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Women's power to hurt the male ego

By Michelle Burford, Oprah.com
October 25, 2010 -- Updated 1343 GMT (2143 HKT)

Here's a closely guarded secret: Women have more influence over men than they think.
Psychologist Jay Carter talks to Michelle Burford about male self-esteem, the criticism that could
demolish a man and what male intimacy is really about.

Twenty-six years of counseling men and couples have given Jay Carter an unusually clear
window into men's hearts and minds. Carter's observations are so eye-opening that we asked him
about everything from finding the key to a man's inner life to the best way to chew him out when
you're mad:

Michelle Burford: You've written that most women have no idea of their power to wound
men. Where does this power originate?

Jay Carter: During a boy's most important developmental period -- his first five years -- he
usually gets his self-esteem from his mother. I think some of Freud's theories are hogwash, but I
believe he was right about at least one: Whereas a girl might choose to grow up to become like
her mother in certain ways, a boy tries to be becoming to his mother -- to make her proud.

Years later, when he meets someone he wants to spend his life with, he unconsciously gives her
what I call his "jujube doll" -- a kind of voodoo-like name I have for the part of a man's self-
esteem that's vulnerable to a woman's opinion of him. If she sticks a pin in his doll, he recoils.
Most women I talk with don't realize what kind of influence they have over men.

Burford: Doesn't a woman likewise hand over part of her power to the most significant
man in her life?

Carter: Yes, but she does it by sharing her most private feelings. The seat of a woman's soul is
her emotions. A woman usually believes you know her when you know what she feels. But the
seat of a man's soul is his intent or purpose.

That's why when a woman bares her soul by disclosing her feelings, a man often doesn't
recognize that as significant. He's been socialized to discount feelings.
For him, baring the soul means sharing his hopes and dreams. He may say things that seem
boring, silly or outlandish: "You know what I'd do if I had $20,000? I'd invest it in lotto." But if a
woman really listens, he'll share more.

After a failure, a man might express his intentions by saying, "I know I've messed up, but here's
what I wanted for our family." When a woman understands this, she can begin to share her own
intentions as a way of drawing him closer. Men respect hopes and dreams. That's a language they
speak.

Burford: In your book "Nasty Women," you state that men are more word-oriented. But
aren't women considered more verbal?

Carter: Yes, but research on gender differences has proven that men tend to take words more
literally and to hear them in more sweeping terms.

Let's say a woman asks her husband to pick up a half-gallon of orange juice after work. When he
arrives home empty-handed, she's irritated.

She might offhandedly say, "You are so irresponsible." All he hears is the word irresponsible.
He believes she's saying he's irresponsible in general. He thinks, "What about all the months I
paid the mortgage? Does one slipup erase all my effort? And why is she overreacting?"

With his self-esteem wounded, he may launch into a defense about what it means to be
responsible. She gets frustrated because he's so caught up in words that he doesn't acknowledge
her feelings -- and that's usually because he doesn't remember how important feelings are to her.

Oprah.com: How well do you know your partner? Take the quiz to find out

Burford: What if the man really is irresponsible? How do you communicate that without
inciting a gender missile crisis?

Carter: If you decide you want to keep the man around, don't use the word irresponsible. You
can call him a jerk or even an ass and it won't devastate him, because what is a jerk? That's not
concretely definable. But what a man feels when you call him irresponsible is what a woman
feels when you call her a bitch. It's the ultimate insult. So if you're angry at a man, just call him a
bitch.

Burford: Suppose a woman tunes in to her partner's intentions but he doesn't reciprocate
by hearing her needs. How can she convey her frustration without becoming a nag or
know-it-all?

Carter: She can get his attention through action. If a man leaves his pajamas on the floor, a
woman might get so upset that she'll accuse him of disregarding her feelings. Then for two days,
he'll pick up the PS to avoid an emotional outburst.
But if two men were living together, one would simply say to the other, "Do you think you could
put away your smelly pajamas before my girlfriend gets here?" The other agrees -- but still
leaves his PJs out. So his roommate finally says with a grin, "The next time you leave your
pajamas out, I'm gonad burn 'em in the backyard." He does. When the other guy looks for his
PJs, he finds a smoldering pile of cloth.

