From the AC360º Archives

I learned something new today about Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s resume. I now know which line item most intrigues me.

From the AC360º Archives

My son’s most treasured possession these days is a stick. It’s an ordinary looking stick. But I’m told it has extraordinary powers.

From the AC360º Archives

I love receiving holiday gifts.

Especially when they’re gifts of knowledge.

I feel like I received at least five gifts of knowledge when I met Janet Nkubana on a recent night.

I hope you’ll let me share them with you one at a time.

From the AC360º Archives
When Rwanda’s master basket weaver Janet Nkubana walked me through the symbolism of her basket’s designs, the image you see here left a big impression.

About Michael Schulder: Michael Schulder is a Senior Executive Producer at CNN. He's also a man on a mission. A mission to take on the myth of the 18 - 49 "Demo" and create a New Demo for a New Age. Schulder is a frequent contributor to Anderson Cooper’s CNN site AC360.com: News and Commentary Direct from the AC360º Newsroom.

From the AC360º Archives

I’ve been to Rwanda before. But I was never invited into a backyard. Now I know why.

From the AC360º Archives

I picked out a basket at Macy’s and read the name of the artist to Rwanda’s master weaver, Janet Nkubana.

From the AC360º Archives
To repair a country after a genocide, in a nation like Rwanda, where the killers and the survivors still live in the same neighborhoods, takes a lot of time, to say the least.

From the AC360º Archives
The Tiger Woods story has triggered a memory that led me to two old photos. One photo is real. One is doctored.

The Book of Laughter & Forgetting Tiger

I read about the photos 30 years ago in the Czech author Milan Kundera’s “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting.”

The original photo, on the left, was taken in February of 1948.

In Kundera’s account, this moment represented the birth of communism in Czechoslovakia.

The Czech Communist leader, Klement Gottwald, [the man on the right of the photo] had just stepped out on the balcony of a Baroque palace in Prague, before “hundreds of thousands of citizens massed in the Old Town Square. Gottwald was flanked by his comrades, with (Vladimir) Clementis [two faces to the left] standing close to him. It was snowing and cold, and Gottwald was bearheaded.”

Kundera continues:

“Bursting with solicitude, Clementis took off his fur hat and set it on Gottwald’s head.”

So, that fur hat you see on Gottwald’s head was given to him by comrade Clementis, who sacrificed his own warmth for his comrade’s.

That gesture of communist solidarity caught the attention of the Communist Party propaganda machine.

They “made hundreds of thousands of copies of the photograph taken on the balcony, where Gottwald, in a fur hat and surrounded by his comrades, spoke to the people.

Every child knew that photograph, from seeing it on posters and in schoolbooks and museums.

Four years later, Clementis was charged with treason and hanged.

The propaganda section immediately made him vanish from history and, of course, from all photographs.

Ever since, Gottwald has been alone on the balcony. Where Clementis stood, there is only the bare palace wall.

Nothing remains of Clementis but the fur hat on Gottwald’s head.”

The doctored photo on the right is all that remained – until the age of the internet brought back the original.

Those photos make me think of Tiger.

Airbrushing Tiger

Tiger Woods’ acknowledgment of “transgressions,” has spurred a similar reaction to his omnipresent images from some free enterprise business comrades.

The huge consulting firm Accenture has treated Tiger the way so many felt: as if he’d committed treason against the brand. It dropped its sponsorship of Woods, saying he “just wasn’t a metaphor for high performance anymore.”

The New York Times describes how, “hours after Accenture ended its sponsorship deal, the golfer’s face was replaced by an anonymous skier on the company’s home page. His name was scrubbed almost completely from the rest of the web site.”

But images of Tiger endorsing the Accenture brand survive. So many airport terminals. So many corporate tchotchkes. So many web sites. It’s harder to make people disappear in the age of the internet than it was back in the 20th Century.

Tiger on Newsstands Today

I just picked up the Golf Digest January 2010 cover story headlined “10 Tips Obama Can Take From Tiger” (pre disclosure.) The issue is irresistible.

