Hidden Figures and 18

I’m writing this before the Oscars.  La-La Land is nice enough, but if Hidden Figures doesn’t win Best Picture, I hope you’ll see it anyway, because it surely was.

And speaking of our long, bumpy — but ultimately magnificent — march toward equality, here is the story of a remarkable week on the Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson when it was guest starring Harry Belafonte instead.  Wow.

Finally, please join me in welcoming a terrific new DNC Chair, former Labor Secretary Tom Perez — whose passion is matched only by his intelligence, effectiveness, and compassion — and a terrific new DNC Treasurer, Bill Derrough (pronounced DAR-row), who we are fortunate has signed on for this 18-year gig.  (Turns out, DNC Treasurer carries an 18-year term.)  The son of a mom who spoke no English when she arrived from Central America and a decorated war veteran dad who was 35 years a union carpenter  . . . the product of our public school system . . . Bill has made his fortune helping hundreds of troubled companies restructure, as when he worked with unions to help save thousands of jobs and tens of thousands of pensions, while returning creditors’ 100 cents on the dollar, in the American Airlines reorganization.  (My own level of financial expertise, when I took on the treasurer’s role, was in advising financially troubled individuals to cut up their credit cards.)

Now that I won’t still be asking you for money.  (Click here to make real the “dollar a year” nature of the job.  Give $18, if you’re a normal person; $180 if you’re a little bit affluent and determined to help launch a 2018 blue tide; $1,800 if you’re the white sheep in the Koch brothers’ family.  I’ll see it the minute you do, if I’m on-line, to jump through the screen and say thanks.)