Jenice Armstrong's unhelpful anti-bitch advice for women in business

Here is the opening of Jenice Armstrong's column in today's Daily News: "IF PROFESSIONAL women really want to get ahead, then they have to stop acting like bitches."

No really. It gets better from there.

To be fair, this isn't Armstrong speaking for herself. Instead, she's quoting Susan Tose Spencer, former vice president of the Eagles—her father owned the team—who has a new book full of advice for business women. Like: Use your "feminine wiles" to your advantage. But don't complain about sexual harassment! That's whining! The best thing to do is just ... add more sexiness to be harassed. At least that seems to be the lesson here:

In her book, she shares an anecdote about the time she ran into a problem with her biggest customer's male buyer. He was the touchy-feely type and kept reaching for her leg under the restaurant table. (If it had been me, I would have had that loser's hand twisted up behind his back and slammed his face up against the tables. But then again, I'm just a wage slave, and Spencer couldn't afford to alienate the guy.)

So, she writes, the next time she met him for dinner, Spencer brought a beautiful female colleague with her. She and the other woman made a point of sitting on either side of the buyer, so he had to turn his head and look from one to the other. The distraction kept him from playing grab-a-leg, enabling Spencer to keep his business and her own virtue.

"You can't embarrass the male ego. Once you embarrass them, you make an enemy," Spencer warned.

Ick. You notice the burden here isn't on the man to avoid getting handsy because he might make an enemy of a well-connected businesswoman. Just: Ick.

But get back to the whole "bitch" thing. Spencer's contention is that women get the label because they deserve it: "You know they're always called bitches. Well, why? Because they act like them. Think about it. They kind of try to sabotage a guy. Or they'll talk behind his back."

Here's the problem: A successful woman will always—always—have the bitch label affixed to her at somewhere along the way. We all know this. I bet Spencer has been called it a time or two. Or three. My workplace experience is that women are no more or less likely to do the sometimes-ugly work of getting ahead. But when they do, it's the b-word for them. And men aren't held to the same standard: Steve Jobs was famously hurtful to his employees at times, yet the last week of hagiography-eulogizing has somehow mitigated that quality—or turned it into an advantage: He was just trying to make the product better! And maybe that's so. But is there any doubt that a Susan Jobs would've been seen much, much differently?

Spencer's journey, too, is shaped by the fact that she had access to the top rungs of the corporate ladder by virtue of her lineage. Would she have been vice president for the Eagles in the 1980s if her father hadn't owned the operation? Maybe ... but doubtful. It's pretty easy to dispense advice on taking third base if you were born there—and easy to be all sugar and charm if you didn't have to fight your way to the top. I'm not sure Spencer's advice is all that helpful to real women—or that Armstrong's amplification of it is all that helpful to Philadelphia.

Are the Inky and Daily News Really So Similar?

Philly's two major dailies come under new ownership on Friday, and I couldn't help but notice this quote today from the new guy in charge:

Longer term, (new CEO Gregory J. Osberg) said, he wanted to talk with the editors of the newspapers about making them "more distinct from one another."

"I think today we are asking our consumers to choose one newspaper or the other, the way we're approaching the news," Osberg said.

"If we start to separate the brands, to become more distinct in their editorial missions, there is an opportunity for us to get consumers interested in buying both of the papers on any given day.

I'd love to know what Osberg means by that, because the Inquirer and Daily News couldn't seem more different to me. The Inquirer is the suburban newspaper, with lots of coverage of New Jersey and outlying counties that I -- as a Philly resident -- don't generally find all that useful or interesting. (It also tries too hard, I think, to be a "paper of record" with national and international news, sometimes trumpeting headlines on wire service stories you could find anywhere.) The Daily News is pretty much a Philly-Philly-Philly paper, a bit sassier and more fun, but relentlessly focused on what's going on here.

Now: My residency and biases make me a bit more of a Daily News man, myself. But I also see the value, mostly, of the Inky model. By offering such distinct publications, Philadelphia Media Network is probably already reaching more of the market than it would otherwise. The challenge isn't -- and shouldn't be -- getting Philadelphians to buy two newspapers per day. It's getting them to buy one.

Islamophobia, Park51 and Stu Bykofsky's Collective Guilt For Thee, But Not For Me

Oh, Stu.

Stu Bykofsky's at it again. He's in the Daily News today, taking on the "Ground Zero mosque" issue by decrying the intolerance and insensitivity ... of the left.

No really.

I don't oppose building Cordoba House or Park51, or whatever it's called this week, near Ground Zero, but I understand why many dislike the location.

They are assaulted by the Hard Left as un-American, Islamophobic bigots. Is that fair? Is there no other possible explanation for their opposition?

The Hard Left demands, rightfully, that we not judge all Muslims by the acts of a few, but then judges all conservatives by the acts or remarks of a few.

It's disheartening that the same progressives who condemned Sen. Joe McCarthy's guilt-by-association tactics find it so easy to smear their opponents.

I'm not quite sure who all Stu is lumping into the "hard left" here, but I get the feeling it includes a lot of people who are merely, you know, liberal. And vigorous about defending First Amendment freedoms.

