Category: family dynamics

The business of Billary

I had an a-ha! moment in Chicago after attending a workshop on family-owned businesses at the ASBDC conference. Family-owned businesses are often dysfunctional, because the role in the family is not made distinct from the role in the family-owned business. The instructor used the example of the business owned by dad and/or mom with the children/employees expected to come to Sunday dinner every week, where the conversation would inevitably devolve into talking shop. The people providing the jobs and the people providing the meal are exactly the same, so the family dynamic interferes with the business dynamic, and disaster often follows.

It occurred to me that two of my favorite TV shows involve family-owned businesses, and the dysfunction that it brings, both on ABC: Brothers & Sisters and Dirty Sexy Money. The former is about a guy who owns a produce business; he dies in the first episode, and the succession plan doesn’t always go as he planned, with his elder daughter in charge, much to the resentment of at least one of his sons and his brother-in-law. In DSM, the protagonist tries and fails to stay out of the family businss that his late father worked in but gets sucked into the bizarre family/business dynamic.

One conversation that was taking place at the conference was whether Bill Clinton, supposedly insightful politician, regardless of your political view of him, intentionally sabotaged his wife’s campaign for President, One woman said, “How could he not have?” Here’s my theory; there is this company called Billary. Going back to the late 1970s, its mission was to elect Bill Clinton governor of Arkansas, then later, POTUS. So, by necessity, Bill was CEO of Billary, Inc.

Then it was Hillary’s turn to run things. Except that Bill was used to being the CEO of Billary. Heck, he was used to being “leader of the free world”. So while he may have really tried to cede authority to her, the old business dynamic, mixed with their…complicated family dynamic, got in the way. In an ABC interview in August, Bill Clinton said as much, responding to attacks on his wife as a husband, rather than as a surrogate for the candidate.

In many situations, such as when a new department head is chosen at a university, what the former chair does affects the outcome. When the retired one sticks around in some emeritus status, some of the staff will continue to him or her. Whereas when the older one slips quietly into the sunset, that issue doesn’t arise.

So, I’m convinced that Billary didn’t work in its quest to nominate Hillary as President because it was a dysfunctional business. Moreover, I think Barack Obama did not choose Hillary to be his running mate because he did not want to be tied down to that broken dynamic.


Top photo (c) 2008 by Mary Hoffman
ROG

ROG

Carlin and other family-friendly topics

So I wake up at four a.m. for the third time in the night, because I still can’t find a comfortable sleeping position, probably because I didn’t take my pain pills all day yesterday, because I didn’t want to become habituated to them, so I get up and check Evanier, who notes George Carlin has died, and he writes: “Seven words come immediately to mind. All are appropriate for the occasion.” And I check my blog and note that I’d only mentioned Carlin thrice, twice on baseball and football, and once on education, but I recall how I’d been watching Carlin for decades, from the “hippy, dippy weatherman I remember him doing on the “Ed Sullivan Show” to one of the sharpest minds of social commentary, and there’s a pain in my heart AND my side. DAMN! (Not one of the seven words.)
***
Since one Kelly Brown specifically requested me to take this test, what could I do?

75

As a 1930s husband, I am
Superior

Take the test!

And speaking of family things, something I saw on the bus last week: Woman and daughter waiting for the bus, get on the bus. Woman sees child’s father on the bus, apparently to the surprise of all concerned. She says to child, “Oh, your father’s on the bus,’ hands the child to the father, saying “YOU take her!!” then gets off the bus. Child cries for mommy a couple blocks, but is eventually soothed by daddy; Arthur would have been pleased.

At least that a better bus story than my wife experienced, which involved a three-year old running on the bus, failing, crying, and the mother screaming at the wailing child, “I told you not to run on the bus.”
***
I was watching Bill Moyers again, and I must recommend it. It deals with race in America. One segment is about Slavery by Another Name, Douglas A. Blackmon’s book about what the subtitle calls “the Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II.”
Under laws enacted specifically to intimidate blacks, tens of thousands of African Americans were arbitrarily arrested, hit with outrageous fines, and charged for the costs of their own arrests. With no means to pay these ostensible “debts,” prisoners were sold as forced laborers to coal mines, lumber camps, brickyards, railroads, quarries and farm plantations. Thousands of other African Americans were simply seized by southern landowners and compelled into years of involuntary servitude.
Blackmon has a website addressing the issue.

Moyers also previewed the documentary which opens the 21st season of P.O.V. TRACES OF THE TRADE: A STORY OF THE DEEP NORTH, which tells the story journey of discovery into the history and consequences of slavery and which will air on my PBS station Tuesday night.
***
Someone tipped me about Twilight Zone radio plays produced in 2004 for CBS radio using Rod Serling’s original scripts, with Stacey Keach narrating and hosting.
ROG

ROG

The Middle Child

I was only 16 months old when my sister Leslie was born. If I had any sense of entitlement from being an “only”, I don’t recall it. Leslie DID relish in being the youngest and the only girl until Marcia came along nearly four years later.

Leslie and I were always close. I remember when I was in first grade and she was entering kindergarten, I brought her around to all my friends. I was so proud.

Then for a number of years, we sang together, first as part of the junior choir in church, then as a trio with my father (more about which I’ll tell in September, around my dad’s birthday.)

As adults, we pretty much were in synch. I understood where she was coming from, and vice versa, even when we disagreed, which wasn’t often.

So when we had a major falling out around the time when my father died (the details of which I’ll relate in about 20 years), it was very difficult for both of us.

So, I’m glad we’re back. She calls me about affairs of the heart, family dynamics, politics, issues of faith, indeed a wide-ranging dialogue, and our phone bills reflect THAT.

My sister sends me more “junk”, which is to say non-personal, e-mail than just about anyone I know. This one is pretty typical:

Just passing along a little Biblical humor…

A new pastor was visiting in the homes of his parishioners. At one house it seemed obvious that someone was at home, but no answer came to his repeated knocks at the door. Therefore, he took out a card and wrote “Revelation 3:20” on the back of it and stuck it in the door.
When the offering was processed the following Sunday, he found that his card had been returned. Added to it was this cryptic message, “Genesis 3:10.”
Reaching for his Bible to check out the citation, he broke up in gales of laughter.
Revelation 3:20 begins “Behold, I stand at the door and knock.”
Genesis 3:10 reads, “I heard your voice in the garden and I was afraid for I was naked.”

Happy birthday, middle child, albeit a day early. I love you.

ROG
Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial