Lessons from Wendy’s: Getting Burned By Bad Messaging

 Everyone has a bad idea once in a while, and corporate CEOs are no exception. But bad messaging can quickly turn into a PR fiasco when an idea is shared casually, without proper vetting and with the possibility of being misconstrued. A restaurant chain’s half-baked idea can easily turn the company into a media laughingstock and a target of consumer outrage.

So it was when Wendy’s CEO Kirk Tanner mentioned to investors on a recent call that the company was looking at “dynamic pricing and daypart offerings along with AI-enabled menu changes” in the near future. Whether or not the actual plans were misconstrued, it seemed tone deaf at a time when people are already struggling with the impact of inflation. Sure enough, the company was forced to reassure customers  that their hamburger won’t leap in price while they are waiting in the checkout line when the store is busiest.

Fast food isn’t our bailiwick, but we know a thing or two about navigating a crisis stemming from a poorly formed statement, from within a company or by influential outsiders.

Here’s a quick guide:

Don’t amplify the message: Never repeat what you’re trying to overcome in your own communications. Focus on the positive message, such as “Our customers know our commitment to quality and excellence.” If needed, refer generally to “certain missteps.”

Think about your audiences: What may be great news to an investor could be bad news for consumers. Always think about how your message could be received by your key audiences and adapt accordingly. In the case of Wendy’s, instead of simply mentioning surge pricing, they should have highlighted potential benefits for customers, such as real-time discounts and time-based incentives.

Show that you’re listening: Acknowledge that you have heard what investors, employees and the general public are saying, without taking excessive issue with it.

Stay calm: Ensure that you always know what to say in advance of any interviews, keep smiling and be confident to avoid the “deer in the headlights” effect, which leads to disaster.

Never blame the media: Regardless of how opinionated or even wrong some reports may have been, don’t be defensive and pick fights with networks, newspapers or reporters. Take responsibility, stress your own message and don’t publicly complain that your statements are being “misconstrued.” 

Sadly, life doesn’t have a rewind button. But having a firm strategy in place for crisis management and backlashes can help you avoid getting broiled by a bad idea.

By Adam Dickter, Vice President

Original post at DLPR.com

You've (Still) Got Mail!

 A contemporary of mine recently mused on Facebook that after all these years he still has his AOL account (for personal use), and recently checked in to find over 50,000 accumulated messages.

Mine is more like 77,000. My current AOL email wasn't my very first email. It's altered slightly from the original after I was completely bombarded with early 90s vintage SPAM shortly after joining the pioneer Internet service, back when you still paid a monthly fee for dial-up access (remember the screechy sign-in noise, followed by "Welcome"?)

But I have used my vintage AOL email for decades, likely dating back to before my now-adult kids were born. The oldest message is from 2015, since it seems the company -- now a shadow of its once dominant, pre-Google self-- now has a cutoff deletion point. 

While I also use several other gmails and one Yahoo account, for various purposes, I've never felt the need to stop using AOL, though I do remember the point of realizing it was ridiculous to pay the monthly fee and opted for the freebee account (now accessing the web via WiFi rather than modem.)

Why switch? I still have numerous logins linked to it and its how most of my friends and family contact me. And though a while back I opted to disable the signature "You've Got Mail" greeting after a milennial coworker shot me an amused glance at the office, I'm not ashamed of it, any more than I'm ashamed of driving a 90s Ford Tauraus. What's functional is functional.

If history is any guide, one day kids will snicker at people with gmail accounts. Remember when MySpace and BlackBerrys were cool, before Facebook and iPhones ate their lunch? It's just a matter of time.

My contemporary acquaintance noted that he was surprised to see a youthful job candidate's resume with an AOL address. I belleve my milennial kids still use theirs, in some form, as well. More power to them all, for standing by a simple but effective principle in life.

If it aint broke, don't fix it.

What Crazy Eddie Taught Us About Marketing and Communications

Anyone who lived in the Northeast in the 80s and had a TV or radio will likely know the name Crazy Eddie, whose boisterous commercials implored you stop by, because his prices were “INSAAAAANE!”

A recent book, “Retail Gangster” by Gary Weiss, takes a deep dive into the rise and fall of founder and CEO Eddie Antar, whose unlikely success is the stuff of legends – as well as reams of court documents and criminal files. Antar faced a plethora of charges from securities fraud to tax evasion and eventually served hard time as his empire of stores crumbled under the weight of justice.

The book is on my reading list for two reasons. As a college kid I earned some spending cash selling vinyl records, CDs and cassette tapes at two Crazy Eddie outlets (including the flagship site in Brooklyn). So there’s bound to be some nostalgia.

Also, much of the book recounts the brilliant marketing skills that lifted a mom and pop operation on Coney Island Avenue into a serious competitor against more established retail chains.

Though few of us are likely to open a brick and mortar stereo and TV shop in the age of Amazon, there are lessons to be learned from Eddie about selling anything, from physical goods to services or intellectual property.

 It's mainly about enthusiasm and consistency.

Early on, Eddie reportedly handed the copy for his ads to radio stations to be read by whatever DJ happened to be on air. When one of them, Jerry Carroll, put so much gusto into the readings with his signature breathless, fast-paced tone, Eddie fell in love and hired Caroll as permanent pitchman. Carroll became so closely associated with the brand that he was often mistaken for Eddie himself (and perhaps still is.)

The company owed much of its success to shady accounting. But judging by the large crowds I saw at stores, the amount of merchandise that moved, and the number of people they employed it’s clear that marketing created a groundswell of sales. This allowed the privately held company to punch outside its weight class, eventually leading to an IPO (which sadly turned into the beginning of the company’s downfall).

Antar recognized that it was fun to shop for consumer electronics in the burgeoning age of studio-quality stereo components, big-screen televisions, VCRs and disc players – items the average Generation X consumer didn’t imagine owning in their low-tech childhoods.

