6792: The Girls’ Club.

Advertising Age presented its Women To Watch 2009, featuring a few women of color including the executives below.


Esi Eggleston Bracey
VP-Global Cosmetics, CoverGirl

By Jack Neff

BATAVIA, Ohio—“Easy, breezy” as CoverGirl’s slogan may be, the cosmetics business hasn’t always come easy for P&G. Nor has it always been a thing of beauty.

Olay cosmetics failed, and Max Factor got booted from most U.S. stores but Walmart over the past decade. CoverGirl has faced a tough fight against L’Oreal in particular.

But the business has never been in better shape than now under Esi Eggleston Bracey, 38, VP-global cosmetics. CoverGirl has been gaining share for more than a year and, thanks to Lash Blast mascara, it been staging a particularly effective run at an eye makeup business long dominated by L’Oreal’s Maybelline.

CoverGirl’s U.S. shares were up in all three of its major categories—eye, lip and face—last year and last quarter, and brand sales overall were up despite broad recession-fueled in cosmetics, according to Information Resources Inc. data from Deutsche Bank.

When P&G Chairman-CEO AG Lafley in April referred to a current restructuring of the beauty business allowing “our best-performing beauty and grooming leaders to get more responsibility and to grow faster,” clearly Ms. Bracey was one of them. Though she’s had the global role for two years, she’s in the process of relocating from Hunt Valley, Md., to Geneva to assume more direct day-to-day oversight of the global business.

“Without a doubt, CoverGirl’s mascara innovation [Lash Blast] has grown the eye segment,” Ms. Bracey said in an e-mail. “We’ve tripled our market share in mascara in the past three years and doubled our market share in the eye segment in the same time frame.”

More recently, Cover Girl and Olay Simply Ageless Foundation, backed in an unconventional but highly successful move by Ellen Degeneres as spokeswoman, became the best-selling foundation at mass retailers during its first full quarter on the market, she said.

Ms. Bracey was P&G’s first female African-American general manager, though she says the milestone is really about valuing diversity more broadly. “If my role inspires people to appreciate our unique gifts,” she said, “then I’m making a difference, and that means a lot to me.”

Ms. Bracey’s move into general management in 2007 wasn’t her first tour of duty on cosmetics. And it actually allowed her to reap benefits of work she did as a marketing director on the business early in the decade, said Dave Rose, a former CoverGirl brand manager, now marketing consultant.

Those were tough times, he noted, just after P&G pulled the plug on Olay cosmetics, with little in the CoverGirl innovation pipeline, he said. Ms. Bracey provided the leadership to help change that.

“People were pretty shell shocked,” he said. “She did a good job of getting us going again.”


Vida Cornelious
Creative Director, DDB, Chicago

By Jeremy Mullman

CHICAGO—When Anheuser-Busch approached its agencies about launching Bud Light Lime in late 2007, DDB had a problem: The product was supposed to appeal to women and cocktail drinkers, and its A-B account team didn’t have either. So the agency’s chief creative officer, the late Paul Tilley, handpicked Vida Cornelious, a standout creative on the agency’s McDonald’s account, to lead the shop’s pitch for the business and its work on the brand.

Ms. Cornelious proposed that the agency position Bud Light Lime as “a summer state of mind.” The agency won the pitch, and the campaign Ms. Cornelious created—featuring music from the pop star Santogold—turned the brand into Anheuser-Busch’s most successful product launch, by some measures, since Bud Light itself.

Ms. Cornelious, a New Jersey native, attended Hampton University undergrad and later received a master’s degree in advertising from the University of Illinois. Her first advertising job out of school was with Burrell Communications.

Since joining DDB nine years ago, Ms. Cornelious, 38, has worked on some of the agency’s largest accounts and most memorable campaigns, including Dell’s memorable “Dude, you’re getting a Dell” effort.

A ‘day job’
For the past four years her primary focus has been McDonald’s, which she said remained her “day job” even during the Bud Light Lime push. In that role, she focuses on product launches, having developed campaigns to get salads, snack wraps and an Angus Burger off and running.

She’s also regularly worked as a mentor to other young, minority creatives.

Marlena Peleo-Lazar, McDonald’s chief creative officer, ranks Ms. Cornelious “among the best” creatives the marketer has worked with. “This is clearly a woman who should be honored and celebrated,” she said. “McDonald’s and a whole host of other world-class brands have benefited from her insights and expertise.”

