In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

In the wake of President Biden's fall at the Air Force Academy and his subsequent near-accident on Marine One, nobody has mentioned Jimmy Carter's September 16, 1979 collapse during a cross-country race near Camp David. The incident occurred just 200 yards past the entrance to Camp David as Carter neared the top of the second major hill on the course. Between 800 and 900 runners were participating in the event. Lt. Col. Paul Kramer of Washington, who was jogging close behind Carter, told United Press International he saw "his legs collapse. He looked in pretty bad shape. His head was down, and he just looked lousy." Ther story had more details: Carter, wobbly and moaning, was kept from collapsing by security men who held him erect as he staggered to the top of a long hill in the fourth mile of the Catoctin Mountains race. Colman McCarthy, a Washington Post reporter who was running in pace with Carter, described the president as "ashen" and in dis...

Over the past month, there's been a cat-and-mouse game between congressional Republicans and FBI Director Wray over a purported FBI FD-1023 form that may contain allegations of bribery against Joe Biden when he was vice president. My kabuki alarm had been going off over this from the start. Here was the status as of May 3 : Senate Budget Committee Ranking Member and long-time whistleblower advocate Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) today are demanding the FBI produce an unclassified record alleging a criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Joe Biden and a foreign national. The document, an FBI-generated FD-1023 form, allegedly details an arrangement involving an exchange of money for policy decisions. Comer issued a subpoena today following legally protected disclosures to Grassley’s office. Director Wray slow-walked a passive-aggressive reply on May 10: FBI Director Christopher Wray declined...

There's a notable overall pattern here: a dog that wasn't supposed to bark is actually barking, at least a little bit. A few Major League Baseball pitchers, including two on the Dodgers team itself, have objected to the Dodgers' plan to give a hero award to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. This comes in a context, whereby as early as last January, well before l'affaire Bud Light, some National Hockey League players refused to wear Pride jerseys for their respective teams' Pride nights. The most recent example came on March 7, when Minnesota Wild players chose to not wear special Pride Night jerseys that had been designed. According to the link, though, this is actually a dastardly Russian plot. According to a report from The Athletic, there is a connection to Russia in all of this. On March 10, The Athletic published a report titled "The NHL's Russia-Pride jersey problem, explained: Why Wild became latest to scrap plans." The rep...

Gee, d'ya think? In this morning's New York Post , Target’s decision to move some of its LGBT pride apparel in some of its locations made national headlines, and it may have lost control of its own narrative in the process, a top consumer researcher says. Notice how gingerly the Post is covering this story. As I noted a week ago, Target's own corporate flack Erik Castaneda told Reuters that products are being withdrawn at all locations, not just in some southern states. The products Target is withdrawing are being removed from all its U.S. stores and from its website, Castaneda said. And as I noted yesterday, a YouTuber went undercover , representing himself as someone who wanted to buy a "tuck friendly" swimsuit, and was able to speak with a manager who explained these were "out of stock". Clearly Target is doing this very quietly, but as I noted in yesterday's post, it appeared to be actively dumping its Pride products even before th...

Well, if anyone needs to read the tea leaves, Dylan Mulvaney just did a TikTok video that confusingly reveals he spoke with his dad and told him he was attracted to and wanted to date women, while at the same time asserting that he wanted to have babies. But an even more intriguing data point is this one at TheStreet: Target Just Dumped Its Pride Merchandise -- Here's Where It All May Go . This is important, because Bud Light has been the corporation least able to hide the damage the boycott has done -- although its weekly sales statistics are a week or more out of date when they're realeased, they're independent and hard to hide. Target's sales are much harder to track down, although its decline in stock price has been visible, and anecdotal reports of empty stores over the Memorial Day weekend are at least encouraging. But the link, while it's clearly been placed by Target's own press and investor relations people, is notable for its spin: Ta...

Homicide detectives say that when you're interrogating a suspect, an obvious lie is as good as a confession. I would extend this to say that when you're reading a respected commentator, seeing him obviously miss the point is as good as seeing him get it. In this column from Sunday , Jonathan Turley circles around and around in an effort to make a point, but he manages to miss it and unintentionally prove another one. His basic problem, which he can't shake, is that he's a member of the gentry class, which in the current alignment is allied with the one-percent rentiers, along with Marx's Lumpenproletariat , and a small but influential group of radical intellectuals that includes the pansexuals. According to Wikipedia , His father, John (Jack) Turley was an international architect, partner at Skidmore, Owens, and Merrill, and the former associate of famed modernist architect Mies van der Rohe. . . . His mother, Angela Piazza Turley, was a social worker a...

I kept thinking about the basic principles of corporate crisis management and contingency planning that I outlined in yesterday's post for the rest of the day, and I came to some non-obvious conclusions. Let's start with the first principle that was in my link , but which I didn't quote yesterday: Develop a crisis plan. Brainstorm potential crisis scenarios and use them to inform and regularly update your plan. . . . Simply having a plan is not enough when it comes to crisis management; you have to practice it. Everyone who would play a role should a crisis arise needs to know what the plan is and exactly what their role is. Actually, any public corporation with a board of directors is required to show such a plan to its auditors, and show the auditors that it tests it. Banks, utilities, and other companies that are separately regulated need to account for this with their regulatory bodies as well. At least when I was writing such plans, they focused mainly on...