Rob
Sherman Advocacy
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Rob
Sherman Advocacy
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"Fighting injustice, one victory at a time."
The worst scouting idea of all time comes from California. A man claiming to be named Brian Pasternak called Rob Sherman Advocacy to announce that, for the past two years, he has been putting together an alternative to the Boy Scouts of America, and that he sought my input and support. For the reasons outlined below, his ideas stink and he is definitely the wrong guy to be putting together such a plan.
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I received a phone call from a man claiming to be one Brian Pasternak. I don't know if that really is his name, because he used Caller ID Blocking to conceal his identity. I never, ever, answer the phone when someone blocks his Caller ID information. Those calls always go into the answering machine where the caller is instructed to identify himself and his phone number and leave a message. I will return a phone call from someone who leaves a message.
This guy left a message, but it was to an 800 number. I called, anyway, and the person identified himself as supposedly being Brian Pasternak.
Mr. Pasternak stated that he wanted to form a non-discriminatory alternative to Boy Scouts. Unfortunately, though, he said that his program would essentially be a copy of the Boy Scouts of America program, but without the discrimination. It wouldn't be the "Gay and Godless" Scouts, but rather an organization for all who reject bigotry and discrimination.
I suggested that, while it may be desirable to have an alternative program for people who reject the bigotry of BSA, he should be creative and develop his own ideas, rather than copying and/or stealing somebody else's ideas.
He stated that anybody who joined his group from the Boy Scouts would be able to keep their rank and transfer it in. That would meand that God-believers would be able to start in his organization with an advanced rank, because Boy Scouts allows god-believers to be a part of BSA. Atheists and gays, on the other hand, would be guaranteed a start at the bottom of this new organization because they are excluded from BSA membership. Therefore, while god-believers could start out with an advanced rank in the new gig, atheists and gays would always start out with nothing. So much for non-discrimination in this new organization. For atheists, it would be the same old discrimination, BSA or no BSA.
I asked him what the name was or would be for this new organization. He stated that he still had not selected a name for his new group, even though over a hundred names had been proposed to him during the two years that he was working on starting this new organization. He stated that none of the proposed names that he had come across to date seemed exactly right for his proposed organization.
This shows a severe inability on his part to make decisions. I remember when Celeste was pregnant, in 1981, with our first child. We knew that, one way or another, we would have to select a name for it by the time it was born in the spring of 1982. We considered many different names for a boy and many for a girl, but by the Ninth Month, we made a selection for a boy's name and one for a girl's name. Neither name was exactly perfect, but as parents and as the leaders of our family, we knew that we had to make a choice, one way or the other.
We chose the name Richard for our son.
Could you imagine the disruption it would have been in Ricky's life if he were to still be asking me, "Hey, Dad, when are going to pick a name for me? I'm going to be twenty-one years old on May Third. Could I get a name, please?" "Well, kid, I still haven't come up with a name that is just right and exactly perfect for you, but when I do, I sure will let you know!"
Come on! Part of leadership is being decisive. If you want to lead an organization, you have to make choices, rather than finding excuses to avoid making decisions. Pick a name, any name from those over-a-hundred proposed names, but make a choice.
This guy's inability to make a decision on a name for his group after two years and over a hundred proposed names speaks volumes about his lack of leadership skills. If he doesn't have what takes to make a decision about this matter, then he won't have what it takes to make the many, much harder decisions that would come up in the future. This is a guy who can't make decisions.
A person who refuses to make decisions is not a leader, and you should not pick him to be your leader. Make a selection. It may not be the best possible selection, but some decision is necessary and far better than no decision.
Making no decision is easy. Making a decision is hard, but that's what leadership is all about: making the hard choices and then living with those decisions.
Even in high school, you learn to do that with term papers. You start with a blank piece of paper. There are a whole bunch of topics or issues that you could write about. None of them are easy to do, but you have to pick one, stick your sheet of paper in the typewriter and start typing. It may not be the perfect topic, but those who selected some topic and typed up some thing got an A, B, C or a D. The person who refused to make a decision about a topic as the deadline came and went got an F for not typing up anything.
I still face that situation every day with Liberal News & Commentary. Pick a topic and go. Otherwise, it's another day of a blank screen. Many times, I'm busy, either working on an RS Advocacy project or raising money to support the operation, but when it's time to write, I have to pick a topic and start typing.
