I enjoy the spirited debate that takes place on political talk shows.  Chris Matthews on MSNBC is a nightly favorite.  I like Chris Wallace on Fox too, and with a pot of coffee by my side I love the Sunday morning political shows on the major networks. But lately they all bug me.  The pundits are infected with “Look”, which is often followed with “here’s the deal”, or “it’s like this”.

“Here’s what deal”?  Your deal?

“It’s like this”?  What’s like this?  The truth is like this?  Says who?  You?

But the worst is definitely “look” followed by an opinion, as if prefacing the statement with look gives it more weight.  I don’t know why this annoys me except that it comes off as aggressive and if you have to deliver your message with aggression your message is lacking something that would otherwise allow it to stand on its own.

I love President Obama but I blame him for the “look” trend.  Throughout his textbook campaign for the Presidency, I wondered why he began so many sentences with look, as in “Look, the American people are asking for better health care and better education for their children……”

OK, couldn’t you have said all that without the look part?   Look usually comes before “if I told you once, I told you a thousand times, don’t talk back to your mother”, which is what look meant to me growing up.

For that reason, look is patronizing.  If you were to paint what “look” looks like, I’m sure a pointed finger would be the focal point. We don’t need look to fix the problems of our country.  Look is getting in the way.  It makes everything that follows sound more extreme and we’re already too polarized.

Excuhoooose me Mr. President, you’re preachin’ to the choir over here.  I get it.   I’d vote for your health care plan if I could but please stop with the look. You’ve brought cool and intelligence to the White House and civility too, but look ruins it, like you smoking.  The look that works for me is the way you gaze at your wife.  Women would die to be looked at that way.  So do more of that and less of the other look.

So look, the next time you watch a political round table, count the number of times the guests say “look”.  Let me know if you get through one of these shows without hearing it at least five times.  And thank you.  I feel better now.

That Syracuse’s next mayor is a woman is a footnote to the extraordinary accomplishments of the weaker sex in our region.  In her victory speech last night, Stephanie Miner expressed gratitude to her grandmothers who illuminated the path to a career in public service previously reserved only for men.

Miner now joins another attorney at the top tier of local government, Republican Joanie Mahoney, elected the first female Onondaga County Executive in 2007.  Just a generation ago Miner, Mahoney, Syracuse University Chancellor Nancy Cantor and Onondaga Community College President Debbie Sydow would have met for a gentle game of bridge and little more. Today they oversee governments and institutions of higher learning with thousands of employees and multi-million dollar budgets.

Mahoney angered some county workers last month by suggesting jobs would be cut in order to have a budget taxpayers can afford.  Now there’s a public official who knows kitchen table economics!  When the checking account runs low, you stop spending.  You buy school clothes at Target and not Abercrombie if you can afford school clothes at all.  Sometimes you just have to make due with what you have, including last year’s jeans which are now high waters on sprouting children.  Tough.  We’re lucky enough to eat.

Mahoney also showed a mother’s grace by realizing the large and vocal crowd protesting in front of the OnCenter represented the workers at risk and not the taxpayers who have to choose between medicine and heat.  As the empathizers of the universe, women are skilled at identifying the motive behind the complaint.   I never listened to how terrible was a teacher before asking my child if they had received a bad grade that day.

I had the good fortune of working for one of the nation’s first female commercial television station general managers and for that Cathy Creany suggested in 1989 I reduce my work schedule when managing three children under the age of four and a career wore me down to the point I wasn’t particularly good at either.  It was just what the doctor ordered.  My babies were happy, and my station was happy at the top of the ratings.  Ten years later along came a man who fired me for doing what Creany suggested I do; work part-time.

I immediately found work at WSYR-TV and was very happy there, until I was enticed to return to WTVH by, you guessed it, another female general manager.  Maria Moore was sent to stop the bleed in the ratings. It was the last real shot we had at becoming number one again.  With sharp instincts and a democratic management style, Maria knew what she was doing.

It was a great second run but it came to a halt 11 years later.  See the pattern?  Yup, another male general manager at WTVH and another door shown to me.  From now on, if I’m ever hired again by a female television executive (are you listening Theresa Underwood, WSYR?)  and a man takes over,  I’ll write a resignation letter prophylactically and spare us all the suspense.

Which calls to mind the single most effective political campaign phrase I ever heard.  In 2002 attorney Deborah Karalunas ran for New York State Supreme Court Justice.  Her TV commercials featured an enthusiastic male announcer directing us to “Remember the Woman!”    What woman?  It didn’t matter!  The woman! Today I’m not sure how many viewers from that time could recall the name of the candidate, but the demand we “Remember the Woman!” in language so simple a four year old could understand it, heck, it sounded like the way a four year old talks, was enough to get Karalunas elected to the bench where she remains today.