The next step was to make it fun to buy them at Crazy Eddie, rather than boring Sears or Macy’s. 

The frenetic commercials and decidedly non-corporate name, along with the goofy mascot-emblazoned black and yellow logo, got consumers’ attention, while the promise to beat any price – guaranteed! – helped win their trust.

We’ll never know how far Eddie would have gone with an above-board operation, but he clearly showed that marketing can achieve its goal best if it shows:

Confidence: “We are growing fast, be a part of it.”

Relevance: “We have the latest merchandise you need at a price you can afford.”

Persistence: “You can’t turn on the TV without seeing me!”

Energy: “Fast talking, creating a sense or urgency.”

Fun: “We take our business seriously, but you don’t have to.”.

It’s easy to see how the feel of those Crazy Eddie ads helped shape the contemporary market, with everything from car insurance to cars and cell phone plans these days taking an offbeat rather than corporate tack to engage with humor, rather than sticking to a value-based pitch. 

Yes, one could argue the commercials were part of the con, a sleight of hand helping Eddie lull the public into complacency as he defrauded investors.

But even bad business stories have lessons for good people. To ignore what he did right? Well, that would be … insane!

The Ever-Changing New Normal

There is something about the idea of remote/hybrid work and meetings that seems antithetical to the art of public relations.

We try to get our clients as up-close-and-personal as possible with interested members of the media to not only showcase their expertise but also to create real relationships, and work shoulder to shoulder with clients to get their messages out there. The advance in video conferencing that was a rare positive of the pandemic made it easier to have some form of face-to-face communication across distances, but in the end its one dimension remains decidedly confining.

And so we find ourselves in a confused 2023, very much in a hybrid state itself, as we strive to consider life post-pandemic, but still have to deal with Covid’s disruption as outbreaks, spikes, new strains and warnings from health authorities wreak havoc on our planning. While we are nowhere near the situation of the  2020 shutdown, which strained the global economy to the breaking point and still has repercussions in labor and the supply chain, there are daily reminders of an ever-changing normal.

Recent weeks have seen giant steps toward resuming the “old normal” at DLPR as we settled into new Manhattan office space, held an in-person team summit, and ramped up the level of in-person client and client/media meetings, including in-studio broadcast appearances. As someone who prior to March 2020  had traveled regularly into Manhattan since my college years, it has been a strange sense of old and new, like the first days of school infused with major déjà vu.

Meeting face to face with clients and editors, sharing lunch and the actual human contact of a handshake have made me feel present in a way that, despite best intentions, simply isn’t possible over Zoom. Packing lunch in the morning for a day at the office and looking for parking near the train was also a blast from the past.

Who knows what looms in the near future, with the economy portending just as much volatility as the pandemic?

We’ll take what comes and roll with the punches. It’s what our clients do every day, and where they excel. We can certainly do no less.

By Adam Dickter, Vice President

A Sick Binge

Things I learned from hundreds of hours in a familiar, fictional hospital during a pandemic.

Most people would be annoyed or alarmed to spend a couple of hours in a hospital emergency room.

I just spent 330 hours in one. By choice. And I wasn’t even sick.

Fortunately my “ER” was as fictional as it is – in 2022 – defunct. County General Hospital, which treated untold hundreds of patients for 15 years, closed its doors in the summer of 2009 when NBC canceled the critically acclaimed two-letter drama (which regularly forayed into comedy).

With social and public entertainment options limited by the ebbs and flows of pandemic restrictions, the time was right for a revisit of the show my wife and I had faithfully followed in its original run. No insurance required, just the cost of  a Hulu subscription.

On the occasion of a recent virtual reunion of most of the cast, including the breakout star of the first six seasons George Clooney, I figured I’d only watch a few episodes of the first season. Fifteen seasons, 22 episodes apiece, seemed way too much of a commitment.

As it turned out, I would soon present with strong symptoms of addiction, with side effects that include randomly thinking of terms like “tachycardic” and “status asthmaticus” and telling strangers they appeared diaphoretic and altered.

What made “ER” such an uncommon hit for the era, and still today, was the massive attention to detail not only in the trauma and surgery scenes, but in the lives and connections of the characters, not to mention a parade of established and emerging talents in the constantly refreshed cast (by season 15 no original leading stars remained.)

Understanding my condition during these weeks requires a full diagnostic workup. As of this writing I am two full years displaced from my Manhattan office, working 5 days a week from home, with almost no opportunity to travel for work or otherwise. (To spice things up a bit I began begun alternating between three workstations in the house, although none has a water cooler or communal coffee machine.)

Even with some sporadic social gatherings, life has been not just humdrum, but worrisome, as the world has experienced pandemic highs and lows, and each of us has by now experienced multiple real or feared bouts with illness of ourselves or those close to us. Now we’ve also got a lovely little war and the threat of global conflict to contend with.

Within that fake, bustling Chicago ER I found a thriving center of control in the face of chaos. Not every patient wheeled in by gurney with the signature crash through the doors had a happy outcome. But for the most part, every one of the numerous feuds between doctors, nurses, administrators, orderlies and clerks depicted in the show were put aside for the sake of patient care. (In quite a few cases doctors and nurses, doctors and doctors, or doctors and patients did a little more in the interpersonal area than put bad feelings aside.)

In this place if anyone suffers from vasovagal syncope, an MI, an MVC or a triple A, someone will be along to give them a Babinsky, peritoneal lavage or perform an Ex-Lap.

Not to say chaos didn’t frequently win out. In sweeps-month episodes, the ER staff faced more than one gun battle, a plague outbreak, fires, power outages and runaway vehicles, including a memorable helicopter crash in the ambulance bay.

