Rex M Rogers - Discerning What Is Best

Discerning What Is Best
with Dr. Rex M. Rogers

Details: Written by: Rex M. Rogers; Published: 18 December 2010

I was once a red kettle bell ringer for The Salvation Army—for about 20 minutes.

The story begins several years ago when Sarah and I decided to go to Chicago for our annual Christmas get-away, shopping, see-the-lights-n-sights day.

We started this practice when the kids were young. It gave us one sometimes two days without munchkin distractions. It provided a break in our schedules, and still does, for us to amble through retail America looking at whatever tweaks our fancy, enjoying a long lunch in a nice restaurant, and in general having a good time. It may not sound like much, but I look forward to it every year. We both put on bright green or red holiday sweaters, think festively, and take off for a day of hot coffee (me) or tea (her) and wondrous displays of Christmas decorations.

We drove south to Chicago early in the morning, gained an hour crossing into Central Time, and were walking Michigan Avenue by 9:00 am.

Now here’s the thing: we love doing this together, but we shop differently. She’s a slower, few specific stores, mine deep for the gold kind of shopper. We may be at a mall all day and she’ll have visited five or six stores in one wing. I, on the other hand, am a case-the-place, traverse the entire mall or length of Michigan Avenue, surface kind of shopper. In fact, it’s not fair to shoppers everywhere to call me a shopper at all. I buy things once in awhile, but it’s because I was looking for it, went to that store to get it, found what I wanted, and put down the dough. My “shopping” might more appropriately be called “exploring.”

So, what do we do? We get to the mall or in this case the Magnificent Mile, pick a time to meet, synch our watches, and split up. We actually did this when we were dating. It’s a method that still works. In the days before cell phones, if she wanted to find me before the appointed time, she’d check the nearest Barnes and Noble where I’d be ensconced in the Starbucks café reading and sipping a cup of joe. It’s a given. Like a natural law. But this day that bookshop coffee was yet to be.

This is how I came be standing by myself in The Windy City in front of the John Hancock Center. That’s the tall building that looks like a smaller, squeezed version of what was then called the Sears Tower, now the Willis Tower: who thinks up these kinds of nonsensical changes? People despise the new name and it’s disrupted the social fabric of an entire city. Anyway, there I was.

I was just beginning my reconnoiter when I heard to my left the famous tinkling bell of a red kettle bell ringer with The Salvation Army. The older (I’d say elderly, which frankly is how she appeared, but she was pretty sprightly) lady working the kettle was dressed, forgive me for saying, like she needed the funds more than anyone else who might receive them. She was, to put it as politely as I can, raggedy. I don’t know if this was her state in life or if this was a shrewd marketing ploy, but it worked for her. She made eye contact with me and we nodded our heads. We, of course, had never met before and were thus total strangers.

Then, for reasons I cannot fathom to this day, she said to me, “Would you mind manning this kettle for a few minutes? I have to go to the bathroom so badly I can’t stay here, but The Army doesn’t allow us to leave the kettle.”

Now I ask you, how could I turn down a damsel in distress? So I said, “Sure, I guess so. What should I do?” This is when she looked at me like maybe she’d made a mistake, like maybe she’d picked a dunderhead who didn’t know how to ring a bell standing by a red kettle. But she said, “You don’t have to do anything but just stand here and watch the kettle. Make sure no one bothers it. There’s a restroom right down there near the Cheesecake Factory. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” So improbable as it seemed, there I was. I assumed the position and she tore off running down steps like a grade schooler, disappearing behind pillars and me wondering if she’d ever come back.

What makes this more amusing is that I’d chosen that day to wear a sport outfit. I enjoy professional football and had been a fan of the Miami Dolphins since their perfect season during my college years. As a Christmas present one year Sarah bought me the full deal: winter Miami Dolphins coat, gloves, and knit toboggan cap. And did I mention that it was bitterly cold that December day? So here I am standing along Michigan Avenue in a bright light green and orange coat, dark green gloves, and light green hat with a Dolphins logo on the front. I was ready for a football game but not public display in a chic neighborhood. The irony is, every other year we made this trip I’d worn a black fedora with feather and a black dress coat, but this year I went as a rabid fan.

So I rang the little bell. Four or five people passed by. Four or five more put change in the kettle—“Yes! I can do this job.” The lady will be proud of me.

