{"id":639,"date":"2010-09-28T09:15:39","date_gmt":"2010-09-28T16:15:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/?p=639"},"modified":"2010-09-28T11:38:09","modified_gmt":"2010-09-28T18:38:09","slug":"glittering-generalities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/?p=639","title":{"rendered":"Glittering Generalities"},"content":{"rendered":"

Watching the news this morning from one of my favorite ‘hidden gem’ hotels – The CharlesMark in Boston<\/strong><\/a> (Back Bay).\u00a0 I stumbled across an interview with Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT)<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0 I liked her.\u00a0 Seemed like a genuinely smart person and skilled operator.\u00a0 And she’s been working hard making the rounds this days as educations reform and charter schools take the spotlight with the new documentary “Waiting for Superman.”<\/p>\n

But I was unimpressed with her work this morning.\u00a0 The exchange went something like this:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Reporter:\u00a0 “But isn’t there a real problem with teachers who don’t have the skills or drive or ability to teach our children yet they continue in the classroom year after year?<\/p>\n

AFT president:\u00a0 “No one wants bad teachers in the classroom.\u00a0 We don’t want that.\u00a0 We’re not for that.\u00a0 We’re against that.\u00a0 But that’s not the real problem.\u00a0 The real problem is getting everyone together.\u00a0 We all have to address this educational challenge we face together.\u00a0 We need to bring everyone to the table.\u00a0 All parties have to work together to address this collectively … to do it together …”.<\/p>\n

Blah, blah, blah.<\/p>\n

She punted on recognizing the reality of the problem – bad teachers in the classroom.\u00a0 And if you can’t step up and admit that a problem exists, how can you formulate a way of solving it?\u00a0 She might as well have said, “If we can all just hold hands and sing the Coca Cola song …”<\/p>\n

Then I read about the GOP’s “Pledge to America”.<\/p>\n

We’re for families.\u00a0 We honor the constitution.\u00a0 We hate deficits (as well as the government we long to take control over).\u00a0 We support our troops.\u00a0 We believe in a strong America.\u00a0 We hate terrorists.\u00a0 And we are not fans of illegal immigrants.\u00a0 We love America.\u00a0 We love America a lot.<\/p>\n

So what exactly to we do?\u00a0 Not so much.<\/p>\n

My fifth grade teacher used to term all this “glittering generalities.”\u00a0 Kumbya <\/strong><\/a>on the left … Kumbya <\/strong><\/a>on the right.<\/p>\n

I don’t know about you but the kumbya talk doesn’t work much in my world.<\/p>\n

My mortgage company wants the check.\u00a0 My clients want me to show them how much stuff I helped them sell.\u00a0 The folks in the class I teach expect to learn something.\u00a0 My wife expects me to fix the garbage disposal.\u00a0 The people in my world want specifics.\u00a0 They want tangibles.\u00a0 They expect problems to be confronted and addressed.\u00a0 You don’t even have to solve them all the time.\u00a0 But if you show that you acknowledge it and doing everything you can to fix it, people will often give you the benefit of the doubt.<\/p>\n

Does straight talk make a company or brand stronger?\u00a0 I think so.\u00a0 We can all cite popular brands that don’t.\u00a0 But my experience is that if you dabble in glittering generalities long enough, the real problems catch up with you.<\/p>\n

Not only that …<\/p>\n

You become boring as hell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Watching the news this morning from one of my favorite ‘hidden gem’ hotels – The CharlesMark in Boston (Back Bay).\u00a0 I stumbled across an interview with Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).\u00a0 I liked her.\u00a0 Seemed like a genuinely smart person and skilled operator.\u00a0 And she’s been working hard making the rounds…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[78,10,153,79,6,4],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=639"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":645,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639\/revisions\/645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}