And then there’s the malpractice. What’s most refreshing about the show is its willingness to show the stars with all their flaws and let viewers pass judgment on their lapses in judgment and morality, and especially on the rampant sexual and racial harassment that is bound to shock today’s younger viewers, more accustomed to fare in which such behavior –where it exists at all-- would entail an entire episode plot, rather than just a recurring plot device.

The worst offender in this area, by far was chief surgeon Robert Romano, as portrayed by Paul McCrane, a miserable ogre who, in his most jarring incarnation after suffering a career-changing amputation, walks through the ER hurling the lowest-denominator insult at literally everyone, patients and staff alike.

Unlike other shows in the genre, ER’s producers never tried to impart saccharine lessons about life and love with themes, metaphors or corny narrative overlays, nor did they concern themselves with tidily resolving plot threads with happy or even complete endings, often content to leave questions lingering.

With little in real life feeding my imagination, “ER” with its weeks of content, turned into a virtual staycation for me, with a regular routine of checking IMDB for familiar faces, many of whom, like Marissa Hargitay, Christina Hendricks, Shia Labeouf, Kirsten Dunst, Jessica Chastain and Octavia Spencer, were just an audition or two away from big breaks. It was far enough away from 1^st viewing that I couldn’t recall ultimate fates and key plotlines for main characters, such as the cruel fate of Dr. Romano (who would soon be replaced by not one but two similarly bald, pencil-pushing misanthropes, though neither or them – SPOILER ALERT – died.)

While there have been many jokes about being able to practice medicine after watching this highly detailed and realistically consulted drama, I make no pretense of even being able to pass a second-day-of-medical-school quiz. But I do understand that “asystole” is the very last thing you want to hear in the ER and sadly, for some it is.

Plenty of other takeaways too, other than the predictable “importance of teamwork” (yada yada yada) trope. For instance:

·       Patient care tends to suffer when doctors, literally or figuratively, are screwing each other.

·       Never, ever get on the wrong side of the nurses

·       Never jump to fast conclusions in diagnoses, especially based on assumptions about patients (acting drunk isn’t necessarily drunk)

·       Mistakes, even fatal ones, don’t have to end a career

·       Insulting and demeaning coworkers makes a leader less powerful, not more, by parading his insecurity

·       A TV show can survive the departure of its biggest star if its premise, ensemble and writing team are strong enough to pick up the slack

Overall, it felt transformative to be at the heart of all that well-portrayed caring, dedication and medicine. And I didn’t even get a bill,.

 

 

Adam Dickter, who works in public relations and lives on New York’s Long Island, presents strong vitals, and has no history of vasovagal syncope.

When Did Disruption Become A Good Thing?

When I got sent to the principal’s office as a kid for doing standup in AP Bio, the charge against me was simple: “disrupting the class.”

For most of us, especially those of a certain age, “disruption” is an inherently negative concept. Accidents or signal problems cause transit disruption. Bad weather disrupts cell phone and satellite signals. When sci-fi movie villains attack, they use disruptor rays.

But in recent years, we can’t get enough of disruption.

Entrepreneurs promise it, investors seek it, the markets love it. Legacy companies fear the daylights out of it, but the smart ones try to anticipate it, control it and ultimately embrace it themselves. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who disrupted early social platforms like MySpace, once publicly warned his company that if its engineers don’t figure out what will disrupt Facebook, someone else will.

Perhaps it was TechCrunch’s annual Disrupt Expo that helped coin and popularize the term, as it applies primarily to technology, married with services. Now there’s also an annual Disruption Innovation Awards Ceremony in New York that has become known for, you guessed it, being disrupted by tech gaffes and snafus.

In the past 30 years, disruptive technology has raised its head everywhere. Back in 1991, E-Trade started offering online trading, forever changing the way we invest, and today financial giant Charles Schwab has been called the “Amazon of investing” because of its low-cost transactions.

Yahoo and Gmail virtually shut down AOL. The iPhone and its app ecosystem disrupted the cell phone industry. Airbnb’s app is causing indigestion for the hotel industry and its investors.

Drones are disrupting a range of industries. And in the next decade autonomous vehicles will disrupt conventional delivery and transportation (hopefully not disrupting our ability to stay alive on highways). 

As financial PR professionals, we help our clients relate how their specialties, products and services are disruptive, in the best sense. Whether it’s a top accounting firm that is the first to offer advisor services to the emerging medical cannabis industry, fintech companies that offer new ways to offer and process loans, or consultants who streamline compliance and help their clients capitalize on the value of Big Data, smart players are disrupting the status quo in a variety of ways.

There is no greater value proposition today than the disruption message—but there is also a risk that the term will be misapplied and over-hyped.

To tell a credible story of disruption to reporters, investors and clients, here are a few questions companies must ask themselves:

• Who has taken notice of your services?
• Is it the result of someone’s dream to change the world?
• Does it keep rival CEOs and their boards up at night? Why?
• Will it create or eliminate jobs?
• Does it have the ability to scale up and send ripples of change around the world?
• Does this change, moderate or create new behavior? How?
• Will someone want to buy your company to keep it from disrupting them?
• What risk or downside will your competitors try to exploit against you?

Perhaps the best lesson about disruption lies in the contrast between the recent IPOs of Uber, which landed like a thud, and Beyond Meat, a classic unicorn story. Both are undisputedly change agents. But while Uber arguably has the positive impact of making ride-sharing easier and more fun (potentially reducing traffic and drunk driving), questions linger about fairness to its drivers and the crushing impact on the struggling taxi industry, which is trying to do the same job with far more regulation.

Beyond Meat, on the other hand, is an all-around feel-good product that allows vegans to have a guilt-free simulated burger, or meat-eaters to sample a tastier veggie burger. It’s perceived as healthier and its disruption of Big Beef is a plus for the environment (not to mention cows).

Neither company is currently profitable. But when it comes to telling a story about disruption, investors and consumers clearly skew toward change they can feel good about.

