by Kevin Kelton

by Kevin Kelton

It used to be that a young person graduated high school or college, tossed aside the whims of childhood dreams, and set out to build an adult career that would be self-actualizing while also supporting them and a family. Entry-level white collar jobs were plentiful, and even a mechanic or machinist could enjoy a skilled trade they love and the protections of a union job. But for many people trapped in today’s service and gig economy, the dream of a fulfilling professional career has gone the way of the dodo bird.

Don’t get me wrong; there’s nothing wrong with driving for Lyft, waiting tables, or working another service job to pay the bills. It’s all honorable work. But it’s not self-actualizing. It’s not who you are.

That’s why I think every person needs a passion or dream and should be encouraged to pursue that passion as long as they can. I got lucky and turned my dream of being a comedy writer into an actual career. But you don’t have to make money at your dream to live it. Golfers don’t get paid to hit the links once or twice a week. Nor do amateur bowlers, tennis players, painters, photographers, bloggers, and on and on. With the advent of YouTube and podcasting, even wannabe video stars and political pundits (like me) can do their thing. I am constantly amazed and impressed by the vast amount of talent out there in the world. And thanks to technology, you don’t have to win a network role or an Emmy to be a star.

Yet I’m constantly surprised and saddened by my Facebook friends who are missing this important component of a happy life. Every life will inevitably suffer the ups and downs of financial stress, illness, loss, and mental health struggles. Without the important nutrients gained from a balanced diet of joy and fun, the bad calories of daily life will ultimately rot the soul.

Actress Ann Dowd (“The Handmaid’s Tale”) told her story of how she came to live her dream recently, and it made me think we need more stories like hers out there for people who are trying to find fulfillment in their humble lives. If you’re just living to make the rent or raise the kids, you are only living half a life.

So with that in mind, here’s my story of how I came to live a dream. Not everyone will be as lucky as me. But hopefully my story will motivate others to at least take their shot.

I went to college without any inkling of what I wanted to be when I grew up. The only thing I loved doing was playing hockey, and I knew that short, skinny kids with moderate skating skills don’t make the NHL. But I did like comedy. I liked watching it on TV, listening to comedy albums, and, once my brother Bobby began doing standup comedy in New York, hanging out with him and helping write his act. Night after night during my breaks between semesters, I would trek with Bobby from comedy club to comedy club, watching him and the likes of Ed Bluestone, Alan Zweibel, Bob Shaw, Barry Diamond, and dozens of other standup comedy black belts whose names aren’t familiar to most readers. While I pursued a degree in business administration, I was earning an virtual masters degree in comedy just by osmosis. Soon I began applying those skills on my college radio station, where I cohosted and cowrote a National Lampoon Radio Hour-style show.

But it was just a hobby. I wasn’t pursuing a career or money. I was having fun. Like playing hockey.

As my senior year of college was coming to a close, I was wondering where I would fit in in the adult world. I thought I might have the skills to write copy at an ad agency. But it wasn’t what I wanted to be when I grew up. Which, if based on the metric of graduating college, was only weeks away.

One night about a month before finals, I attended a campus seminar about finding your first job. Seems like the practical thing for a business student to do, right? The frivolous days of college radio were ending, I was going to need a job, and it was time to grow up and get serious about life.

The speaker, a best-selling author on the topic of career development, started by telling everyone to take out a piece of paper and write down the three things they’d be in life if they could be anything in the world. My list, predictably, was:

1. hockey player
2. comedy writer
3. radio newscaster

The speaker then instructed everyone to “cross out numbers two and three, look at number one, and focus for the next two hours on how you can become that.”

That’s when I did the singularly smartest thing I have ever done: I crossed out my number one: hockey player. Because I knew that nothing he said about résumés and job interviews was getting me in the NHL.

So I looked at #2 and spent the next two hours asking myself, Why are you looking for a job in advertising when you really want to be a comedy writer?

After the seminar, I returned to my dorm room and set out to convince my roommate, Mark, a theater major and my cohost on our little college radio comedy show, to cowrite a TV spec script with me. I honestly do not recall how I knew what a spec script was.

Mark, who was waist deep in writing his Theater major final thesis project, two one-act plays, thought the idea was absurd. “Are you nuts? We have finals in a month!” I rebutted his forceful protest with the best counter-offer I could come up with: “What if I do all the typing?”

