stan katz

@gothburz Lol

I am a senior coordinating producer for the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. I have worked eleven of these. I was backstage at the Washington Hilton when the shots were fired. The first thing I heard was not the gunfire. It was glass. A champagne flute hit the floor of the International Ballroom at approximately 9:47 PM. Then a second. Then the sound that I have since been told was a 12-gauge shotgun, which from inside the ballroom sounded like a heavy door slamming in a parking garage. Then the Secret Service moved. They moved the President, the Vice President, the First Lady through the east corridor in under ninety seconds, which is protocol, which is practiced, which is the one part of the evening that worked exactly as it was designed. Everything else was improvised. I know this because I ordered the wine. 94 tables. Two bottles per table. 188 bottles of a Willamette Valley pinot noir that the Association selected in February after a tasting committee spent three meetings debating between Oregon and Burgundy. Oregon won. The budget was $14,200. I signed the invoice. I can tell you the vintage. I can tell you the distributor. I can tell you the per-bottle cost because I negotiated it down from $89 to $76. What I cannot tell you is how 147 of those bottles left the building during an active shooter evacuation. I can tell you what I saw. A correspondent from a network I will not name picked up two bottles on her way to the east exit. Full bottles. One in each hand. She was wearing heels and she did not spill. A man in a tuxedo tucked one inside his jacket the way you'd shoplift a paperback at an airport bookstore. A woman picked up a bottle, looked at the label, put it back, and took a different one. She checked the vintage. During an evacuation. That's editorial judgment under pressure. The theme of the dinner was "A Free Press for a Free People." The banners were still hanging when the evacuation began. I know because I hung them. Twenty-three banners, navy blue, gold serif lettering, $11,400 for the set. They were still hanging when 2,600 guests were directed to the exits by Secret Service agents, one of whom had just taken a shotgun round in his ballistic vest and walked to the ambulance on his own feet. The agent's vest costs approximately $800. The wine that left the building was worth $11,172 at Association cost. At restaurant markup, roughly $29,000. The guests saved more in wine than the vest that saved the agent. That's priority. The video went viral by 10:15 PM. Not the video of the evacuation. Not the Secret Service response. The wine. Three guests in formalwear grabbing bottles off white tablecloths while being told to move toward the exits, while a man with a shotgun stood in the same motor entrance where John Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan 45 years ago. A woman near the service entrance was crying. She said "I just wanna go home." She was not holding wine. She was holding her phone. She was the only person I saw that night who looked afraid rather than inconvenienced. That's the distinction. The rest of the ballroom did not look afraid. They looked interrupted. An active shooter at the WHCD is a logistical problem. The dinner was disrupted. The timeline was off. The after-party at the French Ambassador's residence would need to be rescheduled. These are contingency matters. Contingency matters have solutions. Fear is for people who attend events without security details. I have produced eleven of these dinners. I have managed seating charts that require diplomatic-grade negotiations. I have handled comedians, cabinet secretaries, network anchors, and the editor of a major newspaper who once threatened to leave because his table was behind a column. I have never, in eleven years, seen a guest leave a $76 bottle on the table during an evacuation. I have also never seen a guest check the label first. Both observations are consistent. The bottle is worth taking. The evacuation is worth surviving. The instinct is to do both simultaneously. 188 bottles placed. 41 recovered. 147 unaccounted for. One agent shot. Zero guests injured. Zero bottles broken. A free press for a free people. The press is free. The wine was $76 a bottle. They took it anyway.

@ChayasClan Smart man, even if he was messugah

Yes, Gaddafi hated Israel, but this speech he gave at the Arab League Summit I believe in 2007 made the entire Arab world drop their jaws as he openly admitted that it was the Arabs, and not Israel, that attacked and forced the displacement of Arabs from the land, and it was the Arab Muslims in Egypt and Jordan who occupied Gaza, Samaria and Judea and refused to give the “Palestinians” a state. He admits that all of it was the responsibility of the Arabs and not the Jews, and that the Jews have the right to sue the Arabs for the massacres of Jews at the hands of the Arabs and for all the damage caused. Watch, listen and share.

@ChayasClan He said what we Jews have always known.

@GadSaad Wow! Is that for real?!

CNN about to release its breaking news: Elon is singularly attacking the blind community by creating profit-making solutions that marginalizes their non-seeing.

@RubinReport Is Megyn Kelly stark raving mad?!

Great work, Megyn!

@TRobinsonNewEra Too late

What happened when Denmark let in 321 "Palestinians"?

@IsraelinUSA Indeed.

"There's just a different standard for Jews in Israel when it comes to prosecuting a war, they're allowed to fight back to a truce, but unlike America or any other Western nation that is attacked this viciously, they're not allowed to win a war. It's a double standard." @profgalloway on the @Morning_Joe show - say it louder for the people in the back 👏🏻👏🏻 🎥 @MSNBC

Mr President @PresidencyZA, the people want to know why you are adverse to us asking you q’s. This one way dictating kinda thing is what we want you to do to cabinet. You’ve got country management the wrong way around, I’d suggest.

[BREAKING NEWS] Former Deputy Chief Justice Moseneke recommends elections take place no later than February 2022. More details on #eNCA #DStv403

[BREAKING NEWS]President Cyril Ramaphosa agrees to the resignation of the North West Director of Public Prosecutions.Advocate Moipone Noko resigned after she was informed that she will be facing an inquiry into her fitness to hold office.More on eNCA.com & #DStv403

"Cabinet has decided to put the country on an adjusted Level 3 from Level 1 with immediate effect." Statement by President @CyrilRamaphosa on progress in the national effort to contain the #COVID19 pandemic, Tuynhuys, Cape Town. bit.ly/3aSIx8L

Check out my latest article: Radio’s future ain’t what it used to be linkedin.com/pulse/radios-f… via @LinkedIn

There's an easier way to close radio sales linkedin.com/posts/stan-kat…

Check out my latest article: Radio spots are a major tune-out factor. Here's what you can do to mitigate the problem linkedin.com/pulse/radio-sp… via @LinkedIn

Cartoon from @Spectator’s daily Covid-19 update. Sign up for free: spectator.co.uk/covid-19-updat…

Advice to anyone in business: Culture eats strategy for breakfast.

To succeed, you need relationship currency. How many people will recommend you behind your back?

Selling is listening more than talking. Prescription without diagnosis is malpractice.

The Smartest Person In The Room Is... jacobsmedia.com/innovation-rad…