The problem here is that Stu gives the game away with is appraisal of the project.

Two-thirds of Americans agree that Muslims have a right to build it, yet think the location is unhelpful. They may be letting emotion trump reason, but are they Islamophobes?

If you despise - as I do - the Westboro Baptist Church for holding up "God Hates Fags" signs and desecrating soldiers' funerals, are you anti-Christian?

Well, Stu, no. But if you oppose the presence of, say, Lutherans or Catholics or Methodists at military funerals because they're Christians and Fred Phelps is a Christian, then yes: you're anti-Christian. You'd be burdening an entire religion with collective guilt from the actions of a few jerks. And that would be irrational, unthinking and unconcerned with the facts. More than that: It would be wrong.

That's more or less what's happening with the "Ground Zero mosque." (Which, as has been pointed out many times, isn't actually at Ground Zero.)

So what Stu is really saying here is: Collective guilt for thee, but not for me. It's understandable that all Muslims be painted as terrorists-in-waiting, but oh so unfair to paint all critics as Islamophobes! Stu's complaint breaks down under the weight of its own contradictions.

It also breaks down under the weight of, you know, the facts: Plenty of liberals have praised Sen. Orrin Hatch -- a conservative's conservative -- for defending the First Amendment rights of the Park51 leaders. Lots of them have linked to columns by former Bush aides Michael Gerson and Mark McKinnon mounting a similar defense. So we're not calling all conservatives "Islamophobes." Just the Islamophobic ones.

"Officers' safety comes first, and not infringing on people's rights comes second."

I'm pretty much on record that I find gun ownership the most ambiguous of all the civil rights. It's not that I dispute the meaning of the Second Amendment -- that debate, I think, is for all intents and purposes over -- but, let's be frank: Guns are instruments of violence. Period. I'm not at all certain that the Second Amendment is always and everywhere a good thing.

But I like civil rights a whole bunch, and it seems to me that if I call on folks to defend them when they don't like it, I should do the same thing. That's why I find this story in the Philadelphia Daily News so disturbing:

In the last two years, Philadelphia police have confiscated guns from at least nine men - including four security guards - who were carrying them legally, and only one of the guns has been returned, according to interviews with the men.

Eight of the men said that they were detained by police - two for 18 hours each. Two were hospitalized for diabetic issues while in custody, one of whom was handcuffed to a bed. Charges were filed against three of the men, only to be withdrawn by the District Attorney's Office.

Read further into the story, and you'll hear tales of men arrested after they offered their legal permits to carry the weapons to officers -- who either didn't know the law well enough to accept the documentation, or, because of other issues, couldn't independently verify those permits in a quick and reasonable manner.

In such cases, it seems to me, the call goes to the person who is exercising their rights. If police can't prove you're violating the law, they shouldn't be able to arrest you or confiscate your property. But that's not really the case in Philadelphia, at least. Enter Lt. Fran Healy, a "special adviser to the police commissioner," and this somewhat chilling statement of values:

"Officers' safety comes first, and not infringing on people's rights comes second," Healy said.

That sounds reasonable enough on the surface -- and certainly, nobody wants to see any cop dead -- but: Spend any time in a courtroom, like I have, and you'll realize that "officer safety" is the loophole to end all loopholes. As a general rule, police have to have "reasonable suspicion" -- evidence derived from their observations or witnesses -- to stop you, to frisk you, to arrest you. Under the guise of "officer safety," though, officers can frisk you to (wink) make sure you don't happen to have a weapon. And if they happen to dig criminal evidence out of your pockets -- evidence they wouldn't have had the right to collect otherwise -- well, that's just what happens in the course of things.

Sometimes, you end up with innocent men in state custody for 18 hours because the police can't or won't get their act together.

Like I said: I do want Philly cops to be safe. And guns make the city scary, at times. But I want the police to operate on the presumption that they honor the rights of the citizens they serve. Stories like today's don't offer me comfort.

What I got in my first issue of the Philadelphia Daily News

As expected, my first issue of the Philadelphia Daily News landed with a startle-me-out-of-my-sleep SMACK on the front steps this morning. After checking my e-mail on my iPhone, I decided to forgo electronic stimulation for a little while and spend some time with my new newspaper.

And time I spent. It takes me five-to-10 minutes most mornings to blaze through Philly headlines on my Google Reader. But that's only the "local news" headlines. There's a lot more stuff in the paper, obviously, but there's something about the physical medium of paper that slows. you. down.

Or maybe that's just me.

In any case, I spent about an hour with the Daily News this morning -- probably aided by the fact that the Friday edition is a little fatter with weekend "things to do around town" news than its sister issues the rest of the week. Here's what I found:

* CRIME: Actually, I was always getting the crime news on my RSS feed from Philly.com, but I usually raced past it. For whatever reason, I spent more time with it. There's a lot of crime in Philly! But you knew that.