By Adam Dickter, Director

From The Company Blog at DLPR

Meeting 41: A Kinder, Gentler President

Mon., Dec. 3, 2018

By Adam Dickter

In the summer of 1992, George H.W. Bush was looking at a difficult re-election campaign. He and Ronald Reagan had accomplished a rare feat: capping off a two-term presidency by winning the White House for a candidate of the same party. Bush was riding high from his resounding victory against Saddam Hussein in Operation Desert Shield, but the economy was pulling out of a recession, and the Democrats had an array of impressive challengers. The President couldn’t afford to take any votes for granted.

And so, in August of that year, the Bush Administration, as part of a multifaceted outreach effort, invited a dozen or so journalists from Jewish community newspapers, magazines and newswires for a White House press briefing. I was one of them.

In the interest of full disclosure, I wasn’t a typical member of the pack. Only a few years out of college, I had a few bylines under my belt, and had covered the New York City mayoral race of 1989, but I was by no means a national political correspondent. I was there because Alan Tigay, the very kind editor of Hadassah Magazine, the publication where I worked at the time, wanted to give a budding journalist a big break.

It felt surreal to step out of the train station and say to the cab driver, “The White House, please.” Arriving after a sleepless night, I was shown to the Roosevelt Room. I had envisioned the event as I’d seen press briefings on TV — sitting in the audience, facing the president at the lectern. Instead, we all sat around a table, and as luck would have it I ended up directly across from the 41st President — about as close as I’d sit with family members at the dinner table.

I listened for about 45 minutes as senior journalists grilled the President about his policies on American spy Jonathan Pollard, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, Soviet Jewish emigration and more. Toward the end I was able to get one question in, asking if he’d changed his view on a major Israel policy issue. I got a one-word answer: “No.”

What I remember most about the meeting is how the President and his staff went out of their way to make everyone feel comfortable. He was in no rush and always polite to the questioners, even as they pressed him for answers. It was a far cry from the adversarial exchanges President Trump has with mainstream media. Yes, it was good politics, but I also got a strong sense that this was just the way George Herbert Walker Bush spoke to people. On his way out, he stopped to speak to each of us individually.

When it was my turn, I was at a loss to make small talk with the leader of the Free World. He asked where I’m from, and I told him (Brooklyn, at the time.) That was about it. Later on, it occurred to me that I could’ve told him how my mother suffered from Parkinson’s disease, and suggested he reconsider his opposition to stem cell research that could help people like her. It was my one and only chance to lobby a President. But that would have crossed a line. I was there as a reporter.

In the course of the long journalism career that followed, I met many other political figures, but never another sitting U.S. President. In the 1992 campaign, Bush went in strong but quickly lost ground to the young, dynamic duo of Bill Clinton and Al Gore, whose expert political team managed to paint Bush as tired and out-of-touch, an image he bolstered with visuals such as looking at his watch during a debate and appearing stunned by a supermarket price scanner.

Perhaps it’s no coincidence that this took place at the dawn of the cable news age, when politicians were still grappling with how to burnish their image in a 24/7 news cycle.

When he talked about a “kinder, gentler nation” guided by “1,000 points of light,” it wasn’t hyperbole, but maybe George H.W. Bush just didn’t have the fire in his belly to face the onset of the 21st century and the dawn of the technology age.

During the many testimonials in the week of mourning ahead, George H.W. Bush will be remembered as a World War II combat vet and former CIA director who helped usher in the defeat of the Soviet Union and took quick decisive action with his line in the sand against Saddam. But many who had the chance to meet him, even briefly, will likely just remember a gentleman who treated people with kindness and made them feel at home.

This article first appeared on O'Dwyer's.com

Another version via Hadassah Magazine:

Why Did Star Trek Take Off?

It's fair to say that I grew up with Star Trek, in more ways than one.

Just five months separated our births in 1966, and it could be said that we came of age together, as the show gained mass popularity in syndication in the 70s, and was later revived in movie series form in the 80s.

As the Original Series turns 50 today, much has been written about why the show built such a cult following, certainly more than any other TV show in history, more than most movies and perhaps more than most sports franchises. Yes, people during the dark wartime 60s probably appreciated the glimpse of a non-dystopian future. And yes, decent people probably enjoyed the idea of a group of ethnically diverse liberals working together to make the universe a better place.

But entertainment isn't philanthropy. There's one simple reason people were drawn to the show: It was cool.

Gene Roddenberry and his production team, particularly set and prop designer Matt Jeffries were highly successful in creating a consistent and believably futuristic universe for the characters to inhabit that was colorful and often dazzling.

And yes, it was cool. And not in a geeky, sciencey way.

Captain James T. Kirk, after all, was living every guy's dream: He got to work in a big La-Z-Boy chair with a built in phone, in front of a giant flat screen TV (ahead of its time), always with cool stuff to watch. He got to travel with his two wingmen and meet beautiful women. His two best friends were a walking computer who always had the answers and a doctor who can patch him up after bar fights. (Neither of whom were romantic rivals.) He also had a mechanic on hand to fix his ride. He had authority over others, even people older than him, and while he was a military man, he didn't take that very seriously. No one ever saluted him, and some even called him Jim.

All he's missing is a beer.

From the boots and the flip phones to the phaser guns and colorful tunics and minidresses, a different world than the tin-foil spacesuits of earlier sci-fi. Everyone looked cool and seemed to have fun, even when they were desperately trying to save the ship from the latest curiosity-borne catastrophe.

Although it dealt with serious topics and contained plenty of action, it never took itself too seriously. A few of the episodes, notably "The Trouble With Tribbles" and "A Piece of the Action" were played entirely for laughs. In fact there were comic elements in almost every episode, with playful music often overlapping the scenes in which they tease Spock.