And Tiger’s words in that issue before his transgressions were acknowledged, are extremely valuable lessons for a large segment of the population. His advice in that piece convinces me that Tiger Woods will never be out of the picture. Here’s a brief excerpt.

(Editor’s note: please resist the urge to read double meanings into every sentence that follows.)

“AS a result of recent swing changes, it’s easier for me to shape tee shots, even my natural draw. I’m letting the club release along the line of my setup instead of muscling the ball with my upper body, which I did at times when my bad knee prevented a good shift into impact.”

Tiger continues:

“At the tour level you have to be able to hit different sand shots, because the bunkers are so varied and a stroke saved can make all the difference.” (please! You weren’t paying attention to the editor’s note on that last phrase.) “To hit a longer bunker shot, I rotate my body faster to the finish.”

OK – enough.

The point is this.

If you’re serious about golfing, you’ll want to see and hear from Tiger again.

Closeup shots of his back swing. And his short game. And his puts. And his body alignments.

Even if you’re not a golfer, you’ll probably want to hear from him. Golf is a mind game. And who’s not rightfully curious about whether he’ll get his mind back in the game.

Tiger Woods’ each individual twist and turn is not of great consequence.

But the universally fascinating question, in his tragic fall, is this.

Will Tiger be back in the picture again?

I think the answer is this.

Tiger Woods will be back in the picture if Tiger Woods chooses to be back in the picture.

But I don’t expect we’ll ever see the same image.

About Michael Schulder: Michael Schulder is a Senior Executive Producer at CNN. He's also a man on a mission. A mission to take on the myth of the 18 - 49 "Demo" and create a New Demo for a New Age. Schulder is a frequent contributor to Anderson Cooper’s CNN site AC360.com: News and Commentary Direct from the AC360º Newsroom.

Michael Schulder’s Article ‘As funny as the times allow’ originally appeared March 19, 2009 on the AC360º blog.

Tonight, Barack Obama will appear on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Will President Obama be funny? “As funny as the times allow,” said a White House official. How funny do these times allow one to be? We asked a similar question after 9/11. When can we laugh again?

Read the full article: ‘As funny as the times allow’ on the AC360º blog.

About Michael Schulder: Michael Schulder is a Senior Executive Producer at CNN. He's also a man on a mission. A mission to take on the myth of the 18 - 49 "Demo" and create a New Demo for a New Age. Schulder is a frequent contributor to Anderson Cooper’s CNN site AC360.com: News and Commentary Direct from the AC360º Newsroom.

Michael Schulder’s Article ‘My late show confession‘ originally appeared October 2, 2009 on the AC360º blog.

I admit it. I couldn’t resist the headline. My confession doesn’t rival David Letterman’s. But I have to get it off my chest. When I was reading CNN.com’s home page yesterday, as we were approaching CNN TV’s prime time programming hour, before we got wind of the Letterman story, the first link I clicked on was entitled: “Why Women Have Sex.” As soon as I clicked it, I realized, I was in danger of being exposed.

Read the full article: ‘My late show confession‘ on the AC360º blog.

About Michael Schulder: Michael Schulder is a Senior Executive Producer at CNN. He's also a man on a mission. A mission to take on the myth of the 18 - 49 "Demo" and create a New Demo for a New Age. Schulder is a frequent contributor to Anderson Cooper’s CNN site AC360.com: News and Commentary Direct from the AC360º Newsroom.

Michael Schulder’s Article ‘Let freedom ring’ originally appeared October 2, 2009 on the AC360º blog.

I’m not going to mention any real names in this piece, even though I only got wind of one person’s first name. But I experienced something today in a CNN rest room which all of us have probably had to confront. Whether to answer a cell phone call when you’re in the bathroom.

I never have answered a cell phone in a bathroom, for a variety of reasons. Protecting my cell phone from potential water damage is the least of those reasons. I think there are certain boundaries we need to preserve to maintain a civil society. This is not the most pressing issue on the civility front today. But it did turn my stomach when someone in the men’s room picked up the cell phone and proceeded to have a conversation as if it talking on a cell phone while in the process of a natural act were the most natural act in the world.

