Over-50

Alleged Age/Gender Discrimination - "Torre et al. v. Charter Communications"

On June 19, 2019, five middle-aged female employees filed a gender/age bias lawsuit "Roma Torre, et al. v. Charter Communications." Here is a copy of that complaint. 

Their ages range from 40 to 61.

All five are still working at the cable channel NY1.  And, that's the rub. Here are more details from the New York Post.

Essentially, the troops at NY1 have broken into factions.

Some support the plaintiffs. They give high-fives.

Others perceive them in negative terms, labeling them as everything from jealous to looking for a fat settlement. 

And there are those who just feel fear. They don't like this kind of tension at a job they want to make it their business to hold onto. Broadcast represents glamour. 

Overall, the organizational culture at NY1 had been shifting from one not welcoming "sharp elbows" to highly competitive. Also a star system has allegedly evolved. The plaintiffs view as unfair that Pat Kiernan keeps receiving perks others don't. In addition, his supposed temper tantrums have been tolerated by the powers that be. 

Of course, the side-taking extends beyond the organization. That could damage NY1. Advertisers, viewers, and talent can flee. That can happen quickly. It could take lots longer to do reputation restoration. 

Meanwhile, the plaintiffs face being blackballed in their industry.

In Silicon Valley, after Ellen Pao filed her gender bias lawsuit against former employer Kkeiner Perkins, her employment prospects dried up. The job she did land was at Reddit and she couldn't hold onto it. The jury acquitted her employer.

That losing lawsuit and Pao's professional life since should be an object lesson about the risks of suing one's former or current employer.

Vanity Fair reports on women who were on the front lines of #MeToo who claim to have become victims of retaliation. Their employment prospects had also dried up. In addition, many who sued didn't wind up with lucrative settlements as had former Fox employee Gretchen Carlson. 

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In Workplace, Gender Bias Could Go Poof (but ageism remain)

In some circles, the law firm Sanford Heisler Sharp's signature is the class action gender lawsuit against BigLaw.

A recent high-profile one has been "Tolton, et al. v. Jones Day." Here is a copy of the complaint.

However, if the post-gender era does come, Sanford has nothing to fear. A group or individual with power likely will always be treating unfairly those with less or no power. Lawsuits are in the cards.

In addition, ageism isn't going away. It's one form of blatant prejudice that employers can still get away with. 

Signs of a world without gender classifications seem to be taking shape. That includes language.

Berkeley, California has passed an ordinance banning all gender terms from the city code. Those terms range from "policewoman" to "manhole."

The popular book "Gender Outlaw" by Kate Bornstein envisions social norms which don't differentiate human beings according to the sex organs they were born with. There will be no male. There will be no female.

Increasingly the conventional notion of gender as male or female has broadened into a continuum understanding. On that continuum some human beings are at the points of being more or less male or female in attitudes and behavior.

So, there is no longer such a set notion of what's "female" or "male." On the popular network television series "Good Girls," Beth thinks strategically about criminal activity, like a man is expected to do. However, her deep love of her children would be considered a female trait. 

Also, and most importantly, with fertility rates plunging in developed economies, the female's reproductive role becomes less central to how the world operates. In The Atlantic, Derek Thompson chronicles how the future of cities - the main engine of economic growth - is childless. It might be conjected that the need for offspring could have resulted in a conspiracy to temper female career ambition. 

The time when human beings don't sort out anything based on the perception of gender could arrive sooner than traditionalists anticipate.

An unexpected consequence could be fewer serial killers. Many of those have been locked into sexual-identity distress. With that distress not taking hold any more, there would be no compulsion to kill and keep killing. If "Law & Order SVU" keeps being renewed for another season, it might feature a post-gender plot line. 

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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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Boys Who Allegedly Don't Grow Up

Adolescent boys are practically delusional about where they can channel their sex drive.

They are also Masters of The Smirk. How many parents, even sophisticated ones, have barked out to their teenage sons: Wipe that smirk off your face.

Also, boys in those years between childhood and adult responsibility tend to be mean.

In addition, they frequently get into a pickle with the law.

