BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  AUG 22

DAY OF FINANCIAL RECKONING

It is getting closer to the end of the month and my nerves are on edge. I’ve done everything I can to prepare. I’ve filled out the forms; I’ve talked to my financial adviser, Sean Joyce, and I’ve made calculations for all contingencies. Waiting is the worst. It gets worse as you get older.

The only step I didn’t take was to make a purchase. It could have been a fatal mistake, but we’ll see.

The day of reckoning, August 31st, is the announcement date for the winners of the Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes. If you’re an old geezer, who grew up in the 60s, and weren’t exactly on the doorstep to the middle class, the Sweepstakes was a quick and easy way to get up and out; one of the least labor intensive paths to the American Dream. (see footnote below)* This was before they invented the lottery.

I still remember like it was yesterday watching the late Ed McMahon walk up to some small house in a lower middle-class neighborhood, maybe in Columbus, Ohio, knock on the door to the complete surprise of some guy in a t-shirt who Ed presented with a huge cardboard check for a million dollars. Man, was that guy happy. He called his family out to the stoop and everybody danced with joy in front of the cameras. I used to enter the Sweepstakes back then, assuming of course that you had to buy at least some magazine subscriptions they offered in the entrance package. The copies of Life, Field and Stream, American Knitting, and Home & Garden began piling up but Ed never came. I thought it may be because I lived in an apartment.

I lost track of the contest. Ed died and life went on. Then a short time ago the presentation of the checks started to show up on TV again and, lo and behold, in the mail came my package. Not only that, it contained a letter from Deborah Holland, executive vice president of the Department of Finance, ‘Official Business’ with a lot of Sweepstakes facts in that very small print the credit card companies use to tell you about changes in your contract. Deborah informed me that “you are the sole owner of not 1, not 2, but 3 fully valid SuperPrice Numbers,” and get this:  The prize is $5,000 a week, I mean like “forever.” Let me just run some quick numbers here. $5,000 a week, four weeks a month, 12 months…Did you get the same number I did? $240,000 a year for life, and I’m already a finalist. OMG

The package contained some scratch-off contests, too. All I had to do was paste the right stamps in the right boxes on the return forms and put my faith in the US Postal Service. You didn’t need to buy anything, Deborah said. Okay, so I stood by my guns and didn’t, even though it wasn’t just magazine subscriptions anymore. They had great deals on a multi-colored necklace and bracelet that would make a nice Christmas gift, brain games, a storage container for bacon, a battery operated can opener, and a book on the healing powers of vinegar. I could have gone for it all, but didn’t.

What really surprised me was shortly after I sent in my entry forms, I got two more within weeks. I sent them in, too. But I began to suspect that if I got the duplicate entry packages it was because they opened my first envelope and found out I didn’t buy anything the first time around. Again, I stuck to my guns.

I may have really blown it. Doubt I will ever get to the finals again. We’ll see.

THE HUMAN TOUCH

It was a warm and touching moment that made a great impression. The snapshot was of one man turning his head and yucking it up with his friend next to him in a transformative moment for both. Only they weren’t walking in the park. Usain Bolt of Jamaica and Andre DeGrasse of Canada were racing toward the finish line in the 200-meter trials at the Rio Summer Olympics.  You just don’t see that very often. It was funny. It took some of the hot air out of the Olympic hype and solemnity.

Bolt has won nine gold medals, tying the record of Carl Lewis in track and field, and he has done it with great class and flash, a true hero to his Jamaican homeland, and a great role model for young men and women worldwide. He’s also been a lovable sports champion. His behavior has been colorful, charismatic, entertaining and sometimes heartwarming, if not enigmatic. He is also, as well he probably knows, highly marketable. Media have wondered whether he is taking performance-enhancing drugs. The rest of us are wondering about personality-enhancing stimulants, like a great sense of worth.

Then there’s Ryan Lochte, Gunnar Bentz, and Jack Conger, who allegedly fabricated an armed robbery to cover up drunken behavior that ended up in a bathroom door being torn from its hinges. Think about that. Would you invent a detailed account of phony cops forcing you out of your cab on a city street in Rio de Janeiro and ordering you at gunpoint to turn over your wallets and get down on the ground, for no other reason than to escape paying for a broken bathroom door? They should retire from swimming and go for the gold in screenwriting.

Lochte said on Twitter that he regretted the incident. But you’ve got to wonder about his sincerity using Twitter and carefully crafted linguistics to make things right. Twitter is too easy.   Readers are not exposed to the look in the eye, the inflection in the voice, or the facial expressions that hint of compassion or contrition. You can’t know if the confessee even wrote what is posted, particularly when the guilty party is a flack-staffed, coveted celebrity in whom so many important people have a huge financial stake.

SPEAKING OF OLYMPICS

It’s time to really take a deep breath and give renewed consideration to an idea, proposed for many years, most recently by Washington Monthly editor, Paul Glastris: “The problem is that hosting the Olympic games in a different city every year is unnecessary and, as a matter of basic management, moronic,” he wrote.

He’s right. Building and rebuilding the infrastructure, from housing and venues to security and making the media comfortable, is ridiculous and ridiculously expensive, especially in a city like Rio and a country like Brazil in economic and political crisis where just blocks from lavish Olympic sporting arenas children live in shacks and blocks from beach ball volleyball sand, dead bodies were washing up on the shore just weeks before the first ball was served. Why not give the Olympic Summer Games a permanent home in Greece? The Greeks created the Olympics and they demonstrated in 2004 that they’ve still got it down. The Winter Games could find a home in Canada….just because.

*(Note to millenials: A long time ago in America, one of the great pillars of capitalism was the prospect that the economy and a free society would empower you to achieve your dreams–life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and the big bucks, just like Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence. Polling research has for years informed us, most regrettably that the American dream is now not really achievable. Sorry.)

Editor’s Note: Mike Johnson is a former journalist, who worked on the Ford White House staff and served as press secretary and chief of staff to House Republican Leader Bob Michel, prior to entering the private sector. He is co-author of a book, Surviving Congress, a guide for congressional staff. He is currently a principal with the OB-C Group.