Dear Hillary: Some advice on taking criticism

Dear Hillary,

Watching the Democratic debate last night, I was reminded of some words I wrote in 1944 about handling criticism. It seems your opponents, and the press, have become more vociferous in their criticism of you ( rather unfairly at times, in my opinion). I do hope you’ll find the following helpful:

What about criticism? I am always being asked if it troubles me, or makes me angry, or hurts me. Should we be affected by criticism regardless of its source?

In the last analysis you have to be friends with yourself twenty-four hours of the day. If you run counter to others now and then, you have enemies, but life would become unbearable if you thought about it all of the time, so you have to ignore the critics. You know quite well when you face audiences and are among crowds of people, that perhaps everybody present dislikes you cordially. Then you do your best to make others see your point of view, but if you cannot win them over, you still must go on your way because each human being has an obligation to do what seems right according to his own conscience. If you are honest, you will always be your own most severe critic.
To spend your life, however, thinking about “what will be said,” would result in a completely unprofitable and embittering existence. Since one of the chief things that human beings can do to be helpful in life, is to be cheerful, it would indeed be foolish to dwell upon the criticism of those who can know little about you, who do not take the trouble to verify their facts, and who frequently have ulterior motives for the things which they say or write.

I think it is salutary to read criticisms, even unkind and untrue ones. I do when they happen to come my way in the natural course of events. I do not seek them out, but they certainly tend to keep one from being overconfident or getting what is commonly known as the “swelled head,” but all of us must be wary not to have our confidence in ourselves completely destroyed, or we will be unable to do anything. Some criticisms I read and forget. Some remain with me and have been very valuable because I know they were kindly meant and honest and I admired and believed in the integrity of the people who expressed their convictions which were opposed to mine.

I would not want the people I love and who are most often with me to withhold criticism, but since those are the people you must count on for giving you the courage to live with a purpose, they are the ones who have the greatest responsibility to make their criticism constructive, since they know you will pay attention to them.

Sometimes criticisms I have read have seemed unjustified and unkind, and sometimes they have annoyed or hurt me, but I learned long ago that the world is not based on universal justice! One should not expect it, so I think that I have developed a great indifference except where people in whom I believe are involved. I can honestly say that I hate no one, and perhaps the best advice I can give to anyone who suffers from criticism and yet must be in the public eye, would be contained in the words of my aunt, Mrs. William Sheffield Cowles. She was President Theodore Roosevelt’s sister and the aunt to whom many of the young people in the family went for advice. I had asked her whether I should do something which at that time would have caused a great deal of criticism, and her answer was: “Do not be bothered by what people say as long as you are sure that you are doing what seems right to you, but be sure that you face yourself honestly.”

Friendship with oneself is all important because without it, one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.

Sincerely, Eleanor Roosevelt

Be sure to read about my run for President in 1952 at Robin Gerber’s website: www.robingerber.com

Doubting Women’s Leadership

 

---

As I go around the country giving talks about, “Leadership the Eleanor Roosevelt Way,” people often sigh deeply and say, “If only Eleanor Roosevelt were around today.” As we remain embroiled in war with Iraq, continue to have a diminished role in the United Nations and flail against terrorism, they long for her conviction and courage. Women are particularly hungry for role models of leadership other than the saber-rattling men that surround the President. But women’s leadership is treated as an oxymoron. In our society, women are not valued, looked to or easily recognized as leaders.

The evidence is as close as your local bookstore. Rudy Guiliani’s book, Leadership fits neatly next to the leadership lessons culled from Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld’s lives. Head to the business bookshelf for more in this genre, and you’ll find Lincoln on Leadership, Patton, Reagan, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Grant, Lee, Teddy Roosevelt, Churchill, Attila the Hun and Jesus, to name a few, but until I wrote about Eleanor’s leadership, the only woman on the list was Elizabeth I. That was five years ago, and there’s still not another leadership book based on a woman’s life. The message: if you want to learn leadership from history’s leaders look to the men.

It’s not just about books, of course.

The news: About 85 percent of the sources on ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News are male, according to a study by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). Only 15 percent of the sources were women, and they were rarely portrayed as the opinion leaders or experts. Of the women who were shown on the nightly news, almost half were “ordinary Americans” as opposed to experts; only 14 percent of the men were presented as non-experts.

