Over-50

Incidentally, We Members of the Mickey Mouse Club Didn't Care About Who Walt Disney Really Was

M-i-c-k-e-y M-o-u-s-e. 

Poof. The iconic Disney logo can be eliminated from popular culture.

Deadline reports there is growing scrutiny of Disney's founder Walt Disney.

He was an obviously flawed human being. In fact, on speeches I had created on leadership for chief executive officers I leveraged his attitudes about his workforce as negatives. For example, he couldn't understand why employees would want higher compensation. After all, went his thinking, weren't they fortunate to be part of his team. In addition, he was in no way the kind of verbally polished leader of today. The undertow of his messaging signaled prejudice.

But that was then. A different time. Entrepreneurs, be they Disney or Henry Ford, could operate by their own rules. 

Today, Bob Iger, by so many current metrics, scores high on leadership. His memoir "The Ride of a Lifetime" captures his ethos of deep caring, especially of all the humans in the loop. They range from employees to consumers. 

On Glassdoor, the overall rating for working at Disney is "4" out of a possible "5."

After retiring from the job of chief executive officer, Iger parachuted back in when the business of Disney became troubled. 

Actually, as I argue in this article, Disney seems stuck. But that's a strategic matter, not a cultural one. Iger has a big job ahead of him.

That, unfortunately, will likely include the struggle to preserve the Disney logo. The founder's flaws have tainted the essence of what Mickey Mouse meant to generations. Part of that was the extreme power of creativity. 

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No Longer the Elephant in the Room: Professional Decline

" … full-scale professional … decline can feel, to some, as threatening as death itself." - Arthur C. Brooks, The Atlantic, June 4, 2020.

Careers are lasting longer. That could because human beings are living longer and maintain good health. Therefore, they can remain productive in the workforce well into their late 60s, 70s, and beyond. Also, the increase in the years of a professional life can be the result of simply needing the money. This is not your father's retirement. The cost of living, with a few exceptions, has become high throughout the U.S.

Along that extended career journey there are those who blossom in new ways or fit into unexpected roles. 

Among the late bloomers has been Clint Eastwood. Now 90 years old, his later productions such as "Miracle Dollar Baby" and "Unforgiven" have been authentic art. 

At law firm Paul, Weiss, chairperson Brad Karp has added on a global leadership position in philanthropy and social justice. His initiatives range from the Paul, Weiss Coronavirus Relief Center to creating a consortium to eliminate racial bias. Simultaneously, he manages about 1,000 lawyers at the firm.

University of Chicago research professor David Galenson documented that phenomenon of the late bloomer or game-changer in his book "Old Masters and Young Geniuses."

More often, though, is the awareness of not being the player one used to be - or the fear that could soon occur. Among the poignant memes in "Boston Legal" had been Denny Crane's observing that he could no longer sustain his once-brilliant performance as a lawyer. Instead there would be only the occasional flashes of genius. 

Professional decline, points out Brooks, can take many forms. Those range from others receiving the attention and rewards you had to not being able to keep up with what used to be the expected daily workload.

The usual response to that unraveling is denial, embedded in a thick emotional wrapper of fear. Brooks hammers that only worsens how decline impacts a professional life.

As in so many spiritual programs - be they Buddhism or the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous - Brooks' advice is acceptance. Yes, embrace that reality and go on from there.

That "there" could be a shift to semiretirement, rebranding, delegating more and taking on the role of manager, reducing the number or intensity of assignments, and/or forcing yourself to learn new skills. In addition, there is the option of retiring. That's what Johnny Carson did when at the top of his game. 

Among those who are pulling that off well has been Betty White. She created new space for herself as The Aging Woman. Bill Gates shifted from the fast-moving tech sector to funder and thought leader for making the world a better place. 

Among the professionals who might be stumbling is investment guru Warren Buffett. Although not all have given up on him, enough have. It makes you wonder why he hadn't left center stage when his act was still engaging. 

Also, in the legal sector, you got to ask if iconic David Boise, founder of Boies Schiller and Flexner, should consider rebranding. In 2020, there has been at Boies Schiller the "Partner Diaspora."

With the numbers of aging who are still doing paid work growing, the issue of decline is no longer the elephant in the room. It's palpable. Every day you size up your colleagues and yourself asking: Do they and I still got it?

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Growing Up with Roaches

Tears flowed today.

The world attended the George Floyd Memorial. Some did that in-person in Minneapolis. Others through the extensive coverage on sophisticated media such as PBS.

Among the speakers was political activist Al Sharpton. His message cut through socioeconomic differences - not just racial bias. He used the metaphor of cockroaches to describe his mission of tracking down what thrives in darkness. 

