Ken Osmond, who played the two-faced Eddie Haskell on the 60s sitcom “Leave It to Beaver,” died last week. It’s been nearly a half century since I watched the show, but I remember Osmond’s Haskell character with great clarity and fondness.
Osmond’s passing got me to thinking about my other most memorable TV supporting characters. To qualify for my list, a show had to be off the air for more than three decades.
She’s back! Eighteen months after a damning report revealing that Sheryl Sandberg was a ruthless executive ultimately responsible for smearing a prominent Facebook critic and Holocaust survivor with false accusations of anti-Semitism, Sandberg is again fashioning herself as a feminist activist and promoting a dubious Facebook small business program. These are good “make work” activities because indications are Sandberg has quietly been shunted aside.
Do the names Tim Bray and Christian Smalls mean anything to you? If you’re concerned about the pervasiveness of corporate wrongdoing and the widespread toadyism that enables it, they should.
Joe Biden and his media enablers sent a powerful message to women who want to come forward with accusations of sexual misbehavior against powerful politicians: Unless your abuser is a Republican, best to keep your allegations to yourself.
David Zapolsky, Amazon’s general counsel and a corporate officer, thought it a great idea to publicly trash a warehouse supervisor with only a high school degree, calling the worker “not smart or articulate.” The worker, Christian Smalls, may lack Zapolsky’s Ivy League education, but thanks to a leaked memo he’s out finessed Amazon’s entire senior management. Yet another example of what happens when lawyers gain control of a company’s PR practices.
Chuck Todd, Jim Acosta, and the rest of the White House press corps would do America a great service if they stepped aside and let L.A. anchor Alex Cohen handle Donald Trump’s daily coronavirus briefings. Cohen has the talent, temperament, and temerity to engage Donald Trump and expose truths about the president that would be undeniable even to his longtime supporters. Donald Trump talks tough, but he’s no match for the tattooed roller derby terror infamously known as “Axels of Evil.”
While many journalists on Saturday were suffering bees in their bonnets because President Trump was disrespectful to NBC correspondent Peter Alexander, veteran Wall Street Journal reporter Jacob Schlesinger was busy reporting out the story White House correspondents have coveted for years but didn’t appreciate was out there: Donald Trump’s admission of failure.
World leaders on Monday marked the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp with calls warning against the rise of global antisemitism. A day earlier, Michigan Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib promoted a false “blood libel” claim that Jews murdered a Palestinian child in Jerusalem. Jewish leaders demanded that Tlaib apologize. Here’s why I’m glad she didn’t.
Boeing’s grounded 737 MAX, which experienced two crashes and claimed 346 lives, was a cost saving move to tweak an existing airplane design rather than develop a new plane from scratch. So, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that nearly half of the Boeing directors who approved the initiative have ties to private equity. One of them is David Calhoun, who took over as Boeing’s CEO on Monday.
The flying public can take great comfort knowing that Calhoun is an accountant by training, as are two of the three Boeing directors who comprise the board’s aerospace safety committee. What more could possibly go wrong?
Most PR professionals will tell you the importance of getting out before the media and telling your story. Harvey Weinstein and his advisors offer a case study as to why that’s sometimes a very bad idea.
I’m a journalist and television pilot writer. I previously was president of a New York City-based PR and crisis communications firm. Earlier, I was a business reporter with major newspapers in the U.S. and Canada. I also worked as an advertising copywriter. Born and raised in Toronto, I’ve lived in London (the one famous for snowsqualls), Montreal, Boston, Detroit, New York, San Francisco, and Marin County. I post regularly on LinkedIn and can be reached at: