I wrote this “love-note” to the CEO of a major department store chain. You, my readers, know who they are. Perhaps even shop there.
I pursued his senior staff to do business with my agency. That, notwithstanding admonishment from an occasional friend, a long-time and relevant supplier to them, who urged that I take care that my would-be client does not find out I am a Jew before I have a chance at doing business with them. They just ain’t that keen on us Jews he told me.
Right. This is just a couple years ago. Since I sport a genuine Anglo-Saxon, Protestant last name, I forged ahead.
Their arrogance was really transcendent. I got nowhere albeit I put forth a truly yessable proposition. That got me to some real ranting at their CEO. By email. Amazing that bucko took notice, like, for real. Rather than ignore me or tell me to pound sand — I would have had the roles been reversed — he responded to my email! Perhaps his research had me confused with somebody relevant with an extensive voice in a couple industries. The following is a clipped recount of the first email. Yes, I have redacted the profanities. I will forego his beefy letter with apologies: one page of sorry and one of informing me of their amazing corporate culture, one that would gladly coddle me in their bosom.
Clearly, he had not yet found out that I was a Jew.
Some of the text …
“I write this with little expectation that you will actually read it. And even less that you would respond, beyond a “fuck you” or a business-school derivative of that. You are a smart guy. For you, profanity is not just a small mind wanting to express itself forcefully. That ain’t you, bud. It is you punting on a third down. You get that; in the town where you are headquartered, you are all college and NFL nuts.
Next you are in L.A., I would direct you — perhaps drive you — downtown, to this pseudo park: flat concrete, on top of a major parking structure for the Music Center, home for an ever-increasing number of homeless people. They sleep on top of the grates that provide venting and heating from the many parking levels below. Among them is Ted, a man you may want to meet. He is missing teeth. Somewhat malodorous. Wears a worn-out, hand-me-down Members Only jacket of now undefined color. By all appearances, another of the downtrodden.
Why?
I digress…
I know that they do not teach “class” at any of our fine universities. Perhaps I am overstating that, not having researched that entirely. I know to a one-hundred percent certainty, they do not at Stanford, Michigan, UCLA, Harvard, Penn or USC, and at least 2 of prestigious colleges in Europe. Not at undergrad or grad or law-schools. Been there. Actually, headed one of those and got to lecture at two others. In my youth, I had to turn down a teaching gig at the grad. school of business at one of those. My boss at the time, was a tad paranoiac. He thought I might give away the crown jewels.
You and I both know that all that.
I also know to a one-hundred percent certainty that one cannot buy “class” on Rodeo Drive., 5th or Madison Avenues, on Rue Saint-Honoré St. in Paris, via Condotti in Rome, the grand bazaar in Istanbul, Marrakech in Morocco, nor …
You get it; you are a smart guy.
Class. Some people are born with it. Most who have it, learn it at the knees of their parents, from friends, teachers, mentors and others as they go through life. A very select few elect a life-choice to lead a “class” existence, and, have the incredible fortitude to pull that off!
Others, well, they are just not standing in any of those compelling lines.
Back to Ted.
Sometimes, when some TV broadcast wants to interview a homeless person, and want the interview to be erudite, they seek out Ted. Whatever his immense failures in life relegated him to living over a parking structure exhaust vent, he is well thought-out, articulate. And he exhibits that elusive quality: “class”!
It is not about education, bank account, relationships, Gucci, Mercedes Benz and other trappings. It is something else. Some of us bring up our children with certain grand — regrettably, now apparently waning-in-time concepts — such as: ‘There are some things WE always do. There are some things WE never do.’ Hopefully, we raise our children to be substantial individuals. In the vernacular, it is what they bring to the picnic.
Ted has more class in his left index finger than most accomplished people I have ever met. Trust that as a collector of people and stories, I have met and communicated with some fabulously interesting folks around the world. What a journey to meet those folks and make, perhaps presumptively arrogant judgments about them: a morally destitute, yet popular two term president, a well-earned, well-liked Pope, a couple Nobel Prize winners (one a literature prize winner whose claim to fame was unmitigated bullshit – hey my authority on that was my aunt, who was bloody there to see that charlatan for real)…
So much class from the Polish priest who became a Pope. Really. An ordinary priest from Poland. I may be a tad jaded here. Imagine that man was willing to take my phone call one morning. Unlike your high-prized vice presidents.
No class for a two term U.S. president.
Less than zero from a morally bankrupt Nobel Prize literature winner. I do not regret the time I spent with that poseur. I do regret the credit I gave him in my eulogy for my mother.
And then there is Ted. And my mother and father. And my awesome wife. And my daughters.
It takes one minute and forty-seven seconds to draft a two-line email, including addressing it. Compelling, I opine, in response to three emails from me, particularly since you bloody asked to be involved. To turn down invites for coffee. Consider that actually it might have been easier to say yes and limit ‘coffee’ to 10 minutes, including copious stirring, than jousting over doing it or not. You know, say yes and take your beating like a man.
Nobody is that busy nor that important, bud. Certainly not me. Oh… And not the Holy Father. He made the time knowing that I was an essentially irrelevant formerly country and penniless immigrant Jew.
It is just so quintessentially classless to not …
Enough of this diatribe. Unlikely this it will benefit anybody other than my need to write it.
Perhaps you can impart some of this to your children, as you raise them to hopefully substantial adulthood.”