The talking heads were talking within hours of the Ft. Hood tragedy.

Post traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, was labeled the culprit early in the evening. Until one guest on Larry King ventured to be politically incorrect.

One Army representative disagreed with the other “experts”.. Perhaps PTSD

was not the culprit he pointed out. Perhaps it was an act of terrorism. If some talking heads can make PTSD the culprit, why is it politically incorrect to project terrorism as the culprit. Everyone is guessing. Why is one guess appropriate and not another?

The Army representative contributed a different theory. What if this was an act by a major with an Arabic last name and an agenda. The other talking heads leapt to the defense of PI, being politically correct. Here is the irony: enlisted American men and women fight for our freedom of speech, for our way of life. Then when a former enlistee ventures an opinion, the talking heads yell that you can’t say those things.

When President Obama wanted to speak to school students at the beginning of the year, he encountered an odd array of reactions. Some parents threatened to pull their children from school, some school systems offered to make his speech optional. I wrote an article asking, tongue in cheek, if President Obama was the anti-Christ because of the extreme reaction of some people to his speaking to students. It is a free country and I was allowed to raise that question.

A month later I raised a different question about the freedom of speech. Oprah had herself photo shopped on the cover of her own magazine. She empowers women to be authentic. I questioned her weight. I was told that was slander.

We can question the president and not Oprah?

Where does slander live? Where does PI live? Where does freedom of speech live?

Through the tragedy of Ft. Hood we will learn much. Will we learn to keep our freedom of speech or will it get lost in the fight to be politically correct?

Oprah is fat, period. That’s OK. Most of us struggle with
weight and end up on the losing end at some time.

There are two things that are not OK. One is her self-imposed expert status. Two, is Oprah being photo shopped on the cover of her own magazine. Oprah is a goddess here on earth. She has done amazing work as an angel. And no amount of tonnage will change that.

To protect her own value, Oprah needs to stop talking about weight as if she is the expert. Napoleon Hill said, “It is not enough to know, one must know and do”. We all know what we should do; the difference is in the doing.

Credibility is devised from three sources:
How we identify our value, communicate our value, protect our value.

When Oprah sets herself up as the diet or physical fitness guru, she is not protecting her value. She can interview experts; she just can’t set herself up as the expert. Her value is not in communicating as an expert. Her value is in the quality of guests and the quality of conversation that she can expose the American public to on a plethora of topics. Or actually, any topic she wakes up and chooses.

Oprah can get away with this disconnect between what she says and what she does, because she is Oprah. The problem is that most of us mere mortals cannot protect our value when there is this schism between what we say and what we do. As a professional speaker and expert on communicating value, the damage is in the example she sets.

Oprah is a freak of nature. A good freak, but a freak. Just like LeBron James is a freak of nature. A good freak, but a freak. The unfortunate consequence is that if we do as Oprah does, if what we say contradicts what we do, we will come across s freaks, and not the good kind.
The second error in her near perfect judgment (except for that horrendous movie she produced her record is near perfect) is the cover of her most recent issue of O. Oprah photo shopped? That’s bad on so many levels. From the perspective of her credibility, how is being photo shopped protecting her own value? How is it communicating her own value?
To tell her readers, through a picture, and a picture is worth a thousand words, that what she looks like is not good enough even for her?

Oprah needs the Sarah Palin interview. No really. The Queen of TV talk will benefit from this interview in ten ways.

1. She said she would. Before the election she said she would have Palin on after the election.

2. November is ratings month. Say what you will about the woman who can set back feminism 50 years in one sentence, ratings are ratings.

3. Landing the interview the day before her book comes out is still a feat, and Oprah fights for ratings just like mere mortals.

4. Oprah’s brand is strong and well identified enough to take the few hits she will take for giving air time to the high priestess of rogue.

