“And this is the best that you c – that the-the government, the *U.S. government* can come up with?”

Friends: 

I think we can all agree that I do a lot of reading.  Nonfiction, fiction, mysteries, and classics, it doesn’t matter what, I read a lot of it.  But typically books don’t affect me tremendously on an emotional level.  Sure, I get excited about books, feel adrenaline pump during intense passages, feel sadness about unfortunate events, or get wrapped up in the lives of the characters, but for the most part my emotions do not manifest themselves outwardly.  I don’t cry when characters die or scream and shout when the heroes prevail.  And I don’t typically get frightened during horrifying episodes.  But that all changed Friday night as I read the last 100 pages of the latest Tom Clancy novel, “Against All Enemies.”  I cannot remember the last time I was so frightened that I had to force myself to read the pages.  Come on; this isn’t some Stephen King thriller or Danielle Steele horror novel!  This is Tom Clancy, king of the political thriller.

I’ve read all of the Tom Clancy novels so I know what to expect—Awful bad guys and righteous heroes, last-second victories, and the good guys winning.  This one though, really struck a chord and in a bad way.  You see, because Tom Clancy has an insane knack for predicting the future.  Don’t believe me?  It has happened on at least two occasions and probably more if I think hard about it.  Remember 9/11 and the killing of Bin Laden?  Clancy wrote about both of them long before either of them took place.

In 1994, Clancy wrote in “Debt of Honor” about a Japanese airline pilot who crashed his 747 into the U.S. Capitol building, eradicating a good portion of the U.S. Congress.  Eerily similar to the 9/11 attacks.

And just last year, in “Dead or Alive,” Clancy wrote about the special forces operation to locate and kill a character patterned after Osama Bin Laden.  While the mission was accomplished in a private residence outside of Las Vegas, the circumstances surrounding Bin Laden’s death (as much as we know about it) are seemingly parallel.

Which leads me to the denouement of the latest Clancy, involving coordinated attacks by Islamic jihadists on passenger jets flying out of numerous U.S. airports.  And oh yeah, in case I forgot to mention it, one of them was a flight out of our very own LAX.

Look, I know it’s fiction and I know it’s made up, but this is what bothers me… if Tom Clancy can think this up, why would we expect that terrorists, the people who really want to do these things (not just entertain audiences), wouldn’t also be able to think this stuff up?  Seriously, Tom Clancy has already shown that he can think like an actual terrorist… when will lightning strike again?  Will we see next week, next year, next decade the living-out of Clancy’s fantasies by terrorists?  Because if Tom Clancy can think this stuff up, so can the terrorists who are motivated by hatred and a desire to harm, not the need to sell books.

Let’s go back in time, say to 1984 and the publication of “The Hunt For Red October.”  You remember the Alec Baldwin movie about a rogue Russian captain who steals a nuclear submarine and heads towards the United States.  The book and movie had a happy ending… the captain just wanted to defect; he wasn’t heading west to park nuclear warheads off the coast of New York City.  But the book put the U.S. Government into a tizzy.  Not only were Clancy’s scenarios and techno-jargon incredibly accurate, but it also posed a question that the Defense Department had not considered.  What IF a Russian nuclear-submarine could run silently and launch missiles without discovery?

In 1984 the FBI and CIA got a wake-up call.  Times had changed and the rules had change also.  The bad guys didn’t play by the same rules anymore; they stopped wearing black bandanas and riding across the plains on horseback. 

Which leads me to the main point.  What is our government doing to protect us?  All we have seen are our government’s reactions.  Heightened security, TSA body scans, and random searches (but please, no profiling… God-forbid we insult someone or infringe on someone’s “rights!”)  If terrorists have people sitting around all day thinking about new ways to kill Americans and wreak havoc and Tom Clancy is sitting around all day doing the same, please please please PLEASE tell me that the U.S. Government has people doing the same thing.  PLEASE!!!!!

Because here I am getting ready to take a trip.  A flight out of LAX this week to the east coast, with a final destination to the heart of our country.  And during our country’s birthday no less.  Should I feel concern?  Absolutely.  Should I feel safe that our country has planned and continues to plan for every potential scenario of terror and aggression?  If not, then I have no reason to even leave the house.  I would have no right to take my family on a plane, on a train, on a boat, or even into the car.