Mark reluctantly agreed, and I spent the next month typing out the “Barney Miller” script we’d rift on during study breaks. (For those under 50, “Barney Miller” was the “Brooklyn Nine Nine” of my time.) I sent it to my brother and to a cousin who was also in the TV business. My cousin and my brother’s agent both got back to me with vague words along the lines of “it shows promise.” That was all I needed to hear.

Two months later, I arrived in Los Angeles with an old manual typewriter, $2,200 in college loan debt (the equivalent of about $10K today), and two more spec scripts that I wrote in motels at night during my drive across country. (I was always a fast writer.) Aside from a six month day job as a bank teller to earn rent money (where I spent my lunch hours writing jokes in the breakroom), I never stopped pursuing the dream. I kept writing spec scripts, started doing standup to showcase my material, sold jokes to whoever would buy them, and kept networking to make things happen. Suffice to say, with a lot of hard work, tenacity and resilience, I eventually broke through and enjoyed a fairly successful career as a TV writer (including writing for “Saturday Night Live” – another dream fulfilled).

All thanks to that speaker in college who advised me to become a hockey player.

Granted, I had a lot of built-in advantages not available to everyone; I had a brother in the business to help me navigate the terrain, and a bit of born-with talent I was able to match to my passion. But getting paid to do it was still a long-shot dream that required the one thing we are all born with: a driving desire to like how I spend my time.

To button my point, I didn’t need to get paid to live out my dream. I stopped getting paid to write long ago, but I still do it to this day. In fact, I’m doing it right now. And though no one will pay me a dime for this longwinded and self-indulgent essay, I enjoyed the two hours I spent writing it as much as writing a sketch for “Saturday Night Live.” This was my day on the golf course. I hope I broke 80.

I also pursued other dreams in my life as well to keep me sane when work wasn’t enough, including earning a black belt (achieved), hosting a political talk show (achieved on a small scale), and being a great dad (a work in progress). I even continued playing ice hockey into my mid-thirties and got to an adult league championship game (which we lost). Some dreams never die.

What do you love to do? Find it and do it. Even if it’s a few hours at night or on the weekend. Write. Paint. Compose. Play. Cook. Dance. Travel. Shoot an average round of golf or a game of pickup hoops. Buy the motorcycle. Build the boat. Whatever it is, add a little dash of it to your life. You don’t have to become a pro or even be good at it. You just need to love doing it. 

And never listen to someone who tells you your dreams are impossible. Had I gotten that same sage advice a few decades back, I might be in the Hockey Hall of Fame today.

Kevin Kelton is the cohost of The More Perfect Union podcast and founder of the Facebook political group, Open Fire.

by Rebekah Kuschmider, MPU co-host

OMG, MPU-inverse. This week. This freakin’ week.

If you’re like me, you’re probably getting focused on the midterms. It’s go time and we’re all geared up to phonebank and canvas and write postcards and register voters or something to make sure this upcoming election has record turnout and awesome outcomes. That’s what fall is supposed to be about.

Then we got smacked with news that Paul Manafort is going to cooperate with Bob Mueller’s investigation. Holy shit! That was a plot twist, right? I can’t wait to hear what this guy has to say! And is he gonna say it in English or is he going to revert to the original Russian to detail his involvement in the Trump campaign?

But what’s really weighing on me this week is the story about a letter Senator Feinstein referred to the FBI. The letter, which was sent to the Senator and to Representative Anna Eshoo by a constituent, details an episode in which Brett Kavanaugh attempted to sexually assault an acquaintance at a party in high school. Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer detailed the contents of the letter – though not the name of the sender – the New Yorker on Friday.

When the details were revealed, Washington kind of exploded.

Now, Brett Kavanaugh isn’t the first Supreme Court nominee to be accused of sexual misconduct. Hell, he isn’t event the first Supreme Court nominee in my lifetime to be accused of sexual misconduct. I remember what people said about Clarence Thomas and what they said about Anita Hill. I remember and my heart is so heavy for this unnamed woman. Because she must remember all of that too and now? Now she must be so afraid.  All I can think about is how she feels right now, how she’s felt these last weeks since the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh.