So despite some subtle social themes that reflected Roddenberry's liberalism, people started watching "Star Trek" for the same reason that decades later they'd be fixated on "Friends." The cast interacted so well, you wanted to fantasize that you were part of it. And the costumes and sets made it easier for you to lose yourself in that world than in, say, the living room of Darren and Samantha Stevens on "Bewitched" or the ridiculous Isle of Gilligan.

Maybe that's why 50 years later people who weren't born when the show began, even as original cast members begin to die off, still want to be immersed in that world, flocking to conventions in full regalia and cramming their minds full of trivia. They like making a difference and sharing deep thoughts, but not as much as they like cool, funny stuff.

When Barack Met Michelle

It was mostly curiosity that drove me to see the film "Southside With You."

It's rare to see a biopic about people who are not only still alive, but still in prominence. Oliver Stone's "W.", released in the final months of the George W. Bush administration, is another example. But Richard Tanne's "Southside" is much less ambitious, seeking not to chronicle the lives of President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Robinson Obama, or even their relationship, but the events of the single night in 1989 when they hit it off.

Some critics have called the film somewhat awkward, in that it shows a side of America's most prominent couple we don't expect to see: flirting, walking in the park, and eventually (spoiler alert) making out. And then there is the spectacle of them walking down the street with no security detail, never gathering a crowd or even a look from passersby who will not know their names for another 15 years.

This is a tribute to the talents of actors Parker Sawyers and Tika Sumpter, who lend great authenticity to the roles, and Tanne's casting. The story and pace, however, at times come up a bit short. Movies about a single date ("Blind Date," "Date Night") are usually comedies. This has its light moments, as the audience is in on the joke: Michelle has her doubts about this guy, who is poised to be the leader of the free world. And there is chemistry between the actors. But perhaps like the real deal, Michelle seems to go back and forth about whether she likes this guy, even after the supposedly transitional moments.

It's precisely because we get to tag along and listen to the improvised dialog, but know what we know that "Southside" can be so engaging, whereas a similar story about two ordinary people, or promising people with an unclear future would fall flat. When Barack brings his law firm advisor (she insists it is not a date) to a Southside community meeting where he's well known for his activism, and stirs up the crowd with his prompt to gain trust through dialog with city officials and stand firm for their interests, we have our first glimpse of the future commander-in-chief. With sharp intellect and acute public spirit, there seems to be only one thing missing in the life of this man who had an unstable childhood marred by an absent father, mixed feelings of belonging and numerous changes in venue.

And by the time he is sharing ice cream with Michelle leading up to the fateful kiss, we know he has found it.

Despite the lack of dramatic tension in this story, it works because it is at heart a tale of two people fortunate enough to have found life partners who bring out their full potential in each other, and early in life.
Besides curiosity, maybe I was drawn to "Southside" because I was lucky enough to have the same, and pray that my three children will be just as fortunate.

Bruce Springsteen and the Lyrics of Transcendence

The first I ever heard of Bruce Springsteen was in the 9th grade, when someone wrote the lyrics of "Born To Run" on one of the desks. Later, I added "Thunder Road" and "Jungleland" to the mix tape that played endlessly on my Walkman titled "Rock 2." (Who knows what happened to Rock 1). Over time more of his songs became familiar and, at mid-decade, working in the record department at an outlet of the legendary Crazy Eddie's electronics chain, I began buying his albums, under the mentorship of the department manager, Bob, a Springsteen fanatic.

In the years since I've often said the soundtrack of my life is all Springsteen. But this week we entered a new phase in our relationship. These days Bruce sings "Meet Me In The City Tonight," so I did. Along with 18,000 other fans, seeing Bruce live at Madison Square Garden. At a healthy 66, Bruce lived up to his well-earned reputation as a singular, hard-working performer, with a non-stop three and a half-hour show packed with audience interaction (crowd-surfing!) and a mix of old and new favorites (including the entire "River" album, in order).

Bruce is known to have one of the most loyal fan bases of any performer. It's not just his guitar skills and his ability to set poetry to music. I think it's also the result of a backstory that matches the narrative of his songs. Though he's surely one of the richest people in show business, his gruff-denim look and scratchy, smoky voice still make him seem like the working-class guy who plays in dive bars.

But his lyrics are imbued with a singular sense of rebellion and transcendence.

"I want to spit in the face of these badlands."
"Say goodbye, it's Independence Day."
"We gotta get out while we're young."
"Tonight this fool's halfway to heaven and a mile out of hell."
"Lost track of how far I've gone. How far I've gone, how high I've climbed."

Some artists (Simon and Garfunkle, Don McLean) write poetic lyrics that are subject to speculation.With Bruce the theme is obvious. He didn't fit in in the small New Jersey town of Freehold. Not at church either. Or high school or, briefly, at college. It was only on stage, guitar in hand, that he felt like himself. And so he ran to better places.

And he shares the journey with us.

Some artists' songs complain about life being tough or romantic partners who did them wrong. In a few songs, like "The River" and "Jungleland," Bruce lingers on inescapable misery.

"The poets down here don't write nothing it all, they just stand back and let it all be."
"Is a dream a lie if it don't come true. Or is it something worse?"

But the overarching theme in Springsteen's ouvre is vowing to break out of a trap, or boasting that he's already done it. And there's no walking away or leaving on the jet plane for this guy. It's all about getting in cars.

"Climb in back heaven's waiting down on the tracks."
"I got some beer and the highway's free."
"Well I run that hard road out of heartbreak city, built a roadside carnival out of hurt and self-pity, It was all wrong, well now I'm moving on."
"Kids asleep in the backseat. We're just counting the miles, you and me."

The man whose best-known hit is Born To Run, really was. And fortunately, he shows no sign of slowing down.