Only those of us who grew up in urban areas, most of them poverty-ridden before gentrification, emotionally bonded with that metaphor. As Sharpton pointed out, the entitled Hollywood types could never identify what it was to share one's living space with roaches.

In roach-infested tenements like mine in Jersey City, New Jersey, there was always the fear that one of the would piggyback on our school clothes into the classroom. The bullies would have a field day mocking the unfortunate kid. Vividly, I remember one little girl who had a roach on her First Communion veil. Somehow I can't imagine she ever recovered from that public trauma. 

Food not locked in the refrigerator had to be kept in tightly locked jars. Meals required total alertness, with frequent visual scans, to prevent roaches from joining in. The DIY extermination rituals didn't work for long. 

Floyd was one of us - the roach people. From the get-go, we had to fight to maintain any sense of human dignity. Of course, cockroaches undermined that.

No, that was not the situation only for people of color. My immigrant Italian family, not exactly pale WASPS, experienced disrespect just about everywhere. No surprise the meme of respect dominates the iconic film "The Godfather."

In crying for Floyd we the roach people also cried for what we had endured. Often I wondered if I wouldn't have wound up hating myself if my ancestors remained in Italy.

The ability to love myself came through years of recusing abused animals. We connect with animals via our minds. Theirs chronicled lots of four-legged versions of roach stories. They also sent me constant messages that I was a good person. In addition, a force for good.

George Floyd, like Jesus Christ, died for all of us. May his legacy, as with Christianity, bring love and hope to humanity.

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Late Bloomers - Clint Eastwood Turns 90

Success doesn't necessarily mean greatness. Major metro areas are filled with successful professionals and even blue collar types who leave no imprint on society.

For decades Clint Eastwood succeeded with B-grade films like "Dirty Harry." For those who liked money, he was a role model. The message was: Figure out a game where you could make the big bucks without a lot of heavy lifting. 

Then, something happened. Eastwood pivoted from hack to master. Today, at age 90, he is revered in the world of serious film for productions ranging from "The Unforgiven" to "Million Dollar Baby."

There really is a late-bloomer phenomenon. University of Chicago professor David Galenson documented that in his research.

Galenson found out there are two types of genius. One is the Mozart kind. Early in life they recognize their talent and know exactly how to put it out there. In literature it was Sylvia Plath. The other is the Frank Lloyd Wright version. It takes a while to figure out what is the unique strength and how to make it a platform for accomplishment. It also took a while for Sally Field to create the right niche for her acting talent. 

Galenson's book is "Old Masters and Young Geniuses."

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We Really Did Spend All That Money to Go Out to the Movies and Chow Down Overpriced Popcorn

Another economic victim of COVID-19 could be AMC Entertainment.

In mid-March, because of various shelter-in-place mandates, it had shut down its 630 theatres across the U.S. and furloughed 25,000 employees.

Reportedly it has not paid its rent. Even before COVID-19, it was struggling because fewer people were going out to the movies. They can stream at-home or watch videos on their phone. 

Given that folks are forced to stay home, they may be breaking forever the habit of paying for a movie ticket and the expensive snacks. That could deep-six the movie theatre industry in the U.S. Yes, COVID-19 could be the tipping point. 

Earlier AMC's lenders had hired law firm Gibson Dunn about a possible restructuring.

Now, according to sources to the New York Post, it has contacted Weil Gotshal & Manges about a possible Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Neither AMC nor Weil Gotshal has commented on that.

The brandname bankruptcy lawyer at Weil Gotshal is Ray Schrock. He had handled bankruptcies for PG&E, Fairway and Sears Holding.

Overall, bankruptcy practices, along with restructuring and workouts, have been thriving in the legal sector. 

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Yes, There's that Seductive Fantasy of Being Without a Home

The moderate weather and liberalism in certain urban areas make California a haven for the homeless. 

The search for a solution to this crisis is generating both desperate and innovative proposals.

Among the desperate is the one in the city of Lancaster. The proposal, backed by its mayor Rex Parris, would fine anyone feeding the homeless in a public space. Those supporting the measure hammer how the eating ritual results in public defecation. That hurts local businesses.

Among the innovative ones is a proposal coming from cruise lines. They would provide ships, docked in nearby waters, to provide housing for the homeless. Rent for the rooms would be calculated on the basis of income. Usually the homeless receive some kind of public assistance. Local municipalities would have to pay nada for this approach.

What most proposals ignore is the reality that there are homeless people who want to be out there on the street, not in any shelter.