Indeed, she has been honored, having her work shortlisted at Cannes and winning a gold medal from the Chicago Creative Club and a 2008 AdColor Award.

After Ms. Cornelious’ AdColor win, DDB Chairman Bob Scarpelli remarked that he was “proud DDB has her.”

Alas, not for long. Later this month Ms. Cornelious is departing the agency to accept a group creative director role at GlobalHue, an agency that specializes in both general-market and multicultural advertising efforts. “From a professional standpoint, having an opportunity to lead a team really appealed to me,” she said. “But I also think that, with where we are in the culture right now, with a diverse president, that it’s a real opportunity to make strides in how ethnic marketing is perceived.”

6791: Twitter Suspension Lifted.

The one-day suspension is over, as Twitter has restored the MultiCultClassics account. There was no explanation for the reversal, just as there was no reasoning offered for the shutdown. But the incident did demonstrate Twitter is not in touch with its users, as the service provided zero human connections and plenty of irrelevant links to useless content—somewhat symbolic of the overall Twitter experience. Although we did pick up one Horny Kitty follower.

Feel free to join Horny Kitty by following us on Twitter.

6790: Ruling Minorities.

From The New York Times…

The Waves Minority Judges Always Make

By Adam Liptak

WASHINGTON — Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first black member of the Supreme Court, ended his 24 years there bitter and frustrated. He had been unable, he said, to persuade his colleagues in many cases concerning racial equality, the cause to which he had devoted his life.

“What do they know about Negroes?” Justice Marshall asked an interviewer. “You can’t name one member of this court who knows anything about Negroes before he came to this court.”

But the other justices did get to know Justice Marshall, and even the more conservative ones acknowledged that his very presence exerted a gravitational pull more powerful than his single vote.

“Marshall could be a persuasive force just by sitting there,” Justice Antonin Scalia told Juan Williams in an interview for a biography of Justice Marshall, recalling the justices’ private conferences about cases. “He wouldn’t have to open his mouth to affect the nature of the conference and how seriously the conference would take matters of race.”

President’s Obama’s nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to serve on the Supreme Court, where she would be the first Hispanic and the third woman, has raised questions about how her background would affect her decision-making. But there is another question, too: How would she alter the larger dynamic among the justices?

The first woman on the court, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, often says that wise old women and wise old men reach the same conclusions. But empirical research on federal appeals courts tugs in another direction.

In sex discrimination and sexual harassment cases, according a 2005 study by Jennifer L. Peresie in The Yale Law Journal, “female judges were significantly more likely than male judges to find for plaintiffs.”

Perhaps more surprisingly, the study found, “the presence of a female judge significantly increased the probability that a male” on a three-judge panel “supported the plaintiff in the cases.” Indeed, “panels with at least one female judge decided cases for the plaintiff more than twice as often as did all-male panels.”

A study in The Columbia Law Review last year found a similar effect in voting rights cases. “When a white judge sits on a panel with at least one African-American judge,” the study, conducted by Adam B. Cox and Thomas J. Miles, concluded, “she becomes roughly 20 percentage points more likely to find” a voting rights violation.

In an interview, Ms. Peresie, a Washington lawyer, cautioned against extrapolating to the Supreme Court from studies of appeals courts. “Maybe one out of nine is different from one out of three,” Ms. Peresie said.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the second woman to serve on the Supreme Court and currently the only female justice, said that she and Justice O’Connor, who preceded her, brought a distinct perspective to the court.

“As often as Justice O’Connor and I have disagreed, because she is truly a Republican from Arizona, we were together in all the gender discrimination cases,” Justice Ginsburg recently told Joan Biskupic of USA Today.

But Justice Ginsburg said her own influence in all sorts of cases at the justices’ conferences was uncertain. “I will say something — and I don’t think I’m a confused speaker — and it isn’t until somebody else says it that everyone will focus on the point,” Justice Ginsburg said.

Mark Tushnet, a law professor at Harvard and an authority on the Supreme Court, said Justice O’Connor’s arrival at the court “did affect the way other justices responded.”