The debate: The overwhelming majority of opinion leaders debating the top issues of the day on Sunday morning talk shows are men, many of them politicians whose leadership benefits by exposure on these influential programs, according to a recent study done by the White House Project.

The gurus: Of the nation’s top 50 living business gurus, 47 are male, according to a study released this year by Accenture’s Institute for Strategic Change. How did Accenture come up with the list? By counting web hits on Google, media mentions and scholarly citations. Talk about your self-reinforcing loop!

This overwhelming cultural bias makes it all too easy to forget that women have a strong legacy of leadership in this country. In Eleanor Roosevelt’s case, she had all the qualities Rudy Guiliani, John McCain, John Edwards or any of the other men running for President today bring to their leadership – and then some. She used her platform to achieve her vision – human and civil rights for all, equal rights for women, and a better life for our nation’s children. She was authentic, ethical, fearless and bound to the concerns of the least fortunate in our society. In her day, Eleanor enhanced the national debate on a range of issues in ways that were creative, bold and grown from her experience as a woman.

Eleanor would no doubt be pleased that we finally have a woman running for President. And Hillary Clinton, appropriately, looks to Eleanor’s life for inspiration. As we look toward the possibility of electing Hillary as President, it’s worth reminding ourselves that, acknowledged or not, women have shown themselves to be forceful and effective leaders. As Eleanor said, “Women, whether subtly or vociferously, have always been a tremendous power in the history of the world.” If we elect a woman as leader of the most powerful nation in the world, I’m confident we’ll prove what Eleanor always knew: that women can handle the greatest leadership challenges as well as any man.

Go to www.RobinGerber.com to read about my new novel, coming out in January: “Eleanor vs. Ike,” where Eleanor Roosevelt runs for President in 1952!

MY FIRST POST

Dear Reader,

I’ve always loved new technology. Of course, I’ve written many newspaper and magazine articles, but I also spent many hours speaking on radio, and when television began, I had my own show, “Prospects of Mankind.” My first guest was the Reverend Martin Luther King, and later, John F. Kennedy. I love the innovation of the internet, and particularly this new blog technology. It reminds me of writing my daily “My Day” columns that were syndicated in over one hundred newspapers.

Please come back and read my blog. I plan to comment on issues of the day, and I do hope to hear from you as to your thoughts and activities.

Sincerely,

Eleanor Roosevelt

WHEN IS ENOUGH COULTER ENOUGH?

Television producers and hosts are often obtuse in the extreme. Somehow it wasn’t enough when Ann Coulter derided and slandered women whose husbands had been killed in the Twin Towers on September 11th. “These broads are millionaires … I have never seen people enjoying their husband’s death so much,” Coulter wrote in one of the screeds she passes off as books. Yet even after this revolting comment, where Coulter revealed the depth of her depraved need for attention and the wealth it brings her, television talk shows still asked her back.

Somehow Coulter’s career making inane, vicious and unsupported comments on television didn’t end after these post-911 comments either, “we should invade (terrorists’) countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.” And a week later, “Congress could pass a law tomorrow requiring that all aliens from Arabic countries leave….We should require passports to fly domestically. Passports can be forged, but they can also be checked with the home country in case of any suspicious-looking swarthy males.”

Of course, Coulter had a litany of crazed-utterings that go back a decade, like this gem, “”I have to say I’m all for public flogging. One type of criminal that a public humiliation might work particularly well with are the juvenile delinquents, a lot of whom consider it a badge of honor to be sent to juvenile detention. And it might not be such a cool thing in the ‘hood to be flogged publicly.”—MSNBC 3/22/97

Or this, from Hannity and Colmes in 1999, “I think there should be a literacy test and a poll tax for people to vote.” And on the same show in 2001, “God gave us the earth. We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the trees. God said, ‘Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It’s yours.”

I admit to being a long-time Coulter hater, angered that someone who so lowers the civil discourse is given so many platforms for her vitriol, but I never felt personally attacked until yesterday. Coulter finally showed the true face of her fascistic beliefs, and as a Jew, her words were more than insulting to me, they were horrifying.