That is chronicled in the nonfiction bestselling book turned into a film "Stuart: A Life Backwards." By Alexander Masters, it delves into the past and present of an emotionally crippled alcoholic who refuses to stay put in the housing social services finds for him.

The man - Stuart Shorter - treasures his on-the-street social network in England. They share his values. He feels safe with them. Should that mindset be labeled "Civilization and Its Discontents," a title borrowed from Sigmund Freud?

Another bestseller about a relative form of homeless "The Stranger in the Woods" by Michael Finkel. It's a true story about Christopher Knight who pulled off living in a kind of tarp in Maine for 27 years. He had no job, no human companionship, no sophisticated technology. 

Anyone who has done volunteer work with the homeless understands that the members of the category are not a monolith. They represent a variety of value systems. Also, some of them feel proud of their own individual solutions to survive the harsh life both on-the-street and in shelters.

For about three years I collected day-old bread products from supermarkets to bring to homeless facilities. At those, even the staff were interesting characters, marching to a non-middle-class drummer.

As a member of condo board on the Gold Coast of Connecticut I had to help the owners come up with a humane way to halt the sleeping in the lobby chair of a woman who did have her own apartment. Unfortunately, that wound up requiring sustained police monitoring. Some contended "Sleeping Beauty" was mentally ill. I always had a hunch she embraced values we didn't understand. 

And, when traveling abroad in my mid 20s, I wound up in a homeless shelter for women on the East End of London. Their sense of self was often stronger than my own, at least as a bullied graduate student. 

Reflection: "Home" doesn't necessarily mean, as Virginia Woolf hammered, a room of one's own. Here is her book on all that. 

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Transitions - I Would Have Preferred to Pass Up the Growth

Brilliantly, Nicole and Charles play out the dynamics of transition.

That's in "Marriage Story," which is really a film about divorce. 

The meme is that, yes, everything is working nicely until it stops working. Then, human beings get plunged into the pain and possibilities of adjustment and building a platform for what is next.

Currently, both in relationships and professional life, transition is the new normal. That's among the reasons "Marriage Story" resonates with so many.

The need to let go of what had been so very okay begins - how we all remember - when we graduate from college. Even if we are continuing formal education that will be in the more serious, emotionally sterile, highly competitive corridors of law school or graduate degree programs.

The bonds of college cannot hold. Adulthood seems all too hard.

What Baby Boomers didn't expect was that the transitions would continue right into semi-retirement/retirement/reverse retirement.

In the 1980s, we got knocked out of the corporate box through downsizing and technology.

The self-employment option was one we likely never anticipated taking.

Then there were the economic downturns following 9/11 and the worldwide financial crash.

Recovery wasn't evenly spread around in an America that favored youth and digital natives.

Then retirement? Maybe not for long. The Federal Reserve documents one-third of those who left the workforce have bounced back in. That even has a title: reverse retirement.

Of course, the generations following the Baby Boomers all had and are having their own kinds of transitions. And, for all it seems to be a bitch. Consider the epidemics of clinical depression, substance abuse, and suicide. 

The rah-rah crowd clucks about the growth achieved through transition. "Marriage Story" questions that kind of extreme optimism.

How some of us yearn for the whatever it takes to live the lifestyle of real-life character Christopher Knight. It was essentially transition-free.

In "The Stranger in the Woods," Michael Finkel captures the tale of 27 years living in the woods of Maine, without job, any human companionship, and sophisticated technology. In the single-minded focus on survival, Knight encountered few transitions. And even those few could be anticipated, such as the summer crowd leaving and that source of the food he would pillage cut off.   

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Economic Refugees - Don't Get Yourself into a "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" Pickle

According to the Social Security Administration, the number of retirees receiving their monthly checks outside the U.S. zoomed up 40% between 2007 and 2017. And the media such as CBS calls those on the receiving end around the world "economic refugees."

Like all refugees, they fled their roots to find a better kind of life.

But instead of coming to the U.S. as so many from Europe did in the early 20th century, they are heading out of the U.S. to low-cost nations such as Ecuador and Mexico. 

Many of those suffered investment reversals, especially during The Crash of 2008. Others just have had with hustling. They don't want to chase after part-time jobs and gig work after they finish up their official careers. Then there are those who have had it with American values. Yes, they can truly re-start their lives without the pressure of having to be wealthy - or, at least appearing that way. 

The best way to navigate this decision is to use vacations from work to travel to those distant places.

Reading about it isn't enough. The film "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" made that point. Brits who outlived their assets travel to a retirement center in India - without having visited it before. It's an unfinished edifice. 

