SUMMERS ARE MADE FOR DISNEY

America has become Disney, and Disney has become America.....!

Starting out here in Chicago during the 20s, even Walt himself might never have imagined all that was to happen. But if today he could, would he approve?

First came the animated classics of the 30s and 40s like Snow White and Bambi. Next, the dazzling theme parks of the 50s and 60s like Disneyland and Disneyworld. Today, Disney has come to mean a fine-tuned cookie factory generating a never-stop assembly line of pre-packaged summertime sensations.

Has Disney Corp learned from America, or has America learned from Disney Corp? Perhaps it doesn't makes any difference anymore, because they both operate the very same way. Find a demographic market (giggly pre-teens or sentimental elders, inner-city poor or country club rich, whatever), crunch the numbers (polls, surveys, focus groups, whatever), then package a product that fits that market (summer blockbuster, television series, touring singer, video game, pc, candidate, whatever).

Is it too cynical to say that this way virtually everything and everyone becomes another product launch? And sure enough, usually in the good old summertime when people have the most time to bite the bait.

American capitalism and free enterprise are part of our proud heritage, but do we cheapen the heritage when we invest as much time packaging as we do perfecting the product? Ahh, but then that's not really a problem is it, because in a throwaway culture, no product is made to last too long anyway. A few cases in point.....

In just the last 12 months, Disney has given us the flashy package called Hannah Montana, now the triple-flash package called the Jonas Brothers, and waiting in the wings the salsa flash called Selena Gomez. But watch closely, kids, in another 12 months the Disney Imagineers promise still flashier products coming off the line.

Not to be outdone in the flash-today-gone-tomorrow game, A,erica during those same 12 months has given us Mitt Romney, Rod and Patti Blagojevich, Drew Pearson, Ron Burris, a dozen new reality shows, and a very gifted but exploited Susan Boyle.

Remember the names, folks, because they're here today, forgotten tomorrow. That's Disney! That's America! And, lets admit it, that's us!

5 MINUTE POP QUIZ YOU CAN ALL PASS

From the earliest times of organized societies, societies organized around a division-of-labor. Someone had to milk the goats...someone had to fashion the arrows....someone had to skin the kill. Each person had a role, and it was a functional one. Not any more...!

While there are still functional roles -- doctor, carpenter, aluminum siding -- six vast new categories of function- less humanity have evolved. Go ahead, fill in the blanks >>>

#1 - Experts: They appear one day with degrees after their name, exotic credits to their resume and can write very long polysyllabic reports. They wear dark, tailored outfits and are quoted often in the media. They never come with any doubts, but always with a fee. Here's a hint. Economists were created to make weather forecasters look good. Other examples include ____________________.
#2 - Pundits: They appear on television a lot. No degrees after their name, but they come with a fast mouth, glinty eyes, and steel-trap opinions about everything and everyone. After a few years at this gig, pundits are hired not to interview others, but to interview one another. Robert Frost said, "Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half have nothing to say and keep on saying it." Examples include ______
#3 - Political Bloggers: They are a derivative of pundits, only nobody will pay them so they chatter on their own websites without pay (hmmmm?). Also without much purpose. Examples include ____________________
#4 - Celebrities: They are those among us who are usually famous for being famous. They may have done something once in their life, but now they do nothing with their life. Except pose for the paparazzi, deny rumors about their sex life, and occasionally get arrested so they can go to rehab and then be interviewed by Barbara Walters. From this sub-species of our species name three ________________________________________
#5 - Protestors: They are from all walks of life with all kinds of opinions. Unlike most of us, protesters take their opinions to the streets. Give them a cause that's close to their heart and they'll wear their heart on their sleeve anywhere anytime. Some are there to make a point; others to make the 5 o'clock news.You only have to name one to pass this question _____________________________________
#6 - Freaks: They come in all shapes, sizes and makeup.These are people who will eat worms, climb barned wire, swim swamps, and so long as there's a camera dance with the alligators. Many freaks are former celebrities who themselves were former stars. When you become a public freak, there is nowhere else on the food chain to go. Some currently sad examples include ________________________________

See, I told you this is a quiz everyone could pass!!! Unfortunately!!!

FATHERS DAY IN CHICAGO WITHOUT THE FIRST FATHER

This month Chicago will celebrate Fathers Day without the first father who is now in Washington. That still leaves us 1,061,928 households which include fathers. But as even you have suggested, Mr. President, sometimes the problem with Fathers Day are the fathers....!

Mothers, on the other hand, are naturals for their Day. By every given measure -- biological, emotional, spiritual and traditional -- moms have what it takes to be celebrated. Dads....? I ask you, Sir, how many artists paint padonnas to match their madonnas? How many lyrics are penned to dear-old-father-of-mine? How many children run home with a bloody nose and look for a daddy's lap? How many dying soldiers call out for pappa?