2010 will go down in the record books as the year women seemed to run everything.  WSYR-TV, CXTec, other businesses both big and small, households, private and public colleges and the top offices of city and county government will all simultaneously be run by women.   In 2002 we heard it and we ran with it. Bring on 2010.  Remember the Woman!

I am overwhelmed with the good wishes and good ideas from readers with way more experience at throwing large parties than I.  I’m having a fundraiser for my friend Jean Kessner who is running for the Syracuse Common Council. Six people or fewer?  I’ll take you on.  More than that?  I want my mommy!

I’m washing platters and dishes.  I’m writing lists to keep track of lists.  I’m replacing light bulbs I should have replaced long ago.  Cobwebs in the corner?  There’s no time like the present.  Company has a way of getting one’s act together.  250 invitations were sent out.  I’m told by political experts to expect 50 attendees.

Christian my artistic 16-year old is creating a little surprise for guests at the door.  He’s only charging me $10.00 for it.

Here’s the frustrating part.  I’ve got this great house, if I may say so myself, only I had to move things out of place to keep people from hurting themselves and now the place looks a little odd.

The little white table in the breakfast room has been moved to the corner of the living room because it’s the perfect place for the wine bar.  That leaves the breakfast room looking empty and weird with chairs pushed against the walls.  I brought the  undersized side table from the living room in front of the chairs so that people wouldn’t clunk themselves on the head with the chandelier that descends from the ceiling in the center of the room, and they’ll have someplace to put things.  When you’re at a big party there’s never enough surface area to put down glasses or plates.

I want everyone who walks in the door to see my house as my family and friends see it every day. But that’s not possible now. They’ll see a wooden spider-back side chair pressed near the upholstered easy chair by the fireplace.  The effect is off-balance and crowded but if two guests want to continue the conversation while seated, this will be perfect, unlike the permanent placement of the spider-back chair near the french door into the sun room.  In a room full of people that chair would intrude on the flow of the circular floor plan.

I think I have enough of everything and because of that, I wonder if anyone will show up. A couple of my friends are interested in coming after the real guests are gone so this party may stretch beyond the 8 pm closing time.  I hope so.

Life’s big events often reveal the quality of one’s friends and this bash is a big event for me.   All my life I was so busy raising four children as a single parent and cursing the clock on the kitchen wall, the last clock of many I saw on my dash to work each day, that I didn’t have the reserve to entertain at home.  Three of the four children are thriving in their own place and the clock has as much power over me as those melting ones in Salvador Dali oils, so I’m ready for this final frontier of homemaking.

My friends are ready to launch into service at the ring of a cell phone.  The readers of this blog who left suggestions for a smooth event continue to astound me.  Sounds corny but I am so lucky.

I promise photos and a full report tomorrow night.

Now, where’s my mommy?

It’s satisfying to see a U.S. President who publicly admits his mistakes, but it’s disappointing to see how he does it.  The word “screw” does not belong in any Presidential speak.  In referring to his two failed Cabinet appointments, President Obama went on several network television programs and said on each one “I screwed up”.   Mr. President, you are a brilliant and classy guy.  Please sound like it.

The dictionary offers several definitions of screw as a verb: to fasten or tighten, to undo by turning as with a bottle top, to contort by twisting, to extract or extort, to threaten, to have sexual intercourse with.  When people today say “I screwed up”, they are referencing the latter, though I’m convinced few people know it.

Because profanity has found it’s way into song lyrics, film and school buses, ordinary slang no longer sounds so bad.  All things being relative, words like screw, lousy, stupid and suck seem charming.  But they really make the user sound stupid, pardon my slang.

One of our local newscasters was accused in an online forum of saying the word “pissed” on the air.   Whether or not Dan Cummings really used the word was second to the controversy that followed over use of the word itself.  Half of the posters thought pissed is a fine word, the other half did not.

To me, it speaks to education in the home.   As a child if I used slang, I got punished.  I can’t imagine what would have happened if I was caught actually swearing.  “Lousy” was bad enough.   It’s why I’m so judgmental when I hear well-educated professionals inserting slang as if it’s acceptable.   I wonder, where was the good parenting?  And will these people drop the ball as parents themselves, perpetuating the problem until ugly words like these fail to raise the hair on the back of anyone?

Politicians and newscasters speak on camera to an audience of millions every day.  If anyone has the opportunity to set an example of proper English, it is they.  Let’s hope Michelle Obama takes her open-minded husband to task over the word “screw”, and viewers chide news anchors to do better when they slip.

I mentioned a few slang words that don’t belong in an intelligent conversation.  Let’s hear more.  If people don’t respond to this challenge of mine, I swear, I’ll be pissed.