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Now what?

Deborah Dugan tried to step up, and NARAS pushed her right down. Believing it was stronger than she was, that a woman should be thrilled just to be in the room, never mind that oftentimes Dugan was not allowed to be, like when the Executive Committee renewed outside counsel contracts despite Dugan going on record that she wanted to hire inside counsel to reduce those fees, which were exorbitant for an organization of NARAS’s size.

The fact that these men thought this was acceptable, that it would pass muster, is evidence of what a bubble they inhabit.

Yes, after Neil Portnow’s faux pas, after hiring Tina Tchen, you’d think the boys in charge would have woken up and adjusted their behavior. But no, like serial rapists, they continued in their bad behavior, over and over again.

What kind of homes did these men grow up in? Ones in which their mothers scolded them and they just ignored it?

Or maybe it was their fraternities…who instilled this behavior within them?

Let’s start with Joel Katz. Should an attorney have his own plane?

Now I don’t know what kind of plane Mr. Katz has, whether it’s a G550 or a Piper Cub, but the point here is he’s getting rich off the backs of artists and those they’re associated with. Sure, he’s helping them, supposedly, but why does he end up richer than most of his clients?

Now if you read the complaint, Mr. Katz insisted on a private dinner with Ms. Dugan, before she met the entire brass, whereupon he detailed his relationship woes and pursued Ms. Dugan romantically, despite Dugan being in a committed relationship. Don’t we keep hearing “No Means No”?

Obviously Katz doesn’t believe this applies to him.

Okay, that was just talk. But then Katz reaches in for a kiss? In what work world is that approved behavior?

But it gets much worse. Katz implores Dugan to go to Neiman Marcus for Grammy outfits and then says Neiman should be listed as a Grammy sponsor in exchange. You see, Katz represents Neiman Marcus. Furthermore, do you get the conflict of interest here?

As in Katz represents members of the board that approved his compensation.

And artists up for awards were on secret committees deciding who to give the final nominations to. That’s right, they made music in said categories!

Let’s see… Do I nominate so and so or myself? For all time I can say I’m a Grammy nominee, and if I lean on enough of my friends, maybe I’ll even win one, maybe by promising to get them nominated the following year.

As for the nominations…

The organization voted and then the secret committee tweaked. Not only were there personal interests, if Ken Ehrlich wanted an artist on the telecast, they got picked.

This is what the public has believed happens from day one.

But this is not the American Music Awards, this is the ACADEMY, THE GRAMMYS!

In other words, everyone who’s ever been nominated, ever won a Grammy, it’s just been cheapened.

Not because you were good or bad, deserving or not, but because behind the scenes boys had to get paid.

Which brings us to Neil Portnow. Allegedly he raped an artist.

Who knows?

But then Dugan is told to hire him as a consultant for 750k a year?

You don’t reward bad behavior.

But even worse, why does he get to be a consultant anyway? He served his term, ride into the sunset.

But the piece de resistance is they paid Dugan less than Portnow.

If this isn’t egregious I don’t know what is. Do these men not read the news, are they unaware of the scuttlebutt about women making less money to do the same job?

And were they ignorant enough to believe that Dugan would bring no change?

Oh, it happened too fast.

That’s code for “Who is this uppity woman telling me what to do?”

A man comes in and wreaks havoc. A woman comes in and she must play nice.

How did this happen? Who was on watch?

Let’s start with Katz, since he’s the attorney. Shouldn’t he have been telling the Board to clean up its act? After all, it’s a public organization. Shouldn’t someone have been ringing the warning bell? Especially after Neil Portnow stepped in deep doo-doo with the step up comment?

So what we have here is a representation of the world at large.

That’s right, the world is run by cabals, usually male, and they don’t want to let you in and if you’re privileged enough to get through the door you’d better play by their rules.

And you wonder why the populace is up in arms.

Yup, you’ve got the DNC and the NYT saying a centrist must win. Hillary Clinton says everyone hates Bernie Sanders and he gets nothing done. Well, Ms. Duplicity, ever look in the mirror? You have waffled consistently, at least Bernie has been consistent and true to himself. But if Bernie wins, you lose your power, just like the old RNC heavies lost power when Trump came along. When change is overdue it happens radically, and nearly instantly. Can you say ARAB SPRING?

