WATCH: Betty White's Intro For Monday Night Football Was Disappointing


We can admit it. We were looking forward to tonight's intro to Monday Night Football on ESPN ever since they announced Betty White would be doing "A White Christmas" skit.

Well, if you like jokes about an 89-year old woman thinking NFL quarterbacks are hot, then this is for you. But for us, it marked the first time that we actually missed Hank Williams Jr.

Here is the video...

 

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Anyone Else Having Problems With Apple's iMessage?


iMessage

When Apple announced its latest operating system upgrade a few months ago, there was one feature I was excited about:

iMessage.

This was the iPhone-to-iPhone texting tool that would allow iPhone owners to circumvent the ridiculous fees the carriers charge for text messages.

Instead, iPhone owners would be able to text each other via iMessage for free, no matter how many texts they sent.

iMessage sounded cool, but I didn't bother to upgrade my iPhone's OS immediately, so I forgot about it. Then, last week I finally upgraded--after spilling a cup of tea in my previous MacBook (long story) and deciding it was time to get started with iCloud.

Anyway, after I upgraded, I found I was automatically using iMessage when texting with folks who had iPhones.

And, initially, it appeared to work fine. It was just like texting, except with some blue text-blurb windows instead of the regular green.

But then, suddenly, I found that I was in the dog house at home over having not done something I was supposed to have done, even though I didn't know that I had been supposed to do it. And when I inquired about that--about how I was supposed to have known--I learned that I was supposed to have known because of the text message I had been sent. And when I protested that I had never gotten a text telling me what I was supposed to have known, I got the look that said "Like hell you didn't get that text."

So I checked my iPhone again. And I really hadn't gotten that text. And I didn't get that text until the next day, when it showed up as though it had just been sent.

And then, today, I got a repeat iMessage from the same person four times in rapid succession.

So it seems like iMessage was seriously on the fritz.

I asked my Twitter followers whether they were having any problems with iMessage. Of those who responded, about half said that they had been having similar problems. The other half said everything was perfect.

So, based on this small sample, it seems like Apple's having some glitches with its carrier-circumventing texting-killer iMessage.

Anyone else seeing this?

SEE ALSO: Take The Full Tour Of iOS 5 Right Now--Including The Misfiring iMessage

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Unifying Your Team: More From Coach Tony Dungy

In the NFL, there?s only one goal?winning. But for Tony Dungy, former head coach of the Indianapolis Colts and best-selling author, one of the top moments of his life came after an epic failure. In 2002, he was fired as coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers after six seasons with the team. A year later, his former team won the Super Bowl without him. He was over the moon.

Why was he so proud? Because the team accomplished the goals they made with Tony during the previous years. Even without their coach, they were unbelievably unified, which was the topic of last week?s EntreLeadership podcast. Host Chris LoCurto talked to Tony about unity and leadership, plus a whole lot more. But like all good things, it had to come to an end. Luckily, we were able to capture the rest of Tony?s interview.

What leaders, legendary or living, do you admire most?

There are really several people. Nelson Mandela is a person who I?ve gotten to know about since my daughter went to South Africa. Going over there to visit and seeing someone who cared more about his people than his personal problems was really stunning to me.

I grew up in the Civil Rights era, so obviously Martin Luther King. I was with George Bush after we won the Super Bowl. He talked about giving the order to go and fight, realizing that it was going to cost a lot of American lives. He really believed it was the right thing to do. People like him, those in leadership positions who make the tough decisions, are who I admire.

What books have most influenced your career?

John Wooden?s autobiography influenced me in terms of coaching. Coach Wooden won a lot in a way that was very dignified and very Christian-oriented. It made me realize you could do things the Lord?s way and still be effective as a coach. Here was one of the greatest winners in the history of college basketball, and he put the Lord first. As a young coach coming up in the profession, it was very encouraging.

After (Philadelphia quarterback) Michael Vick was sent to prison, you began mentoring him. Tell us just a little bit about that.