Jewrotica Names 10 Sexiest Rabbis

Rabbi Jill Hammer

A Women of The Wall activist, the founder of a queer yeshiva and the Orthodox leader of New York's Stanton Street Shul are among the 10 "Sexiest Rabbis of 2013" named by the website Jewrotica.

The site picked six men and four women, all but three U.S.-based, for the inaugural honor out of more than 150 nominees sent by  "students, congregants, community members and families all over the world," Jewrotica said.

Jewrotica founder Ayo Oppenheimer in October said she would change the title of the list to Hottest Rabbis in response to criticism about judging people by their appearance. She told the Times of Israel "We’re not at all looking at physical looks. It has nothing to do with measurements or six-packs. There is so much more than that that makes someone attractive.” 

But David Abitbol, one of the judges and an Israel-based contributor and webmaster for Jewrotica, said a name change was never seriously considered. “We were just taking the piss out of people who complained,” he said.

Abitbol, who is also a founder of the website Jewlicious, said in an phone interview Tuesday the list was “Unequivocally not about sexy as people conventionally understand the term. For us, it’s a euphemism for attractive, compelling and inspiring.”

The cross-denomonational list is not ranked, meaning that each person is considered equally sexy. The rabbis selected are:

• Josh Yuter, spiritual leader of the Stanton Street Synagogue in Manhattan;
• David Dunn Bauer, director of social action programs, Congregation Beth Simchat Torah in Manhattan;
• Susan Silverman, Women of the Wall activist and Jerusalem-based author;
• Jill Hammer, PhD, founder of Kohenet, the Jewish Priestess Institute in Connecticut;
• Benay Lappe, founder of Svara, a Chicago yeshiva "committed to the Queer experience;"
• Yonah Bookstein, co-founder of the Jewlicious Festival and Pico Shul in Los Angeles;
• Dan Shevitz of Congregation Mishkon Tephilo in Venice, Calif.;
• Aviad Bodner of Moishe House in Tel Aviv;
• Lizzie Heydmann, founder of Mishkon in Chicago;
• Yonatan Gordis, a founder and strategist at ChangeCraft who lives in Canada.

Jewrotica also included 19 other rabbis for "People's Choice" voting online. Oppenheimer said in her introduction that the nominations "spanned age, gender, country, ethnicity, relationship status and denomination, with a roughly even number of rabbis nominated from each ‘stream of Judaism’ and an approximately 60-40 divide between male and female rabbis."

Rabbi Hammer, who is 44, married to musician Shoshana Jedwab, and the mother of a five-year-old daughter said she appreciated the "playful intent" of the list.

She told The Jewish Week she became aware that she had been nominated only the day before the winners were announced via a post on Facebook. Her nomination came from a student at Kohenet.

"I am surprised and of course flattered, but as a shy person I'm also embarassed," Rabbi Hammer said. 

She added that while she was uncomfortable with ranking people, "I appreciate the intent to start a conversation about what is erotic and spiritual, and the wide definition [of sexy] used by the [selection] committee."

Abitbol said the site would likely make the list an annual year-end feature. While he said it was “hard work” sorting through the nominations, the site’s staff “had fun doing it. We all learned something new from going through the research.”

Google Says Smart Contact Lenses Could Aid Diabetics

With Google Glass already a reality, perhaps it was only a matter of time before the next logical leap: smart contact lenses.

But the as-yet unnamed lenses being developed in the top-secret Google X laboratory aren't intended to show you restaurant deals, videos or directions to the nearest bowling alley.

The lenses are designed with the more serious purpose of helping detect and prevent diabetes.

Bloodless Testing

Using a tiny wireless  chip working with a miniaturized glucose sensor embedded between two layers of soft contact lens material, the prototype can generate the wearer's glucose reading from tears an astonishingly fast once per second, a much better testing method than pricking a finger.

"We’re also investigating the potential for this to serve as an early warning for the wearer, so we’re exploring integrating tiny LED lights that could light up to indicate that glucose levels have crossed above or below certain thresholds," wrote project co-founders Brian Otis and Babak Parviz, on Google's official blog Friday.

The pair noted that diabetes, which affects one in every 19 people on the planet, leaves many struggling to manage the disease as they juggle blood sugar testing with their daily routines. "Uncontrolled blood sugar puts people at risk for a range of dangerous complications, some short-term and others longer term, including damage to the eyes, kidneys and heart," they said.

The technology must be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and is still in its early planning stages with no time frame for release to the public. But the researchers said multiple clinical trials have helped refine the prototype.

The announcement comes just days after Google announced it was purchasing Nest Labs, which makes smart thermostats and smoke alarms, indicating that the hugely profitable company is branching out in many different directions.

'Wow' Factor

Technology analyst Jeff Kagan told us that Google has an entire division that focuses on this kind of innovation. "Not all of them come to the market, but they are all very high on the wow factor," he said.

Kagan said we may not yet be living in the era of "Six Million Dollar Man" cyborgs, but things we never dreamed possible when that show ran on ABC in the 1970s are now being realized.

"We actually have cyborgs running around mixing in with a population every day and it's no big deal today," Kagan said. "We have seen artificial arms and legs, artificial hearts and lungs and all sorts of wonderful innovation. This is just the next step in treating an illness called diabetes. And it sure looks like Google wants to be a big player in that medical and healthcare space."

Particularly exciting, he said, because "Google transforms every industry it touches. And it looks like they want to transform healthcare going forward now, too."

Targeting Diabetes, From The Negev

When Andy David’s nine-year-old daughter was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, the Israeli diplomat used his medical background to search for an unconventional treatment that would spare her from daily doses of insulin.

David, who is currently Israel’s consul general for the Pacific Northwest United States, soon learned about groundbreaking work at Ben-Gurion University in the Negev that shows great promise for kids in the early stages of Type 1 diagnosis.