Deborah Dugan lost her job because she was a woman speaking the truth, plain and simple. As for her style…isn’t a leader supposed to lead, how come strong males are lauded and strong women are not?

As for the handling of this debacle…

It was all an inside affair, Dugan was willing to walk for a check. Negotiations were close, and then NARAS offered less and said she had to take it or leave it within the hour. She left it. And all hell broke loose.

Why did the Academy think Dugan would remain silent? Especially when they were leaking all the info themselves?

Harvey Mason, Jr. whines about leaks, and the Academy is the source of them! Even worse, Dugan’s hiring was leaked to the press because the attorneys represent the media outlets too!

Now I have no firsthand knowledge re Dugan’s allegations. But one thing is for damn sure, they’re incredibly damaging to the Academy’s reputation. Rule one is to keep this stuff behind closed doors. Stay a step ahead of the game, anticipate consequences, quiet things down.

So Dugan won’t come back. She can’t, not unless they fire just about everybody else!

So they hire a new person…

Well, it’ll look bad if it’s not a woman.

But what about all of Dugan’s complaints? Are they swept under the rug or addressed? Or is it business as usual?

This is kind of like Murdoch’s “News of the World.” There was no way to fix the behavior, he just shut the newspaper down.

It appears they’ve got to shut NARAS down and start all over.

Truly. Get all new people. Have the voting process be transparent. Wake up and walk into the new age.

But no, NARAS is living in the past and heading for the graveyard. Everybody’s sucking at the tit of the CBS contract in a world where broadcast television is tanking. These are the same people who couldn’t foresee the internet, who railed at Napster and now Spotify. They just wanted the old world to go on forever.

But one thing’s for sure, the men were looting and partying while they held these prestigious, high-paid positions. They thought they were the stars. Forget those people who make the music, they’re just cogs in the machine, we call the shots.

And they do!

But will they continue to?

Highly unlikely.

Tune in tomorrow, Tuesday January 21st, to Volume 106, 7 PM East, 4 PM West.

Phone #: 844-6-VOLUME, 844-686-5863

Twitter: @lefsetz or @siriusxmvolume/#lefsetzlive

Hear the episode live on SiriusXM VOLUME: HearLefsetzLive

If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app: LefsetzLive

This is how you pour gasoline on a fire.

Let’s see, published so far are the Grammy payments to law firms. Joel Katz’s firm, Greenberg Traurig, renegotiated the $20 million a year deal with CBS for the telecast. Good work! Until you find out the firm was paid $6,309,936 that year, 2016. The firm was paid $1,758,388 in 2017, the last year for which figures are available. And Greenberg Traurig was paid $1,167,029 in 2015. What were all these fees for? Negotiating employment agreements, dealing with internal lawsuits? I mean, paying top buck when your budget is only so big…who is making these decisions, didn’t anybody think about hiring inside counsel?

That’s right, Deborah Dugan.

But it wasn’t only Greenberg Traurig. Proskauer Rose made $906,691 in 2017, and that year, in addition to the Greenberg and Proskauer fees, there was another $3,737,400 paid out in legal fees! So, in 2017, the Grammy organization paid over $6 million in legal fees, who do they think they are, Boeing?

But it gets worse. The Grammys are all about the awards. Who does the nominating?

Well, it turns out it’s a coterie of supposed experts. It’d be like a bunch of directors from the sixties deciding who should be nominated for Oscars. Actually, that might be better than what we’ve got, but the truth is it’s undemocratic, and there would be no transparency, the way the music business has liked it since its inception… Come on, can you say “royalties”? But no, the Grammys are run just like the business, opaque.

So Harvey Mason, Jr. tells us Dugan’s attorney offered to drop the claims, have Deborah Dugan pack up her bags and go home, in exchange for millions. Are we supposed to be offended by that? Does Mason think we’re ignorant musicians who don’t understand how the world works?

Dugan signed a contract, lengthy according to her attorney, and I’m sure it includes a provision whereupon the Grammys can fire Dugan for behavior beyond the pale. I’m sure there are even examples in said contract. And when you fire someone for cause, they get bupkes, i.e. nothing. So Dugan takes the gig, gives up a solid gig with Red, moves across the country, gets involved in this imbroglio and is willing to walk away with nothing, stab herself in the heart for the good of the Academy? Give me a break, take a look at Muilenberg’s golden parachute. Furthermore, an attorney is an advocate, a representative, their goal is to negotiate, to get you the best deal they can. Isn’t that what Harvey Mason, Jr. wants Greenberg Traurig to do, as he is a personal client of the firm?