As we watched Episode Two of Showtime's "The Loudest Voice in the Room" Sunday night, some of us had an ah-ha moment. Could the code about whom Roger Ails really was be broken by analyzing Ailes as a Boy-Man. The media tycoon with the smirk on his face.

Somehow Ailes might have missed that rite of passage which males undergo to leave boyish things behind. Yes, Ailes might well be a classic case of arrested development. Here is TV's summary of Episode Two. 

And, it was the play-out of that syndrome which might have kicked off #MeToo. Ailes died before any of the allegations of sexual misconduct at Fox could be proved in court. So, we will never know for certain if Ailes was the sexual predator he has been suspected to be. However the suspicions were enough for The Murdochs to oust him from Fox.

Meanwhile, this Showtime series, which re-interprets Ailes' rise and fall, could be affecting other careers. For instance, in Episode Two, Rupert Murdoch does not come across as the cunning fox he is usually portrayed as.

Here is speculation about losers and winners from Showtime's "The Loudest Voice in the Room." That programming, although not a ratings blockbuster, could havee long-term impacts on individual professional lives and media in America.

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Becoming Invisible, Then Isolating

Since 2006, the rate of suicide in the U.S. has increased 2% each year.

In addition, suicide attempts are at about 1.4 million annually.

Those are just some of the statistics the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released today from its recent study. Here are more details from Bloomberg.

A sign of these suicidal times, talking about thoughts of offing oneself is no longer taboo. And it has become commonplace.

In fact, last night a Millennial neighbor and I chatted up in front of our building about our bout of suicidal ideation earlier in the week. The woman next door who overheard us joined in. My quip was that when a date asked me my purpose in life, I blurted out: Trying my best to stay alive. 

Yeah, we are a nation in lousy emotional shape.

As the Bloomberg article points out, the 60-year run of optimism about treatments for mental illness - ranging from medication to take therapy - was magical thinking. A reason for that is also something Bloomberg notes:

" ... psychological stressors can activate a genetic predisposition, so life circumstances matter a lot. And the U.S. is home to some particularly challenging ones ..."

WORK SUCKS

At the top of the list is the disenchantment with work. Since Puritan times the work ethic has been the unofficial religion in America. That belief system is being battered on all fronts.

Some don't have enough work.

Others work at what pays peanuts.

Those who have lots of well-paid work such as lawyers, like Gabe MacConaill, are committing suicide. Or they are self-destructing in other ways be those drugs or embezzling client funds and getting caught.

A reason FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) has caught fire is that too many are treated so badly by employers, clients, and customers while working. The dream is to find satisfaction elsewhere.

FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS

The pain is palpable. And, as fellow human beings, we feel it.

So many decent human beings are suffering and it's needless.

The most obvious instance of that is homelessness. Some cities look like third-world countries.

But more pervasive is the extreme loneliness. Gone is the ability to even have a conversation. The Diane Sawyer two-hour television special on screen time pointed the finger for this at digital technology. In addition, the aging become invisible. Then they self-isolate.

RATS NO LONGER STAY IN THE BASEMENT

In Manhattan there used to be the old saying: If the rats stay in the basement, you know things are under control. It's when the rats climb the stairs and merrily join the diners in the restaurant that you know the social system is collapsing. 

The dark aspects of society - corruption, narcissism, violence, and bullying - have taken over. We watch an inspiring film such as "Breakthrough" and are incapable of feeling hope.

It's overdue that the key institutions in society such as the mental health system, education, government, and the private sector look at what Bloomberg labeled "life circumstances." Those are the levers to push to reduce suicide.

Meanwhile, it is possible to get through the day.

Talking to one trusted acquaintance can release the despair.

There are caring human beings at Samaritans. That free hotline (212-673-3000) operates 24/7.

Go the animal shelter and adopt a companion, even if that means relocating to a pet-friendly apartment.

Do one decent human act. That can be as small a gesture as holding the door open for a mother carrying a child. 

Full Disclosure: Several members of my family committed suicide. 

Exactly the right tone and content for all your communications. Complimentary consultation janegenova374@gmail.com.