She was afraid the night a high school boy held her down and tried to assault her. She was likely afraid in the days after that, wondering what she should do, what she should say. She was probably afraid of what people would say to her and about her. She was afraid of what would happen to her, to her family, to her future.

So she spoke to a therapist instead of to the police and lived her life for the next 30 years. 

Then that boy from her past appeared in her newspaper with the words “Supreme Court Nominee” under his photos.

What could she have felt then? Was she afraid?

She knew things about him than no one else knew and she was the only person who could tell her story. And she wanted to tell it.

But she was probably afraid. Afraid of what would happen to her, to her family, to her future.

She has seen what happens to women to tell the tales of powerful men who commit terrible acts. The women aren’t hailed as heroes. They are vilified and questioned and harassed and abused in a million ways. Look at Monica Lewinsky. Look at Anita Hill. Look at the women who spoke about Harvey Weinstein and Les Moonves and Louis CK. Look what it took for people to believe the stories about Bill Cosby. 

Hell, look at the young men abused at Ohio State and the boys assaulted by Jerry Sandusky at Penn State. Victims have to climb a mountain just to get a platform from which to be heard.

But she also knows that the only way to share her story is to tell it, to climb that mountain, to find a platform. So she told it. She told two other women, powerful women, women positioned to relay her story through official channels but who could also, maybe, just maybe protect her, too. She told them to use her story but not her name. She gave them the truth but tried not to give away her life in the process.

They did what she asked. They redacted her name and told investigators and the White House. They made her letter available to the Senate as they deliberate. They tried to walk the tightrope of sharing but not sharing too much.

And now the attacks on her credibility are ramping up. She sees her classmates from the time signing letters saying her story can’t be true. She is hearing analysts calling her honesty into question. She is seeing Senator Feinstein and Representative Eshoo being criticized for doing as she asked by protecting her identity. And she knows what will be next.

She knows that internet sleuths are probably right now trying figure out her name. The trolls beneath the bridges of Reddit and 4chan are right now prying into her community and trying to unearth her identity. She knows there are forces are so prepared to exonerate a man that they will cheerfully destroy a woman who dared to speak her truth. They will find her and her spouse and her children. They’ll share her name, her address, her children’s’ school, her relationship history, any arrest record she might have, her work history, everything about her. They will slice open her life and spread it out, hold it to the light and ask the world to examine her and find her wanting.

This will happen and she knows it. And she is probably afraid.

The bravest person in America today is this woman, whoever she is. After 30 years of private pain, she took her pain public. She was wise enough to withold her name from the story but she knows that was just a delay. Soon enough, her world will be different and there is no way she can stop the violation Brett Kavanaugh started all those year ago when he held her down and covered her mouth to silence her.

She may not have changed history but she is a person of great courage for trying. 

Actual photo of a recent NY Times op-ed columnist.

by An Anonymous Trump Staffer Rebekah Kuschmider, MPU co-host

Greetings MPU-niverse! We’ve made it through the last days of summer and, here on the east coast at least, we’re experiencing the rainy weather associated with hurricane season. You all remember hurricanes, right? The kind of storm that can disable the entire utility structure for an island under US control, like what happened in Puerto Rico last year? And a year later 11,000 people still don’t have power? Yeah. That.

In DC, the biggest storm is the storm of speculation about who wrote the anonymous op-ed from inside the Trump administration. The piece, published in the New York Times, confirmed that even Trump’s staff thinks he’s an incompetent shitweasel. Trump is so furious about it that he told the press corps that he wants Jeff Sessions to open an investigation into the matter. The Justice Department responded by saying “Writing columns isn’t a crime, you incompetent shitweasel. We’re not investigating anything.”

So far, no members of the MPU cast have confirmed or denied their involvement in the column. You’ll have to listen to the podcast to see if any of us are implicated.

Meanwhile, here’s all the news that’s  not fit to ‘cast!

The Greatest. Don’t @ Me: Last week on the podcast, we talked about the new Nike ad featuring Colin Kaepernick. We all had lots of good things to say about Kaepernick and Nike and the rights of people to express their opinions in the manner they see fit. And this was before we even saw the ad.

Now that the full film has been released, I’m even more psyched for one very simple reason. In the narration, Kaepernick says that Serena Williams is the greatest athlete ever.

