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A 13 Year Old Gives a Lesson in Civility
Politics, Professional, Technology Comments (1)
The Wall Street Journal has a story headlined: “Detroit Politician Gets Lesson In Civility From a 13-Year-Old“. Here’s an excerpt from the end of the story:
During a video-recorded council hearing to discuss a police whistle-blower lawsuit, Ms. Conyers repeatedly interrupted City Council President Kenneth Cockrel Jr., as he tried to question a witness. Mr. Cockrel began banging his gavel, calling for Ms. Conyers to be quiet while he had the floor. The video shows she shouted at him: “You not my daddy, you do that at home, not here. OK? Exactly. So treat me with respect because I’m tired of that. Be respectful. You may not do that at home but you gonna do it up here. Grow up. Control your house and you know how to treat other women better…Shrek.”
Then, a couple of weeks later, she found herself at City Hall speaking with Ms. Conyers, where the following exchange happened:
According to a video of the actual discussion, Ms. Conyers told Miss Bell that she found Mr. Cockrel’s behavior disrespectful. Miss Bell said, “But you didn’t have to call him a name.”
“But now you’re telling me what I should have and should not have done,” said Ms. Conyers.
“You’re an adult. You have that choice,” said Miss Bell.
“I’m what?” said Ms. Conyers.
“You’re an adult,” said Miss Bell. “You had that choice….Sometimes people need to think before they act.”
In addition to being a wonderful thing for the political world (and who doesn’t agree that we could use more civility in politics?), this is a wonderful thing for marketers to learn.
All too often I hear complaints about email being blocked. No one wants to understand why, they just want things to work like they think they should. When things don’t work that way, then they start acting like second and third graders.
“The DNSBL admin is a big meaney!”
“The ISP is incompetent!”
“They’re stupid! We should sue them!”
The list goes on (and on and on and on and on), but those three are enough to give you the flavor. And it shows a lack of basic civility.
You don’t have to resort to name calling to get what you want. The equation here is simple: (Mail that is wanted + Engaged list = Delivered mail). Engaging your list if the mail is unwanted is a bad thing. So is sending mail that is wanted to a list that never does anything with it (including open it). If one of those two things is lacking, it is generally not the fault of the ISPs or their filters.
But, let’s say for the sake of argument that it is one of those rare occasions where something is their fault. Now that you have commenced with the name calling, what have you accomplished? You’ve managed to alienate yourself from the very people who can actually do something to help you by acting like an 8 year old.
The far better course is to remember that you are dealing with people who have other pressures on them than “make sure that XYZ’s mail gets delivered to our customers”. In the grand scheme of things, you are relatively unimportant to the ISPs. They are far more concerned with getting rid of the really bad spam, and if you get caught up in that, they want to work with you to block the bad spam and still let your mail through.
Unless you’ve been acting like Ms. Conyers and are in need of a 13 year old to teach you some civility.
[UPDATE: Here's the exchange:
And here’s a really, really odd interview with her by a Detroit reporter where she blames it all on bullying (and then gets asked what kind of nut she thinks she ought to be and which cartoon character the Detroit mayor looks like):
And finally, a note: Apparently, “Shrek” is Yiddish for “monster”. Why is it that no one in the media has picked up on that given the speed with all of the various derogatory meanings of “macaca” when Sen. George Allen inadvertently used that term in the last election cycle.]
MickC @ May 29, 2008
She Is more childish than the 13 year old! I saw a clip of the video on T.V. and had to see the rest, so I went online to search. To my surprise, Ms. Conyers is a pure idiot. I could be more mature with my own words, I know, however I want her to understand what people think of how she acts and obviously mature reasoning doesn’t work for her. She should not be allowed to sit anywhere in the U.S. Not on any board, not in any council not even a PTA meeting… anywhere EVER. That little girl was absolutly right. Somebody should give her a scholarship!