The child (he prefers not to name her for security reasons) underwent eight weeks of transfusions of Alpha 1 Antitrypsin, an anti-inflammatory drug generally used to treat emphysema.

“That was two and a half-years ago, and she has not had to have insulin,” said David, who is a non-practicing dentist and also has a degree in Medical Science fromHebrew University in Jerusalem.

He notes that his daughter still needs to have her sugar levels regularly monitored and that her treatment -– she is one of several dozen to receive it so far – is still very experimental. “It’s not something you will find mainstream,” he says.

The success of the treatment was in receiving it soon after symptoms appeared, when the body still has a large number of insulin producing cells that could be boosted by the drug.

David’s younger child, diagnosed sooner, was not a candidate for the therapy and requires insulin shots.

He praised the researchers at Ben-Gurion for their groundbreaking work. “Their goal is not to manage diabetes but to eliminate it,” he said.

Several years after it was discovered, Alpha 1 is showing new promise in the war against diabetes, which may affect as many as 550 million people, one in 10 globally, by 2030 if current trends continue, the International Diabetes Foundation warns.

“There are new areas that have become relevant for our therapy,” said Dr. Eli Lewis of Ben-Gurion University, above, in a recent interview in New York. He was in town to present new findings to peers and other interested parties.

The approach may soon allow for treatment of the more prevalent Type 2 diabetes, commonly developed in adulthood, and for other diseases, including other autoimmune disorders, said Lewis.

The treatment focuses on preserving healthy pancreatic cells in charge of the natural production of insulin. The results of clinical trials have been encouraging, and it has been proven to “cure” laboratory mice in whom diabetes has been induced, as published by his group and by independent related research groups.

Doctors commonly treat Type 1, previously known as juvenile diabetes, with a complex daily regimen of insulin injections to boost the supply of the hormone that regulates blood glucose.

A less common treatment, when there are too few cells to produce healthy levels of insulin, is to transplant healthy islets – naturally occurring clusters of 5,000 or more cells  -- to the patient with Type 1 diabetes. About 90 percent of those cells produce insulin. But as in any transplant, the body’s immune system attacks the foreign cells and rejection hampers efficiency, requiring immunosuppressive drugs.  Such islet transplant patients, since the year 2000, have typically returned to insulin injection within 5 years after the procedure.

Researchers at Ben-Gurion’s Clinical Islet Laboratory have found a way to use Alpha 1 to aid the graft recipient in accepting the transplant. The drug is already approved by the Food and Drug Administration, allowing a fast-track to human clinical trials in the U.S., where an estimated three million people suffer from Type 1 diabetes.

Unlike Type 1 diabetes, in which the body does not produce enough insulin, Type 2 diabetes, commonly associated with diet and lifestyle factors (with a likely genetic predisposition) occurs when the insulin produced is not effective because of other factors in the body. Adding hope for such patients, Lewis says his team is now able to preserve islets that previously fell victim to high glucose, fatty acids and drug toxicity.

While initial research has focused on transplants of islets from human donors, Lewis now says his team is was able to finally also cross the barrier to the more difficult rejection process, such that attacks non-human tissue.

Lewis said pig cells are generally used because of the scarcity of human donors, and because the cells are most compatible with humans. However, “transplant from one species to another is a huge barrier. Cells from a different species evoke an immune response that are harder to block."

Alpha 1 is a protein that exists already in the body and its production increases when we are sick. Administering proper doses of the drug boosts the ability of the transplanted cells to survive long-term by inhibiting inflammation and minimizing tissue injury.

Clinical trials so far have shown that within 8 to 12 weeks patients can end the Alpha 1 therapy and maintain proper glucose levels without insulin for more than two years.

“We figured, let’s use this molecule that the body is making anyway when it needs to recover tissues and see if we can hit Type 1 diabetes at the most dynamic point, which is soon after diagnosis,” says Lewis. “Those are the trials we did for two years that are just completed and we are writing them up. The outcomes are pretty astounding. Within two or three years … no antibodies [fighting the islets] and other parameters in an impressive volume of participants.”

Because cell inflammation promotes the spread of other serious illnesses, the Alpha 1 therapy may prove effective in fighting unhealthy inflammatory conditions outside Type 1 diabetes.

Lewis said that diabetes rates in Israel are similar to those of western nations because of similar diets and lifestyle. He cautions that the high-fat, high-sugar diet that precipitates Type 2 diabetes is especially dangerous because it represents a double amount of stress to beta cells in poorly controlled Type 2 diabetes.

 “The body is designed to handle one or the other,” he said. “But the combination is something the islets can’t handle.” He further warns that even when people resolve to increase exercise and improve their diet, it won’t necessarily reverse the damage. “It becomes imprinted in the DNA,” he said  “The long-term implications might start to turn up even if you change your lifestyle, so early prevention and control are absolutely essential.”

adam@jewishweek.org

For more information, contact Kevin Leopold, 
executive director, American Associates, Ben-Gurion University of Greater New York Region
: kleopold@aabgu.org


Seeing Red After 'Knockout' Attacks

 

Guardian Angels, in their iconic crimson berets, offer reassurance in Jewish areas.

On the streets of Midwood, Brooklyn, last week all was quiet as a cold, gentle rain fell and pedestrians and motorists went about their business, slowly marching into the weekend.

Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa and two of his volunteers stood out on a street corner in their bright-red garb in a heavily Orthodox neighborhood where more subtle and modest clothing is the norm.

It wasn’t exactly the National Guard, or even an NYPD watchtower, but the small delegation of volunteers — some would call them vigilantes — following two moderately violent incidents in the community was welcomed with open gratitude as they made their way around the area in a lunchtime patrol.

“We’re hard to miss,” said Sliwa, who is 59 but shows no sign of mellowing with middle age. “People know who we are and what we’ve done.”