BOOM.

For years, fans of Serena have been saying that about her and there’s always some analyst – usually male – who’s right there saying “But Pete Sampras…” or “Well, there are a lot of other athletes in other sports…” before mumbling something about Muhammed Ali or Michael Jordan or someone.

No. NO. Serena is at the top of the damn athletic heap and there is no reason to argue against it. Thirty goddam years that woman has gotten on the court and won. She won big, she won small. She was number one or she was fighting her way back to number one. She got injured and came back. She got pregnant and won a Grand Slam. She damn near died after giving birth, came back, and made it to the finals at Wimbledon. She’s out there tearing up the US Open court this very weekend. She trains, and she works, and she wins. She has done it longer than any other athlete you can name and she’s done it with more grace.

She’s the greatest athlete ever. Thank you Nike for saying it out loud.

And Another Thing: While I’m airing grievances here can we talk about Michelle Obama? About a month ago, she showed up on every social media feed in the country doing a video with Lin-Manuel Miranda, Janelle Monae, and Chris Paul telling us all to vote. She’s co-chair of When We All Vote. She’s the face of a a major get out the vote initiative. She’s doing the work.

Then yesterday, her husband shows up and gives a speech and he’s the hero of this election?

Bruh.

Look, I know. I KNOW we all feel like Barack Obama is the savior we need but c’mon. He didn’t save us from Trump in 2016 and he can’t flip Congress single handedly this year.

Michelle is a symbol for all of us who are doing the work this election cycle. From the record number of women who are running for office to the activists who are drawing attention to the continued detention of children to the protestors keeping the Kavanaugh hearing in the news to the thousands of volunteers making calls, knocking on doors, and sending postcards, people are doing the work.

The work is what matters, not the speeches. You can appreciate Barack at this moment but we should all do the work like Michelle.

Yes, You’re Right: If you think the subtext of this whole column is that women of color don’t get enough credit for their impact on our country, you’re entirely correct. Gold star for you.

Science Lesson: During his confirmation hearings this week, Brett Kavanaugh – who got a medical degree from FUCKING NOWHERE, I might add – said something about certain types of birth control being “abortion causing drugs”.

I’m going to assume that Not-A-Doctor Kavanaugh was talking about emergency contraception, sometimes known by its brand names Plan B or Ella. These are hormone-based medications that can be taken up to 72 hours after intercourse to prevent a pregnancy. They start a cascade of biological responses that suppress ovulation so that if there are any sperm flailing around a uterus, they won’t have any eggs to fertilize, thus no pregnancy occurs.

If the person taking the emergency contraceptive has already ovulated or ovulation is imminent because the necessary hormone surge has already occurred, the medication is ineffective and pregnancy is a very real risk. Not guaranteed, but there’s a distinct probability.

Once upon a time, the scientists who developed these medications thought perhaps one of the effects of them would be changes to the uterine lining that could prevent implantation of a fertilized egg. During the approval process with the FDA, they listed this as a possible effect and the FDA had them put it on the package insert for the medications, where it remains to this day.

Those inserts were written about 20 years ago and have not been updated, despite additional data about how the meds actually work.

What scientists now know is that the medication suppresses ovulation pretty effectively. When people take the drug at least 2 days before they’ve ovulated, they tend not to get pregnant. The part about preventing a fertilized egg from implanting? Yeah, that didn’t turn out like that thought. The drug doesn’t do that. To quote the scientific findings “There are no data supporting the view that levonorgestrel can impair the development of the embryo or prevent implantation.”

How can we be sure of that? Well, it’s pretty simple. If the drug prevented ovulation AND prevented implantation, it would have a near-zero failure rate and no one who takes it would get pregnant. Instead, continuing research shows that ,“In each study, none of the women who took LNG EC before ovulation became pregnant, but among those who took it on the day of ovulation or after, roughly the same number of pregnancies resulted that you’d expect to see with no use of emergency contraception.”

So, the moral of the story is emergency contraception only works by suppressing ovulation, it doesn’t cause abortions in any form, and the Republican party has a SCOTUS nominee who believes in junk science and right-wing scaremongering.