This is not to slam fathers. After all, most believers still think of their god as a guy. But meanwhile back here on earth, florists and candy stores ring up a lot more sales on Mothers Day. And why not? Mothers are what keeps the race going. A few minutes of help from the father-to-be, but now compare his minutes with her months. This new life (at whatever instant you believe it begins) is now lung and ligament a 24/7 part of her own existence. From morning sickness to afternoon exercise to nighttime daydreaming. What only last month was a girl is today a woman. Someone who once lived in her todays, today can't help living in her tomorrows.

I myself a father look at fatherhood as a profound union with my wife. And yet, my wife's union is with cosmic forces I can never touch. Pick whatever name you like-- God, Evolution, Energy, Eternity. While she's dancing in the invisible arms of that ineffable something, I'm still commuting, golfing, and gardening without missing a beat. Or a period. Or a night's sleep.

This June 21st will come and go quietly here in Chicago. As probably it should. Okay, some passing attentions -- a card, a smile, better yet a kiss -- will tell dad you still care. But in any event, the wisdom of the ages should be remembered. The Bible, the ancient Greek dramas, the psychological discoveries by Freud, and yes some of the parenting specials back here by Oprah. Each in its own way is paying tribute to the staggering meaning and meaningfulness of mothers.

Mr. President, a fine way to spend this Fathers Day back here in your Chicago might be for we fathers to get our bearings straight. By tracing them back to the women we made mothers. Back to their place in the galaxy of human existence, to their purpose in the preservation of that galaxy, and to our repudiation of any distractions and desertions of which we may be guilty.

Maybe, lets make this Fathers Day another Mothers Day....!

SECRET TO PBS-MASTER OF MINUTES & MILES

We've all heard the pitch during those persistent PBS calls for money. With a congregational chorus of solicitors in the background, chirpy hosts remind us of the value to our local PBS stations. And they're right. Only not always for the reasons they report....!

If you're looking for top quality news journalism, children's programming and culinary excursions, this is the place. Possibly the only place left in the great and growing cultural wasteland that is television. However, upon closer examination, PBS's greatest contribution may be the way it has learned to master the minutes and miles of our lives. The minutes of lost time, and the miles of other lands. They do it with music.

Take the musical ways they allow us to transcend time. I'm thinking of those remember-when concerts with the singers and singing groups from the 50s, 60s and 70s. In other ages, folks had to recall the songs-of-their-youth in the privacy of their nostalgia. Nothing wrong with that, but now PBS brings all this back to life. Right there in front of graying audiences who cheer to the sights and sounds of their old favorites.

Okay, their favorites look their age as they try to hit the high notes of their old Hit Parade best-sellers. But the audiences are just as old, and just as happy to be re-living their youth with the singers they once danced and fell in love to. When some of us at home watch these 2-hour trips through the labyrinths of young love, we tingle with a few long forgotten tingles. And perhaps we pick up the phone and make that pledge the hosts are chirping about.

Along with the minutes are the miles.

I'm thinking those recurring musical concerts PBS offers from far-off lands. International singing stars from European cathedrals, Tuscany mountainside, Irish music halls, Swiss and Bavarian castles. Your network and cable stations aren't taking their cameras there anytime soon. Instead, they fill out their schedules with more pop music award shows than -- well, then there is good pop music! One wonders how can 20-30 award shows a year X two hours each find enough really award-worthy singers? The answer is, they can't So they just keep trotting out many of the same over-and-over-again favorites padded with a few never-to-be-heard-again bummers.

To be sure, the law of hypocrisy demands that someone like me put up or shut up. So I pledge. Not a lot, but just enough to help PBS keep mastering the minutes and miles of my little life. And whattayaknow -- you get a PBS sticker to show for it!

TIME IS MORE THAN RELATIVE - IT'S EVERYTHING!

You how how it is. The event starts at 8PM, but you're calculating the best time to arrive. Never too early, but exactly how late? The computation is both science and art. Not only for your social life, but your political life as well....!

Cicero put it this way: "All life is a matter of timing." Woody Allen added "80% of success is just a matter of showing up." When you apply this thinking to new ideas, timing takes on special significance. Usually we like to be the first on our block to embrace a new idea so long as it turns out right, but gee-I-never-liked-it when it turns out wrong. History bristles with examples. Fire...the wheel...the alphabet....the Wright Brothers...the Edsel....the 40 to 1 shot at the derby...all those sub-prime mortgages.

A friend's 100 year old father-in-law once confided with a smile, "I've seen many changes in my life, and I was against every one of them." A wise after-thought. But the real payoff is in wise-forethought. Which candidate will have the right stuff? which campaign will put us on the right track? which piece of legislation or which nominee will achieve the right results? oh, and which cablecasting or blogging screamer is the right one to shut off?

Come to think of it, though, some after-thoughts can also be a matter ot good timing. For instance, when is it time to keep cherishing national memories and myths, and when is it time to crate them away? Here too history bristles with examples. Our old frontier spirit of conquering the land and everyone on it...the tall-in-the-saddle rugged individualism of Kit Carson and Buffalo Bill....unregulated free enterprise...empire building...racial profiling...corporate farming...small town Americana.

The problem with some cherished memories and myths is that, after all, they did help get us here. It's never easy to repudiate your own past, to tear pages out of the national photo album, to admit some of the old movies had it wrong. And yet, here again, time is a player. As Ecclesiastes teaches" There is an appointed time for everything...."