I stand there, I ring the bell, I ring the bell some more. Then I noticed to my right an elegantly dressed couple from Grand Rapids, business owners I knew from my work at the university. Apparently this was their shopping/exploring day too, because they checked their watches, gave the loving nod, and parted company, she across the street toward Bloomingdales and he to points unknown. At any moment I thought he was going to see me, but he didn’t. I don’t know if he didn’t recognize me and kept going or if he didn’t “see” The Salvation Army bell ringer in his haste to move on to warmer locations. I considered yelling a greeting, but stopped and to this day I’m not sure why. Was I ashamed of what I was doing? Why would I be? Or did I not want to tout my good deed in an inappropriate manner? I don’t know. What bothers me now is that ego was probably involved in either motivation.

Finally, after at least 20 minutes, the kind lady returned with a smile on her face, thanking me effusively for this wonderful thing I had done. I didn’t think I’d done all that much, and I didn’t have the heart to tell her I’d had second thoughts and hadn’t identified myself to a person I knew. So I didn’t think my record was a good one. She, however, seemed to think I was a knight who’d rescued her from ignominy.

And maybe I was, a Knight in Miami Dolphins green and orange. One thing for sure, my respect went through the roof for people who stand by red kettles in the cold elements and ring bells for The Salvation Army.

I said, “Goodbye,” and she said, “God bless you,” and I went exploring for that bookstore and java.

Someday I’m going to call that business couple and tell them this story.

*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Dr. Rogers or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com or follow Dr. Rogers at www.twitter.com/RexMRogers.

Details: Written by: Rex M. Rogers; Published: 16 December 2010

Each US President's signature is etched in the wood panels of the entrance hall of the Ronald W. Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley, California. It’s an interesting exhibit, which caught my attention immediately not because it was first on the tour but because I’d never seen anything like it.

Like the public, some presidents wrote well or even beautifully; some did not. Some wrote small versus larger letters. Some wrote legibly, meaning some were not easy to read. A few wrote with the proficiency of John Hancock. Some used initials. Some used middle names. Some signed his name with what appeared to be a certain flourish. Some signed his name in what appeared to be modesty, almost timidity. But now I’m interpreting or “reading into” the signature. Interpreting signatures is controversial.

Graphology is the pseudoscientific analysis of handwriting. One of the earliest books on the subject was written in the 16^th Century, but graphology in practice if not in name dates much earlier than this. Analyzing handwriting includes signatures, of course. Supposedly, graphologists can predict personality traits and identify how people will likely think if appointed to, say, a jury. But pun intended, the jury is still out on this one.

I’m not enamored with the idea anyone can deduce anything from a person’s handwriting or signature—except perhaps how accomplished the person’s grade school teachers were in handwriting instruction. But I’ve always found it interesting to consider how or why people sign their name as they do.

I’ve especially wondered what leads people to sign their name in a virtually or even thoroughly un-readable fashion. If you saw their signature anywhere but where signatures are supposed to reside you’d think the signature was simply a scribble mark. What strikes me as odd is that this signature, this scribble, is legally them. It commits them to whatever they signed.

A scribble is generally not distinctive, or at least another person could claim the same scribble. Yet your name and signature belong to you (This thought breaks down, I know—believe it or not, there are a lot of Rex Rogerses in Michigan let alone the US, UK, and Australia. But there aren’t too many Rex M Rogerses). So why do people sign their name like illiterate people did in pioneer days? Just “Make your mark here” someone said and people put down their X. It's not like it's a sin, mind you, but I don’t get this.

Supposedly medical doctors writing prescriptions model the world’s worst handwriting, but I don’t think that’s fair. They just provide examples of their handwriting to a broader cross-section of the population than most professionals do.

Poor penmanship is endemic to modern civilization. We’re in a hurry, and we spend most of our “writing” time on keyboards anyway. Good penmanship is doomed, even in our own signatures.

At any rate, handwriting in general and signatures specifically are different because people are different, whether learned behavior or some mystical thing rooted in personality. I just find signatures fascinating, a kind of fingerprint with words.

Details: Written by: Rex M. Rogers; Published: 15 December 2010

At Richmond International Airport today I stood for the first time in a radar-scanner-better-than-enhanced-pat-down-let-it-all-hang-out “Advanced” Imaging Technology machine. I’m still decidedly not sure if I feel safer, violated, ready for an orange prison jumpsuit, or treated like just another piece of baggage.

I’ve written about this twice before: “New Enhanced Body Pats,” “Revisiting Pat Downs, Body Scanners.” So you can be forgiven for thinking I’m obsessed with this. But really, folks, this is getting ridiculous, all in the name of the ultimate trump card: security.

Before “Advanced” Imaging Technology machines: You unpack your laptop, take off your shoes and maybe your belt, place all metal (watch, coins, cellphone) in your bag or the cereal bowl provided for you, place small-bottled liquids within a plastic baggy—get the baggy out of your luggage—place on the checkpoint belt, remove your jacket, and walk through the metal detector holding your boarding pass.

