Media
McConnell, Frank
MEDIA TAKE MY WIFE—PLEASE GOOD (DEEDS) TO THE LAST DROP If you check out the November 22, 1993, issue of People, you may have caught, on the recto page of the centerfold, a rather enigmatic ad...
...They found traces of cocaine in the mother and the baby, and— there was no other recourse—called the cops, who arrested the mother and put the two-day infant into foster care...
...That a megabuck company would go out of its way to give a pat on the back—and thereby increased support—to community volunteer projects around the country that almost make you believe "America" might still be a viable concept, is something extraordinary: something noteworthy...
...But look...
...Is this just exploitation...
...Okay...
...So they got their weekend and they got their awards and medallions and certificates, and they went back home to continue the stellar things that had brought them there in the first place...
...That turned into a task force...
...What's remarkable about Maxwell House, though, is that it really is—dare I say this and keep my leftist secret decoder ring?—capitalism working the way it should, in the best of all possible worlds, work...
...And advertising: I've written my share of knee-jerk liberal stuff about the perniciousness of that craft, and in most cases the McConnell knee still, and accurately, jerks...
...Celeste was appalled: went to the jail, went to the D.A., talked to the hospital people and local doctors, all of whom agreed with her that this was one screwed-up way to handle things and wished there were another option...
...So somebody (it was our dear friend Catanna Donovan) nominated Celeste for the award, unbeknownst to us...
...We're talking high profile here, and we're talking media event—the occasion demands italics— for the whole damn weekend (video cameras were almost as ubiquitous as tour guides...
...for a weekend of—well, I gotta tell you, and you know I'm not especially optimistic in my reading of life—hopefulness...
...I think of a great sentence from Nietzche' s Beyond Good and Evil: "Cynicism is the closest approach an ignoble soul can make to honesty...
...It is their way, as they say, of paying the country back for the century of support Americans have given their product...
...was, apparently, so successful, cordial, and inspiriting that the Maxwell House folks decided to continue it, selected fifty heroes for 1993 from— according to them—five thousand nominations...
...Good people...
...The first "Real Heroes" weekend in D.C...
...The woman at the lower crook of the S, the one in the beige jacket, is my wife, Celeste...
...on that October Sunday...
...Holly House opened last month in Lompoc...
...And like Pam Edwards, who suffers from a rare form of lupus, but who runs an organization committed to helping seriously ill and handicapped children in Redondo Beach, California...
...Except, maybe, the proposition that when you see a clear wrong, you—that's you—get off your butt and do something to make it at least less wrong...
...And Keith Begley from Florida, who runs an AIDS solace project, and whose life partner is HIV-positive...
...Next day the kid took her baby to the hospital to be checked...
...What she did was, she called a meeting— advertised in the local paper—of interested citizens...
...It's a photo of fifty people standing on a spiral staircase in a rough S shape, all holding candles and smiling...
...And Bryan Slye from Reno, born paraplegic, who is a fully-functioning and in-demand paramedic, and is truly funky and smokes as much as I do...
...Enter Maxwell House...
...ed (and nose-out-of-joint...
...And that turned into Holly House...
...Now being married to Celeste is sort of like being married to Joan of Arc...
...Some of our more politically-fixat"It's amazing how he managed to stay out of the limelight...
...The Maxwell guys are, of course, going to get a lot of mileage, and a lot of future People ads, out of this...
...They even got Barbara Bush to present the awards at the Saturday night banquet, and Willard Scott to emcee the country/western dance Sunday night...
...I heard a version of that sentence from virtually all the "real heroes" I talked with...
...The Maxwell House logo, an overturned cup with "Good to the Last Drop," is tucked into the bottom of the page...
...I doubt if you could have found a single moral or political or even ethical proposition upon which those fifty could have agreed...
...They didn't think they belonged there...
...1992 was the company's centennial, and to celebrate it, they decided that they would seek out one hundred "real heroes"—Americans who had volunteered to fill a need in their communities and had made a difference for good...
...It is a fully-funded, city- and federal-supported live-in coun18 seling and care center for addicted mothers and mothers-to-be who want to get clean and learn how to care for their kids...
...I don't think I really belong here—all these other people have done so much more...
...Not a bad beginning for the idea of a republic...
...And the legend reads, "With Real Heroes like These, We Can Light up the Country...
...And Jay Wilson, who coordinates Thanksgiving dinner for 27,000—the figure is right—every year in the Baltimore area...
...Coffee, for crying out loud...
...Coffee isn't even good for you," snided one pal—a vegetarian who also smokes grass every night...
...MEDIA TAKE MY WIFE—PLEASE GOOD (DEEDS) TO THE LAST DROP If you check out the November 22, 1993, issue of People, you may have caught, on the recto page of the centerfold, a rather enigmatic ad for Maxwell House Coffee...
...Instead, they chose to spend four days honoring folks like Celeste...
...Oh, yeah...
...buddies sneered such when we got back...
...And others...
...That turned into an organization with support from agencies like the estimable Klein Bottle, a Santa Barbara County institution dedicated to helping youth...
...About two years ago, she read in the morning paper about a young woman who had come up from Santa Barbara to our town, Lompoc, to have her out-of-wedlock baby at her aunt's home...
...And for Celeste, it means that by the time this sees print, she' 11 be playing with, and delighting in, the kids at Holly House...
...More than even my deep pride to be Celeste's companion on the weekend, my indelible impression is of that goodness...
...Celeste, having started the whole thing, now plans just to spend many hours a week playing with the Holly House children...
...Let me tell you how she wound up standing there in D.C...
...And Maxwell House Coffee got a lot of footage and a lot of photoops...
...If you've been reading this column, you know it's not my favorite beverage...
...And some of them were ultraconservative, and some were far-Left, and some were pushy and abrasive, and some were a little self-satisfied, and some drank a little too much, and some were uptight prigs...
...And others...
...And of the real enthusiasm with which the Maxwell House folks were eager to do them the honor they had—without the slightest self-advertisement on their part—earned...
...The fact is that the heroes honored by Maxwell House honor Maxwell House...
...Maxwell House could just as well have spent their money on something else...
...FRANK MCCONNELL 19...
...And Gary Meistad from Houston, who owns a bar I've got to go to, and who raises money for all sorts of causes by doing Texas-style barbecues, and who insists that no non-Texan even begins to comprehend the meaning of "barbecue...
...Maxwell House called, interviewed Celeste, and in mid-October we flew, at their expense, to D.C...
Vol. 121 • February 1994 • No. 4
