It has been 30 years since Jimmy Breslin, the legendary New York newspaperman, simultaneously attacked Donald J. Trump’s demagoguery and the fawning media’s round-the-clock coverage of whatever outrageous thing he said or did (sound familiar?). 

In a Newsday column titled: “Violent Language, Between You and I”, Breslin savaged Trump for his bullying, racism, egomaniacal ways and, surprise, surprise, butchery, of the English language.

Breslin’s column ran right after Trump had paid for a full-page ad in all four of Gotham’s four major daily newspapers.

The advertisement was headlined: “Between You and I” and, as Breslin noted, “…practically called for the death of the black teenagers arrested for the rape and attack on the woman who later became known as ‘The Central Park Jogger.”

Breslin wrote of Trump’s ad: “As the young woman is not dead (indeed, she would live and miraculously testify in court about the mugging and rape) and those arrested for her attack do not as yet even have a trial date, much less guilt established, his (Trump’s) scream for vengeance could be considered premature by some.”

While excoriating Trump for his rush to judgment, Breslin provides equal time for the New York journalism community.  He asks why Trump “…became so immensely popular with the one group of people who are supposed to be the searchlights and loudspeakers that alert the public to the realities of such a person.”

He continues, “Even the most unhostile of eyes cannot say that his buildings are not ugly. Yet all news stories say ‘imaginative’ when common sense shouts ‘arrogance.’ Always, the television and newspapers talk of his financial brilliance, when anybody in the street knows that most of ‘Between You and I’ Trump’s profits came from crap games and slot machines in Atlantic City, the bulk of that, the slot machines, coming from old people who go down there with their Social Security checks.’”

Breslin presciently balances the chutzpah of Trump with the adulation of the media (a modern-day phenomenon that I believe anyone on either end of the political spectrum would agree is alive and well, if not thriving).

Breslin’s brilliance is on full display when he analyzed Trump’s Between You and I headline: “When the unwashed get to the word ‘between’ while speaking, the first thing their ear tells them is that ‘Between You and I’ is right because it has a tonier sound to it, almost regal they imagine, than (the grammatically correct) ‘between you and me.’ Therefore such people as Trump say, ‘Confidentially, between you and I.’”

I urge you to read more of Breslin’s take on the future president and the subservient media of the late 1980’s. There are many lessons to be learned for The Base and the current representatives of “fake news.”

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* While I love the headline and think it fits this blog like a glove, I must give Gore Vidal credit for having coined it.

My Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter connections know that, when it comes to customer experience, my twin bete noirs are United Airlines and New Jersey Transit, respectively. The former still has the unfriendliest skies in the nation and the latter is a daily excursion to hell and back. 

So it’s rare when I stumble across a truly superior customer experience. And, it’s rarer still when I give a shout out to an organization. But I’m doing so in this case because the institution in question scored a perfect 10 in every aspect of my customer experience. And that institution is (drum roll please) the Ace Shoreditch Hotel (www.acehotel.com).  They truly aced my stay in London last week.

Here’s why:

• The front desk clerk greeted me by name as I strolled up to registration (I’m guessing the car service arranged for that? Or my London employees? The ghost of great customer experiences past?).
• The room was reasonably priced, within a five-minute walk of our London office and chock full of every conceivable amenity one might desire in the middle of a jet-lagged night.
• The overnight manager was an angel in disguise. I won’t bore you with the details, but I had to be at the Ace’s front door at 4:40am one morning to meet a car service that would whisk me away to the EuroStar and a trip to Paris. As I anxiously paced back-and-forth waiting for the tardy car and checking my watch, Sam, the night manager, walked right alongside me. He calmed me down, told me about shuttle flights from Heathrow, etc., that could still get me to my appointed rounds on time and, well, talked me off the ledge. Caring hotel employees can be an oxymoron nowadays. But not at the Ace Shoreditch. And definitely not Sam.
• Last, and not least, the Ace was chock full of branded merchandise. I felt like a kid in a candy store (since I am absolutely obsessed with branded merchandise). Ask any client, prospect or trade group to which I belong for verification. I kill for SWAG.

So, if your travel plans should call for a jaunt across the pond and a visit to London Town in the near future, I cannot more highly recommend the Ace Shoreditch.

After Word: I will be sending hotel management a link to this blog and they bloody well better upgrade me to a luxury suite when I’m next in town. 😊

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Shannon Watts is my hero. 

As you’ll read in this riveting account of one week in her life, Shannon is putting everything on the line (including her life) to mobilize moms to stop gun violence. In fact, she has already succeeded in helping to pass gun safety legislation in 20 states.
Shannon is a Type-A mom with a cause. She’s authored a book called “Fight Like a Mother” and founded a non-profit called Moms Demand Action that has more followers than the NRA.

Watts began her one-woman crusade in the immediate aftermath of the Sandy Hook mass school shooting in 2012.

Since then, she has been the Energizer Bunny of the anti-gun violence crusade (Note: Moms Demand Action isn’t anti-gun. It’s anti-gun violence).

Make no mistake that Shannon Watts knows she is putting her life at risk by taking on the more extreme elements of the NRA.

In fact, if you read her weekly diary, you’ll see that when she arrived in Rhode Island to participate in an advocacy day with Governor Gina Riamondo, Shannon was met at the gate by two security guards. As Watts noted, “Their job is to take me to the nearest hospital if anything should happen.”

Our country is a better, somewhat saner place thanks to a true take-no-prisoners, damn-the-torpedoes, full-speed-ahead hero like Shannon Watts. And it proves that one person can indeed make a difference.

I encourage moms (and dads) everywhere to join Ms. Watts in her crusade. The life you save may be your own child’s.

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As someone who dabbles in high-altitude mountain climbing, I’ve been closely following the horrific events on Mount Everest in the past month.

While most news coverage has focused on the lax standards that have allowed hundreds of climbers to be caught above the death zone in complete gridlock (and many die as a result), I stumbled across an equally disturbing trend of late.

Thanks to global climate change, warmer temperatures and melting ice, scores of long-dead bodies are suddenly emerging from their ice tombs on Everest.

In fact, it’s now a routine occurrence for guides and climbers alike to spot human bones poking up from the ground, smooth and ice encrusted.

As one guide told the New York Times, “Snow is melting and bodies are surfacing. Finding bones has become the new normal for us.”

The plethora of long-gone, perfectly preserved climbing corpses has caused something of an ethical dilemma for the climbing community.

Traditionally, people who perished on Everest had been left on the mountain in the exact position in which they expired. (Think the perfectly preserved Roman corpses of Pompeii.)

Now, though, with so many previously buried bodies popping up from the melting ice, the climbing community is faced with a conundrum: Do they leave hundreds and hundreds of corpses on the fabled mountain or ship the remains back to the victims’ families?

All of which brings us back to global climate change.

According to the New York Times, the snowline on Everest is higher than it was just a few years ago. Areas once coated in dense ice are now exposed. Climbers are trading ice aces for rock piton spikes that are hammered into cracks on the mountain’s walls. Trust me when I say that is absolutely mind boggling.

The Nepalese government already has its hands full with far too many inexperienced climbers attempting to summit the world’s tallest peak. Now they have to figure out what to do with the zombie-like remains of previously buried climbers.

For the Climate Denier in Chief, I’d say it’s high time to schedule a State Visit to Mount Everest. Assuming he can make it at least to base camp (which shouldn’t be a problem, given his self-proclaimed physical prowess and fitness), I think the president would get a whole new point of view, literally and otherwise, on global climate change. Let’s hope seeing is believing for Trump. Otherwise, melting ice won’t be the only condition that yields human bodies.

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