I work with a team of researchers.  I am old (over fifty) and my colleagues are young (twentysomethings).  I prefer my research that has footnotes.  You know, those things with numbers and text at the end of the page or article.  They prefer to use hyperlinks, the stuff you click on to get to a web site.

Suffice it to say it has been a challenge for both sides.  So in the spirit of fair play, I tried to imagine a debate – debates are pretty popular these days – between a Footnote and a Hyperlink.

You tell me who you think wins.

Footnote- I don’t get it.  As best I can tell the biggest distinction you guys have is that you’re underlined and in a different colored font.  That’s it.  I look at you and you tell me nothing.

Hyperlink- We’re highlighted so people know that with just a click they can get to the real source.  Jeez.  You old folks.  You know, you should get out more.  Take a walk or something.  Oh!  How about this?  How about going on the  Internet?  Ever heard of that?  Why waste type space with the endless dribble that you Footnotes put us through when you can take people straight to the source.

Footnote- Funny.  Well, not really funny.  More like impertinent.  Sad, really.  You young folks have an amazing ability to think you are the center of the universe.  That you know everything.  A bunch of baby Jesus’ out there walking around like you’re God’s gift to the planet.  Look, I like the Internet as much as anyone.  But what if there’s no 4G or WiFi?  And God forbid what if someone is reading this on a piece of paper?  What good is your “click” for then?  I’ll give you a hint.  Bupkiss!

Hyperlink- Dude, if you can’t afford to find a Starbucks then I don’t know if you should be reading.  I mean, really, even McDonalds has WiFi now.  Reading something on a piece of paper?  Please.  People used to read on clay tablets and scrolls.  You guys are still killing trees.  I bet you still use one of those 20lb telephone books.  Wake up grandpa.  Today people read on devices.

They are easy to make fun of.

The women’s hair is a bit too big, their necklines a bit too low.  Men sport facial hair and at least one article of clothing is “camouflage.”  Men’s shirts usually don’t have sleeves.  Faces and hands reflect a hard scrabble living.  Cigarettes and obesity are hard to avoid.  A good percentage of the houses are “manufactured” – that is, mobile homes sitting on cinder blocks.  Many are abandoned.  Cars, or various parts of cars, dot the front lawns.  A lot of lawns need  mowing.

But then you meet and work with the people you see something very, very different.

You realize that a lot of us “sophisticated big city and affluent suburban” types could learn a lot from the people in Belle, West Virginia – this town just outside of Charleston south of the Dupont Chemical plant.  A place where the McDonald’s is open all night to accomodate the shift workers.

I spent a week there with a bunch of high school kids from churches across the country – Texas, California, Illinois.  They divided us into crews and we spent a week in a family’s home cleaning, painting, doing odd jobs.  We all learned some things.  How to rehang a gutter.  How to fix a roof.  How to build a deck.

But what we learned most was from the folks in Belle.

We learned that there are people out there who still know and care for their neighbors.  One of our crews was working with an elderly woman whose son was in the hospital with cancer.  He passed away that Tuesday morning, just the second day we were on the job.  Within hours there were dozens of neighbors descending on the house with food and condolences.  They stayed all day.  As one person said with a smile, “we take of each other here in Belle.”

How many of us in our comfortable suburban neighborhoods could say that?

We learned that there are people who keep their word.  Our crew was assigned to the house of “Miss Ginny”.  We were struggling with a gutter installation that was part of our work assignment.  The pitch on the roof was too steep (at least for us) and ladders too unstable.  On our last day in Belle, I saw a handful of men, the oldest well into his sixties, in the neighborhood fixing the roof on a small house down the block.  I asked if he’d come down and look at the project. He did.  ”How much?”  I asked.  ”Fifty dollars cash.” He replied matter-of-factly.  I handed him seventy-five dollars and never saw him again.  A week later I got a thank you note from our resident, Miss Ginny.  ”The gutters look beautiful,” she wrote.

I wonder if I could have relied on a random contractor in our community to do the same.

We learned that there are people who are grateful for even the smallest of things.  We worked the entire week at Miss Ginny’s house, often in blistering heat.  Miss Ginny always sat with us in the shade on the carport.  She was hard of hearing, a cancer survivor, and suffered from lupus.  But she was there every day.  She’d be the first to hold the ladder when someone was up caulking or painting.  She’d bring us home made brownies and store bought Cheetos.  She had water in the fridge.  Her small frame home was dark and simple but she made it our own and never complained about the sweat, sawdust, and grass that I’m sure we tracked in and out.  She was all alone.  Her husband died seven years ago.  The two boys were far away.  She lived off social security.  Not a hint of any modern technology – no cable, no computer.  Her health was failing.

But never a complaint.  Indeed, I’ve never heard anyone say thank you as much as Miss Ginny.  ”You guys are doing a great job!” she said repeatedly (even though our work was very amateur hour).  ”Thank you so much!” came at least once an hour.  Miss Ginny constantly reminded us that she felt very blessed and thanked the Lord every day for all the good things in her life.  She didn’t have much, but was always joyful for what she had.

And I thought to myself how often I complain about even the small things that go wrong in life.

Yup.  We all learned a lot from the folks in Belle, West Virginia.

Get past the surface appearances, the stereotypes and the things that – at the end of the day – really don’t matter that much- and you see people that we all would do good to aspire to.