When I went to see him, I found out about his background. What struck me was that all the benefits I enjoyed, all the lessons I learned from my dad and people around me, like my uncles, he didn?t have. He was blessed with a lot of God-given ability, a great platform, a lot of money and playing in the National Football League; but he didn?t have the foundation I had. And so, he made some mistakes.

Then, the question became, ?What are you going to do once you get out?? You can?t change history, but you can change where you are going. We talked about it, and I felt like he was sincere in his desire to change.

Michael told me one of the toughest moments he had in prison was getting a letter from a young boy who said. ?Michael Vick, you are my favorite player. Why aren?t you playing?? Michael had to write back and tell this young kid who was a fan, ?I?m not playing because I have made some mistakes in my personal life.? Michael said he wanted to get back to show that boy that he made some mistakes but wasn?t a bad person.

When he was telling me that story, I just felt like he was going to make it. I didn?t know he would come back and play as well as he?s played. I felt like he was going to make it personally.

Was your goal to get Michael Vick to return to the NFL?

My first desire was to get him back with his family. So, we talked about it. I told him, ?Hey, you grew up without your dad there. You don?t want your kids to grow up the same way. That?s the first thing you have to do. And then, we need to look at your decision-making and lifestyle.? Football was after all that?way, way secondary. I think that?s why Michael did so well. He put the right things first.

The Easier Way to Make Hard Decisions

Making the tough calls isn?t simple or pretty. But as an EntreLeader, it?s part of your job. On our next EntreLeadership podcast, Dave discusses the easier way to make those hard decisions. Plus, we?ll have a special interview with Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, Built to Last and How the Mighty Fall. It?s a broadcast you won?t want to miss!

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Bob Morvillo, Defender Of Martha Stewart, Maurice Greenberg, John Zaccaro (And Me), Dies At 73


Robert Morvillo

One of the most famous and successful white-collar defense attorneys, Bob Morvillo, died yesterday at the age of 73.

A founding partner at Morvillo, Abramowitz, Morvillo defended dozens of high-profile clients in a career spanning four decades.

Morvillo's clients included Martha Stewart, John Zaccaro (the husband of VP candidate Geraldine Ferraro), Maurice Greenberg (the former head of AIG), Merrill Lynch, and others, many of whom were never publicly identified as clients because their cases ended without prosecutors filing charges.

That latter group, as it happened, included me.

Peter Lattman and Benjamin Weiser have an excellent profile of Morvillo over at the New York Times. If you want a picture of what he was like in court, I also covered his Martha Stewart defense in detail for Slate. (He lost, but he still put on a vivid performance.)

I won't repeat the details of Morvillo's life here. I'll just add a story of my own interaction with him back in 2002, shortly after the New York State Attorney General, Eliot Spitzer, filed a legal complaint against Merrill Lynch and me about conflicts of interest in the Wall Street research business. The encounter was brief, but it came at an extremely challenging and stressful point in my life, and I'll never forget it.

What Spitzer alleged, as you may recall, was that a desire to win investment-banking business had corrupted the Wall Street research process, inducing firms and analysts like me to write bogus research reports flattering investment-banking clients.

Exhibit A in Spitzer's complaint were emails written by me, my research team, and Merrill's management, bankers, and compliance lawyers.

The emails showed the tension that resulted when we expressed negative opinions about the stocks of banking clients or stocks held by the firm's investor clients--both of whom complained or retaliated when we said something they didn't like. The emails also showed the emotional reactions of all of us as our stocks, reputations, and clients were getting destroyed in the dotcom collapse.

In his complaint, Spitzer had presented some emails as evidence that my team and I had believed one thing privately and said another publicly--in other words, that we had defrauded investors by not telling them what we really thought.

In one of the most notorious of these emails, I had referred to a stock called Infospace as a "piece of junk" while the firm still had a "Buy" rating on it.

Presented with just the snippet of the email and the rating, Spitzer's conclusion seemed the only logical one. So it was no surprise that, based on Spitzer's complaint, federal prosecutors decided to take a look at the case.

That was where Bob Morvillo came in.

