prosecute, and too powerful to be held accountable for its actions. Facebook is no longer a social media platform, it is a social disease. It’s a cancer that is spreading and engulfing our entire democratic political process, while violating our own individual rights to privacy. That’s why Congress needs to regulate social media the same way it regulates the broadcast media. And when those regulations are violated, offenders like Facebook should be shut down by the federal government, the same way the FCC can pull the license from an offending TV station.

It’s no wonder that so many people are opting out of the Facebook universe. Unfortunately, millions more remain active on Zuckerberg’s power platform, including those who believe everything they read. If only the rest of us could reach them and tell them to beware of “Face News”.

 
 

Forget Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders. Tony Kornheiser is the hippest septuagenarian on planet Earth, and he’s even seen on Uranus (I’ll get to that joke in a moment). So how does this veteran sportswriter and co-host of ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption stay so young and hip?

TK: I work with young people every day. I walk into an office where I am surrounded by people who are 20, 30, 40, and almost 50 years younger than I, and often I overhear what they say, and they treat me nicely in a grandfatherly way, and they laugh at the stupid things I say. And then if I say, “Tell me about this”, they’re willing to tell me about it, and that keeps you a little bit clear of that silo mentality.

Later this month, “young” Mr. Kornheiser will be in Winston-Salem for the National Sports Media Association’s annual gathering, where he will be inducted into the NSMA Hall of Fame. I spoke with Tony by phone last week, and among the topics we discussed were his early influences, and the success of “PTI”.

JL: Who had an influence on the career path you chose?

TK: I grew up on Long Island, so I read Stan Isaacs in Newsday, I read Larry Merchant and others in The New York Post, I read Dick Young, and I read Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamill. I used to say, “Why can’t I be Irish? Look at these guys! [laughs] They got the genes, they understand what it is.” In high school I used to cut out columns by Breslin and Hamill and tape them up on my wall. I thought, “My God, if I could do this, if I could just be mentioned in the same sentences with those people. They were my idols, and I wanted to be a sportswriter, and that’s ALL I wanted to be.

True to his dream, Tony wrote about sports wherever and whenever he could, pulling stints at both his high school and college newspapers. In the early 1970’s he landed jobs with Newsday and The New York Times, and in 1979 he was hired by The Washington Post. While writing for the Post, Tony launched his own radio show in D.C. which was syndicated by ESPN, and in 2001, the network paired Kornheiser with his longtime buddy Mike Wilbon on a new, daily television show called Pardon the Interruption (affectionately known as “PTI”).

JL: For me, “PTI” is appointment television because it brings me up to speed on the world of sports, but, more importantly, I just love the chemistry between you guys.

TK: Mike has said that “PTI” is sort of a daily digest of sports, and the brilliance of the show is if you keep it short, you keep your viewers. The reason Mike and I have great chemistry is we worked together for 20 years before we ever went on TV. Newspaper sports writing is what we wanted to do, but “PTI” is so good because we actually still like each other, and think that the other one has something to say.

And what they have to say ranges from serious to the absurd. My favorite part of the show is the open, when Wilbon mentions an item in the news, and Kornheiser tosses back a quip. Example:

Mike: Tony, Oprah says she once lived with John Tesh. Who’s the oddest person you ever dated?

Tony: This is awkward…John Tesh.

But Tony’s favorite running gag is to use the planet Uranus as a double entendre.

Mike: Tony, NASA just scrubbed its Pluto mission.

Tony: Really? When are they going to scrub “YourAnus”?

Sometimes, though, even the most accomplished wordsmiths get into hot water, like the time Tony was suspended by ESPN for joking about an on-air colleague’s wardrobe choice.

JL: It seems like every week or so, a sports guy gets suspended, fired, or is made to apologize for something he said in jest. Have network executives, and society in general, lost their sense of humor?

TK: I would say that the cultural wheel turns, and you either adapt to it or you die. One of the great casualties in the very current world is humor. Mel Brooks said, “Tragedy is when I fall down a manhole. Humor is when YOU fall down a manhole.” Humor has always been based on attacks on somebody, and in the world we live, those attacks are seen as much worse than they had ever been seen before. Some of the casualties of humor are in the day-to-day workplace, but you can still hang around with your friends and say terrible things. You just don’t say them out loud.

JL: We began by talking about the young folks you work with, so are you concerned that, with cutbacks in newspapers, today’s aspiring writers may not be able to have the kind of experiences you did?

TK: People will always want to read good writing, it’s just a question of where that writing is going to appear. I have great fears for newspapers in the short term, but this stuff is probably cyclical. If there were no more newspapers, there’s still writing, but I think they’ll come back.

JL: What about YOUR future, and the future of “PTI”? Is there any reason why you can’t be doing the show when you’re 90?

TK: Only if I’m drooling. Mike and I get the sense that as we get older and more hideous, and more curmudgeonly and more cantankerous, that young people actually like us. They think, “Wow, this is like watching my grandparents argue.”

You can catch Tony the curmudgeon and other sports notables at the NSMA Awards Weekend, which runs from Saturday, June 22 through Monday, June 24. For tickets and more information, visit NationalSportsMedia.org

 
 

Earlier this month during a CNN town hall, Democratic presidential candidate Senator Kamala Harris broke bad on companies who pay their female employees less than males doing the same job. If elected president, Harris would enact a mandatory federal “Equal Pay Certification” program, under which companies who don’t comply, would pay hefty fines. Said Harris, “Under our plan, for the first time in American history, companies will be held responsible for demonstrating they are not engaging in pay discrimination.”

By requiring companies to participate in the certification program, Harris’ plan represents a paradigm shift in the battle to end pay disparity. “What I am proposing is we shift the burden. It should not be on the working women to prove it. It should instead be on that large corporation to prove they’re paying people for equal work equally.”