Sliwa, who founded his civilian patrol in 1977 and has become one of the New York’s most recognizable personalities, says he was invited to patrol Jewish neighborhoods following a string of “knockout punch” attacks in Brooklyn neighborhoods, involving some 10 victims.

Sliwa says he has large groups pounding pavement day and night in Williamsburg, Crown Heights, Borough Park and Midwood. Jewish leaders in those communities, however, reported only sporadic sightings of Guardian Angels when contacted by The Jewish Week.

In any case, their visibility and deterrent factor was applauded.

“Anyone who wants to come in and help is welcome,” said Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who represents parts of Borough Park and Flatbush.

Along the busy Avenue J and Avenue M shopping areas in Midwood, Sliwa had numerous positive interactions with motorists and pedestrians during an hour-long span of his patrol with his associates, Manuel Colon, 31, and Shaggy Wilfred, 39.

In each case he gave out cards promoting his evening radio show on AM 970, while Colon and Wilfred handed out fliers promoting the Angels’ work.

Crime is generally low in this middle-class area rich with Jewish infrastructure, but before the knockout attacks it periodically made news with swastika paintings and the occasional synagogue vandalism. Concern about crime is such that the founder of the Flatbush Shomrim Volunteer Patrol, Chaim Deutsch, was elected to the City Council in November.

“The neighborhood is changing,” said Gregory Rozenblatt, 35, a transit worker who lives in an apartment on Avenue M and has been in the area since his family arrived from Russia when he was an infant.

As he welcomed the Guardian Angels patrol near Moisha’s kosher supermarket, Rozenblatt blamed landlords for letting “the wrong kind of people” into the neighborhood by not properly vetting them. He says his neighbors play loud rap music in the evening and police won’t intervene. “It wasn’t like this 20, 30 years ago.” He recalled being in a local pizza shop when someone came in and spit at the owner, who called the police.

Sliwa, a hardcore political conservative who served as a counterweight to hardcore left-winger Ronald Kuby when they shared a radio program on 770 WABC AM from 2000 to 2008, said the knockout attacks are not new, but rather a third cycle of them in his three decades on the streets.

He blames the resurgence on the current political climate, saying the Democrats’ attacks on the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk searches during the mayoral election, and a federal court ruling against them have made police less aggressive and more reactive, while criminals are bolder.

“The cops are laying off, not frisking, not tossing guys, not making their lives miserable,” Sliwa lamented, which leads to ”thugs taking license to rough people up.” He said cops overused the searches as a means to make more arrests and then get themselves off the street to process them, but a middle ground should be found.

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, who will be replaced next month by William Bratton, has said it’s unclear whether recent incidents were part of a game or merely isolated incidents that may have drawn little notice in the past.

But Sliwa said the presence of the Angels is meant to invite anyone who feels drawn into the game to pick a more suitable target.

“If you want to be a macho, maniacal guy and you want to challenge someone, see if you can knock someone out, hey, I’m standing here, I’m close to 60,” he said defiantly. “We have other Guardian Angels — you hit us first, see if you can knock us out and we’ll hit you so hard your mother will feel the vibrations.

“Maybe that’s the language you can understand,” he added. “Pain compliance.”

Lou Guida, a Midwood resident who is applying to be a police officer, was one of those who stopped Sliwa to welcome him and shake his hand on Ocean Parkway.  “They take a lot of pressure and time off the police,” he said. “More ears and eyes deter crime.”

Sliwa, who is raising three Jewish children with his companion, Melinda Katz, the borough president-elect of Queens, has been honored by many Jewish organizations and offered advice about fighting back and Jewish pride at dinners and other events. He’s also a proud Israel supporter and has publicly criticized the people of his ancestral Poland for cooperating with the Nazis.

The Canarsie native knows New York neighborhoods like the back of his hand and uses catchphrases to let people know it. “I live in the streets, I don’t live in the suites,” he says in cadence, coming across like a walking crime map.

“On the Avenue M commercial strip, there’s been a lot of intimidation there,” he said as his patrol approached that area.

He recounts how a group of Orthodox women were recently being heckled nearby, when one of his patrols appeared from around the corner. “They did the bird,” he said of the hecklers. “Disappeared into the park.” He believes that criminals start with verbal intimidation, and then quickly graduate to assaults. “The next step is home invasions,” he warns.

In 1991 the Angels mobilized in full force to protect Crown Heights chasidim who were under attack by bands of rioters during three days of violence sparked by the accidental death of a black child in a traffic accident.

These days, with crime figures plummeting, the Angels seem to have fewer members and a lower profile, but Sliwa said there are still thousands in chapters around the country. Arrested more than 70 times, Sliwa said the group has come a long way, from being treated “like Hell’s Angels instead of Guardian Angels” under the Koch and Dinkins administrations. Rudy Giuliani, for whom Sliwa vigorously campaigned, told police to respect and work with the group.

He said he has some Jewish members, but observant Jews who are inclined to do this kind of work are generally drawn to Orthodox neighborhood patrols.

“What happens is when a young boy goes home his bubbe and zaide will say, ‘This is how I raised you, to join the Guardian Angels?’ ” Sliwa says in his best faux-Yiddish accent.

He hails the heroism of the Jewish groups and their rallying call of “chapzem,” Yiddish for “Get them,” referring to criminals.

But although the Orthodox patrols and the NYPD are out in full force, the Angels believe that when it comes to protecting yeshiva students and elderly women, the chance that vigilantes might be waiting around the corner could be just the ticket to nip the knockouts.

“They have no spine,” said Wilfred, one of the Angels volunteers, of the knockout punchers.
A Newark resident who works as a security guard when he is not on patrol, Wilfred echoes Sliwa’s challenge. “Anyone who has the guts to walk up to an elderly person [and hit them] them, someone bigger than them should have the same guts to knock them out. Turn the situation around, and see how that feels.”