That's how men operate. They don't call each other irresponsible or accuse each other of not
caring about feelings; they simply burn the damn pajamas. For a woman to get a man's attention
without bruising his jujube doll, she has to show rather than tell.

Burford: You've written that when a woman begins to care deeply for a man, he becomes
her home-improvement project. Why?

Carter:A woman often marries a man for his potential. If women married men for who they
actually were, there would be far fewer marriages. When a woman loves a man, she says to
herself, 'I could improve him. Once we're together, things will be different.'

Since I began my practice in 1977, I've heard this refrain hundreds of times. I try to get it across
to the woman that what she sees is what she gets. This is him. If he's drinking every Friday and
Saturday night, look forward to a lifetime of weekend alcoholism. He may cut out Friday, but
he'll still be a drinker.

Men tend to resist change. In fact, one of the most prized characteristics of a man's friendship
with other men is total acceptance. When a woman begins to encourage a man to live up to his
potential, he misunderstands that as her overall dissatisfaction with him. What he feels is
tantamount to what women feel when men don't hear and respond to what they say they need.

Burford: How might the relationship unravel when she expresses her disappointment?

Carter:The man may initially improve according to her recommendations -- remember, he has a
lot invested in what she thinks of him. But over time, he becomes slower to respond. The there's
the day when she inadvertently steps on his jujube doll with a spiked heel, and it's so painful that
he snatches his self-esteem back.

That's the day she loses significant influence. He tries to make himself not care what she thinks,
which is why she begins to feel he's emotionally distant. He stops connecting. He doesn't look
her in the eyes unless he's angry. When the marriage is on the brink of breakup, the woman drags
him into my office. That's when I hear what almost any therapist can tell you is the most repeated
phrase among men: "No matter what I do, I can never please this woman."

While she's been genuinely trying to improve him with the best of intentions, he's been feeling
her efforts as a shot to his self-esteem. After all the work she has put into him -- he finally eats
with his mouth closed, he doesn't say ignorant things -- he may run off with another woman.

That's often because he's looking for someone who will think the world of him -- someone who
will see him as he thinks his wife once did. What he doesn't know is that he's bound to repeat the
cycle because he hasn't done the work of understanding himself, the woman in his life, and the
differences in how they communicate. He thinks his new woman is looking enraptured because
he's the greatest, but what she's actually thinking is, "Wow -- what potential."

Oprah.com: How men really feel about their bodies

Burford: Once a man has snatched away his "jujube doll," can a woman ever get it back?

Carter: Yes. She can sit down with him and say something like 'It wasn't my intention to hurt
you, but I have. I really do think you're a wonderful man.' He may never admit that there are heel
marks all over his doll, but if she approaches him this way, he'll slowly open up again.

Burford: How can a woman encourage her partner to reach his full potential without
hurting his self-esteem?

A: By stroking the jujube doll before bringing the hammer down. Let's say a man leaves his
McDonald's wrappers all over the car. The woman is angry that he's inconsiderate of her desire
to drive without bits of cheese, pickles, and dried ketchup stuck to the steering wheel. What
should she say?

"I see how organized you are by the way you keep your desk, which is why I'm a bit surprised
about the wreck our car is." Because she has first acknowledged the big picture -- "I know you're
a neat guy" -- the criticism doesn't sting. And if she keeps the whole thing light, she'll get a laugh
out of him before he heads out to clean the car.

I'm not suggesting that women spend their lives enabling and patronizing. This is not about
telling a man he has the brightest gold chain or the biggest penis. Emphasizing a man's positive
qualities is acknowledging the complete picture of who he is and what he has already done right.

Burford: After nearly three decades of counseling men, do you think most really want to
please women?

