Laura Berman's Blog

Neveah's Mom should never say she's sorry

Poor little Neveah Buchanan. The five-year-old Monroe girl who vanished from her mother's apartment house parking lot two weeks ago has touched hearts -- mine, included. But she's also filling that weird societal niche we seem to reserve for innocent children who have evil befall them: they're objects of pity and curiosity. This is TV show host Nancy Grace's stock in trade: The former prosecutor's passion for solving these crimes and for focusing on them is one symptom of

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Pilots on the loose

In her final awful minutes, Rebecca Shaw, the co-pilot on ill-fated Continental Connection Flight 3407, ran through female stereotypes with blinding speed. On its front page, The Wall Street Journal ran her comments in a huge block of damning type:

"I"ve never seen icing conditions. I've never deiced...I've neve experienced any of that. I don't want to have to experience that and make those kinds of calls. You know I'd have freaked out. I'd have, like, seen this much ice and thought, oh my gosh, we were going to crash."

Admissions of inadequacy and inexperience, served up in a stream-of-consciousness babble: My first reaction to the transcript was that Rebecca Shaw had set women back, like, y'know, 30 years. But Shaw was at least verbalizing her fear and concern; the pilot, Capt. Marvin Renslow, seemed oblivious to the need for corrective action. Both Renslow -- who flunked five pilot tests in five years, according to the Wall Street Journal -- and Shaw paid for their inattention with their lives.

The chattering, young Shaw sounds especially silly in the transcript. But the more I think about her, the more sympathetic I feel: She admitted that she lacked experience and training she should have had, while flying under the wing of an older pilot. Alas, his skill and training were questionable.

Shaw, the pretty co-pilot, can so easily be held up to ridicule or blame. But don't let her nervous chatter divert you from the way Colgan Inc. cut corners and cost, ultimately at a terrible price.

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Category: Oakland County politics

Waterboarding in Oakland -- for charity

Activist Bruce Fealk, who dogged former U.S. Rep. Joe Knollenberg with a giant paper mache head, is now trying to whip up a waterboarding frenzy, and not at the Waterford Oaks water park: He's challenged Chetly Zarko, a Republican consultant and blogger, to a torture tete a tete: "I'd give $10 per second for every second Chetly could withstand being waterboarded."

Zarko got the challenge after he characterized the interrogation practice as "pouring a little bit of water in someone's face" in a recent blog post.

He hasn't refused to participate, exactly, but he's posed some legalistic objections and called the challenge "ridiculous."

Both men have their ideological overkill shoes on, sure. But once Zarko dismissed pouring water over someone's covered face to simulate the sensation of drowning as a "little bit of water," he served up the Fear Factor concept to trickster Fealk.

It's the 21st century version of a 17th century duel: Two bloggers, some macho breast-beating and a charity challenge. Zarko wants to name the charity himself.(Fealk already picked Folds of Honor.

Given the ongoing back and forth, I wouldn't expect resolution on the duel/waterboard details anytime soon.

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Category: Laura Berman's Blog

High finance, small net

This is a situation that others -- Angelina and Brad come to mind -- must face after getting married. Which partner's bank gets the new business? I don't know where Angelina's son Maddox does his banking, but my daughter, age 8, has her own bank account. Her elementary school has a deal with Chase to enlist little savers. That's where my husband banks, too. In other words, theirs became the lead bank, by default.

Chase, relatively new in town and eager to gobble up others, sent out a friendly bank manager to woo my business -- well, he came out from behind the counter. This led to delusions of grandeur and the inevitable comparisons to Angelina Jolie. Now the courting -- no toaster but a cash reward for opening an account --is paying off. After months of trying to assuage the old Brand X bank, I'm going for convenience over loyalty.

This leaves me with one question regarding high finance and bank profits: JP Morgan Chase earned $2.14 billion in the first quarter of 2009 and the business world cheered. But that piddling profit came after receiving $25 billion in TARP funds. If Treasury lent me $25 billion, I'd report a profit in excess of $24 billion. Wouldn't you?

In the meantime, here's a cheesy video of Angelina, Maddox and son Pax.

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Category: Laura Berman's Blog

Flower Child at 70

Judy Collins -- she of the cornflower blue eyes and coltish hair mane --will turn 70 on May 1. Even so, she's still a flower child. Her appearance at Planned Parenthood's luncheon at the Troy Marriott, when she entertained an audience of 325 people had a folkie feel: "Let's get this out of the way," she said, as she launched into her rendition of Joni Mitchell's, "Both Sides Now."

The long hair is now piled atop her head, all silvery and elegant, and people under 40 aren't quite sure who she is: One of the distinctive voices of the 1960s and '70s, the inspiration for Stephen Stills song, "Suite Judy Blue Eyes" ("I am yours/you are mine/you are what you are.)

Why was Collins' speaking to Planned Parenthood? I introduced her and was told she felt a strong connection to the organization. If so, she never explained the link directly. But she's writing a memoir -- her fifth --that she's calling, "Sex, Drugs and Folk Rock." She told a couple of bawdy stories, recalled meeting her husband at an Equal Rights Amendment fundraiser in 1978, and suggested that she's a woman who has lived and loved and survived.