“Jim?”

Zip

“Yeah, we still on for lunch?”

Flush

“OK, that time sounds good for me.”

Hand wash (thank goodness).

And the conversation went on as the offender exited the bathroom.

I have to imagine the person on the other side of the line heard the sound effects.

If I were that person on the other side of the line, I know what I would have said.

I’m passing on lunch today. Not as hungry as I thought I’d be. Let’s reschedule. Text me from the car.

I’d take a foot tapper in the next stall desperately sending me Morse code over a cell phone talker any day. At least, with a foot tapper, I can distract myself by getting a song in my head to the right beat. But there’s no blocking out a cell phone conversation two feet away.

I’m no Miss Manners. And I’m not an activist. But I think a well-mannered society should have certain common understandings. Turning off your cell phone ringers in theaters is now standard. Not talking on cell phones at the cash register is becoming widely accepted. Now I want to know this.

Who out there among you agrees with me? Cell phones have provided us with a certain level of freedom. But in the bathroom, I say, let freedom ring.

About Michael Schulder: Michael Schulder is a Senior Executive Producer at CNN. He's also a man on a mission. A mission to take on the myth of the 18 - 49 "Demo" and create a New Demo for a New Age. Schulder is a frequent contributor to Anderson Cooper’s CNN site AC360.com: News and Commentary Direct from the AC360º Newsroom.

Michael Schulder’s Article ‘The survival of Bahia’ originally appeared July 2, 2009 on the AC360º blog.

It wasn’t the Hudson River. It wasn’t a soft landing. It wasn’t a happy ending. When the Yemenia Airlines Airbus went down in the rough seas of the Indian Ocean, 152 people perished. Everyone on board. Everyone except a 14-year-old girl named Bahia Bakari. The way her father describes her, Bahia did not fit the profile of a survivor. She could “barely swim” her father told the Associated Press. She was, he said, a fragile, timid girl.

Read the full article: ‘The survival of Bahia’ on the AC360º blog.

About Michael Schulder: Michael Schulder is a Senior Executive Producer at CNN. He's also a man on a mission. A mission to take on the myth of the 18 - 49 "Demo" and create a New Demo for a New Age. Schulder is a frequent contributor to Anderson Cooper’s CNN site AC360.com: News and Commentary Direct from the AC360º Newsroom.

You can read more articles by Michael Schulder by following the links below to Anderson Cooper’s CNN site AC360.com: News and Commentary Direct from the AC360º Newsroom.

• The innocence of Michael Jackson, June 26, 2009
• The end of prostitution as we know it?, May 14, 2009
• Arlen Specter’s Valley of Death, May 8, 2009
• Weekend Flu Watch: Help us, Delta Lady! May 1, 2009
• Polar Man, April 22, 2009
• This one’s for the bird brains, March 20, 2009
• As funny as the times allow, March 19, 2009
• Killing me would not be in your interest, March 13, 2009
• Madoff’s little lie, March 12, 2009
• What Madoff said in court, March 12, 2009
• How Wiesel would punish Madoff, February 27, 2009
• President Obama’s Ark, February 10, 2009
• Where have you been, Harry Markopolos?, February 5, 2009
• Super Bowl Lesson: The humiliating journey of James Harrison, February 2, 2009
• You look so beautiful I can hardly keep my eyes on the meter, January 30, 2009
• Take the day off. I insist., January 29, 2009
• How much is a lot of money?, January 29, 2009
• How many Americans does it take to change a lightbulb?, January 26, 2009
• The urgency of patience, January 24, 2009
• ‘The Big 3′ and the ‘B’ word, December 4, 2008
• Feeling sorry for China?, October 23, 2008
• Global 360°: Pregnancy, Grief, Celebration, July 18, 2008

About Michael Schulder: Michael Schulder is a Senior Executive Producer at CNN. He's also a man on a mission. A mission to take on the myth of the 18 - 49 "Demo" and create a New Demo for a New Age. Schulder is a frequent contributor to Anderson Cooper’s CNN site AC360.com: News and Commentary Direct from the AC360º Newsroom.