It's a Family Affair

I guess I'm a bit of a traditionalist at heart. I miss Washington's Birthday.

Since 1948, historians have consistently ranked three presidents among the country's best--George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt. Ironically, if FDR's mother delayed delivery for another 48 hours, all three men would have been born in February.

When I was a school boy, teachers spent most of February giving both Washington and Lincoln the attention they deserved. These were great men, who deserved their own holidays. Lumping them together with mediocrities, such as Benjamin Harrison, Franklin Pierce, and Warren Harding, just for the sake of a unified presidential holiday and countless automobile ads, seems to be a travesty.

In a lifetime filled with moments that defined the United States and its future, one of Washington's best decisions is often overlooked. He declined an opportunity to run for a third term. He understood the danger of dynastic rule.

American voters may be fascinated by political families, but very few have had any staying power on the national scene, because we remain deeply suspicious of them. For most of my adult life, two families have dominated the presidency--the Clintons and the Bushes--and Hillary is learning first hand the dangers of assuming tacit "inheritance" of the nation's highest office due to your last name (see Ted Kennedy's failed effort to unseat Jimmy Carter in 1980).

The legacy of the Bush-Clinton-Bush years has been a dynastic dynamic defined by division. Those voters who flock to Obama see a charismatic figure who trumps his shortcomings in experience with a message of unity and civility. Clinton tries to the frame the argument around competence, rather than pretty speeches. Dukakis tried that same message against George the First, and failed.

In his farewell address, George Washington, the only president not to belong to a specific political party, warned against the perils of partisanship. "The common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it," he said. "It agitates the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection."

Obama views himself as the purple candidate. Washington, who devised the original Purple Heart medal, probably had a fondness for that color, too.

It's Only Rock and Roll To Me

You could say my teenage son is a connoisseur of video games. Not only does he play them, but he also knows every detail about them--from voice actors to the individual histories behind the production companies that make them. As a result, in both conversation and deed, I have been exposed to almost every genre, and have personally watched my sons hijack cars, kill aliens, score touchdowns, and defeat the Nazis.

I'm now convinced one video game threatens the very fabric of life as we know it, and it should be banned permanently from all game consoles forever.

Guitar Hero.

OK, so maybe I'm being a little extreme, but consider for a moment the basic conceit behind this game. You spend hours in front of a TV screen pretending to be a rock star by accurately pushing the right buttons on your faux guitar.

What would happen instead if you spend that same amount of time trying to learn how to play a real guitar?

About a year and a half ago, I got an acoustic guitar for a present. I had always wanted to learn how to play a musical instrument, and now in my late forties I was trying to recapture a little youthful indiscretion. My boss at the time had played rock and roll with the same garage band since he was in junior high, and that provided some additional inspiration.

There is an old Cheech and Chong routine in which a heavy metal star named Alice Bowie proclaims proudly that he is a success even though he only knows three chords. You would be amazed how accurate that statement can be.



Little by little, I set aside part of the day to practice strumming chords, and going online to sites like Chordie.com to see how these chords formed the musical shape behind popular songs. My son was taking guitar lessons, too, and on occasion I would share a class to pick up a few pointers.

No one will forget Jimi Hendrix when they hear me play, but there is a special sense of satisfaction when you are jamming out a tune, and your teenage son yells downstairs that you are playing too loud.

Fighting off the forces of the Covenant is pure fantasy, but learning how to play an instrument is a personal pleasure that can last a lifetime. If your child really wants to pretend to be a rock star, maybe they should be encouraged to experience what it's like to make real music instead.

Get them a guitar, a set of drums or some other instrument. Just make sure to invest in some earplugs for awhile.

Warning Labels

For me, common sense as we know it ended the day I saw a TV commercial in which a volcano spit out a Jeep. I didn't mind the fact that the Jeep drove away from the carnage after landing on the ground. I was simply amazed that the legal department forced advertisers to include a disclaimer warning people not to try this stunt.



If lawyers are worried their clients might be sued by Jeep owners who might say they drove into volcanoes because their vehicles failed to include a disclaimer warning them not to take this action, I suppose I should not be surprised that a Do Not Attempt disclaimer now appears in another series of TV advertisements for Toyota.

In this particular case, car and truck owners are so desperate to get their hands on a new Toyota Tundra truck that they go to any lengths to deliberately destroy their own vehicles in "accidents" of their own doing.

An attorney must be pretty desperate if they think they can free a client that destroys a car, collects the insurance money, and then spends it on a new car, because the person was unduly influenced by a television ad.

A disclaimer on a TV spot should not control behavior. Ethics should.

This week's revelations about the widespread use of performance enhancing drugs in baseball include recommendations for controlling a problem that is inherently uncontrollable. At the root of the problem lies the personal ethical code guiding each ball player who must decide if he will rely on his own talents or will he chemically enhance them.

Bending one's ethics to achieve a goal is an ancient challenge, but certainly a timely question to consider during the holiday season, when positive religious themes still manage to float through the din of holiday music.

Civilized society requires moments when ethics and law intertwine. For instance, murder carries both legal and religious consequences that deter us from taking such a dramatic step, no matter how angry we might get when someone cuts us off on the Garden State Parkway. But in a wide array of situations, ethical questions adopt a grayer hue, and in these circumstances, we must rely upon both our conscience and our intelligence to make the right decision.

Sports is an imperfect arbiter when it comes to ethics. The New York Daily News can put an asterisk next to the unblemished record of the New England Patriots for as long as they want. It won't help Jets fans feel better.