I say this with the utmost of emotion, the tears streaming down my eyes.  Please, someone, just tell me that they have people sitting around all day thinking this stuff up… because if Tom Clancy can think it up and the terrorists can think it up, then our own government can think it up.  And then they can plan for how to protect us from it…

Please…

www.robcohen13.wordpress.com
Twitter:  robcohen13
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“It’s the hard-knock life for us!”

Friends:

Just the other day I heard something that perplexed me:  “18-year old hospitalized for exhaustion and malnourishment.”  My initial reaction was to think that it was just a teenager who had had too much fun in the sun, maybe got dehydrated swimming in the pool all day, maybe some sunstroke or a bad sunburn.  Nope, eighteen years old, exhaustion and malnutrition from performances, travel, and appearances.  Is this any life for a kid?

I get it, “18” is not a kid, it is an adult, she is free to do what she wants.  But with Father’s Day weekend just having passed, my question is “what was her father doing?”  How do you let your baby girl become malnourished and exhausted?  And it got me to thinking about all of these kids who are being pushed and pushed by their parents or, on the flip side, the parents who do nothing while their children run rampant.

We as parents have many responsibilities.  We need to feed and clothe our children, put a roof over their heads, and give them the tools to be productive and self-sufficient adults.  Along the way, though, we also need to teach them that it is ok to be children, it is ok to play, it is ok to have fun.  Because once they grow up and leave school and start families of their own, the times to be young and crazy will be few and far between and the stress of everyday life will be palpable.

Which is why these parents who push their kids to perform, to succeed, to compete at such young ages really concern me.  Look, I know what it was like.  I loved playing baseball and, if I could, I would have played it every day twice.  I didn’t want to go to school, I didn’t want to go to Hebrew School, I wanted to play baseball.  But this was because it was fun.  It wasn’t because I thought I could make a career out of it or because this was the only path my life could take.  I never placed all of my eggs in the one basket of “Major Leagues or Bust.”  And my parents always said that when baseball was no longer fun, it was time to stop playing.  They didn’t push me. 

I heard a story that Jason Heyward of the Atlanta Braves played on like 4 different baseball teams at one time, one year playing like a couple of hundred baseball games, all while he was 15 years old.  Seriously?  When did he have time for school?  And, more importantly, when did he have time to be a kid???

So when I hear about an 18-year old suffering from exhaustion and having to be hospitalized, it really pains me.  And of course, this 18-year old happens to be a superstar, not that you could put it past me, I had no clue who she was, other than that she is dating Justin Bieber (which is a whole ‘nother Oprah.)

But it isn’t surprising.  I have been dealing with these types of parents for years because we have represented them.  The parents who are living vicariously through their kids, the parents who identify in their kids a talent that they never had and they feel the need to exploit it… for some it is a path to financial security which they so badly crave.  But do the kids crave it as well? 

Let me tell you this story:  mother lived in poverty and ran her daughter from audition to audition because the kid LOVED to act.  And finally the kid got a job, and then another, and then another, and became something of a star.  So what did the mother do?  Well, when the kid disowned the mother and accused her of exploiting her for the mother’s own gain, the mother ran off and had another kid so she could do it all over again!  I kid you not… (see what I did there?)

This is real life.  You have parents who take their kids to the driving range at 3-years old so that they can be the next Tiger Woods or they privately tutor them instead of putting them in school so that they can go to auditions. 

So play it out, what happens when the kid grows up?  Well, they do exactly what you would expect them to do.  They rebel, they act out, they “play.”  They get tattoos (Miley Cyrus), they drink and do drugs (Adam Rich and Todd Bridges and Britney Spears and Dana Plato) or they turn to crime (Lindsay Lohan and countless others).  They get to be kids, except the consequences of their play are more debilitating and harrowing– Jail sentences and overdoses and, when the flame of fame burns out, suicides. 