5. A book, even by Palin, is still a book. Oprah is all about the book.

6. Oprah is in her professional heart, a journalist.
therefore she will embrace the opportunity to go where katie couric and tina fey have gone.
7. She can ask the tough questions ie The Million Broken Pieces public lashing

8. Every single Oprah fan can’t be left-can they?

9. It should be fun to watch if Oprah can make it an hour without throwing up in her mouth, alittle.

10. She said she would

 I admire Rush Limbaugh: in some sick, out of body

kind of way. I admire his business acumen. It requires Brink’s trucks to take his paycheck to the bank, and that is admirable.

He says things that if you or I said them at a cocktail party, would get us banned for life. If speaking to incite a riot were a crime, Rush would be spending his life in jail.

So what does this have to do with owning an NFL team?

In some ways, it would be perfect justice. As if we have relapsed back two hundred years to Masters and their Slaves. The coliseum or arena would simply become the old Plantation. Rush could own his “meat” by the pound.

In other ways, it would poetic justice. Rush would have to cater to, suck up to, and be inclusive to players with all different political, cultural, and economic views.

Here’s the reason why he will never be an owner, part owner, announcer, or stadium vendor selling beer up and down the aisles.

In communication as in life, there are consequences. As a Communication Coach I have identified 50 rules. Rule #1 is that there are rules. Rule #2 is that there are consequences for breaking the rules. The same is true in life.

Rush has benefited from positive consequences. Like his 400 million eight year contract. He gets to spew his venom to somewhere between 14 and 30 million listeners.

Now for the negative consequences. You can’t step on and over every demographic group, except your own, and expect those groups to like you. Here’s the rub. In this 21^st century, every owner, every manager, every leader, every part owner is faced with the same challenge: to create buy-in from their troops. There is no way that Rush Limbaugh can create buy-in from most of the ethnic players or players with different political views, who fill rosters on every team.

 Communication is about making choices. The more clear the speaker, the more successful. Rush has been very clear as to his beliefs, philosophies support . . . or at least what he thinks will bait listeners whether or not he really espouses the beliefs.

 Now he has to pay the consequence. Rush in the Bad Boys League?

The NFL is home to players charged with drugs, dog fighting, and murder. This Bad Ole Boy? He’s just too bad.

We have only just begun . . . to hear the fallout from President Obama’s humanitarian mission to bring the Olympics to Chicago.
Should he or shouldn’t he . . .have made the trip amongst rising unemployment numbers, a health care debate, and what some sensed as the end of the free world as we know it if the President was on a plane for a day.

Long after 9-11, 9-11 continued to be blamed for everything. In Podunk, Iowa, a struggling restaurant would blame the terrorists for its lack of daily receipts. So it may be with this one-day trip the President made to try for Olympic Gold.

Should he or shouldn’t he?

Every other President whose country was vying for the nod, made the trip.
Some say, the other Presidents are not as note worthy as is our president.
Tell that to José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, President of Spain. Better yet,
tell it to the 46 million people living in Spain. The President of Brazil does not count equal to our president? Tell it to the 155 million people living in Brazil.

He got a plane for several hours. He was always in touch with the White House.
This is not like George W. going into hiding after the classroom incident on 9-11.

Should he have put his credibility on the line? Why not?
What is the value of crebibility if it is not used? You can have a Bugatti Veyron $1,700,000, by far the most expensive street legal car available on the market today sitting in your garage. Doesn’t it have more value if you take for a spin?
Your Kentucky Derby contestant will always win on paper if you never take him out of the barn. Only when tested, will you discover your current worth.

Some pundits say the committee was miffed that he only spent a few hours
on the ground during his pitch. How blasé we have become when it is not whether or not a president came in person to plead his case, but whether or not he stayed long enough at the dance!

What if the problem was between the American and Olympic committee? If his trip was able to identify this as the true problem, isn’t that a good thing.

It’s not always about whether or not you hit the homerun. Sometimes it truly is about whether or not you got up to bat. Or whether or not you took your turn at bat when the rotation order stopped at you.

At the United Nations last week, Benjamin Netanyahu forged a compelling argument to the UN audience and the world. In a world of subtlety and innuendo, the clarity of his message stands out like a beacon in the night.

Every speaker has multiple audiences and Bibi was no exception. He had the delegates sitting in front of him, the International press, foes, friends, and Israeli citizens. From a communication standpoint, here is why his speech is circling the Internet as proof that effective use of the English language is not entirely dead.

The Prime Minister used the three C’s of speaking: clarity, conviction, and confidence. Juxtapose his clarity with the 90-minute regurgitation that Kadafi humored himself with when he had the opportunity, the first in 40 years, to address the UN.

Netanyahu began immediately, in the second line of the speech, reminding the delegates that the UN had created this Jewish state 62 years ago. No jokes, no humor, no story telling. He moved with lightening clarity to his agenda.

He used an effective rhetorical device throughout the first point of his speech. He called out Ahmadinejad for being a Holocaust denier, but more importantly to that event, he called out the delegates who sat and listened to the denier hold court. The way he called them out was with the repititve mantra, Is this a lie?

He cited documents preserved by successive German governments, and asked, Is this a lie?

He held up the actual construction plans for Auschwitz and asked,
Is this a lie?

He referenced President Obama’s visit to the Buchenwald concentration camp., and asked, “Did President Obama pay tribute to a lie?”
He stood in front on his audience, and calmly and confidently told those who stayed and listened to the “denier” that their actions were a disgrace. Think about it. It takes courage to call out the audience to whom you are speaking. It is masterful to call out your audiecne, and then ask them to perform the call of action of your choice.

Then he masterfully transitioned to his next point. Masterfully, because transitions are often rough or used not at all in today’s world of extremes: either text or bluster. He went on to point out that, “History has shown us time and again that what starts with attacks on the Jews eventually ends up engulfing many others.” This transitoin enabled him to move from Israel’s legitimacy to his next agenda point, Iran.

He did not position Iran as a Jewish problem. Not a terrorist problem, nott even an American problem. He postioned Iran as a challenge of who will win the minds of the world: how we think. He said, the Iranian regime pits the 21st century against the 9th century.

In positioning this struggle for our future he said, “What seemed impossible a few years ago is already outdated, and we can scarcely fathom the changes that are yet to come. We will crack the genetic code. We will cure the incurable. We will lengthen our lives. We will find a cheap alternative to fossil fuels and clean up the planet.”

What he did not say, is that many of these discoveries will take place in Israel. The terrorists who live on cell phones, deny or don’t know that it was the Israeli’s who brought us the cell phone and instant messaging.

He reminded delegates that out of all of the quotes that could have selected to be inscribed on the outside of the United Nations, only one was selected. Inscribed is the great Biblical vision of peace: “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation. They shall learn war no more.”

Important to hear his next words, “These words were spoken by the Jewish prophet Isaiah 2,800 years ago as he walked in my country, in my city, in the hills of Judea and in the streets of Jerusalem.”

Late in his speech he says simply, “We want peace.” How many world leaders have spoken with such clarity?
This address stands as an example of a world leader who chose to speak with Clarity, Confidence, and Conviction.

I miss Cher and her inappropriate nakedness. I miss Bette Midler and her horrible fashion sense.
I even miss Bjork and her famous swan dress. I miss women willing to make a mistake. Make a mistake for the sake of standing out.
Everyone in Hollywood wants to stand out, but no one wants to make a misstep. Impossible to stand out without risk.

So what we have is arguably the most privileged people in the world.
With access to the best designers, make up artists, stylists, they become homogenized: Driven by the fear that they will show up on some little twerp’s glam cam as a fashion “don’t.” I say, “don’t bore us. That is the biggest sin you could commit. The Emmy’s came and went with a thud.

So boring that about all we have to talk about is that Kyra Sedgwick wore black shoes with a dusty rose dress. Hardly the stuff of yesteryear. Padma Lakshmi wore red flowers on a purple dress, not an offense that deserves prison time. Victoria Rowell was the fashion highpoint of inappropriateness, but it was done with such bad taste that not even Stevie Wonder would have said it was acceptable.