Instead, may I humbly suggests that if you are still looking for that perfect holiday gift for a child or grandchild, consider a few moments of putting the Mitchell report into the context of day-to-day life, and sharing your personal credo of ethical behavior with family members.

And if you get them a Tonka truck, just make sure they know to avoid playing around volcanoes.

Standing Pat

Ms. Pat Russo
Chief Executive Officer
Alcatel-Lucent
54 rue la Boetie
Paris 75008, France

Dear Pat,

Happy holidays. I hope those French lessons are going well.

Sorry to bother you while you're spending all your time these days trying to save your company (and your job), but there is this little matter about a vacant building that used to employ some of the world's greatest research scientists and engineers.

You may have heard recently that Preferred Real Estate said au revoir and pulled out of a deal to purchase your property in Holmdel. Seems it ran into a little snag when it thought it could convince residents that it would be a good idea to put hundreds of a new homes there.

I hope you won't consider me too presumptuous if I offer a few thoughts, just in case you are still in the market for selling this 500-acre site. I'd hate to see you make the same mistakes twice.

I think you should know that most Holmdel residents would welcome new commercial development on the site. You should have seen the smiles over at the tax office back in the old days when they got ready to mail out your quarterly property tax bill.

At the same time, we have gotten used to the quality of life around here, and so you might want to share with any prospective buyers that we aren't too keen about changing existing zoning to allow the addition of any major housing developments on the site.

You probably understand how you can get used to things. Why, after a year or so of French cuisine, I bet those blue plate specials at your favorite New Jersey dinner have lost their allure.

How about taking the time to see how much it might cost to rehabilitate the old Labs building, so that it can house multiple business tenants? In a marketplace filled with other vacant buildings, wouldn't it make sense to preserve an existing asset with such strong brand equity, because of its technological and historical heritage?

I'm certain that if Alcatel-Lucent can do its part to help encourage new commercial development on the site, the Township Committee would show its gratitude by moving our annual community celebration to Bastille Day.

Joyeux Noel.

It's My Party (and I'll Cry If I Want To)

In 1864, Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, took the unusual step of selecting a Democrat, Andrew Johnson, as his running mate. It was a cagey move. Lincoln had been impressed with Johnson's administration of Tennessee as a wartime governor, and he created a National Unity ticket with an eye towards a post-Civil War reconciliation with the Confederate States.

Given Lincoln's willingness to put partisan politics aside, I found some irony from a recent post in the Monmouth Country Republican Blog, which is managed by an anonymous editor who goes by the name of "Honest Abe." Abe was lamenting the recent results in Holmdel, in which only one of the two Republican candidates won a seat on the Township Committee:

Mayor Serena DiMaso was reelected, but her running mate, Jerry Allocco, was defeated by Democrat Janet Berk. DiMaso and Allocco were on opposing slates in the primary, but teamed up for the general election. Sadly, it is reported that some Republicans worked for the democrats, resulting in a close race and Allocco's loss.

The truth is actually a little more interesting. GOP candidates for state and county offices easily routed their Democratic opponents in townwide voting. Even the eventual Democratic winner in the Freeholder race, John D'Amico, trailed his nearest opponent by almost 400 votes. Holmdel's Republican proclivities remain solidly in place. In the face of this Republican landslide, it counts as a small political miracle that Janet and I collectively attracted 52 percent of the vote in the Holmdel Township Committee race.

Abe's sadness (which might be better described as ire) stems from his frustration that Republicans in Holmdel are not political robots. They can unite with Democrats and Independents around issues of common local interest without sacrificing their political loyalties on a national, state or even county level.

A healthy political discourse begins by replacing polemics with consensus building and problem solving, especially since party platforms cannot cover every contingency. Common sense usually fills the void. Or to quote from Lincoln himself--"Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed."

Lincoln made that observation in 1858. Roughly 150 years later, it still offers a good guidepost for addressing the challenges of any community.

Rocket 88

In college, I spent most of my senior year growing a red beard, which I reluctantly shaved off to perform in a community theater production in Savannah, Georgia. Frankly, it was getting too hot to wear that beard anyway.

Roughly ten years later, I tried to grow it back, only to see to my dismay that my beard was now snow white. Not ready to be married to someone who looks like her grandfather, my wife uttered one of her famous ultimatums.

"You'll have plenty of time to look old," she said as she handed me my razor.

I have found that TV advertising has a way of making you feel old, too, or at least nostalgic. In the 1950s, the Oldsmobile and its Rocket 88 engine inspired early rock and roll songs. When I was a teenager, one of the coolest cars in the world was an Oldsmobile Cutlass, especially its muscle car variant, the 442. It was another one of GM's classic attempts to transform an ordinary sedan into a sports car, and it worked. The Cutlass was the top selling car in America in the mid-1970s.

It may have been your father's Oldsmobile, but it was more graceful than the homogenized version that GM finally retired in 1999. The sixth generation Cutlass was nothing more than a re-skinned Chevrolet Malibu.

So, imagine my surprise, when I was watching the latest TV advertising promoting the new Malibu as the car you can't ignore. To prove the point, the ad folks have a female jogger run into a parked car that she does ignore.



Just in case you did not get the joke, a second ad shows a group of bank robbers who escape detection by police because they were fortunate enough to select a bland, forgettable car.

The Malibu does look like a nice car, but I could not help but stare at the poor lamented automobile that served as the butt of all this corny humor. It was an Oldsmobile.

GM used to make buses, too, which is fitting. It just threw this once proud brand under one.