[Dialogue] Shocked!

Wed Oct 10 17:09:37 EDT 2007

Dear Jim,

  I agree with your wife.  The responders to your earlier dialogue did miss your point, and an important point well taken it was.  But you have to take the bulk of the responsibility for that.  You chose to use an illustration that was so glaring in its insensitivity that it totally obscured the real point you were making.  It was offensive, I suspect, to most women and to more than a few of us guys, including me.

  By the way, I'm 69 years old and I was reading Betty Friedan back in those days also, and have read other important women since then, like the late Anita Roddick who founded The Body Shop.  The story of your woman friend who has gone on to "bigger and better things" is telling.  What's interesting about that story is that she referred to you as the "best boss" she ever had.  The story would have had much more power if she had referred to you as the "best subordinate" she ever had.

  Don't bail out on us now just because there's a little heat in the kitchen.  Most of us are likely to get slapped around a little from time to time, or it would be blabber rather than dialogue.  Hang in there.

  Best wishes,
  Randy Williams

Jim Rippey <jimripsr at qwest.net> wrote:
        st1\:*{behavior:url(#default#ieooui) }                I started out writing this in reply to what Adelbert Batica wrote.  But in view of the continuing comments, It’s become more than that.

  Yes, I am SHOCKED.  And I guess I am naïve.  The corporate world I lived in 40 years ago had its faults but it certainly was vastly different from the corporate world I see everywhere now.  The CEO I wrote for made something like $200,000.  Competition for that “corner office” was fierce.  And that CEO salary was maybe only 15 times what I could hire an entry level person for.  (Yes, because of the CWA contract.  But for a CEO to make more than 30 times what an average employee made was still unusual back then.)  I remember in 1962 when the accounting people were ecstatic because the company had finally fully funded our pension obligation.  And back then, NWB and other Bell companies matched donations employees made to any worthy cause that was certified as tax exempt by the IRS. 

  I guarantee you that most Bell System employees were proud to be telephone people.  I was asked to write a company history and when it was published, the company gave the books to the long service Telephone Pioneers.  They sold those histories as a fund raiser for their charitable work and lots of proud employees paid to buy that book. However, by the time I retired in the early 80s, I kept running into people who told me, “You sure got out at the right time.”

  Along the way, the Bell System was split up, NWB became part of US West and Qwest bought US West.  And almost immediately it killed off the matching gift program.   A couple of years ago, the CEO of Qwest was making more than $15 million with salary, bonuses and stock options.  He made more in five days than the CEO I worked with made in a whole year.  Make it 10 days allowing for inflation.

  Back in those days, Northern Natural Gas Co. was a big, well respected corporation with headquarters in Omaha.  The Northern Natural people were as proud of their company as the Northwestern Bell employees were of theirs.   Along the way Northern Natural changed its name to Enron, bought a Houston company and the board imported Ken Lay from Houston and made him CEO.  He moved to Omaha and said nice things.  But then, quite suddenly and apparently because of some shenanigans on the board, Enron headquarters was moved  to Houston.   And eventually, the Northern Natural people’s retirement funds were wiped out by Ken Lay and Enron’s bankruptcy.

  Yes, I’m shocked.  And sick.  Nor do I agree, as Karl Hess puts it, that free enterprise hasn’t existed for years.  But it is getting mighty scarce and American voters are too gullible to understand what is happening, or what it is costing them.  

  As for the flap over my use of the word whore, I’m surprised and disappointed by several of the reactions I’ve received.  I’ll reprint what I wrote:

  “Today, there are far too many politicians toadying to big business interests because that’s where the money is.  When women do this, we call them whores.”

  First off, I’ll say that, of course there are male whores, too.  However, my use of the word was to make the point that in our current economic system, what these men (and women who are part of it) are doing makes them whores and that’s what they should be called.   In fact, what they are doing is WORSE because people are being killed and/or impoverished as a result of their corporate greed.  And it’s sickening to see the enabling laws politicians are willing to pass if the price is right.

  As for feminism, I was probably reading Betty Friedan before a lot of OE-ICA people were out of high school.  I was an early subscriber to MS mag and I promoted women at the phone company.  I just got a letter from a woman who went on to bigger and better things, has lots more money than I do, and she still claims I was the best boss she ever had.  And for the record, my wife of 60 years doesn’t hesitate to criticize me.  But she’s read some of the Dialogue criticism and simply says, “They’re missing your point.

  So I guess I should be sorry that some were offended.  But at the same time, I’m offended that some people read what I wrote, missed the irony of it, and chose to focus their upset on that instead of what is happening to our world and our country.

  Yes, I am shocked
 and disgusted.  I think I will give op on Dialogue for a while.  

  Jim Rippey

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