Hollywood, is where Beautiful is Boring. And boring is just wrong!
In a city that can make Raiders Lost, impossible to believe that creativity died a premature death. However, it did, at 8pm standard time, fashion was announced dead. The cause was boredom.

We have gotten so used to bad behavior that it takes worse and worse behavior to move the meter. When Kanye West can out-Kanye himself, that is quite an accomplishment. Michael Jordan, the class act of professional sports, deems it appropriate to give an acceptance speech that embarrasses just about everyone. Serena Williams embarrasses even Serena and Roger Federer the Swiss wonder, lobs expletives like tennis balls.

Much of Joe Wilson’s district if not the country, thinks it is OK to call out “You Lie” to the President of the United States, while Tea Party members think it is OK to call for the president’s death. Is being civil missing in action, or is it truly dead?

Why is there so much extreme behavior? Because average doesn’t get attention. You can’t get 60 seconds or sixty minutes of fame for being a moderate. The word civil is inside the word civilization. What does that say about us as a civilization that we can no longer play nice, speak nice, or make nice?

You could call it the Congressional Two Step.
It leaves me looking at Congress and the President
and ask, Shall we dance? –down, up down. Or perhaps it was
a Broadway play, choreographed to the last stand or should I say the last sit-in?

Watching the audience was by far the most entertaining
part of President Obama’s Address on Healthcare.
As Republicans sat on their hands, Democrats rose to their feet.
As Republicans got to their feet they waived white sheets of paper as if they were flags of surrender. In reality, they were waving Republican’s healthcare versions.

This production came with its own heckler. As if on cue, Republican South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson shouted, “You lie!” in response to Obama’s denial that proposed health-care legislation would provide free health coverage for illegal immigrants. HE HAD TO SPEAK TO RAHM EMANUEL AFTER THE SPEECH. THAT MUST HAVE BEEN A PUNISHMENT ALMOST WORSE THAN DEATH. Juxtapose this act with the Iraqi journalist who threw two shoes at President Bush and ended up in jail. Only in America, and truly only in America, could an elected official call the president a liar on national TV and suffer no consequences.

Overlooked in the fanfare and drama was his direct discourse,

President Obama addressed members of Congress
and it was as if Representatives and Senators were back
in high school, or perhaps kindergarten.
Or perhaps they were all in an aerobics class as they stood and sat in red or blue unison: Up
his propensity to call out those who supported and did not support,
and his rousing conclusion: “we did not come here to fear the future, we came to shape it”.

If you listen to Rome, you know that he is famous for saying, “have a take, and don’t suck.” He did not suck, but the event did.

Marketed as Dinner with a Legend, for Rome and one hundred of his best friends, or those willing to pay to hear and see him in person. The promise was that he would visit each table for photo opps.

Worse than not visiting each table? He visited some! Everyone paid the same amount although not everyone received the same value. Over-promised and under-delivered. It sucked.

Three hours and only 15 minutes of Rome. It sucked.

He finally arrived, spoke for five minutes, and was spirited away to a private room with his sponsors. It sucked.

Forty-five minutes later, he came back to the microphone for vintage Rome.

For fifteen minutes. Then whisked away in a waiting limo for the airport.

Rome rightfully calls out athletes when they act like spoiled children.

This was Rome acting like an athlete!

The lesson here is about our value. We put into our bank of credibility in pennies and nickels. We take out of our bank of credibility in hundred dollar bills. Rome’s visit to Cleveland did not protect his credibility. He came as a thank you to a town that first helped put him on the map of sports respectability, and has helped keep him there. Cleveland, C-Town, is a sports town.

The way his visit was organized hurt his value. Our job is to wake up every morning with the goal to identify our value, protect our value, and communicate our value. No one else has that goal. Not our PR people, not sponsors, not radio stations.

Rome, you did not protect your value. Here is my take, it sucked.