Carter: Oh, yes! And I believe that a man will feel even more motivated to please a woman he
loves if he knows that, in general, she already thinks the world of him. Once a woman tells a man
how responsible and caring he is, he'll usually do all he can to live up to that image. Just to make
her proud, he'll rise up and move mountains.

Why sharing is a beautiful thing

October 28, 2010 -- Updated 1645 GMT (0045 HKT)

Editor's Note: This is one in a series of articles about CNN Heroes. Jorge Munoz was named
one of the top 10 CNN Heroes for 2009. The tribute to the top 10 heroes of 2010, hosted by
Anderson Cooper, will be shown Thanksgiving night at 8 p.m. ET. Voting for the 2010 CNN
Hero of the Year is under way at CNNHeroes.com.
New York (CNN) -- Jorge Munoz is a bus driver in New York City who started feeding the
hungry in Queens five years ago, using food that would otherwise have been thrown away. And
that's how he discovered a secret -- the power of sharing.

"People are telling me, 'Jorge, you have no money, you do all this and get nothing back.' And I
say I have a checking account full of smiles."

Munoz has been recognized as a Top Ten CNN Hero in 2009 and received the U.S. Citizens
Award from President Obama. His website is AnAngelinQueens.org.

Munoz spoke Wednesday with CNN's Elizabeth Belanger. Here is an edited transcript.

CNN: What is it that made you decide to do what you do every day?

Jorge Munoz: In the beginning it was to try to avoid wasting food in the garbage. But then I
realized it was like a mission from God for my family. That's how we see it.

I was working in a summer camp on Long Island and I was waiting for the kids on the bus, and
across the street was a food processing plant. I saw a couple come out with a lot of food, and it
was good food. I asked them about it and they said they had to throw it out every Friday. But it
was good food and I asked them about it, if they could give it to me because I knew someone
would want it.

So in Jackson Heights I saw people waiting on the corner, and I asked them what they were
doing and they said they had no money for food. So I called my mom and I said I had people to
give the food to. At first we brought food for eight guys. And a few days later I saw a few of
them on the corner and I asked them about it and they said they sleep under the bridge. That's
when I decided to bring them food [every day]. And the first week it was eight guys, and the next
week 24 and so on.

Take the iReport challenge: Be an everyday hero

CNN: Are you out there every day? What do you provide for people?

Munoz: In these 6 ½ years we've been doing it, I've missed one day because of a snowstorm.
And we've distributed 121,000 meals over the years, might be more. But every day we make 120
to 140 meals. For the last few months, every piece of bread I get I bring in the morning with soda
or water that I buy. Besides meals, we provide hot coffee, tea, a piece of cake and sometimes my
mom makes chicken soup. And when I have money I provide fruit. When I have a budget, when
winter is here, I provide caps, underwear, winter hats, scarves, boots. And this time of the year,
on the website, I ask for coat donations. I need about 100 coats because these guys sleep on the
street.
 Video: A family affair
RELATED TOPICS

 Jorge Munoz
 New York City
 Hunger

CNN: Why is what you do important today?

Munoz: Because I have a family at my house and I have a second family out there. And that's
about 130 to 140 guys. And there's always a line out there. And the economy is not good right
now, and those who have a place to stay have to choose between a place to live and food. And
when we're there they have something to eat. At least we provide a little something, and the only
thing we ask in return is a smile. If you hand a meal to someone who hasn't eaten anything in the
last 20 hours and they smile, you know you did something good.

CNN: How much food do you cook in the space of a week?

Munoz: In a week it's hard to say, but for example, tomorrow we're going to cook 22 pounds of
rice, 15 pounds of pasta, 10 pounds of frozen vegetables, 10 pounds of onions, 8 to 10 pounds of
peppers, 60 pounds of chicken, we do that through the oven. My mom, she's the one who creates
the menu and every day we change the menu.

CNN: What was it like to become a CNN Hero and what has your life been like since?