After “Advanced” Imaging Technology machines: You do everything you did before AND remove all items from your pockets, stand side-ways placing your feet on two conveniently provided yellow footprints, place your hands over your head and wait while an X-ray picture is taken of your all-together. Then walk to the end of the rubber mat and stand on two more yellow footprints facing an agent who’s waiting to hear from his or her cohort that “He's clear.” Meanwhile, said cohort agent is sitting nearby in an enclosed, specially and newly erected opaque booth checking out your bod, deleting…or viewing, processing, or saving the pic for a rainy day.

After the newly installed AITs you can’t pass through the checkpoint with anything in your pockets, not your leather wallet, not aspirin, not even a piece of paper (all of which were perfectly permissible before AITs). So you’re down to the clothes on your back.

This is progress, which is to say “Advanced” apparently means not-able-to-distinguish-skin-from-leather, pills, or paper.

Women, or men for that matter, wearing more than a piece or two of jewelry have to virtually strip themselves before going through the AIT, only to take considerable time afterwards to put themselves back together. Post-checkpoint looks like a cross between a slumber party and a locker room with total strangers in various stages of undress.

All this makes us safer we’re told. And maybe it does. But I still believe there’re other ways, other less invasive, intrusive, time-consuming, and demeaning security methods than AITs and/or enhanced pat downs.

I saw an elderly woman in a wheelchair. An agent pushed her near the AIT. Then she had to take off her shoes, an action that was for her challenging at best, stand up teetering while she removed her coat, strip her jewelry, etc. No one helped her. In my book this is unnecessary and, worse, disrespectful.

Not for a minute do I think authorities can guarantee some notable person’s image won’t show up on the Internet. If it can happen it will happen. It’s only a matter of time.

While we’re told the AIT X-rays are safe I don’t think we’ll know for ten or twenty years—we’ve been told a lot of things were harmless for human beings only to discover otherwise: cigarettes, DDT, liberals, gambling, Bernie Madoff, O.J., obesity.

Mostly, though, I don’t think this theatre of the absurd at airport checkpoints actually increases airline security, mainly because radicals are smart enough to conjure ways around whatever we do. So we're involved in much ado about what?

Details: Written by: Rex M. Rogers; Published: 14 December 2010

Congressional Democrats, led by Rep. Barney Frank (MA) and encouraged by Senate Majority Leader Harry M Reid (NV), are attempting to sneak through a bill legalizing online gambling. The bill, an amendment to a larger tax relief bill, would make online gambling revenues taxable, which is the ultimate interest of online gambling proponents.

Interestingly, they’re doing this despite repeated national polls that suggest some 67% of the American public oppose the legalization of online gambling. This lame duck move is, one would hope, doomed to failure.

Increased legalized gambling means increased indebtedness, bankruptcies, and addictiveness. In every culture the social cost of increased gambling always outpaces any increase in revenues that may land in public coffers. Consequently, while many solid moral arguments can be marshaled against gambling one of the best arguments against it is practical economics—gambling doesn’t work financially. No one wins but the gambling operation.

Legalization of online gambling has been a perennial goal of the gambling industry since the earliest days of the Internet. But so far, Congress has had enough concerns not to take the plunge.

If this new bill passed it would overturn the 2006 Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. This legislation bans online gambling and makes it illegal for credit companies to process online gambling funds.

Still, and here’s the irony, since the Internet is the “worldwide” web and not a “national” or “domestic” web, people in the U.S. can and do regularly gamble online—as many as 7 million log on monthly to poker sites alone. They do this by accessing offshore sites. Liberals in Congress don’t like this because all they can see are potential-but-unreachable tax revenues.

Liberals, including Forbes magazine, love to argue four things:

--governments should not restrict gambling because it’s an adult decision,

-more gambling yields more jobs

-more gambling means more tax revenues,

-more gambling is good for economic growth.

Yet none of these arguments have been borne out historically. Gambling was, is, and always will be bad economics, bad policy, and bad politics. It’s a time bomb in a pretty package, a snake in the grass that’s waiting to bite. Barney Frank’s bill is a bad bet.

Details: Written by: Rex M. Rogers; Published: 14 December 2010

I couldn’t quite believe my eyes, but replays and game announcers quickly confirmed what I thought I saw—a New York Jets coach tripping a Miami Dolphins player. Assistant Coach Sal Alosi stuck out his knee as Dolphins cornerback Nolan Carroll ran to cover a punt, tripping him. Bad enough behavior as it is, but Alosi’s incredible lapse of sportsmanship played out live and in color on Sunday night national television.