Speaking of conflicts of interest…

As for the dueling investigations… Does anybody trust these anymore? It’s like hiring McKinsey, so you can blame the consultant when things go haywire. And how much are these investigations gonna cost? Quite possibly more than it would to pay Ms. Dugan to go home for good!

And the leaks just keep on coming.

Dugan didn’t get along, she didn’t play the game.

But she thought she was hired to clean up the mess. Come on, do you think Neil Portnow was gonna do this, the man who couldn’t even make nice over criticism of the lack of women being nominated and winning Grammys? Sure, maybe he misspoke, telling women to “step up,” but why wasn’t he conciliatory to begin with, why even go on the offensive?

Then Mason goes on to defend the Trustees. They work for free, yippee!

Yeah, for free at those meetings in Hawaii.

Mason is as stupid as Portnow when it comes to defending himself.

As for leaks… That’s how the world works these days. Hell, we have a President of the United States being impeached and there’s been one leak after another, because that’s how you get the truth out! Expect more leaks in this case.

As for the Gammy whistleblower, whose name has been leaked, i.e. Claudine Little, who claims the environment she worked in was “toxic and intolerable” and “abusive and bullying”…just ask Amy Klobuchar’s assistants, Klobuchar’s bad behavior has been well-documented and the “New York Times” just endorsed her for the Democratic nomination for President!

And people are always stunned how business works. This is the territory, and it’s not only men, but women too. And it’s a fast-moving world of big egos and why in the hell does the unverified statement of one employee put the head of the whole organization on leave?

I’ll tell you, Mason was inundated with input from other employees and he’s unsophisticated in these matters, never mind aligned with the usual suspects wanting business as usual.

Now if you follow business, boards are responsible for the behavior of the company, for the actions taken. And if Mason is so right, how come we aren’t hearing from the rest of those Trustees, i.e. board members, regarding what they think? Oh, they’re sucking at the tit and they don’t want to give up those perks while working for “free.” Which is why companies try to exclude board members who are doing it for the money, that clouds your opinion.

So a kerfuffle has turned into a conflagration.

And let’s take the worst case scenario, Dugan yelled at Little.

There’s no allegation Dugan hit her. There’s no allegation that Dugan fired her. Is this a reason to blow up the Grammys just before the telecast, when everybody is paying attention, which they only do once a year?

Now I don’t know what really happened.

But I know more than I did Thursday night.

And as the days go on, I’ll gain even more knowledge.

As for those vaunted Trustees, is any of them of the caliber of Chuck D, who defended Ms. Dugan, who has a reputation for telling the truth, speaking his mind?

So they tried to clean up the Grammys, run it legitimately, they even formed a task force to find the best candidate, who turned out to be a woman with experience in the field, and with celebrity musicians. And I wonder how much that process cost. And now Dugan is trying to institute change and it’s her fault? And alleged behavior trumps ideas?

If Mason was a leader, he’d accept responsibility and take prompt action. But he won’t, he’s a typical two-faced musician, making nice to your face and then stabbing you in the back thereafter.

Oh, don’t argue. Come on, you know how it works, in order to work a musician has to be nice to everybody, that’s how you make it. It’s only when you get to the top that you can do things your way. And even if you do, the label might take it out on you…remember George Michael with Sony or Neil Young with Geffen?

Institutions need to be challenged on a regular basis. To stand still is to die. This is how the labels almost lost complete control of recordings with the advent of Napster. And the truth is today they do not have the control they once did, and never will again. What happens when CBS no longer wants to pay $20 million a year for the telecast? What’s the plan then? Oh, you know it’s coming.

Yes, the artist has gained traction in the internet era. And Dugan was trying to take the focus off the lifers populating the labels and the Grammy organization and she’s the one paying the price.

Only in Hollywood.

“Interim Grammy Chief Slams Deborah Dugan in Letter; Warns of ‘Misinformation,’ ‘Leaks'”