IN TWEET: THE FULL, EXTENDED INTERVIEW WITH MALALA YOUSAFZAI FROM “THE DAILY SHOW WITH JON STEWART.” DO YOURSELF A FAVOR AND WATCH.
It’s rare that I watch an interview several times back to back and am moved to tears every time. That’s the effect the incandescent Malala Yousafzai has on people. Jon Stewart’s is rendered speechless several times during his conversation with her. His reaction is genuine and profound.
There’s really no need to blast the Taliban assassins who tried to murder Malala Yousafzai because, in all honesty, that single cowardly act has become one of the biggest epic fails in the history of failed terrorist crimes. Plus, we all know there’s a special place in hell for them.
Included here is the original in-episode interview with Yousafzai from THE DAILY SHOW WITH JON STEWART as well as the extended after-show discussion. Please note that these embeds are streaming directly from the Comedy Central site. Some mobile browsers may not support the required plugins necessary to view the videos on you phone or tablet.
CLICK HERE for more information on the Malala Fund.
CLICK on the image below to buy the book I AM MALALA from Amazon.
HUBRIS will be re-broadcast on Friday, March 22 at 9pm E/P on MSNBC.
IN TWEET: YAHOO! DEFINITELY NEEDS PRESS…JUST NOT THE KIND OF PRESS CEO MARISSA MAYER HAS BEEN GENERATING OF LATE.
Meet Marissa Mayer, a cautionary tale in the making. Don’t let the warm smile and sparkling eyes fool you. She’s what happens when an apple falls far from the Google tree, rolls down a storm drain and settles under that withering Yahoo! bush. You know, the one clinging to life in the sunlight deprived corner of the internet garden.
It’s been almost two weeks since Silicon Valley flipped out over a leaked memo from Yahoo! HR big wig Jackie Reses. Buried deep in a shit pile of sunshine and roses was the lead. In short, scrubbed of the HR warm and fuzzy, if you currently work for Yahoo! from a remote location, one of the following will be changing in June: your location or your employer. Cue lead balloon.
To be fair, it doesn’t take much to raise hackles in the ol’ SV but this particular story took on a life of it’s own and went global. Of course, Reses was merely the messenger, delivering a decree handed down from the ivory tower of Marissa Mayer, newbie president and CEO of beleaguered media company Yahoo!. In her infinite wisdom, Mayer decided an “all or nothing” policy regarding working from home was the best way to deal with a mountain of bad morale, poor productivity and the general uselessness of pretty much anything Yahoo!. Apparently her 13 years at Google translated into a mind set as convoluted and ass-backwards as the mobile platform she helped build.
Since her decision to call all worker bees back to the Yahoo! hive, the chatter on Mayer has been spewing from two camps: the bigger and louder voices have chewed her up and spit her back out. In this version of reality, Mayer is a cold and calculating bitch on wheels. A bean counter who thinks what is good for her goose is not something to be shared with all the little ganders in the flock. A smaller cadre has rallied around Mayer, calling her decision some version of “brave/bold/decisive.”
Personally, I think both groups have it wrong. Mayer is neither hero nor villain. She is merely another in a long line of CEO’s who simply don’t get it. It’s a combination of tin-eared imperiousness, tone-deaf hypocrisy and a decision making process fueled by the panic that ensues when you take over a company teetering on the edge of oblivion. You can also throw in the ego stroke that comes from having your underlings just outside your door, available to shout “how high” when you say “jump.” Making this a uniquely bizarre “only in the tech world” oddity is the fact that a company like Yahoo! is scuttling working remotely. Last time we checked, the mobile office and lifestyle platforms are both important pillars to future of the Yahoo! brand. You don’t see Apple pushing iPhones in the press while instituting a landline-only policy in Cupertino. Just saying, it’s an odd call even by Yahoo! standards.
I don’t envy Mayer. She’s the latest muckety muck coupled to the Yahoo! executive train wreck (plus here and my favorite one here). If she keeps it up, she just might be the caboose. What a company like Yahoo! needs is a tough, visionary and inspirational leader. An individual willing to trim the fat (and dead weight) while also making it clear that he or she understands the company from the ground up. It’s a tricky balancing act that requires juggling humanity, humility and honesty while maintaining an unflinching fix on the light at the end of the tunnel. Ultimately, you need a CEO who can rally the same troops he or she is shaking up and shaking out.
Mayer is undeniably smart and talented but that doesn’t make her the right person for the job. Book smarts rarely translate into street smarts and Yahoo! needs someone with that cred. Hint: a former engineer does not a CEO make. In fact, very little of what Mayer has done since taking the reigns points to her being the salvation of a once great brand. Free meals and cozy sit downs will only take the company so far.
Even if she was 100% right in her thinking, there is no way on earth anyone paying even a bit of attention could envision a scenario under which the Reses memo wouldn’t turn into a nightmare. When your people are down, a kick in the teeth is NEVER the way to perk them up. Even if you deploy every semantic contortion available, what amounts to a take away (and, in the case of Yahoo!, an entrenched employee perk) is going to be hugely unpopular. When coupled with the appearance that the decision is devoid of rhyme, reason and compassion, you have an internal and external PR crisis to deal with. Insult, meet injury.
I have no doubt that there is considerable dead weight and poor productivity in the Yahoo! ranks. If there wasn’t, the company would be sitting pretty. It isn’t. At the same time, why would you anger both the good employees and those who should be shown the door? Where is the case study proving that a former work from home deadbeat, when anchored to a cubicle, blossoms into a model employee? Why create a policy that penalizes everyone and perpetuates the very mindset that contributed to the decline of the company in the first place? Why? Because it’s the path of least resistance. It requires zero creativity and virtually no heavy lifting on the part of higher ups. It’s what a smart person does when they are low on executive savvy and oblivious to the reality going on just outside their well-insulated suite.
