Jane Genova: Speechwriter - Ghostwriter

Don't cry for the ladies of Greenwich, CT

One unfortunate lady of Greenwich, Connecticut was forced to settle for a Mercedes S550 instead of the Rolls-Royce she had her heart set on.  It wasn't the recession.  Actually everything is bouncing back in that tony town.  It was, reports Jessica Pressler in NEW YORK Magazine, the old perception game.  The lady's husband, the one who brings home the bacon, figured that Mercedes was more fitting with the era of post-affluence. 

People, I guess the husband's reasoning was, should be acting simply rich, not extremely wealthy.  But we shouldn't cry for this woman.  After all, Greenwich remains the town of greed, snobbery, and a curious number of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.  You can read about all that in my novel "The Fat Guy From Greenwich."  Here are the first two chapters Download FGFGchapters1,2.

John Murtha Dead: More than six degrees of separation

The death of John Murtha shouldn't have been on my radar screen.  After all I exited western Pennsylvania for what will probably be the last time in the summer of 1981.  Princess Di was getting married.  That was a very long time ago.

But there is that six degrees of separation.  Actually, more than the usual points of connection and distance.  When I was live-blogging the Rhode Island lead paint trial [see that under "legal"] the defense attorneys for Sherwin-Williams were from Jones Day in downtown Pittsburgh, a few blocks from where I used to work at the former Gulf Oil, now Chevron.  The head attorney Mickey Pohl had been the Chairman of the Board of my alma mater Seton Hill.  I had written to him commending the development staff at Seton Hill who had so smoothly arranged my creation of a scholarship.

In the four-months of that litigation Pohl and I had plenty of time to talk.  His law firm had hired John Boyle who I had babysat when a student at Seton Hill.  His mother Joanne Boyle, my freshman comp professor, was and still is President of Seton Hill.  John had started out his career employed by John Murtha. 

It was Joanne Boyle who helped me get hired by a state senator in PA.  That didn't work out too hot.  A resentment reared its head, at least on my part.  Life has peculiar effects on the six degrees or more.

Our Lady of Dirty Looks

It's a female game:  The giving of dirty looks.  They are both intended to whip us sinners into compliant behavior and properly warn us that we could be spoken about to others with those dirty looks served as a side dish.

An outlier, I have been well-acquainted with Our Lady of Dirty Looks.   The Lady began to target me for reeducation in St. Boniface Roman Catholic School in downtown Jersey City, New Jersey.  Obviously that didn't take.  The women, both nun type and secular professors and administrators at then all-women's college Seton Hill, Greensburg, Pennsylvania, also lavished many looks on me.  By my young old age I got the game.  When the office manager at a professional services firm in Manhattan started in, I bid adieu. 

Females have to learn more sophisticated power strategies and tactics if they aspire to become change agents in our institutions.

DAILY BEAST's Gerald Posner joins growing number of "inadvertents"

Both veteran journalist Gerald Posner and the site he published his piece in THE DAILY BEAST admit that five sentences had been copied from the MIAMI HERALD.  The plagiarism was declared "inadvertent."  That is an impossibility for a seasoned writer. 

DAILY BEAST head Tina Brown could make hay with this.  Controversy sells.  She could throw Posner under the train and explain the pressures on old-line journalists in an era of upheaval.  Then she can issue her manifesto for reform.

Beware Who You Marry: School Chums & the spouses who got 'em stuck

Daniel Goleman, who brought us Emotional Intelligence in 1995, now is bringing mainstream the proved notion that we creatures influence each other cell by cell.  That concept - mirror neurons - is teaching us all to choose our social network carefully.  The most thought-through selection should be our spouse.  From experience we already knew how much impact the relationship has, including the two getting to look similar.

An aging baby boomer I have from my college days at Seton Hill, Greensburg, Pennsylvania and graduate school at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan plenty of evidence of emotional death by spouse. 

About 100 young women and men who were my school chums tied the knot with people who are developmentally stunted, tend to self-destruction especially in careers, and are clever at appearing the victim of fate.  Brother, you should see or listen to those once-promising human beings now. 

One stupidly revealed that no one, not one, person came to visit them when they lived outside a metro area.  Those no ones included me.  Both had come to whirl around and around in a cycle of complaint against the world.  The husband had been forced out of a number of jobs.  Both clung to their conviction of his being misjudged.

Another look the part of life not being kind to them.  The woman, who had it all going for her, married a man who piled up degrees and publications in psychology in order, I have a hunch, to get a handle on his own difficulties.  That didn't work out the way he or both of them expected.

On the other hand, there are spouses who got away.  One fled an egoistical monster.  She's doing terrific. 

Since we influence each other cell by cell, we should be more wary about who we let in and who gets to stay in.  Pruning a network should become our first priority as we grow in wisdom about who we are and how other people operate.

Elizabeth Edwards: What Power Game Has She Been Playing?

In my new book "Over-50: How We Keep Working," I have a chapter on Power Tools, which we seasoned players are expected to know and how to manipulate.  [Here are the Preface and Introduction to that book which will be published in a few months Download Over50prefaceintropdf.

One example of power mastery is Elizabeth Edwards.  We are still not completely certain which of the numerous power games she is running.  But my hunch is that she's an iconic passive-aggressive type.  That kind leaves the door open so the dog gets out.  On that platform of the dog endangered or even harmed by getting out, the passive-aggressive go to it.

Did Elizabeth in some way or many ways help drive her spouse John into the arms of another woman?  And then did she carefully time all her movements, ranging from the book to her contention to a friend [who blabbed] of being a victim of wife-beating?

John Edwards might have been more wary.  After all, he knows he married a woman smarter than he is.  He also knows the woman was as ambitious as he is, maybe more so.  She was bound to set in motion what could help her achieve her goals, whatever they were. 

Is John Edwards's sin that he underestimated his wife? 

Hitchens Wages War - Is this a gimmick?

Christopher Hitchens is a print guy.  His writing appears in those iconic printies like VANITY FAIR.  His books were traditionally printed by old-line publishing houses.

That world of print is fading.  Has Hitchens picked a fight with Gore Vidal to get back on a radar screen that is already getting smaller and smaller?  Could be.  A standard procedure in the business of publicity is to create controversy.

Only this gimmick might not be as effective as Hitchens would have anticipated.  Most of the New Establishment - like the folks at Politico, Abovethelaw, and HuffingtonPost - don't know about or care about Vidal.  Soon enough, we might know or care about Hitchens.

VOGUE not holding up

In the second half of '09, newsstand copies of VOGUE were down 15.1%.  During the same timeframe, those of VANITY FAIR were up.

Could we women be rebelling about being told how to look?  VOGUE never was focused on real women, like Dove soap has been.  It might have to pay dearly for that.   It could seek salvation by having a major spread on consignment stores which carry lots of size-12 brands.

Power Plant Blows in Middletown, CT

No one knows the real death and injury toll.  What is known is that two are confirmed dead and about 10 injured when a power plant blew in Middletown, Connecticut.  For my sleepy wealthy New England state this is about as close as things come to mass tragedy.

Usually those Black Swans come in the form of individual dark doings.  The Bush Administration lawyer who allegedly attempts to murder his wife, a Skadden Arps attorney, when she serves him with divorce papers.  The Kennedy relative convicted of the murder of a teenage girl.  Dominck Dunne used to find many things to write about here.  My novel "The Fat Guy From Greenwich" involves murder for greed.

The Jim Cramer of Weather

Here is weatherman Jim Kosek becoming passionate about snow.  Likely Kosek is headed for his own talk or reality show or Harvard Divinity School.