At that point, it is too late.  These kids are already damaged.  My question when I see this, when I see Britney Spears shaving her head or Miley Cyrus on a stripper pole, is “Where are the parents?”  Well, by then, the parents have already lost control.  The monster they have created (or allowed be created, let’s be fair) has already run away, a la Frankenstein.

There are so many aspects of this “epidemic” that could be addressed.  We could write volumes alone just talking about the stress of being on this course of performing.  We all know it but we hate to tell our kids-the odds are against their success on the field or on the screen.  Few people actually make it, which means that along the way, there will be a hell of a lot of rejection and failure.  For what?  Our kids already have self-esteem problems because of the perfection they see on the screen.  We want to add to it by putting them in situations that will lead to failure!?!

Look, I am not arguing against child actors or playing lots of sports or even competing.  These are all important.  But the kids need to know that all of these are activities.  They are supposed to be fun.  And if it isn’t fun anymore, it is time to stop.

You don’t want to be 18-years old and hospitalized for exhaustion unless it is because you ran around Disneyland all day and forgot to grab a Mickey-shaped pretzel…

Have a great week my friends.

Rob

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“Congratulations. Hudson High class of 2004!”

Friends: 

It is that time of year, so I felt that it was appropriate to bring back a post from last year because, seriously, my feelings haven’t changed on this one.  In fact, another year means 365 more days without reaching some kind of benchmark or closing.  So why not celebrate the little things, like preschool graduations?

(Also, as an aside, with graduations come kids going off to college.  Keep this in mind-once they turn 18, they get a whole lot more by way of rights; and that includes the right to designate agents-in-fact and people to make decisions for them in case of incapacity.  They really need to execute something to grant these rights so that they are protected.)

 

It’s graduation season and I had the opportunity to attend a graduation last week that was the culmination of years of hard work and dedication… pre-school graduation.  The gateway to a successful kindergarten career.

Before I had kids, I was just as skeptical as all of you.  Seriously, a pre-school graduation?  And this graduation was carried off with all of the seriousness of the commencement exercises of M.I.T., Harvard, or Princeton.  Aside from the songs about loving Friday night, how it is not good to be a turkey on Thanksgiving, and wanting to be a Maccabee.  Aside from that, it had the full pomp and circumstance, the processional and recessional, the caps and gowns and the receipt of diplomas.  Although I didn’t see any “graduates” wearing leis or bikinis under their gowns.

So sure, I thought it was kind of ridiculous.

Until I really thought about it.  So what?  What is really wrong with a pre-school graduation?  Is there a slippery slope?  Are they now going to be holding graduation ceremonies from kindergarten, 1st grade, 3rd grade, 11th grade, all the way up the line?  If they do, so what?  I am 100% in favor of it.  And this is why…

Graduations are dividing lines; they are goals to work towards and conclusions of chapters in lives.  And once you complete your studies, with limited exceptions, you don’t have those dividing lines anymore.  If you are a teacher or a professional athlete, this may not apply to you because your career may actually be pursued during specific dates of the year.  But when you are in school, you have a goal– to graduate.  To finish the school year and feel the sense of triumph that comes when you walk across that stage and collect that diploma, a simple, maybe even meaningless, piece of paper that means you did it.  When was the last time you got that kind of recognition in your job?  Or, more importantly, when was the last time you actually had a destination date by which you marked an accomplishment?  Other than retirement which we all have penciled into a calendar someplace, right?

This is the thing.  The real world is unlike the world our kids live in when they are in school.  The rewards don’t come as often.  And the lines of demarcation are sometimes non-existent.  So why not let them enjoy it?  Why not celebrate their accomplishments?  And have this celebration start as early as possible.  Have it ingrained in their psyche that there are destinations, goals to achieve and rewards to reap when they reach them.  The rewards being celebrations in their honor, a reason for people to give them gifts, a reason for people to be happy for them and laud their accomplishments. 

Because seriously, once you get out of school, those types of celebrations are few and far between.  Why take this away from them?  Celebrate them.  Give the kids reasons to be happy, to celebrate, to feel a sense of accomplishment.  Because once they get out of school and work, there aren’t as many opportunities for those types of celebrations.