Category: City Hall

Jewel of Detroit has wet diapers

Looking back on the history of the Cobo Center un-deal, Mayor Ken Cockrel Jr. sounds like a stock advisor gazing backward: If only he'd sold his stocks for cash, and sent pink roses every day to Monica Conyers.

He imagined she'd fall into line, a presumption that instead inspired her to protect Cobo, one of the city's crown "jewels," from outsiders.

In real life, Cobo isn't glittering: It's more blight than bright. During a tour of the heart of Cobo earlier this week, a longtime Cobo tenant walked me through convention halls whose ceiling drips are caught by plastic "diapers" -- tarps stretched across the leaky areas. Two giant doors, garage-style, facing the river, have been patched with wood, in the style of a vandalized, foreclosed home repair. Except for a new patch near the Kwame-built, appealing cafe, The Vu, the carpeting is dingy. In places, walls are crumbling. Remember the South Terminal of Detroit Metropolitan Airport before the new terminal? It's deja vu all over again.

Attracting conventions is becoming more difficult, my guide confided in a pained voice, because "they don't want to come back." Indianapolis? Cleveland? "We can't compete with them."

Head on down there and take a look around. You don't need perfect vision, or even an experienced guide, to see there's no jewel -- just Depends for the ceilings.

Mark Fidrych and the Ivory Snow girl

Weird, isn't it, that Mark Fidrych and Marilyn Chambers wind up in the obituaries on the same day? He was 54; she was 56. They were briefly sensations, the objects of mass adoration and attention, while in their early 20s.

She was a porn star, whose "Behind the Green Door" drew crowds in 1972, for reasons that are now difficult to recall. He was "The Bird," a gawky and compelling pitcher, who threw one great season for the Tigers, in a quirky, unforgettable style, and was sidelined by injuries.

What did they have in common besides deaths that came too soon? She was the "Ivory Snow" girl gone bad; his offbeat mannerisms were viewed as fresh and sweet. Both of them achieved fame with hints of innocence and vulnerability, in professions that aren't supposed to be about either.

Here's Fidrych in a 1985 interview.

Category: City Hall

Casting a new High School Musical

One minute she's a feminist intellectual, touting her law degree and her credentials. Then, Detroit City Council President Monica Conyers undermines her own case, with the exaggerated flair of a sitcom character.

After helping her brother get a job with the city ($30,500 a year), she renounced him this week by denying his existence, at least in the fraternal sense, to News reporter David Josar. Brother? What brother? When it turned out that the man in question, Reggie Esters, 38, was an ex-con who got fired for not showing up and recently got in trouble again, was indisputably her brother, Conyers reluctantly admitted the truth.

That wasn't her only flip-flop of the week.

"I didn't say she needs a man but...does she?" That was Conyers, sounding like Anna Nicole Smith or Mae West, baring her claws as she snarled about her fellow Council member Sheila Cockrel to a Channel 4 (WDIV) reporter. That was after she'd told Cockrel to "shut... up"

But don't the mean girls always get mad at the teacher's pet? Cockrel responded to the character smear and obscenity with a diagnosis, suggesting the president needs work on her anger management skills and impulse control.

In high school, the mean girl with impulse control problems gets sent to the principal's office. But this is Detroit City Council, where Monica Conyers is the principal.

Category: City Hall

Ken Cockrel's revealing portfolio

Any suspicions that Mayor Kenneth Cockrel Jr. is a shrewd real estate speculator, or a reckless gambler, or an astute investor can now be shelved.

His newly released financial statement is instead touching in its humanity: The mayor's portfolio reflects the earnest and well-meaning aspirations of a man even his opponent called "a good guy" in Wednesday night's debate: He and his wife have invested in 529 plans for their children's college educations (totaling over $100,000), in the manufacturing industries that once made Detroit great (Johnson Controls, Ford and General Motors stock) and in the cool technology (Sony Corp.) you'd expect a self-described geek to love.

They've put their money where their hearts and lives are -- a strategy that's been painfully unprofitable. The house, bought in 1992 for $62,000, now carries a $132,973 mortgage: testimony to in-the-bubble thinking that's now gone bust. The stock? Well, we know where those companies are now.

The Cockrel ledger shows the mayor to be a man who heeded conventional wisdom and the dictates of common sense. He is a Detroit Everyman, a good one, who backs his community with dollars, and invests in his children's education. Still only 43, and despite $180,000 in income last year, he's very much the working stiff. With college for five looming, he and his wife are still fighting for current financial security. And maybe this isn't the right time to grade on financial acumen: Bernie Madoff seemed really smart last year.

Did Geraldine Ferraro really say that?

Geraldine Ferraro, once the first woman vice-presidential nominee, is providing grist for the Obama camp, now clamoring for her head. But the comments she made to the Torrance (CA) Daily Breeze are similar, if not identical, to those she made at a Livonia event last Thursday.

The Daily Breeze incited controversy with this Ferraro comment: "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position." But in Livonia, that line was part of a larger riff about her own status as the first female vice-presidential nominee. If she hadn't been a woman, she said, she wouldn't have been nominated.

If you listened to her comments in context, they compared her (failed) candidacy to his (ascendant)one. She said it. She meant it. Her candor, in the heat of a dead-heat campaign, provided the Obama campaign with a rejoinder to last week's Hillary "monster" quote. But it also shows how plucking a single line out of a newspaper is unlikely to explain the rest of the story.