What we have, then, so far, is a guy who has a good concept, but who conceals his identity with Caller ID blocking, can't make a decision and hasn't been able to get started after some two years working the proposal, but when he does get started, wants to be a copy cat of what others are doing and offer the same old discrimination in the name of non-discrimination.
With that as a foundation, I sought to find out about this guy's character. I asked him what location the 800 number rings through to, but he refused to say. I told him that, if he wanted people to work with him on his project, people have a need to know where his operation was based out of. If people were going to invest their time, energy and capital in his operation, they have a right to know where the operation is headquartered. His excuse, this time, was that it was a temporary location and that he would be moving, soon, so the address was irrelevant.
OK, so what does he do for a living? Again, another vague answer. He said that he was a "general agent," which means absolutely nothing. I asked what field of business he was a general agent in. He stated that he was a general agent "in the financial services" industry. Again, a vague answer that meant absolutely nothing, because lots of businesses could be considered to be in the financial services industry.
Still seeking to obtain any specifics I could on this guy, I asked him what the name of the company was that he works for and the address of that company. His answer was the usual evasiveness. He said that he didn't want to drag the insurance company that he works for (now no longer a financial services company) into his Scouting-type business.
Fine, I said, but what's the name of it and what is it's address, so interested persons would have at least some specific, some concrete, identifiable piece of information about this guy to use as a reference.
He said that it was his own insurance company, called Brian Pasternak Insurance, and it's located in the Los Angeles area. I asked him for an address but, as usual, he refused to say where Brian Pasternak insurance was located. While on the telephone line with him, I checked using my broadband connection in several internet telephone directories for both the person Brian Pasternak and for any Brian Pasternak Insurance located anywhere in California.
No surprise, here. No Brian Pasternak and no Brian Pasternak Insurance anywhere in California. Naturally, he refused to disclose what the address of such a company was.
When I let him know that the internet search turned up nothing, he stated that Brian Pasternak Insurance isn't the real name of his insurance company. What is the real name? None of my business.
Hmmm. I then told him that, without any concrete specifics about who he was and where he was operating out of, I was concerned about the legitimacy of the whole deal. I intended to let readers of my internet news and opinion service, Liberal News & Commentary, know about the results of my research into him and his proposed company so that readers could take that information into consideration when deciding whether or not to associate with him. If, however, he wanted to change his mind and start providing me with specifics about who he was, where his operation was based out of and what he does for a living, those concerns would be alleviated, so there would be no need to write an article expressing those concerns.
This got him really mad. He said that he was not ready to go public with his proposal, even though he claimed that over a thousand people were working on the plan with him. If Liberal News & Commentary were "to break the story" about his proposal before he was ready to have it revealed publicly, he said that "it would destroy years of work and cause the project to fail."
Wow! Imagine that! I didn't know that Liberal News & Commentary had that kind of power and impact! I'm impressed. Aren't you?
Is it the premature revelation of his project that would cause it to fail, or would it be the revelations about what kind of a tricky guy he is that would be its downfall?
He then stated that if I were to destroy his plans by breaking the story prematurely, he "would hunt me down for the rest of my life and make my life miserable." That kind of comment demonstrates that, besides being a terribly inept and incompetent business manager, Brian Pasternak is also severely mentally unstable.
I informed Brian that I intended to publish an article in Liberal News & Commentary about his plans and about my grave concerns about both the merits of his proposals and whether he is the right guy to carry the ball on this issue. He responded by calling me a fucker and a person with big balls because I was planning on "breaking the news" about his proposal without first getting his permission.
Here's a guy who can't make the simplest decisions about his own operation, but he's going to dictate to me how I run my business and retaliate against me if I don't run my business the way he sees fit.
About a half hour after we got off the phone, he sent me a Nastygram via e-mail, complaining about my "zeal to be first to get the story out without regard for the consequences of your actions." Rest assured that I could care less about being first, second or last to get out the story about this guy. My real concern is that readers of Liberal News & Commentary be as informed as possible about this guy before making a decision about whether to do business with him. Most people don't have the time nor the expertise to do the research about this guy that I, as an experienced and professional journalist, can do.
Then, exactly four minutes after he sent his little Nastygram, he sent a second e-mail, entitled, "Recall," in which he wanted to retract the previous e-mail. This demonstrates, once again, indecisiveness and a severe lack of leadership skills. This is a guy who has an inability to either make decisions or to stick with one of the few decisions that he actually does make. Either send the Nastygram and stick by it, or don't send it at all. The worst choice is to send it and then plead to have it back.