Harris, a former prosecutor and California Attorney General, could be on to something. That’s because as an expert in enforcement, her plan purports to actually have teeth. Other federal reforms have netted disappointing results.

Take for instance the Equal Pay Act, which was signed into law by President Kennedy in 1963, a year when women made 59 cents for every dollar earned by a man. The problem is that, at first, the Act only applied to women in blue-collar jobs. Moreover, a woman with a grievance about pay had to file a sex discrimination claim, and then provide proof that she was being paid less money than a man in her plant who was doing the exact same work. And keep in mind that a woman who filed a grievance almost always had her case reviewed by a male supervisor. Talk about a stacked deck.

In 1972, the Equal Pay Act was finally amended to include women in white-collar jobs, but even then, progress was slow, and the pay disparity gap wasn’t closing fast enough. In 2009, President Obama introduced the Fair Pay Act, but it too failed to move the needle significantly. One reason? The FPA lacked any real punitive action against violators. Another obstacle is that most corporations were (and still are) run by male executives who don’t tend to see reduction of the pay gap as a top priority. According to a 2015 report by ThinkProgress.org, there are only 48 female CEOs heading up the top one thousand companies. That means in a society where women outnumber men, only 4.8% of the top jobs in America are held by women. Again, I’m not saying that male executives don’t care about pay disparity, but figures don’t lie. For example, in 2018, the American Association of University Women conducted a study of pay disparity in every state, and the news wasn’t good for working women. Nationally, white women make about 80 cents for every dollar a man earns doing the same job, but that number falls to 61 cents for black women, and 53 cents for Latina women. Here in North Carolina, women fare a little better than the national averages, or about 84 cents for every dollar a man makes, but that’s only up by a penny from four years ago. Even worse, the pay gap isn’t expected to close until the year 2060.

If the latest poll numbers hold, Senator Harris isn’t likely to be the Democratic nominee for president in 2020, but that doesn’t mean her proposal won’t gain traction in the next session of Congress. Let’s hope that the Equal Pay Certification plan will survive her candidacy, and that women won’t have to wait forty more years for something they should have had in the first place.
 
 

Politicians love to declare “war” on social problems. We’ve had a war on AIDS, a war on hunger, and now, a war on opioids. Declaring such wars gives us a definable enemy to fight and the means to eradicate it, which begs the question: why haven’t we declared war on school shootings? Oh sure, some schools now run emergency drills so that students can learn how to hide in the closet if a bad person enters the classroom, but those measures are about as effective in preventing school massacres as when my teachers told us back in 1962, that if we put our head between our legs, we’d be safe from a nuclear blast.

Last week, just days after the 20^th anniversary of the Columbine high school massacre, 18-year-old Devon Erickson and 16-year-old Maya McKinney waltzed into the STEM School at Highlands Ranch near Columbine, and opened fire, killing one student and wounding eight others. It was the 35^th school shooting of this academic year, and just one more in a long line of school massacres, including at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012 and Douglas Stoneman High School in Parkland, Florida in 2018.

In the days following every school shooting, elected officials on the left say we need to ban all guns, while those on the right say we need to arm teachers, and offer more mental health counseling. Amazingly, both sides tend to agree that we need a School Resource Officer (or SRO) in every school, but thus far, that hasn’t happened, and even if it did, those officers would not be able to stop murderous intruders from entering the school. So what’s the solution? We must augment SROs with preventive security measures.

For years now, I’ve used this column and my Triad Today television program to advocate for limited ingress and egress, as well as the installation of electronically locking doors and metal detectors in every school building. Under my plan, all students would enter through one main set of electronically controlled doors, and be scanned for weapons while the armed SRO observes. After that, students and visitors would have to be buzzed in or out by the SRO, or by designated office staff who can view the entrance way on TV monitors. If there is more than one building on campus, then the same safety precautions and devices would be duplicated in each building.

Whenever I float this strategy, educators, law enforcement, and elected officials say, “It’s too expensive, the scanning delays would lengthen the school day, and keeping doors locked would violate local fire ordinances. Here’s my response: Will building security be expensive? Yes, but America is the richest nation on earth, and our government always seems to find money for everything except making our schools safer. Congress can mandate that every school be retrofitted with secure doors and detectors, and, that federal dollars be allocated to the Department of Homeland Security who, in turn, would subsidize the aforementioned upgrades in every locality. Would routine metal detection for every student entering the building cause delays that might lengthen the school day? Yes, but so what? Would locked doors put students at risk in the event of fire? No. The doors can be designed to open automatically with an emergency override function activated by the SRO or office monitor.

I don’t mean to oversimplify this, but I’ve visited a number of industrial plants where thousands of employees can only enter and exit through one main gate, and I’ve been buzzed in to countless office buildings over the years. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, and there’s a way for this to work. I also realize that what I’m calling for will make our schools feel like prisons, and it pains me to have to make these suggestions. But before you email me to say how crazy I am, first go interview any one of the hundreds of parents who have lost their children to school massacres, and ask them if they would have minded locked doors, metal detectors, SROs, and longer school days.

In the late 1960’s when highway deaths were piling up, our government mandated the use of seat belts. Today, the government also mandates sprinkler systems for large commercial buildings, requires a blood test before a marriage license can be issued, and won’t let you drill a well or install a septic system until your land has been inspected. The fact is, government is there to protect its citizens, and the time has come for that protection to extend to children while they are in school. We’ve gotten really good at locking down schools AFTER a shooting has occurred, so let’s try something radical. Let’s get really good at locking down schools BEFORE a shooting occurs.