OJ at 71 - Template for Comebacks, At Any Age

Will OJ Simpson emerge as a highly paid social network influencer? Maybe a political commentator on broadcast? Like Betty White, a presence in the aging niche? Or, maybe, just maybe, a pitchperson on network television commercials for this lawyer or that lawyer. We can hear it already: If you have used Roundup ...

From his Father's Day video on Twitter, it's obvious OJ still has the charisma. Here, you can view the slimmed-down OJ tell the world he's back and will be talking about everything from fantasy sports to, yes, politics. Within an hour it received 673,000 clicks. Currently there are more than 7 million.

Through the Twitter handle @TheRealOJ32, the disgraced star is rebuilding his brand. 

That brand could wind up to be bigger than those of his lawyers such as Alan Dershowitz who successfully defended him in his murder trial.

Will that irk members of the Dream Team, some of whom seem to be struggling to keep their own brands from fading? After all, former admirers of Dershowitz's legal skills wondered what was the political pro-Trump clown act about. Then, more recently, Dershowitz goes on record as saying that if Democrat Joe Biden runs for U.S. president against the incumbent, he will support him. 

OJ could become the most iconic antihero in American pop culture. This Father's Day weekend, ambitious PR types could be knocking out articles analyzing the dynamics of this comeback and providing best-practices bullet points.

Exactly the right tone and content for all your communications. Complimentary consultation janegenova374@gmail.com.

Our Fathers from the 1950s, Our Resentments

It's overdue, isn't it. 

Finally, it would be smart to ditch the extreme anger of many Baby Boomers at the fathers who just weren't there for us - at least not emotionally. 

The actual culture hadn't assigned that role, not yet. Maybe not really now, either.

But, pop culture such as the new medium of television depicted dad as attuned to our difficulties navigating childhood and being a young adult.

At the dinner table every evening, Jim Anderson on "Father Knows Best" picked right up when Kitten was upset. His intervention was more sensitive and effective than that of the mother Margaret. 

Many of us, at least the girls, wanted to be Kitten.

The boys likely identified with Bud who had the average amount of male confusion and Jim never failed to decode life for him.

Meanwhile back then, the social contract had it that if fathers didn't go out for a pack of cigarettes and not return they were doing just great as "family men."

Those without a drinking problem were saints.

And it was us the offspring who were supposed to engage with their emotional conflicts. They ranted how their wives, that is, our mothers, didn't appreciate them. That was even though we ourselves had no emotional education - that is, until our generation embraced BigTherapy. 

In short, the culture let fathers off the hook.

For decades so many of us could not accept that. In essence, we were railroading them into our inner justice system for what was not classified as a crime, at least not yet. 

So, for Father's Day 2019, I am going to set in play a psychic shift. Or, try to.

That could entail driving with the dog from northeastern Ohio to Holy Name Cemetery in Jersey City, New Jersey.

My father's grave is right by the the entrance to the cemetery. I won't be mugged, at least not if I make it quick. (Jersey City's mayor Steve Fulop is waging tech war on crime but it's still a work in progress.)

Here's the scripting for the by-the-grave narrative:

"Dad, it's fine, now. You didn't go beyond the bare requirements of parenting. You got it that you didn't have to. And that was that. Yeah, rest in peace." 

Then, the dog and I will swing by what is no longer the old neighborhood - Bay Street downtown. The tenement in which I grew up is a condo. The past has gone the way of gentrification.

The resentments against fathers of the 1950s have to go the way of enlightened self-interest. There's no emotional payoff in replaying how the relationship could have been or should have been.

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There Are New Rules about Burning Bridges in Careers (but not in personal lives)

The conventional wisdom: Don't burn bridges. Play it safe. You don't know whom they know or the reach of that organization.

The new reality: Professional life is too fragmented and the pace of change too rapid for making an enemy or enemies here and there to matter much. There are exceptions, of course. Among them is the closed system of law. There you better be hyper alert about how your moves could be interpreted.

The possible opportunities from burning bridges: The enemies you make can help you bond with other professionals who also consider that bunch to be lowlifes.