Would you, the reader, want to work with a Scouting quarterback who comes up to the line of scrimmage and says, "Hike!" but then, "No, wait," after everyone slams into the helmets and shoulder pads of the opposition? Come on! Make up your mind, Brian!
When the man who claims to be Brian Pasternak sent his e-mails, the name that came up in the "From" field was just "b p" in lower case. While that, alone, is no big deal, it is part of an ongoing pattern of elusiveness and concealment of his identity. In addition, Brian never signs any of his e-mail. Is the e-mail from him or his organization? He doesn't say. Everything with him is vague and imprecise.
Brian insists that what really matters is his ideas, not who he is, and that's why he conceals who he is, where he operates out of and where and for whom he works.
He's wrong. A scouting organization works with children. He wants to work with our children. As an experienced father and highly regarded parent, I'm not about to turn the temporary custody, care and the education of my child over to some toilet-mouth guy who refuses to make decisions, hides behind Caller ID blocking and 800 numbers, sends out e-mails without clear identification, can't decide on a business name in over two years of trying, thinks that his business will fail if the public finds out the truth about what he's up to, and promises retaliation against those who refuse to operate their own businesses according to his whims and dictates.
One thing is certain. He assured me that he is not an atheist. Thank God he's not one of us!
There's another credibility problem with him. He insists that he has over a thousand people working with him. How could it be that this operation is such a secret if there are a thousand people involved? Who are these thousand people? Certainly, if his operation is legitimate, there would, by this time, be at least some prominent individuals involved. Who are these thousand people? Do they really exist, or is he faking it?
The thousand figure, itself, defies credibility. I have been operating Rob Sherman Advocacy for almost as long as Brian claims to have been putting together his rip-off, copy-cat scouting operation, and I don't have anywhere close to a thousand people involved in my operation. It takes time to build up those kinds of numbers, and it's done one person at a time. For an additional comparison, consider American Atheists. They've been around for about thirty years, and they only have about two to three thousand people associated with them. By contrast with Mr. Pasternak, American Atheists is run by some of the finest, most honest and honorable people in all of America, starting with Ellen Johnson and Conrad Goeringer. Recently, I've written about several policy disagreements that I've had with American Atheists, but that doesn't change the fact that Ellen, Conrad and company are amongst the most decent people you will ever find anywhere, any time. I wish them well, and was delighted to read Ellen's recent comments that "the sleeping giant is starting to wake up." That's what I've been trying to get them to do. I'm glad to see that it's happening. Good luck, Ellen and Conrad. I hope you find renewed success.
The e-mail contact for Brian's organization is a particular address at Yahoo dot com's e-mail service. That's a concern, too, because Yahoo makes it explicitly clear, at Paragrah 6-g of their Terms of Service agreement, that their service is for personal communications, not business communications. Yahoo e-mail Terms of Service, Paragraph 6, Section g, line 3 states that their service shall not be used "for any form of solicitation." Yet, this is from where Brian sends out solicitations for people to affiliate with his club.
The bottom line is this: Who is this guy, really? We know that he can't, or won't make decisions when it is necessary to do so. We know that he is a sneaky guy who works very hard to conceal his identity and anything about himself. We know that he hides behind Caller ID blocking, the use of initials in his e-mail and a refusal to stand behind his e-mail messages by signing them. We know that he is a poor business manager who fails to make timely decisions and, when he does make decisions, doesn't stand by the few decisions that he does make.
We also know that Brian is a mentally unstable, foul-mouthed hot-head who threatens people who refuse to let Brian impose his decisions upon others. At the same time, Brian refuses to make necessary decisions about his own affairs.
Is this guy a mole from the Boy Scouts who is trying to find out who wants to form an alternative organization so he can stop that from happening by leading us to the edge of a cliff and over the precipice? Is he a member of the clergy who is seeking access to our children so he can do nasty things to them? I can't tell, because he does a very good job of concealing all personal information about himself.
That, however, is precisely the kind of guy whom I will never allow a child of mine to associate with. I suggest you do the same.
Do let me know what you think about this one.
Rob Sherman P. O. Box
7410
Buffalo Grove, IL 60089-7410
A post office box is used
because
the street address uses a curb mail box,
which is not secure.
Telephone: (847) 870-0700
Fax: (847) 870-1156
E-mail: rob followed by the at symbol followed by robsherman dot com