* ADS: You forget how relatively ad-free most news websites are -- how the hell are they making money, anyway? -- until you dip back into a print newspaper and face an onslaught of commerce. Oh yeah, that's why news organizations are still printing newspapers. Ads for cars, ads for services, ads for apartments, ads for nudie bars. I, uh, won't make use of the last one.

* COMICS: Garfield still sucks. Still, it was the comics page that started my newspaper addiction when I was five years old. I wonder how -- or if -- today's young people might find their first connection to their local news organizations. Maybe through...

* SPORTS: Philly's a huge sports town. I've kind of not engaged that directly. But I know today that Eagles QB Kevin Kolb signed a one-year contract extension, and that Brad Lidge is coming off the DL for the Phillies series with the (boooo!) Mets. So I know way more about that kind of stuff than I did yesterday. Which means I might be able to have coherent conversations with other dudes around town.

* ATTYTOOD: No, not Will Bunch. (Though he was there, with an article about the new CEO of the Daily News, Inky and Philly.com.) I mean a tabloid sensibility to its news coverage that the staid and stuffy folks at broadsheets around the country would surely disdain. Maybe I'm staid and stuffy: I have to read past that stuff to get to the news. But a little verve probably doesn't hurt your engagement with readers.

* LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: It's like online comments. Only culled for the best ones. And with real names attached! It's actually kind of nice.

* USA WEEKEND: I didn't really need that, actually. But maybe that's just me.

It was, overall, a good time. Not perfect: There were some questionable typographic and layout choices -- but weirdly, that was also part of the charm. It's hard to screw up a web page, because most news sites are formatted to give you the same design for every single story. Trying to make the news fit around ads is a somewhat more complicated endeavor, with increased chances to screw up the look of things. It's a little more ... human.

Print newspapers aren't going to replace online news in my media diet. I'll spend some time with the New York Times and Washington Post later this morning, completely contained in the land of pixels. Maybe, though, there's still room for a bit of print in my life. Certainly, the best way for me to financially support local newsgathering is to buy a subscription to the print newspaper. And as you can see, there are benefits and charms to doing so.

Why I subscribed to the Philadelphia Daily News today

We moved to Philadelphia nearly two years ago, and for the first time in my adult life I've gone without a subscription to a local daily newspaper. Why? Easy: It's the 21st century! Why spend money on getting a printed product when you can just go to Philly.com and select the RSS feeds you want to follow?

Today, however, that changed. Money's still tight in the Mathis household -- full-time employment sure would be nice! -- but it seemed like a declaration of values is needed. I subscribed to the Philadelphia Daily News. Our first issue should arrive on Friday or Saturday.

Again, why? Again: Easy. The Daily News has new owners. And I want them to know how important Philadelphia journalism is to me.

To be clear, this isn't passive-aggressive gotcha with Brian Tierney, the would-be media mogul who lost control of the Daily News -- and the Inquirer, and Philly.com -- today. I've been critical of Tierney's seeming cynicism and hucksterism -- but if Tierney possessed those qualities in abundance, one has to give him props for continuing to support good journalism in a challenging era. The Daily News won -- and deserved -- a Pulitzer Prize this year.

Now that he's out, and a group of creditors is taking over, the question will almost certainly be raised: Can the Daily News survive?

Since I've been in town -- and, so I'm told, for years before that -- the tabloid has been spoken of as the weak sister in the city's daily paper constellation. Since the Inquirer is owned by the same company, the thinking went, what were the benefits of having two daily newspapers that robbed each other of circulation? Why not poor all that money into one paper and reap the benefits.

I have my own answer. For me, the Daily News is a real Philadelphia newspaper.

Oh, I could do without its annual "sexiest singles" roundup, and it's self-conscious "People Paper" conceit. But the paper is aggressively local: It covers Philadelphia closely and aggressively. Its Pulitzer was won for a series of articles that exposed corruption on the Philly police force, a good and necessary example of local accountability journalism.

The Inquirer, meanwhile, still seems stuck in an identity crisis. Look at the front page on any given day and you'll see that it's still ruled by the idea that it can be a "paper of record" for events beyond Philly and its environs -- lots of national and international stories, most days, culled from wire services. News that you can (and probably are getting) from other, online sources. It's a pale imitation of the days, 20 and 30 years ago, when the Inky had its own bureaus out around the world.

And even the local news isn't always so local. The Inky's audience -- and thus a huge chunk of its newshole -- is largely out in the suburbs. That's fine. Except I don't really need to read as much about New Jersey politics as the Inquirer wants to sell me. The Daily News, meanwhile, is Philly, Philly and Philly some more.

But the Inky has a bigger circulation. Probably a more lucrative audience base. And so if the decision comes to cut back to one newspaper in this town, well, it's probably the Inky that will survive.

So today I subscribed to the Daily News. It's a statement to the new owners -- small and unconvincing though it might be -- that the DN's journalism is important to me, and (I think) to the community. Even with new ownership in place, it's likely that rough times are still ahead for Philly newspapers, and the industry as a whole. (Don't be surprised if we start hearing about layoffs at both papers, and soon.) If my 30 dollars can keep the Daily News rolling a little bit longer, it's a price I'm happy to pay.