This week, find a reason to celebrate your accomplishments.  Whether it is landing a new client, getting a good result for a client, or simply feeling good about some work you did, reward yourself in some way.  Because it will be a long, long, long time before someone throws you another graduation party…

Rob

 

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“This list… is an absolute good. The list is life.”

Friends:

 

I know a lot about the Holocaust.  I am no expert, I will admit that, but I do know a lot.  I have read thousands of pages on the subject, watched hours of film and footage, and even spent some time visiting a concentration camp.  Schindler’s List, Diary of Anne Frank, Elie Wiesel… and that doesn’t take into consideration the numerous novels written on the subject, including the works of Leon Uris and Herman Wouk. 

Well, add another book to the list, the one I just finished, entitled “The Envoy” about Raoul Wallenberg, the Guinness Book World Record Holder for most Jews saved from execution.  Since the time I began learning about the Holocaust, I knew of Wallenberg, but unfortunately all I knew was that he saved Jews and Richard Chamberlain played him in a TV movie. 

In reading and learning as much as I have on the subject, there is no escaping the disturbing and horrifying elements of the Holocaust, the methods of torture, murder, humiliation, and depravity employed by the SS.  The cruelty was monstrous: tearing children from mothers’ arms, slamming babies against brick walls, tearing babies by yanking their legs apart, separating wives from husbands, the mass executions, the gas chambers, the ovens… it seemed that there was no limit to the brutality.  And don’t get me started on the testing and experiments inflicted on twins, a subject which is very close to my heart, as you can well understand.

But just when I think I have seen and heard it all, that the limits of the atrocities have been exhausted, I learn more and am astounded.  Not at the harshness of the acts (which is practically a given at this point), but at the creativity.  Taken on its base level, those SOB’s were pretty damn creative in their methods of execution, degradation, and torture.  We look at these beasts as uncivilized, monsters who ran amok with no law or order, the freedom to do what they wished, with no worries about consequences.

We as Americans look at our enemies, those who practice terrorism and fly airplanes into buildings, as monsters and beasts.  Do we see them this way because we are, in some ways, jealous of them?  They get to do whatever they want.  They don’t have to worry about rules or restrictions, about playing fairly and letting the best man win.  No, they could care less about those things.  And I am sure it irritates you as it does me.  As Americans we have to abide by the rules, we have to be conscious of the Geneva Convention or the 5^th Amendment or some crap like that, right?  They get to fight dirty; we have to fight clean.

Just this morning I was watching a movie on cable (does anyone call it that anymore?) and it addressed just this subject; an Arab terrorist who knew the locations of three nuclear bombs planted around the U.S. and the interrogation techniques employed by agents of America to learn the locations of these bombs.  The main character tortures and kills to get the answers… and the reaction of the other characters and of the audience is one of disgust.  It attacks our sensibilities when an American tortures or kills and ignores the 5^th Amendment.  Why?  Because Americans are not animals; we don’t do those things; we play by the rules. 

Which got me to thinking.  What would I do if there were no law and order, no rules and no punishments for my actions?  Would I turn into a monster, an animal, a creature only conjured in B-Movies? 

I would like to think that whether or not there were laws and rules, that my moral compass would continue to guide me on a straight path, avoiding temptation and vice.  Sure, that flat-screen television in the store would look good hanging on my wall.  And that guy who cut me off on the freeway should be bumped from behind to give him a little bit of my irritation.  Or maybe I drive 100 miles per hour because I feel like it, want to have the wind whip my hair…

You see, we need laws and rules and order and justice.  It IS what separates us from the animals in the jungle or the animals that threaten our well-being.  Whether it is 5-year old T-Ball or international terrorism, we have to be conscious and mindful of the rules.  Because if we sink to the level of our enemies, if we take a page out of their book and forego law and order and, more importantly, our moral selves, we unwrite our history and bring us closer to what can only be described as H E double hockey-sticks on earth.

And, as a side note, and something I have touched on before—history is written by the victors.  If we employ dastardly and morally disgraceful tactics and act like brutes, how will we be portrayed, in the unfortunate instance in which we lose?  How do we want history to remember us?  How do you want to be remembered?  The Nazis didn’t seem to care too much about that.  Do you?

Rob