Munoz: To become a CNN Hero, being nominated, it's a great honor for me, for my family and
for my country [Colombia]. So they know -- I had the chance to be there for almost a month and
when I went into a neighborhood and people knew, or even here in New York, people recognize
me. And it helped me around the world. One example, there was a teacher in Afghanistan and
she e-mailed me saying she wanted to start a small meal program in their town because of my
story. And there was a little girl in Texas, I think she's 8, after CNN Heroes, she saw the show
and the next weekend she went out with her friends and family and sold brownies and lemonade
and made $25 and sent it to me with a note saying she was touched by my efforts.

CNN: Are you planning on expanding your efforts beyond Queens?

Munoz: Yeah, we already did. Right now, about a month ago, three volunteers they're doing
breakfast in Brentwood and two small towns in Long Island. And in Elizabeth, New Jersey,
they're starting a meal program and they're opening one in Miami with sandwiches and water.
I'm with them and they're helping me out.

CNN: You received the U.S. Citizen's Award from President Obama this year -- what was that
like and what did that mean to you?

Munoz: That was a great honor. A great honor. Why, because not that many people have a
chance to go to the White House invited by the president of the United States. And he told me I
did a great job and to continue doing what I'm doing. Today President Barack Obama wants to
shake your hand and tell you not to give up your mission.

CNN: Who is your biggest inspiration?

Munoz: My mom. I always say my mom is my hero. Because she taught me how to share. She
told me if you share you're OK with God.

CNN: What would you say to people who are trying to figure out a way that they can give back
to their community?

Munoz: If you share, share anything you have you're not using like clothes, toys, share it to
make other people happy. People in this country cook more than they need and two days later it
goes from the refrigerator to the garbage. If you see someone standing on the corner and have $2,
buy them a cup of coffee and a piece of bread. I'm doing it seven days a week, but just do it once
in a while and you'll feel what I feel. And when that person is smiling at you you'll know you're
doing something good. Do it from the inside.

Share. Sharing is a beautiful thing. Think of me, I'm a regular union worker, bus driver and I'm
trying to change the lives of the hungry. And imagine if everyone around the world got together
to change the lives of the hungry. Imagine if they helped once in a while, you'd see a lot of
change. So share, it's a beautiful thing.

The man who did not kill JFK

By Bob Greene, CNN Contributor
October 24, 2010 -- Updated 1332 GMT (2132 HKT)

Editor's note: CNN contributor Bob Greene is a best-selling author whose books include "Late
Edition: A Love Story" and "Duty: A Father, His Son, and the Man Who Won the War."

(CNN) -- In a few weeks a noteworthy anniversary will arrive: fifty years since the election of
John F. Kennedy as president of the United States.

Much will be made of the fact that half a century has passed. Photographs of the young president
and his family will be republished, retrospective essays will be written. Inevitably, as the
Kennedy years are freshly examined, the name of the assassin Lee Harvey Oswald will be
mentioned in the context of what might have been, if only Kennedy's path and Oswald's never
had intersected.

But there is another name that you have likely never heard: a man who might have changed
history as drastically and irrevocably as Oswald did. Kennedy was elected in November 1960; a
month later, this man came very close to making sure that Kennedy never served a single day in
office.

His name was Richard Pavlick.

From an Associated Press dispatch, December 16, 1960, dateline West Palm Beach, Florida:

"A craggy-faced retired postal clerk who said he didn't like the way John F. Kennedy won the
election is in jail on charges he planned to kill the president-elect.

"Richard Pavlick, 73, was charged by the Secret Service with planning to make himself a human
bomb and blow up Kennedy and himself."

Pavlick came much closer to killing Kennedy than most news reporters realized at the time. He
was arrested in Palm Beach on December 15, 1960, in a car loaded with sticks of dynamite.
Kennedy; his wife, Jacqueline; his daughter, Caroline; and his son, John Jr., were staying in the
Kennedy family mansion in Palm Beach, preparing for the inauguration the next month.

Because Pavlick didn't get near Kennedy on the day he was arrested, the story was not huge
national news. The announcement of his arrest coincided with a terrible airline disaster in which
two commercial planes collided over New York City, killing 134 people, and that was the story
that received the banner headlines and led the television and radio newscasts.