More common is the disappointment that routine tasks of life, such as fixing broken plumbing, aren't done on U.S. time. Those who are supposed to do the work often don't have a sense of urgency. So, those expecting the kind of service typical in America become unhinged. 

That shouldn't surprise. Even a domestic move from the New York Metro area to the American Midwest usually requires toning down The New York. Otherwise the retiree is going to wind up isolated.

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No Fool Like an Old Fool?

Steve Jobs wannabe Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes is still in black.

Only at the pre-trial court hearing it wasn't the signature black turtleneck.

It was a basic black dress and black blazer. And, at age 35, she's still attractive.

Some conjecture that it had been her youthful blonde good looks which lured big establishment names such as Henry Kissinger to the Theranos board of directors. At one point superlawyer David Boies had represented her.

Her trial on 11 counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud will begin on July 28, 2020, in San Jose, California. Here is a summary of those counts by the Department of Justice. And, here is a copy of the actual indictment. 

The contention is that she and the startup's number-two Sunny Balwani deliberately misled investors, regulators, and the public about a technology which didn't exist. Balwani, who had also been her lover, was in court but arrived separately. In a television interview he argued that Theranos represented a business failure, not a fraud. If convicted, both face decades in prison.

But meanwhile, she did win one in court. She requested that the Food and Drug Administration speed up the process of turning over documents to her legal team. It claims that would require 6 months. No way, ruled federal judge Edward Davila. He gave the regulatory agency 75 days. Here are more details from the media.

By the time of the trial, most of the tech world could be in the reputational toilet. Regulators, media, the stock market, consumers, and the public globally could have turned on it. An indication of how bad it could it get is playing out in Europe. New York University marketing professor and internet expert Scott Galloway has been predicting just that. 

My hunch is that it will be difficult for both sides - prosecution and defense - to find objective jury members in the San Jose area. The defense might request a change of venue, which could delay the trial. Delays help defendants. 

In the tabloid media this saga could go down as "The Blonde and The Old White Men." On "SNL," there can be a film noir rendition of a board meeting. 

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Baby Boomers - Making That Gigantic Shift from Post-War Wild Optimism to 21st-Century Pessimism

" … pessimism has an image problem." - David Olusoga, The Guardian, July 14, 2019. Here is the thought piece.

The unique problem for us Baby Boomers in arranging some kind of financial security as we age is this: The post-war optimism we embraced.

The odds are that pessimism about what-if scenarios would yield the results we need to not become homeless by age 85. Pessimism tends to cover more bases. 

After the carnage of World War II, those in America in charge of memes made it their business to introduce a wildly positive mindset. On the plus side, that might have helped create the economic tide which lifted all boats. 

In our overcrowded classrooms, swim lesson at the Y, and Sunday School lessons, we were told all was possible. Just keep our nose clean, go to college, get married, and (for females) don't get pregnant before marriage. 

There was no undertow of the M. Scott Peck's notion that life is difficult. It took his publishing his book "The Road Less Traveled" to make that dark idea sticky. 

Life, of course, began to block the sunshine. Popular film "The Graduate" captured how hard it was to transition from what could be called The Program for Baby Boomers to making a place for ourselves after our formal education in an economic system that was sharp-elbowed - and unfair.

Relationships, it turned out, required lots of work. It wasn't what had been positioned and packaged on 1950s series "Father Knows Best."

Disappointment made us America's First Therapy Generation.

But, early conditioning doesn't erase easily. Inside there is still our inner optimist. Trust the system. And all will turn out well.

What we should trust is what we had learned in the required science course in college. That was to apply the scientific method to problem-solving. Approach whatever as an experiment to rule out some solutions and confirm others which were effective. 

That means not buying into supposed expert advice or following the example of celebrities and neighbors.

Many initiatives as we age will fail. But if we approach them as experiments we can navigate life as it is more smoothly and with less trauma.

For example, on expert advice I relocated from aged-biased expensive New York Metro area to southwestern Arizona. The latter had a higher median age and lower cost of living. Had I framed that as try-it-out, I wouldn't have struggled so hard to make it work. Only after 27 months I moved out of AZ and on to Plan B. 

My determination to operate my two boutique for at least six more years is yet another experiment. What I have as a kind of control group are those who have retired.

In itself, retirement is a try-it-out.

According to the Federal Reserve, that plan hasn't panned out for one-third of retirees. They have bounced back into the workforce.

It's not only a matter of money. Retirees found once their professional identity was over they became invisible. 

Obviously, those considering retiring should set that up as a experiment. Their control group are those of us who remain out here hustling. Here, free to click open, is my book on how to land, hold, and move on to better work, at any age Download Outwitting ageism.

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