so you want to be a media trainer

Downsizing, shutdowns, collapses worldwide means carnage in Adland but an upsurge in two businesses: fortune telling and media training. You might not have what it takes to tell fortunes, but surely all those new business pitches puts you in good stead to be a media trainer. For your bag of tricks: this oldie but goodie, a short film demonstrating how not to do damage control. Courtesy, A Current Affair, the Australian version of SNL's Weekend Update. If you're looking for clients, seems the folks over at Motrin could use your services.


hat tip to Scott at MyExtraLife

if you're a boomer, you remember where you were 45 years ago today

November 22, 1963 was a defining moment for kids growing up in post-war America, a date we recalled to each other for years, and still recall to each other when younger (more employable) people aren't in the room.

Our memories aren't of Warren reports or conspiracy theory, but of how the world a kid took for granted, its safety, its social orders, was shattered in the space of a single afternoon. (As our own kids' vision of world order would be similarly detonated, 38 years later.)

I was in third grade, enduring arithmetic class. Suddenly, Sister Superior burst through the door and whispered something to our teacher, who began to cry. She fumbled in her mysterious robes, pulled out a hankie, and told us the news: the President had been shot, but not killed. Then, schoolbuses magically appeared outside the windows, hours before it was time for dismissal.

When I got home, the television was on, which was unusual in our house during the day. Even more unusual was that all three channels showed the same thing, so that we watched what was previously unthinkable come to pass, not just once, but over and over.

Of the events shown, the one most shocking to me was unseemliness on the part of Jackie, who'd been held up to me as a role model, being the first Catholic First Lady. One minute, she was seated beside her husband, looking proper in her pink pillbox hat, matching coat and white gloves. The next minute, she was clambering across the trunk of a car⎯behavior so inappropriate for a First Lady, not to mention one who was Catholic, that every time the scene was replayed, I half expected she'd do something else, and so was astonished again and again.

used to be there wasn't enough fuss about a woman getting a job as a secretary

Whether or not you agree with Obama's pick, you have to admit that Hillary's appointment says something about how times have changed since I was a kid, when girls grew up to be only one kind of secretary and the only cabinet they worked with was in a kitchen.

Being a secretary was a job I did not aspire to. (I thought waitressing better: at least you got tips.) So when I was in college and looking for summer work, I snubbed Katy Gibbs and Kelly Girl and drove over to Manpower Employment Agency instead. As its name suggested, it listed jobs for men. But by the early 70s, there were laws that said they had to list jobs for women, too.

I'd seen an ad they'd run for a landscape worker, thinking how nice and tan I'd get by July. But when I asked about it, I was told I'd come to the wrong place. "This is the men's side. The woman's side is around the corner."

I went back out and through another door and there I found listings for secretaries, cashiers, nannies, candystripers, restaurant help. But no jobs outdoors. And no pay that approached what was offered on the other side.

So, I drove home, took off my interview dress, put on overalls, came back and (deep breath) walked through the men's door. My reappearance caused much consternation. "You can't take a job away from a man supporting his family, honey," I heard not only from the woman (!) behind the desk, but from men in line behind me, hoping for work. I saw their point. I really did. Part of me felt sorry for them. But part of me felt I had a right to work, too.

I held out for a day or so before taking a summer job as a waitress.

yes we did

candidate for change, 1952

Dwight D. Eisenhower was the first presidential candidate to use TV commercials, though he was skeptical about using the new medium. Here, a homemaker speaks upwards as if to the heavens, "High prices are just driving me crazy." Eisenhower immediately cuts in and answers benevolently, "It's another reason why I say it's time for a change."



Ike's opponent, Adlai Stevenson, wouldn’t appear on television because he thought it demeaning to a man ascending to the presidency. Instead, he had his daughter do commercials for him, literally singing his praises, adulatory as Obama Girl.



Ike answered this with his own musical spot, produced by Roy Disney, Walt's brother. Note similarity to the animation and opening march music of the "Mickey Mouse Club". Roy later produced "Our Friend The Atom", an animated commercial for the White House's "Atoms for Peace" campaign.


tips of the hat to DKR and BoingBoing