PRESIDENT BARAK OBAMA CONFIRMS A DR. FISHER THESIS!

PRESIDENT BARAK OBAMA CONFIRMS A DR. FISHER THESIS!

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© January 21, 2009



“The two most engaging powers of an author are, to make new things familiar, and familiar things new.”

Samuel Johnson (1709 – 1781), English author and lexicographer

“The most original authors are not so because they advance what is new, but because they put what they have to say as if it had never been said before.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 –1832), German poet, dramatist and philosopher

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When you are an idea guy, a reader of books, an observer of human behavior, and have the audacity to put your thoughts not only on paper, but in books, books that you often publish yourself for lack of name recognition, or even minor celebrity status, it is reassuring to hear one or more of your themes echoed in the words of our first African American president, Barak Obama.

President Obama urged Americans "to grow up." That has been a theme of mine, blatantly so; I might add, in WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS (1990), THE WORKER, ALONE! (1995), TABOO AGAINST BEING YOUR OWN BEST FRIEND (1996), SIX SILENT KILLERS (1998), CORPORATE SIN (2000) and A LOOK BACK TO SEE AHEAD (2007).

In my book, "Taboo," I chose the Thomas Paine essay that President Obama referenced General George Washington had read to his troops at a low point in the Revolutionary War, in concluding the book in the Afterword.

The whole theme of "Taboo" was Americans reluctance to grow up, and the consequences of not growing up. Many themes in that book are now prophetic; many others are far more exaggerated today instead of ameliorated. I thought I was being provocative, but I underestimated our capacity for self-indulgence and immaturity. If anything, we have slipped into early childhood, and wonder at our fate.

Celebrated columnist George Will writes eloquently today about president Obama's words that "The Time has come to set aside childish things." Of course, the president quoted from scripture, not from me, but my wonder is -- will it register?

I have described the American worker, which is most of us, in my writing as suspended in terminal adolescence in learned helplessness and arrested development counter dependent on our employers for our total well being.

I have further charged that management has been our surrogate parent and permanent baby-sitter, and that we have sacrificed control of our destiny for security, that we have given up freedom for comfort. As a consequence, we have become a complacent society.

We don't like to hear words such as these. We're optimists. Pessimism is a dirty word. We're told we have a bad attitude if we remind ourselves of our collective shortcomings. We even believe self-esteem is something you can purchase like a product, not something you have to earn by doing something worthwhile. Next to the bible more diet books are purchased than any other, people believing that diet is a formula and not a choice, as is also goodness. But I wander.

My writings (including postings on my website) are not themes to win friends and influence people. They are wake up calls of a sleepwalking nation in rote obedience to its nostalgia.

The irony is that workers everywhere have been telling me the things I write about but have always been afraid to be identified with for fear of hurting their careers or livelihood. I'll accept that. I've never had such fear and my career reflects it -- I should say "careers" as I've been in many kettles of fish.

My position is that these are themes that someone has to articulate sometime in some way or one day there won't be a time to contemplate them at all. It is nice to see President Obama is cognizant of and committed to addressing such basic or fundamental issues.

If you think I am trying to pat myself on the back, you have it all wrong. I accept the fact that I'm not read, that I'm an unknown, but it does rile me a bit that some famous people are given credit for saying things that they have taken from others.

This "growing up theme" has been much referenced since yesterday on PBS, the BBC, C-SPAN, and the German Television News, along with columns in local and national newspapers.

More than forty years ago, there was that famous line by president John F. Kennedy at his inaugural: "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."

I had read that exact quote in a book of Kahlil Gibran, the Lebanese poet, in the late 1950s. Gibran had actually used that expression in addressing his own Lebanese people in the 1920s, or forty years before Kennedy had said it.

Thomas Paine is mentioned today as being the source of General Washington's remark in 1776, but I've never seen a single mention of Kahlil Gibran's acknowledgment as the originator of Kennedy's famous line.

My BB just raises an eyebrow when I mention these things, and says, "How's your novel coming?"

Well, she knows it is not coming at all because I'm not working on it, but working on a couple books that, too, are unlikely to be read should they be published. You can imagine how I exasperate her sometimes.

One day I read a piece and told BB, "This guy can really write."

She said, "I knew you'd say that."

"Why?" I asked.

"You wrote it."

And by golly I had, but the author of the piece didn't give me any credit that I had.

Dr. Donald Farr has written before about plagiarism, and he is right, people do take from others, and they get away with it, too. When you are so small to be insignificant, there is not much you can do about it.

Given as I am to going off on tangents, I leave you with this. Some time ago, a young man who liked to work with his hands, but was left handed and couldn't find a suitable wrench for his work, invented a "left-handed-wrench."

This is where it gets interesting. He went to the main office of Sears and presented a copy of his wrench along with the plans for its construction. A Sears’s executive said they would "take it under advisement" and get back to him.

When they didn't, he returned to Sears and asked the status. "Oh, you didn't know? It was reviewed and found not feasible or commercially viable." He was given back the wrench and his plans without any further ado.

More than a year later, he was skimming a Sears’s catalogue, and came across the offer of a left-handed wrench, a wrench that looked suspiciously like his. He ordered it, and upon receipt of it, found it was identical to his.

Unbeknown to Sears, apparently thinking he was just a muck who knew no better, and would be intimidated by "corpocracy" and its giant corporate monarchy, he had, in the interim, successfully patented the wrench.

With no money, but patent, and Sears's wrench in hand, he found lawyers all over town that wanted to represent him. He settled with Sears for more than $5 million.

I mention this because it is little people that often stir the drink. We acclaim all the big guys who take the bows but it is the little guy more often than not who comes up with the ideas.

Steven Jobs is now ailing but he set the whole computer industry on its head. Bill Gates, who was an enterprising guy, essentially stole the software that became Microsoft from other little guys who didn't appreciate what they had, as Jobs stole from Xerox when they didn't know what they had.

Then there is Karry Mullis, the chemist who won the Nobel Prize in 1993 for discovering the "DNA fingerprint" that all the television CSI programs couldn't function without. Mullis was considered something of a flake and ripped off by his employer. I've written about all these people and related incidents in my books.

It is more difficult as a writer although you copyright all your stuff. In a way, you've just got to believe the world is going to be a little better place if others pick up one or two of your ideas and run with them.

Gibran wasn't around to protest Kennedy's use of his ideas. I'm not faulting JFK because he probably had no idea where the idea of "ask not" came from as he was not a reader, nor actually a writer. Some speech writer no doubt picked up the expression for the Kennedy Inaugural. True, JFK won the Pulitzer Prize for "Profiles in Courage," which however was written by Ted Sorensen, one of his acolytes.

Joe Kennedy to make sure "Profiles" became a best seller bought more than $100,000 worth of copies (more than $1 million in today's dollars) of the book around the nation's bookstores to give his son's book an early boost to best seller status. We buy books because they are best sellers just like we buy other products because they are advertised.

JFK, who was always a playboy and never a hard working senator, needed something like this book to give him national recognition. Joe Kennedy was nothing if not a good PR man. And so that is THE REST OF THE STORY.

Be always well,

Jim