State of Tuesday: YOU ASKED, I ANSWERED
Thanks for writing in, folks, and again, sound off if you liked this exercise (or didn’t).
Greetings, Dear Reader,
Kind of a new thing today. We’re doing a mailbag.
People sent in questions for me to answer, like I’m a barking seal getting fish thrown at me.
If you get a kick out of this, write in and let us know and we’ll be sure to do it periodically. If not, same deal, let us know.
With that, I give you …
YOU ASKED, I ANSWERED
Britt Newsome asks, “Hi Geoff, does drinking alcohol make you a ‘real man’?”
Hey, Britt,
No, quitting does. Then picking it back up briefly as you ride through the rain to avenge the killing of your friend Ned at the hands of notoriously ruthless town sheriff Little Bill.
William Munny, the protagonist in Clint Eastwood’s “Unforgiven,” might literally be an imaginary man, but he, in his own words, “killed just about everything that’s walked or crawled at one point or another.” What could be more manly than that?
Well, when we’re introduced to him, he’s entirely reformed. Given himself over to God at the behest of his late wife, an evidently pious woman we never get to meet. Munny is an honest pig farmer and a present father who’d given up a past life of criminality and rabble-rousing. He’d even given up drinking entirely, that is, until Bill killed his best friend.
I’ve been known to booze now and again. I probably will again over Thanksgiving.
Real men love only one woman with a passion that can’t possibly be fathomed by those who busy themselves in pissing contests over who can drink the most swill. They father children. They go to church. They lead productive lives and are constructive, peaceful examples to their children and the surrounding community.
Their righteous fury is rare and carries with it an almost otherworldly gravitas. The perpetually soused man, on the other hand, dies alone and makes a fool of himself plenty on the way there.
At this point, the beancounters on the business side want me to say real men are also subscribers, but in all seriousness, if you enjoy what we do here at State of the Day, consider supporting our work!
Evan Mercer from Boston asks, “Dear Geoff, If you could go bar hopping and get blind drunk with any historical figure, writer, statesman, military leader, etc., who lived before the 20th century, who would it be and why?”
Here we go with more drinking questions, eh?
Obviously Teddy. I mean, it’s not even close. It’s hard to pick the character trait I love most about Roosevelt, but I think it would be his compulsion to endure great personal risk and hardship to learn difficult things firsthand. He read voraciously, of course, but he walked police beats in the middle of the night in New York City, he visited industrial slums, he sought solace in the brutal frontier, and he even led men in combat on horseback.
Teddy Roosevelt takes it.
Lena Whiteford from Boise asks, “What is the craziest day you’ve spent working in a newsroom? What happened?”
My craziest days as a reporter were all outside the newsroom, to be abundantly clear, but I’ll take your question literally.
I don’t know if I could pick, to be honest. There was the day members of Antifa posted the addresses of our entire staff, including the parents of our interns. I remember one time a smartly dressed fellow with a briefcase approached the front desk of the Business Insider newsroom in New York City and asked bluntly if he could get a count for how many Jews were on the floor. That caused a bit of a stir. It’s also always a bit crazy when you’re getting ready to publish a story you know is going to nuke the whole cycle, but that plays out in ways that aren’t as theatric as people imagine. Tense phone calls and spirited discussions and so on.
Major live news events, terrorist attacks, mass shootings, etc., are always crazy.
Some of the craziest days weren’t even related to the news. Newsroom happy hours, especially when drugs are involved, can get quite debauched.
I think watching the New York Times 2016 presidential election ticker go from 95% Hillary to 100% Trump over the course of about 5 hours would probably rank pretty high up there. The phones were off the hook, the networks were melting down, liberal livestreams turned into absolute mayhem.
Caleb Dorsey from Phoenix asks, “If you could challenge one other member of the media to a charity boxing match, who would it be?”
Hasan Piker.
Tara McMillan from Rochester, New York, asks, “What surprising thing did the military prepare you for in life?”
This is going to seem counterintuitive. As a leader, you get the best results if people actually want to show up and work. Compulsions tied solely or mostly to one worldly motivation – including and especially rank – will result in a host of progressively negative outcomes. Resentment, shoddy results, barely minimum standard output.
If you want exemplary outcomes, both individual and unit outcomes, it’s utterly crucial that they spring from a source of genuine belief.
Poor morale is a killer. In the military, there is an ever-present rank structure. It’s beyond burdensome. It dictates, literally, every minute of your life. Poor leadership on top of it is a soul killer.
As a leader with rank, it’s easy to simply order people around. Anyone can do that. Barely sentient blobs of shit can do that.
Your guys have to show up on time every day or the MPs will find them and arrest them. They’re aware of where they fall every minute of every day.
Under that burden, as a leader, you learn quickly or fail. The highest level is getting them to want to show up. That is an art, and if you can do that for them, there’s nothing that group of men won’t achieve for you.
Teddy didn’t take San Juan Hill in Cuba because he simply ordered his men to take it. He took it because he truly believed and his men reflected that belief.
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Thanks for writing in, folks, and again, sound off if you liked this exercise (or didn’t).
WHAT I’M READING
They’re at it again, folks!
Left-Wing Dark Money Groups Get Dirty To Take Key House Seat
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This is wild. What do you think should happen?
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This is bad. We need to do something to help the kids.
Study Confirms What Everyone’s Feeling: We Are Slowly Turning Into Scatterbrained Zombies
WHAT I’M WATCHING
The 3rd World’s O-block is Popping Off
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