Spitzer's complaint was a civil complaint, meaning that it would likely lead to financial penalties and regulatory rule changes. Federal prosecutors, meanwhile, brought the threat of criminal charges--charges that might mean bankruptcy for the firm and--as unthinkable and horrifying as it seemed to me--jail-time for executives.

As soon as Merrill got word that federal prosecutors were looking at the case, the firm hired Morvillo.

Morvillo's job, I learned later, was to assess what had happened and then determine the best course of action for the firm.

As a first step, Morvillo, a former prosecutor, conducted his own investigation into the facts. He wanted to see, I imagine, whether he was dealing with a bunch of honest if clueless research analysts--or, as Spitzer had alleged, a bunch of criminals.

Morvillo summoned several members of my team to his office, grilling them about the dozens of emails that Spitzer had found objectionable.

He met with the firm's bankers and lawyers.

And then he met with me.

For a couple of hours around a polished conference-room table in the offices of Morvillo, Abramowitz, Morvillo slid one email after another across the table to me and then drilled me with questions. As I answered, he stared intently at me.  Whenever my answers left any room for doubt, he pounced.

What did I mean when I had referred to Infospace as a "piece of junk," Morvillo barked.

I explained that, when I sent that email, I was reacting to an inaccurate flame-mail sent to me by a broker whose clients had been crushed in the stock. The broker was angry about something he had heard about Infospace and was lambasting me for my team's having a buy rating on the stock. When I got the email, I was embarrassed and angry, and I forwarded it to the analyst covering Infospace. I called it a piece of junk, and asked her to take it off a recommendation list.

If you thought the stock was such a "piece of junk," Morvillo barked, why didn't you downgrade it?

I explained what I would explain a couple of dozen more times over the next year, in a variety of legal proceedings. My frustration was about what had already happened to the stock, not what we thought was going to happen to happen to it. Ratings are about the future, not the past. One of the worst mistakes analysts can make--and I had made with other stocks and didn't want to make it again--was downgrading at the bottom. At the time of that exchange, Infospace's fundamentals were still solid. If we had thought it deserved to be downgraded, we'd have downgraded it, but we didn't.  A month or two later, Infospace's fundamentals did deteriorate, and my colleague immediately downgraded it. And she was one of the first analysts on the Street to do that. And so on...

And so it went, with that email and others, until we had discussed all the emails Spitzer had cited in his complaint. Morvillo was a huge man, and he was sitting directly across from me. Throughout the interrogation, I had the distinct sense that, if I had ever said anything he didn't believe, he'd have reached across the table and choked me.

Although I didn't really understand it at the time, one of the things Morvillo was doing in this meeting was assessing me personally.  Executives and their firms do not necessarily stay on the same side of the table legally, and Morvillo was not representing me.  He was representing my employer, and he was determining whether I was going to be an asset or a liability. 

Had Morvillo found a story or explanations weak, in other words, he could have thrown me under the bus.

Thankfully for me, he didn't.

After a couple of hours of interrogation, Morvillo leaned back in his chair and asked me one final question--a question whose answer seemed obvious to me but that, in fact, would form the basis of the legal position he would go on to take.

So these emails, Morvillo said, were not professional opinions?

No, I said.  They were like the chatter of a football team on the sidelines of a game.

With that, Morvillo rose and pushed away from the table. I wouldn't see him again for another 18 months, when my case was ancient history, and I was covering the Martha Stewart trial. But shortly after our meeting, Morvillo met with federal prosecutors and explained his view of what had happened. I have always assumed that that meeting played a role in the prosecutors deciding not to continue their investigation.

I will be forever grateful to Bob Morvillo (and the prosecutors) for that.

Defending white-collar executives in legal trouble is rarely a popular job for attorneys.  In the best of cases, no one feels sorry for them. In the worst, they are universally hated. Most people assume that the executives did whatever they are accused of, and, in many cases, obviously they did.

But in an adversarial legal system like ours, they still need counsel. And that counsel can often make a big difference, not just to the executives but to their families and friends. So I imagine that a lot of former clients of Bob Morvillo, guilty and innocent, are sad to hear of his death.

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