“These are older guys,” Mr. Tushnet said. “They haven’t dealt with women on a professional basis on the whole.” Similarly, he said, “very few of the present justices have interacted as equals with Hispanic professionals.” All justices bring their life experiences to the bench in some sense, of course, and Justices Marshall, O’Connor and Ginsburg seemed to devote special attention to cases involving the groups they belonged to.

In a 1992 reminiscence, Justice O’Connor wrote that Justice Marshall was “constantly pushing and prodding us to respond not only to the persuasiveness of legal argument but also to the power of moral truth.” She recalled the moving stories Justice Marshall would tell to support his view that racism played a pernicious role in the administration of capital punishment.

It is not clear, though, that any of those stories caused Justice O’Connor to change her vote. “Justice O’Connor was not nearly as sympathetic to racial civil rights claims as she was to gender claims,” said Lawrence Baum, a political science professor at Ohio State.

Justice Clarence Thomas, the second African-American justice, is by some measures the most conservative justice since 1937, while Justice Marshall was the most liberal. “Thomas is living proof and a daily reminder that not everyone from a particular background has a particular point of view,” said David J. Garrow, a historian at Cambridge University, in England.

Judge Sotomayor has attracted attention for her musings in a 2001 speech about the impact her background might have on her decision-making, remarks a White House spokesman on Friday said reflected a poor choice of words.

“I would hope,” she said, “that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

She added, in a less noted passage, that giants on the court, including Justice Benjamin Cardozo, the second Jewish justice, had on occasion stumbled. “Let us not forget that wise men like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Justice Cardozo voted on cases which upheld both sex and race discrimination in our society,” Judge Sotomayor said.

Still, many judges say that the law is a set of neutral principles that can be applied mechanically and ought not to vary depending on the judge applying them.

Justice Felix Frankfurter, dissenting in a 1943 decision that struck down a law requiring students to salute the flag, reminded his colleagues that he was, as a Jew, a member of “the most vilified and persecuted minority in history” and thus likely to be sympathetic to a broad interpretation of freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. “But as judges,” he went on, “we are neither Jew nor Gentile, neither Catholic nor agnostic.”

Cases with special resonance for Hispanics may not have quite the same profile as cases concerning religion, race and gender, but the Supreme Court will nonetheless face several of them in the years to come, particularly in the areas of immigration, election law and language education in the public schools.

The presence of a Hispanic justice, Professor Tushnet said, will have the usual effect. “Every time there’s a new justice,” he said, “everybody has to say, ‘How will he or she react if I say this?’ ” That is not only an outsider’s view. Justice David H. Souter, the justice whom Judge Sotomayor hopes to replace, has written that the addition of a new judicial perspective necessarily unsettles the existing ones on a court.

“Anyone who has ever sat on a bench with other judges knows that judges are supposed to influence each other, and they do,” Justice Souter wrote in a 1998 dissent in a death penalty case. “One may see something the others did not see, and then they all take another look.”

6789: The Power Of Diversity.

Diversity won Britain’s Got Talent.

6788: Aiming For The Truth.

From The New York Daily News…

You never read this headline: ‘Black cop shoots white cop’

By Errol Louis

Many will assume that the killing of Officer Omar Edwards was the result of a tragic but honest mistake, an accident with no malice or racial bias at work.

That would be a reasonable conclusion—and a dead wrong one.

There is nothing reasonable about the fact we never see black or Latino cops accidentally gunning down white undercover officers, but the reverse has been true in several high-profile cases.

It’s true that Edwards may have violated Patrol Guide procedures by wheeling around with a weapon in his hand instead of instantly freezing and dropping his gun when ordered to do so.

The officers who killed Edwards may have violated policy, too. We don’t know what kind of warning was shouted, and the fatal bullet reportedly entered Edwards’ back, raising questions about why and when he was seen as a deadly threat.

For now, we must leave it to departmental investigators and the courts to sort out what happened.

But even before the evidence is in, what every New Yorker can do is acknowledge—and battle—the malicious myth that most black men are up to no good and likely to commit criminal violence.

It’s a mindset that leads the public to believe nuts and fraudsters—most recently, Bonnie Sweeten of Florida, who set off a national search by falsely telling FBI agents she and her daughter had been kidnapped by two black men in a Cadillac.