What words come to mind when you hear this? Dumb. Poor sportsmanship. Conduct unbecoming. Are you kidding me? Did he think he could get away with this? Did he think?

Today, we heard the NFL verdict: Alosi will be suspended from the team without pay for the rest of the season, including the playoffs, and be fined $25,000. Pretty steep penalty, but not steep enough.

Alosi has “taken responsibility,” apologized, said he won’t do it again, and promised to write 500 times “I will not be mind-numbingly stupid. I will not be mind-numbingly stupid.”

OK, but still not enough. As leaders and as compensated professionals coaches bear a greater responsibility. They’re supposed to be the grown-ups. They’re supposed to set the standard, be a model, inspire others. Sal Alosi may have done a credible job as a team fitness coach. He may be, apart from tripping, a nice guy who mows his Grandma’s lawn every week. But for all that, he’s a man who squandered a stewardship. In a time when more professional athletes are engaging in bad, ill-advised, and even violent behavior, you'd hope that coaches, at least, would still be capable of demonstrating character.

Organizations have long since lost the will to fire people. Organizations are afraid of lawsuits, afraid of being singled out on national television as a bad corporation, or worst of all, afraid of being considered “insensitive.” But there was a day when being fired served as a statement of accountability.

No one likes to lose a job. In fact, there’s no pleasant nor easy way to tell someone he or she has lost a job, and there’s certainly no pleasant or easy way to receive such information.

But losing a job, even being fired, is not the worst thing that can happen to a person. It's not capital punishment. In fact, if a person is indeed guilty of some workplace infraction, as Alosi assuredly is, than being fired can be a turning point in life. It gets ones attention and it can be turned to the good.

I don’t mean to romanticize getting fired. It’s not fun and games, and shouldn't be done arbitrarily. But organizations must attend to their missions and that does not generally include giving a second chance to employees guilty of egregious behavior.

Alosi was a professional, some would say privileged professional. Yet he acted in a highly unprofessional manner. This is grounds for firing. In the end, Alosi need not be banned forever from football, but neither should he be permitted to reengage with this team. Who among the players would respect him? Time for Alosi to move on for the good of the team and, truth be told, for him too.

Details: Written by: Rex M. Rogers; Published: 11 December 2010

Picture the scene: President Obama introduces Bill Clinton at a White House press briefing. Clinton, not the least rattled, takes the podium. Obama channels Pat Nixon while adoringly looking on from nearby. For Clinton, Christmas has come early. This scenario tops his fondest fantasies.

Sounds odd and it was. But this is what took place Friday afternoon in the White House.

President Barack Obama announced Clinton’s support of a brokered tax deal with Republicans, hands off to Clinton, watches briefly, and leaves. That’s right, he leaves saying he’s keeping the First Lady waiting and must go to a party.

Is this strange or what? I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve never heard of anything like it. If President Obama was concerned about his fading political clout before, he better be now. It was a show of emasculated leadership.

Too strong, you say? Imagine Hilary Clinton as President. Really, it may yet happen. Then imagine her inviting Bill Clinton to share a White House press briefing. Never happen in a million years.

Imagine George H. W. Bush bringing in Ronald Reagan, or for that matter, despite his enduring respect for his father, imagine George W. Bush, 43, sharing a White House policy lectern with 41. We don’t have pictures of these historic events because they never happened.

Accounts of the run-up to this political misstep suggest it all came together unplanned in a matter of minutes during Bill Clinton’s visit with the President to discuss tax politics. It looked unplanned. If I were President Obama I’d fire whatever political advisors let this happen. Or maybe they were caught off-guard when the President stepped into this ill-advised photo opp himself? Whatever.

In an effort to make the President appear to be in charge it made him look weak. Standing nearby? A No-No. Leaving for a party? Gotta run so as not to keep the First Lady waiting? To borrow a phrase from ESPN’s football coverage, “Come on, Man.”

I’m not a rabid anti-Obama man. I don’t appreciate much of his politics, but I respect the office and I respect him in the office. I admire how he relates to his wife and children, and I like his careful thinking style. Since as President of the United Sates he is “my President,” unlike Rush Limbaugh, I root for him.

I appreciate the fact the President’s job is one of the most difficult leadership roles in the world. But this was too much. It was like throwing an interception. It’s tough enough to do well, to win. It’s tougher when you make unforced errors.

How could he have gained Bill Clinton’s support without leaving him alone with the White House press corp? He could have invited the former president for a discussion, then let Bill Clinton talk to the press on the White House lawn on the way out, just like every other politician.

All in all, it was not a good day for President Obama. For Bill Clinton, if he didn’t believe in deja vu, he does now. This was bad political theater that will come back to haunt President Obama in his next campaign.

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