Making matters worse for Mayer, developments since “Memo-Gate” have not exactly played in her favor. Sure, some have jumped to her defense and pulled out the gender card. I’d be more willing to entertain the anti-woman meme (which, it should be noted, IS a legitimate problem in Silicon Valley) if Mayer didn’t show an uncanny talent for playing into the hands of her harshest critics. Start with the revelation that, in the same breath as denying new Yahoo! mommies the ability to work from home, Mayer had a nursery built next to her office so she could care for her newborn son. True, Mayer covered the cost of building the nursery but what percentage of the Yahoo! masses could afford such a luxury (if they were accorded similar privileges) and what kind of message does such an expenditure send? Adding to the the veneer of overpaid excess came news today that Mayer received a $1.1 million bonus for five months of work in 2012. It doesn’t matter if she deserved it or not, it’s a story that perpetuates an unflattering narrative.
For shits and giggles, let’s give Mayer the benefit of the doubt and pretend this brouhaha was just a tempest in a teapot. If she’s such a cracker jack CEO, what the heck was Mayer thinking (or not thinking) when she blew a potential publicity coup recently? In what is already being called a major strategic blunder, the Yahoo! CEO decided to appear on the TODAY SHOW day and date to the massively hyped return of Robin Roberts to GOOD MORNING AMERICA. It just so happens that one of the major success stories in the Yahoo! hopper is Robin’s Journey, the popular GMA blog that chronicles Robert’s battles with cancer. In fact, I linked to the blog last week in a tribute to Robin Roberts. What better platform for Mayer to announce new Yahoo! product launches than on GMA, their partner in an existing and thriving co-branded venture? To make matters worse, it appears as though no one from Yahoo! or Mayer’s office picked up the phone and asked to appear on GMA, a request that ABC reps said would have been enthusiastically embraced.
It’s a mind boggling oversight and does little to bolster the Mayer brand. One also has to wonder what fate would have befallen an underling if they made a mistake of similar magnitude. Clearly Mayer working from the Yahoo! campus didn’t improve her strategic thinking here. Of course, it doesn’t seem like she worries all that much about rules she imposes on others also applying to her.
Bottom line, I would love to be proven wrong regarding Mayer. I would happily eat a helping of crow and be the first to offer hearty congratulations if she is able to right what has been a very stubborn ship. Mayer is by no means an island unto herself and it’s only fair to note that there are circumstances in play that are simply beyond her control. Still, her actions and missteps do have consequences that reach far beyond the Yahoo! campus. Certainly its no coincidence that Best Buy, itself mired in a mass of red ink and profit woes, just announced that working from home would soon be a no-no. Rather than Yahoo! setting an example worthy of following, it appears to be another disappointing case of the blind leading the blind. That’s not something to cheer about.
Hugo Chavez, the flamboyant and controversial leftist President of Venezuela, died Tuesday after a long battle with cancer. He was 58.
Hated outside the confines of the country he led with a passion almost equal to the devotion shown to him by legions of followers in Venezuela, Chavez remains as much of an enigma now as he was when he first assumed power in 1999. An outspoken champion of the poor and downtrodden, he also had a habit of being his own worst enemy. Chavez opted for inflammatory rhetoric far too often to curry favor with the United States. At the same time, he didn’t seem to give a rat’s patootie. This made him even more fascinating to anyone trying to figure out on which side of the good guy/bad guy fence Chavez belonged.
Ultimately, that mindset would prove hopelessly simplistic and ill-suited for gaining real insight into such a complex man. Perhaps, like so many leaders before him, Chavez would prove impossible to pigeonhole. In the end, as someone who has never set foot in Venezuela, it’s not my place to judge. Instead, I’d like to offer a different take on Hugo Chavez and one, I think, that makes a fitting epitaph.
Citizens Energy, founded by by former U.S. representative Joseph P. Kennedy II (D-MA), is a Massachusetts-based non-profit. Among it’s many pursuits is the Citizens Energy Oil Heat Program (CEOHP) which delivers discounted heating oil to the poor and elderly in 25 states and on Native American tribal lands in nine additional states. The program itself is a partnership with CITGO, a wholly owned subsidiary of the national oil company of Venezuela.
When Kennedy approached the petroleum industry regarding a collaboration that would eventually become the CEOHP, only CITGO offered to help (see PSA video below). While critics of Chavez derided the effort as a propaganda campaign against the Bush Administration, the program has been an unqualified success. Since starting work together in 20o5, Chavez and the people of Venezuela have donated more than 200 million gallons of home heating oil to the poorest of Americans through the CEOHP. Most of the recipients would have gone without heat during the coldest months of the year, dooming many to not surviving the winter.
Propaganda? Social activism? Humanitarian outreach? Where Chavez is concerned, his part in the CEOHP is probably a combination of all three. Though the number of critics has dwindled since 2005, some still look at the collaboration as a bad thing. I prefer to view it as a success and a blueprint for ways businesses, governments and non-profit organizations can work together across borders and political divides. Certainly other major oil companies had an opportunity to step up. None of them did and none of them have jumped on the bandwagon since. If Chavez did score propaganda points back home, so be it. The lives of poor and elderly Americans helped by the donations from CITGO through the CEOHP seem more than worth the price.