The story wasn’t true—and Sweeten faces criminal charges for lying—but America fell for it hook, line and sinker, launching national Amber alerts. In a similar case, a campaign worker named Ashley Todd last year falsely claimed a 6-foot-4 black man carved a “B” (for Barack Obama) into her cheek. That, too, was a lie.

And so was the 1994 tale spun by Susan Smith of South Carolina, who said a black bogeyman carjacked her two sons - who, it turned out, had died when Smith killed her children by rolling her car into a lake.

This isn’t South Carolina or Pittsburgh or Florida: We New Yorkers like to pride ourselves on being tolerant and sophisticated. But we, too, are susceptible to the bias trap.

One news headline described Edwards as “mistaken for a thug”—a reminder of the slurs cops throw around on the job and off. People get classified as thugs, perps, skells, punks and worse.

An onslaught of gangsta rap and other cultural garbage bolsters the bias. We pay a heavy price by letting racist imagery, words and accusations slosh around society unchecked and unchallenged.

In the tense, split-second needed to separate a cop from a crook on a dark street, those myths may have cost a good man his life.

6787: Twitter Litter.

Twitter has suspended the MultiCultClassics account. Must have committed a flagrant foul. Although it’s doubtful, as the service is rarely used and barely liked. Of course, Twitter permits the continued viewing of spam tweets, and even emailed alerts for new losers followers.

6786: Hair-Raising News.

A few sentences in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• Phil Spector received a prison sentence of 19 years to life for murdering an actress. Let’s hope he finds a new hairstylist in the pokey.

• A Krispy Kreme factory in Virginia is being sued by Fairfax County officials who claim plant waste has messed up the area’s sewage system, breaking environmental laws and causing millions of dollars in damage. Krispy Kreme can probably get the suit instantly dropped by showing up at pre-trial meetings with boxes of doughnuts.

• Southwest Airlines plans to let passengers fly with small pets for an additional $75 fee. Large pets must be stowed in the overhead compartments.

• A local Pennsylvania newspaper apologized for running a classified ad calling for President Barack Obama’s assassination. The message read, “May Obama follow in the steps of Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy!” The paper’s editor said his staff failed to catch the historical connection. Do they award Pulitzer Prizes for extraordinary ignorance?

6785: Calling Out Racism Isn’t Racist.

From CNN.com…

Commentary: Judge Sotomayor is not a racist

By Sherrilyn A. Ifill
Special to CNN

Editor’s note: Sherrilyn Ifill is a professor of law at the University of Maryland School of Law and a civil rights lawyer who specializes in voting rights and political participation. She is the author of “On the Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the 21st Century,” and is a regular contributor to The Root at http://www.theroot.com/.

(CNN) -- When Don Imus denigrated in clearly racist terms the championship women’s basketball team from Rutgers University; when actor Michael Richards screamed at black guests in a comedy club, calling them the “n-word” and invoking the threat of lynching; when Trent Lott said that things would have been better if a southern segregationist had been elected president a half-century earlier, responsible white people from across the ideological spectrum stepped forward to explain that these individuals were not racist.

The “R” word has become the taboo of the white world. By this I mean that calling someone racist is a taboo, not racism itself.

So when Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich and several other conservative commentators call a sitting federal appeals court judge and Supreme Court nominee who happens to be Latina, a racist, it’s time to push back. Real hard.

The evidence offered in support of Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s alleged racism is a speech she gave in Berkeley, California, in honor of Judge Mario G. Olmos, a former judge, community leader and graduate of Boalt Hall Law School who died an untimely death at the age of 43.

The offending section of the speech is this: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” This passage inspired Gingrich, former speaker of the House of Representatives and potential 2012 presidential candidate, to call Judge Sotomayor “a Latina racist.”

To lift one statement out of Judge Sotomayor’s eight-page speech without examining the context and substance of her remarks, is an example of the kind of shoddy character assassination that I suspect will dominate this judicial confirmation process.

Judge Sotomayor’s speech is, in fact, an excellent meditation on how the experiences of judges might affect how they approach aspects of judicial decision-making. It explores the important, and too-little examined reality that judicial deliberations can be affected by a judge’s background, perspective and experience.

In the next sentence immediately following the passage above, Judge Sotomayor says, “Let us not forget that wise men like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Justice [Benjamin] Cardozo voted on cases which upheld both sex and race discrimination in our society.”