In the end, the case for acting with good timing comes to rest before each of us. As individuals and as citizens. It ticks there inviting us to use it in our own decision-making. In democracies, the invitation belongs o everyone. And while millions of us have made the right decisions at the right times, equal millions have really botched it! Rather than investing our time in celebrating one another, how often have we cannibalized one another? The vulgarian packs in Washington, the high-pad shouters in the media, the gun toting gangs in the streets, right down to the way we love to eat our own celebrities from a Mel Gibson to a Lindsay Lohan and now to an overwhelmed Susan Boyle.

All of which brings us back to the case for good timing. In other words -- knowing which bridges to cross, which top burn, and exactly when best to do it.

IS YOUR COMPASS WORKING? WELL I KNOW MINE IS!

A compass is an interesting thing. It will always tell you where true north is. People, on the other hand, will always tell you where their north is. And that's how we sometimes lose our way...!

In a free society we're all free to aim our arguments in whatever direction we believe (or, in the case of managers, in whatever direction they're paid to believe). Yet with all these compasses pointing to different norths, a society's collective journey can grow troublesome. If only we had some benevolent old top sergeant to straighten us recruits out, and guide us to where we need to be.

However, free societies don't want top sergeants (AKA, dictators). The platoon handbook says when troops are free, they need to freely argue things out. Such is the better way to reach camp before nightfall. And what do you know -- every we-the-people movie and on-the-road documentary says the same thing. From our very first American documentarian, Alex Tocqueville in 1835, this work-it-out-among-ourselves doctrine has been honored.

In truth, the doctrine has brought us a long long way. The camp we've reached may not be everyone's choice, but by and large our trip has been a successful one. Trouble is, success is a moving target, and so here we are in a new century with new compasses to reconcile. Some of the very same arrows on the trail are being read by us in some very disputatious ways. What's long-deferred progress to some of us, is dangerous retreat to others.

Pick any arrow out there you wish -- abortion rights, gay rights, marijuana rights; inoculation, interrogation, immigration -- they all point in different ways along our trail. One citizen's "at last!" is another's "Oh no!" One traveller's "Yes we can!" is another's "No, we shouldn't!"

History has produced a great many top sergeants. From an Alexander and a Caesar to a Machiavelli and a Napoleon. In looking back, what each of them built no longer exists. We're still here. That has to say something!

But then that brings us back to what each of our compasses are telling us is true north.....

IT'S BUSTING OUT ALL OVER!

"June is busting out all over...." So goes the rousing Rogers & Hammerstein hit song from Carousel. But what's busting out this June is thunderously different than what I remember when the song was first sung in 1945...!

Back then, aside from the usual flowers and fireflies, there was victory and pride in the air. Americans were coming off the canvass from the Pearl Harbor punch of 1941 to soon land the massive knockout blow to both the Japanese and the Nazis. While the cast was still singing the song on Broadway, General Douglas MacArthur was standing on an American battleship in Tokyo Bay proclaiming the end of evil in the world. His lyrics boomed even louder than the cast's, because from now on every June would bust out all over with peace and harmony. From America to a standing-room-only world.

Sixty-four Junes have come and gone. Long enough to score how well we've lived up to the General's lyric. On balance, we've done worse than the dreamers had hoped, but better than the realists had dared to hope. As you stroll the June gardens of your neighborhood, you can study the swallow's flight and muse over the peonies' smile. They're both still here, as yet unconsumed by the terrifying mushroom cloud that ended that war. Despite the subsequent tragedies of Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, we have avoided World War III. In a dangerous world, avoiding can be as important as achieving.

Of course we have achieved much since then. Medical breakthroughs...electronic marvels....astronauts on the moon....the power of computers and cyberspace within the reach of virtually every hand on the planet. The ancient gods and emperors, not to mention the General, would gaze upon all this in awe. So do our poets and patriots, and let the record show some of this awe is well deserved. We are a disputatious but remarkable people who continue to climb new mountains even though we never fail to shoot ourselves in the foot on the way up.

Along with the achievements, something else is busting out this June. The school kids. Schooling is over, now dreaming begins. After all, summertime is absolutely, positively the most ebullient time for dreaming. Hanging from tree limbs, lounging on lawns, paddling in canoes, or just scratching pictographs in the dirt. True, some of these kids are prowling alleyways and peddling drugs, but the majority of them reject their darker selves and opt for their better selves. They dream of soon-to-be adulthood and careers and amazing headlines with their names in them. These baggy-pants June aficionados don't look it now, but they will be the winners and warriors of the Junes to come.

Now the June page on our calendars usually comes with pastoral scenes of life at its fattest most fruitful best. But wait. Notice the 30 empty spaces on there. Yes, for jotting in appointments. But more than that, like all empty spaces, they're meant to be filled out. Nature and Americans abhor a vacuum!

And so this June arrives like every other June -- except we haven't lived it before. The grand peace and promise we won by 1945 are the very same we need to keep winning in 2009. Neither come without work. Or without dreaming.