Also, it frequently takes one door to close for another to open. Executive coach Henry Cloud made his signature helping professionals break away from old ties. His still brisk-selling book is "Necessary Endings."

When should you follow the ancient practice of extreme caution in relationships and when dealing with organizations? That's easy: When in transition. That's because you don't yet understand the power structure. 

Currently, transitions are frequent.

Our industry collapses. We have to reskill for another line of work in order to make a living.

We age out of doing face-to-face business and have to rebuild as a telecommuting presence.

The universe smiles on us and we become very successful. It will take time to learn to play the game at that higher level.

Burning bridges in our personal lives? That's a whole different story. As "Dateline" documents over and over again, it could be fatal. 

Exactly the right tone and content for all your communications. Complimentary consultation janegenova374@gmail.com.

 

Entrepreneur or Employee? - Big Difference

They build something that disrupts the media industry. 

The innovation works.

The experience is totally heady, with great influence. After all, it's said that media - not government, business or even technology - is the most powerful force in civilization. 

Then they sell that media outlet or simply move on to try out another role. What could play out next could be labeled The Media Innovator's Dilemma. 

For creator of 24/7 cable television news - Ted Turner - there was no next after he sold CNN.  He became just another businessperson whose former outsized presence went poof. Publicly, he indicated he regretted the sale. From then on, Turner seemed in mourning. And for a while, CNN's ratings plummeted. 

In the niche - legal media - the innovator had been creator of Abovehthelaw (ATL) David Lat. That began in 2006.

Officially he has left that role and become what is really a salesperson's job at headhunting firm Lateral Link. Its playing field is the legal sector.

Of course, that also constitutes a shift from being the boss to being an employee.

So far, Lat seems not to be able to totally let go of the legacy. He posts on ATL. It's in connection with his current headhunting  role, leveraging the aura of the innovation in hopes of developing new business. But, still, a clean break might have signaled amazing confidence in what is next.

As an employee, Lat won't be in charge. Instead he had to get the hang of fitting in to someone else's organizational culture. That's challenging.

In more rigid times in business, corporate employers hesitated hiring former entrepreneurs. They were wary that the transition might be impossible. That was the time of the Organizational Man (and Woman).

Since then, of course, careers paths have become less linear. More founders are parachuting into organizational functions. 

At best Lat could become a thought leader in the world of career strategies in the legal industry.

That's different than being a presence in media.

In his current role, his success depends on body count: How many placements he can make. Yeah, it's business, not mission of changing how news and commentary are positioned and packaged. The organization measures success in terms of that business metric. Either you make the sale or you don't make the sale. The game is binary. 

Lat could succeed at being a headhunter. He could adjust to employee status. He could also make more money than he had in media. But gone with his choice to give up ATL is the unique influence he had.

Media is the loudest voice in just about every context. That "loudest voice" is how journalist Gabriel Sherman summed up Fox News founder Roger Ailes. Here that book can be ordered from Amazon. According to some reports, after being ousted from Fox, Ailes was conferring with deep pockets such as Peter Thiel, who funded "Hogan v. Gawker," to fund launching a competitor to Fox. No, Ailes didn't plan to get a job in someone else's media outlet. 

Also, there is the issue if ATL, like CNN, will shift into a downward trajectory after the founder leaves. Part of the innovator's genius is a good head for the business of media. Are those business smarts embedded in ATL? The ATL DNA was Lat's genetic engineering. 

My hunch is that Lat could have moderate success in the headhunting space. But it's the media innovator's dilemma not to be able to make peace with the decline in influence.

Meanwhile, it would be shrewd reputation management for Lat to let go of ATL, in rebranding himself as a leader in executive search. Turner seemed incapable of that kind of reimagining his professional identity.

As for ATL, the niche of legal media seems ripe for another innovation. It could or could not come from the folks at ATL. A severe downturn can create demand for a fresh kind of analysis and presentation of issues. 

Full Disclosure: Since the late 1980s, I have been an entrepreneur. There I found extreme success versus organizational life. Recently I had a negative experience with Lateral Link. 

Exactly the right tone and content for all your communications. Complimentary consultation janegenova374@gmail.com.