I remember being there in the Moscone Center.  It was July 19, 1984.  (Yes, I’m that old.)  ”Morning in America” had not arrived.  Many thought Reagan would be a one-term president.  I was watching Democratic candidate Walter Mondale give his acceptance  as the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party.  It was a great speech.  Historic.   Then about half-way through the speech came this:

Let’s tell the truth. It must be done, it must be done. Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won’t tell you. I just did.

And I said to myself:

And you just lost!

Of course, Mondale was right.  That is, what he said was true.  President Reagan did raise taxes.  But that wasn’t exactly the campaign promise that gets people elected.

Recently President Obama got into trouble for saying that the private sector was doing “OK”.  It actually is doing OK.  The private sector’s got record profits and sitting on $1.7 trillion in liquid assets.  Small problem.  They got OK by laying off people.

Similarly, Congressman Ryan got in trouble by saying that entitlements were bankrupt and that we’d need to raise retirement eligibility and reduce benefits.  Can you guess how that went over?

Al Gore talked about an Inconvenient Truth.  Ron Paul reminds us that as a nation “we’re broke!”.

Popular guys, right?

We hear a lot about honesty and transparency in the communications business these days.  But the fact is that honesty – that is, telling the truth – is something that most people don’t want to hear.

Honesty is only popular when it is something you agree with … or it is funny.  That is, when honesty makes fun of other people.  (We don’t like truth that makes fun of ourselves!)

That’s why David McCullough’s commencement speech at Wellesley High School went viral.  He was the guy who had the guts to tell students, “you’re not special!”

Telling truth to power?  Not really, just digging high school students.

Then there’s that great ad movie, Crazy People.  Dudley Moore plays an ad guy who is goes to an insane asylum and begins writing ads that are “truthful”.  Memorable ad copy included:

• You may think phone service stinks since deregulation, but don’t mess with us, because we’re all you’ve got. In fact, if we fold, you’ll have no damn phones. AT&T – we’re tired of taking your crap!
• Volvo, they’re boxy but they’re good.
• Forget Paris, the French can be annoying.  Come to Greece, we’re nicer.
• Porsche. It’s a little too small to get laid IN, but you get laid the minute you get out!
• Paramount Pictures presents ‘The Freak.’ This movie won’t just scare you, it will f@*k you up for life.

The fact is most of us don’t like the truth.  And rather than become popular like Dudley Moore, the better story about the effect of truth-telling is in Moliere’s The Misanthrope.  Alceste, tired of the vapid, obsequiousness, and politesse of his community takes a vow of truthfulness.  He quickly finds that truth can be a lonely endeavor indeed.

Fast forward some 350 years, truth remains a bummer.  Colonel Nathan Jessep was right.  Most of us can’t handle the truth.

Don’t get me wrong.  Truth is a good thing.  It can make you free.

Just be prepared.

I don’t see a lot of evidence that it has ever been very popular.

After 30 years of living in the United States, my wife is becoming an American citizen.  I’m excited.  More importantly, she is  excited.  She loves the land in which she was born (Holland).  And while she is proud of her Dutch family (and visits them often!), she has raised three children here and has worked as a caterer, teacher, and social worker helping American families.

A hard decision.  But she wants to be able to vote.  And she believes in both the idea and people of America.

Now I read the co-founder of Facebook recently renounced his U.S. citizenship to become a citizen of Singapore.  Originally from Brazil, he’s lived in Singapore all of that last three years.  Why is he trading U.S. citizenship for Singapore?  Taxes, I’m told.  He didn’t want to pay them.

Money.  I understand Eduardo Savarin is changing his citizen because we wants to save some money.  It isn’t because he is poor (he parents were wealthy Brazilians who moved to Miami for security reasons).  He is not only wealthy, he is obscenely wealthy.  And in Singapore, he won’t have to share any of it!  Oh, and there’s a bonus.  He’ll be able to enjoy cheap domestic help since Singapore has no minimum wage.

I hope this guy really like Singapore.  I hear it is a very exciting place.

But don’t bring Juicy Fruit.  I understand that they don’t like chewing gum.  They also seem to have a fetish for caning.  They do it for all sorts of things.  Including immigration violations!  They are also a big fan of executing people.  They are not fans of jury trials by your peers.  Got rid of that in 1970.  Too messy and inconvenient, I guess.  I read on Wikipedia that:

“Amnesty International has said that some legal provisions conflict with the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, and that Singapore has ‘possibly the highest execution rate in the world relative to its population’.”

One thing everyone agrees on is this:  Singapore loves money.  I’m reading in Wikipedia that “the Singaporean economy is known as one of the freest,^[62] most innovative,^[63] most competitive,^[64] and most business-friendly.  The entry goes on to say:

“Singapore has the world’s highest percentage of millionaire households, with 15.5 percent of all households owning at least one million US dollars.^[94] Despite its relative economic success, Singapore does not have a minimum wage, believing that it would lower its competitiveness. It also has one of the highest income inequality levels among developed countries, coming in just behind Hong Kong and in front of the United States.^[95][96]

It is a democracy.  But one of those where the same party has won every election since independence in 1959.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m sure Singapore is a lovely place with wonderful people.

My wife is changing her citizenship based on family, service, and ideals.  That is America.

Savarin is changing citizenship based on money.  That seems to be Singapore.

I think they both made a decision fit for each other.