Coulter’s perfect world, she told talk show host Donny Deutsch, would look like New York City during the 2004 Republican National Convention. Coulter said, “People were happy. They’re Christian. They’re tolerant. They defend America …” When Deutsch asked if we should all be Christian, Coulter twice said, “yes,” then explained, Well, it’s a lot easier. It’s kind of a fast track. ..You have to obey. ..We just want Jews to be perfected, as they say. That is what Christianity is. We believe the Old Testament, but ours is more like Federal Express.”
Federal Express? She lost me there, but I get the rest. If Don Imus was finally silenced for denigrating African Americans, doesn’t Coulter merit the same treatment? Anti-semites have a right to free speech in this country. That’s why the Nazis got to march in my home-town of Skokie, Illinois years ago. But there’s no Constitutional right to get on the airwaves or in front of audiences for highly paid speeches.

Coulter is a fascist, a person who believes in giving the state the right to create national unity on the basis of race, ethnicity or religion. She’s nothing more. She doesn’t offer intelligent political commentary. She doesn’t hold a position of formal authority which might make challenging her views publicly an important undertaking. She is simply a self-promoting hack who would find Hitler or Mussolini more acceptable dinner guests than say, Donny Deutcsh, the interviewer who made the mistake of having her on his show. He happens to be Jewish too.

VISIT MY WEBSITE: www.RobinGerber.com 

CHRISTOCRATS

Rudy Giuliani is leading the Republican pack for the presidential nomination and that has Christian conservatives squeezing their bibles hard enough to turn the pages to pulp. At overwrought conclaves and in mutterings between leaders on the right, talk has turned to breaking away if they can’t break Rudy’s momentum. But the history of exiting the party in a fit of fire-breathing conviction should give them pause.

Rudy has made the religious right desperate. His less than exemplary family values are the least of his sins in their eyes. Three marriages, the last to a woman he began seeing before his second messy divorce, and estrangement from his children aren’t the kind of back-story religious right voters want to tell their children. And his back-tracking on gay rights hasn’t inspired confidence that he will get on the right track to support the Christian right’s aggressively anti-gay agenda. But Rudy’s belief that women should have a right to choose whether or not to have an abortion make him an accomplice to murder in the eyes of that wing of the Republican party that ensured the current President’s two terms. Rudy can never be absolved of that sin.

Up against the wall of Rudy’s transgressions, Christian conservatives are talking openly of bolting the party if he’s nominated. The most memorable bolt of that sort happened in 1948. Segregationist Southerners, angered at a civil rights’ plank in the Democratic platform, walked out of the convention. They were led by South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond, and called themselves the States’ Rights Democratic Party, but the voters came to know them as “Dixiecrats.” Holding a rump convention, the Dixiecrats made Thurmond their presidential nominee. Their slogan was ‘Segregation Forever.’

The eight states that made up the ’solid South’ had been reliable Democratic votes since Reconstruction, except for 1928 when the Democratic nominee was a Catholic, Al Smith. Conventional wisdom in 1948, shaped by pollsters like George Gallup, held that Truman couldn’t possibly win the election without the Dixiecrats. Famously pre-empting the official vote tally, the Chicago Tribune put out a banner headline, “Dewey Beats Truman.” But he didn’t. After that election, the States’ Rights Democratic Party dissolved as did segregationist political power over the next decade and a half.

Leaders of the religious right, meeting last weekend in Salt Lake City, are talking like latter-day Dixiecrats. They feel the Republican Party takes their votes for granted. Perhaps James Dobson, head of the organization Focus on the Family, who hosts a hugely popular daily radio show by the same name, is a good candidate for the Thurmondesque role of proving the religious right’s independence. He certainly has the required bluster to rail against Rudy. Christian conservatives could honestly appropriate the name “States’ Rights Republican Party.” After all, returning the issue of abortion to the states to decide would be the next best answer for them to a constitutional amendment banning it altogether. “Abortion Never,” might be their party slogan. For short, we could call them Christocrats, likely doomed to the fate of that other splinter party that marched too far from the values of most Americans.

Robin Gerber’s novel, “Eleanor vs. Ike” will be published by Harper/Collins in January. Learn more at: www.robingerber.com