That’s it for me, folks. Tune in Monday when we drop some knowledge in the More Perfect Union!

by Kevin Kelton

For almost two years Americans have been saying, “I hope there are adults in the room to protect the country from President Donald Trump’s worst instincts.” Now an anonymous high administration official has come forward to say s/he and others are doing just that, and everyone is yelling that it’s a cowardly coup.

No, it’s not. It’s exactly what a presidential advisor should be doing.

Avoiding or delaying bad decisions and directing the president to better ones are what the “adults in the room” are hired to do. They are the experts in their respective fields. If they know their president works best when he has a cooling off period before making a rash decision, they should do everything they can to give him that time to reflect – not let him fly off the rails by himself. If an impulsive president wants to sign an order to assassinate a foreign leader or launch a precipitous trade war, I want someone there to slow him down. Hell, I wish someone had done that to George W. Bush before he invaded Iraq.

As for the alternative description of this as a “soft coup,” that term simply doesn’t apply. A soft coup is the overthrow of a government by non-violent means. In the case of Anonymous, it’s clear s/he is executing most of the orders of the president and actively working to keep this administration in power until the voters or the congress decide otherwise.

In terms of him or her taking this action anonymously, there is solid historical precedent for that choice. Both Daniel Ellsberg (whom I admire) and Edward Snowden (whom I don’t) stayed anonymous after their leaks and only went public when circumstances forced their hands. And, of course, Mark Felt stayed silent for over 30 years before copping to being ‘Deep Throat,’ even denying it publicly many times. They all knew that going public off the bat might lead to job loss, prosecution, and public ridicule. Maybe the Trump administration’s unnamed turncoat only has so much courage. But better to show a little courage than none at all.

Finally, from a purely strategic perspective, having this person come forward and out himself is exactly what Trump, Mike Pence, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and all the other White House deplorables want him to do. Why would you want to take the same position on it as them?! If this person had penned it under his/her name, Trump would now be on the warpath trying to destroy his reputation the way he has with James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Jeff Sessions, John Brennan, Bruce Ohr, and other people who’ve publicly stood up to him. How would that help the situation? If a person wants to do the right thing while avoiding the fate of McCabe or Strzok or Sessions, can you blame them?

So no, I don’t want the coolest heads in the room outing themselves and being forced to resign so this maniacal despot can replace them with spineless sycophants.

You can excoriate “Anonymous” for selectively removing papers or not outing himself. I applaud him, salute him, and hope many more follow his lead.

Kevin Kelton is the co-host of The More Perfect Union podcast and the founder of the Facebook debate group, Open Fire Politics.

by Kevin Kelton

A lot of people this week are honoring Sen. John McCain for his service in Vietnam, citing his valor as a POW. But McCain’s place in history has deeper significance than just that story itself. Here are three reasons that John McCain will forever live in American history.

1. There are only four names that people will remember in fifty years about the military men of the Vietnam War: Gen. William Westmoreland, Lieutenant William Calley, Lt. John Kerry and Lt. John McCain. The first two will be remembered as villains, and Kerry, the hero turned war critic, will get mixed reviews in some quarters. Only John McCain will universally be remembered favorably for his distinguished service in Vietnam. Of course, each family that lost a relative will long remember their loved one’s honorable sacrifice. But in the annals of history only McCain will famously embody it. He will be the George Washington or the Ulysses Grant or the Douglas McArthur of the Vietnam era. 
2. The historic heroes of any war reflect the national sentiment about that war. George Washington and Patrick Henry are remembered for their selfless love of country. George Patton, Audie Murphy, Sgt. Alvin York and others from World War II are remembered for their steely determination to defend the world from fascism. The image of the Vietnam War will be more nuanced, about a long quagmire that engulfed a nation and held it hostage. In that regard, McCain perfectly embodies Vietnam. His legacy is not about victorious battles and defeating an enemy. It’s about being taken hostage in a war that was un-winnable, and serving honorably while being held hostage for a long time.
3. Finally, though he was born a decade before the start of the baby boom, McCain’s life is a perfect metaphor for the baby boom generation: a generation born into war and painfully tormented by it, that then went on to build the best world they could for the remainder of the 20th and 21st centuries.

John McCain embodies all of that. He is the epitome of the best of the baby boom generation. And that is why he will forever be an American legend.