It wasn't until later that the complete story of a first Pavlick assassination attempt, a few days
earlier, began to get out. It was that first one that might have changed American history.

Pavlick, who had lived in New Hampshire, spent much of his time writing enraged and
belligerent letters to public figures and to newspapers. He resided in Belmont, New Hampshire;
Belmont was at one time called Upper Gilmanton, and Gilmanton itself, four miles away, was
reputed to be the model for the New England town in Grace Metalious' scandalous 1950s novel
"Peyton Place." Thus, Time magazine, in its report of Pavlick's arrest in Florida, headlined the
story: "The Man From Peyton Place."

It reported:

"One day last month Richard Pavlick decided to do something worthy of inclusion in 'Peyton
Place': he made up his mind to kill a president-elect. He took ten sticks of dynamite, some
blasting caps and wire, and began to shadow Jack Kennedy. He cased the cottage in Hyannisport,
sized up the house in Georgetown, headed south for Palm Beach." The magazine quoted Pavlick:
"The Kennedy money bought him the White House. I wanted to teach the United States the
presidency is not for sale."

Here is what was not reported at the time, and was disclosed later by a top U.S. Secret Service
official:

On December 11, 1960 -- four days before he was arrested -- Pavlick drove his car to the
Kennedy home in Palm Beach. He held a switch wired to the dynamite, which, according to the
Secret Service official, was "enough to blow up a small mountain." His plan was to wait for
Kennedy's limousine to leave the house for Sunday Mass, then to ram it and blow up both the
president and himself.

What stopped him?

Kennedy did not leave the house alone. Instead, he came out the door with Jacqueline, Caroline
and John Jr.

Pavlick later told law enforcement officials that he did not want to hurt Mrs. Kennedy and the
children. He only wanted to kill Kennedy himself.

So he waited a few days. A postmaster back in New Hampshire, troubled by some postcards that
Pavlick had sent, alerted the Secret Service. That is how notification of the license plate of
Pavlick's car made it down to Florida -- and that is why he was stopped and arrested on
December 15. "I had the crazy idea I wanted to stop Kennedy from being president," he told
reporters from his jail cell.
What if Pavlick had gone ahead with his plan on that first day -- what if the sight of Mrs.
Kennedy and the two children had not dissuaded him?

As reporter Robin Erb, writing in The (Toledo, Ohio) Blade years later, put it:

"Had Pavlick been successful, [the assassination by Lee Harvey] Oswald and his murder by Jack
Ruby would never have occurred. Had Mr. Kennedy been killed, Lyndon B. Johnson would have
been sworn in as president in January, 1961. How would he have handled U.S. involvement in
Vietnam, the Cuban missile crisis, or the civil-rights movement in the South?"

Next month a book about Kennedy's Secret Service detail in Dallas on November 22, 1963, co-
written by a member of that detail, is scheduled to be published; advance publicity for the book
has centered on the events surrounding that day in Dallas. It will be interesting to see if the
Richard Pavlick story is mentioned, and, if so, if any new light is shed on the events in Florida in
December of 1960.

As it was, Pavlick was ordered to be confined to a government mental-health facility. He would

die in 1975.

And the Kennedy family remained in Florida during those final weeks of 1960. Allowed to live,
they prepared for Christmas. United Press International reported that the tree in their home was
donated by the West Palm Beach Optimist Club. The president-elect received, from his family,
gifts of cigars and hand-knitted socks. All seemed safe and right in their world.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Bob Greene.

The logic of zero-sum budgeting

Thursday, 28 October 2010 12:37 Dean de la Paz / Through the Looking

Alongside borrowing foreign funds for the conditional

cash transfers and lump-sum budgeting, some sectors
criticize the Department of Budget and Management’s
(DBM) zero-sum (or zero-based) budgeting process as
one of the “craziest” policy issues introduced by the new
administration.

The criticism runs the gamut from the theoretical to the

practical.

Armchair purists point out that when an economy spirals into a deficit, then there is a private-
sector surplus. In a deficit, the government spends more than it should and the private sector
benefits beyond what it pays in taxes. The situation compels economic managers to either
rationalize government spending, increase internal revenues, collections and taxes, or both, as the
Finance department is inclined to do.
The inverse happens. When an economy is in a surplus, the private sector is in a deficit, as it
overpays taxes and the government has more funds than needed for its programs.

Where the basis for the DBM’s budget is a zero-sum, implying expenses equal revenues, then
neither the government nor the private sector incurs surpluses or deficits, and the government
does not program expenditures beyond what it can collect in taxes.

If tax collection is weak, then government programs are likewise anemic, and neither benefits
nor costs are derived or imposed on both sides of the private-public equation. Far from being an
economic utopia, purists call such a balance unrealistic.

For macroeconomics purists, there is an imagined fallacy of balanced budgets where the goal of
fiscal policy should not be to balance but rather to attempt productive spending.

The criticism is that a fiscal balance is impossible. Even the United States’ economy suffers from
huge deficits and deficit-spending has been the rule, save for a brief period in the Clinton
administration. For critics, to attempt a balance suggested by zero-based budgeting would be
quixotic at best.

Critics also point to the cliché downsides of zero-based budgets that appear inapplicable to a
government bureaucracy.

One, it involves voluminous detail and assumes a high degree of intellectual competence,
administrative and communication skills. Two, changes can be abrupt and jolting. Three, it
assumes honesty. Against these, the task seems formidable, if not impossible. Add the fact that
we are emerging from one of the most corrupted bureaucracies since the dictatorship years.

Nevertheless, some changes are worth it. Simply recall the reasons for which we’ve installed
Benigno Aquino III as president. We wanted to cleanse government of corruption.

Whether it is called zero-sum, where expenses equal revenues, or zero-based, where budgetary
periods spring from clean slates, under both, budgets start from zero and every function within
an agency is scrutinized as to detailed needs, direct revenues and attendant costs. There are no
automatic appropriations, no blanket increases or changes, no lump sums or incremental
appropriations. More important, there is an implied bias toward efficiency, immediate revenues
and productivity.

Before responding to the rather barbed labels slapped on Budget Secretary Florencio Abad’s
initiative, let us quickly do away with heresies on lump-sum budgeting.

Lump-sum budgets remain comprised of their component parts. Where detail is needed, auditors
and critics can dive in and dig deeper. All it takes is diligence. Where zero-sum budgeting is the
desired mode, aggregate sums that start and end as lumps are antithetical and cannot possibly be
pursued because of the detail entailed by zero-sum budgets.
The logic of a zero-sum budget does not lie within its processes, where it forces the rationalizing
of each budgetary expense against an identified revenue source. Never mind that those compel
fiscal discipline absent in dispensations that treat government coffers as personal purses leading
to inordinate rechanneling to congressional districts in Pampanga.

More important is zero sum’s appropriateness at this particular period in time. We are in a
transition. Realities compel its usage.

Foremost among those is the Aquino administration’s charge versus institutionalized corruption.
The bureaucracy it inherits is seriously infected with budgetary booby traps and the recent
scandals in government-owned and -operated corporations are indicative of the need for a clean
slate as the traditional incremental budgeting processes will simply pile upon and aggravate the
deficit created by a corruption-ridden underlayer.

That existing foundation feeds the corruption Aquino seeks to address. Secretary Abad is
effectively cleansing and rebuilding corrupted institutions. A zero base is necessary to recreate
and reboot a credible and corruption-free foundation upon which latter incremental budgets
might stand.

Because zero-sum budgets target neither surpluses nor deficits from either the private sector or
the government, they inadvertently pursue productive spending and respond to the requisites of
macroeconomics purists on the aspect of quality spending. The act of targeting a balance keeps
borrowings down and spending efficient. By competently matching direct revenues with related
expenses, whether a fiscal balance is achieved or not, relevant productivity results. That, in
effect, might be Adam Smith’s other invisible hand.