Could she have been referring to Buck v. Bell, the 1927 case in which Justice Holmes—widely regarded as perhaps the most brilliant justice in the Supreme Court’s history—upheld the state’s plan to sterilize Carrie Buck, an 18-year-old white woman, who was accused of being congenitally retarded. Buck’s main crime seems to have been the fact that she’d had a child out of wedlock.

In any case, Justice Holmes upheld the sterilization order, emphatically and coldly stating, “three generations of imbeciles is enough.” Does anyone seriously believe that a woman, and especially a woman of color “with the richness of her experiences” would not have “reach[ed] a better conclusion” than that adopted by Justice Holmes in 1927?

In fact Buck v. Bell is the perfect example of how a “wise old [white] man” got it wrong in a way that a woman judge or a racial minority most likely would not.

It’s worth pointing out that in that same speech Judge Sotomayor cautioned, “we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group.” But she acknowledges that “there may be some [difference in her judging] based on my gender and my Latina heritage.”

What Gingrich and others decry in Judge Sotomayor should be applauded. Judge Sotomayor has the humility to recognize the difficulty of achieving true and pure impartiality. Instead, as she pointed out in her speech, “[t]he aspiration to impartiality is just that—it’s an aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others.”

Unlike so many judges who by virtue of being white and male simply assume their impartiality, Judge Sotomayor recognizes that all judges are affected by their background and their life experiences.

Ironically, it was Justice Cardozo who recognized this when he said, “[t]he great tides and currents which engulf the rest of men, do not turn aside in their course, and pass the judge by.” Justice Cardozo concluded that “[n]o effort or revolution of the mind will overthrow utterly and at all times the empire of … [a judge’s] subconscious loyalties.

These are the realities of judicial decision-making evoked by Judge Sotomayor’s speech. It’s perhaps easier to say as [then-Supreme Court nominee] Clarence Thomas so famously did, that a judge can simply, “strip down like a runner,” and become utterly impartial simply by putting on a black robe. But it is more honest to acknowledge that regardless of race, gender, ideology or professional background, impartiality is always a work-in-progress for judges.

Even Judge Richard Posner, a conservative stalwart on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals once observed that, “Litigation commonly involves persons at different social distances form the judge, and the more proximate will garner the more sympathetic response regardless of actual desert.”

Justice Thomas is the perfect example of how hard it can be for a judge to lay aside the personal experiences that shape his worldview. His views about the affirmative action cases that come before him are shaped quite clearly by what he regards as the self-sufficient dignity of his hard-working grandfather and the humiliation he says he felt when others believed his scholarly accomplishments were the result of affirmative action.

White judges are also shaped by their background and experiences. They needn’t ever speak of it, simply because their whiteness and gender insulates them from the presumption of partiality and bias that is regularly attached to women judges and judges of color when it comes to matters of race and gender.

Only a judge who is conscious and fully engaged with the reality of how her experiences may bear on her approach to the facts of a case, or sense of social justice, or vision of constitutional interpretation, should be entrusted to sit on the most influential and powerful court in our nation.

Too often we have allowed ourselves to be placated and charmed by fantasies about umpire judges calling “balls and strikes,” without ever asking which league the game is being played in or whether the umpire was standing in the best position to see the play. We forget that when deciding whether a batter checked his swing, the homeplate umpire will routinely ask for the alternative perspective from the first or third base umpire before calling a “swing and a miss” a strike.

Judge Sotomayor rightly suggests that these things matter. She notes in her speech that “personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see.” She should know this. She’s been a trial judge. None of the other justices who will serve with Judge Sotomayor will have had that experience.

Judge Sotomayor’s speech is one of the most honest and compelling statements about judicial impartiality we’re likely to hear from a judge of her stature.

It ends with this humble observation:

“Each day on the bench I learn something new about the judicial process and about being a professional Latina woman in a world that sometimes looks at me with suspicion. I am reminded each day that I render decisions that affect people concretely and that I owe them constant and complete vigilance in checking my assumptions, presumptions and perspectives and ensuring that to the extent that my limited abilities and capabilities permit me, that I re-evaluate them and change as circumstances and cases before me requires. I can and do aspire to be greater than the sum total of my experiences, but I accept my limitations. I willingly accept that we who judge must not deny the differences resulting from experience and heritage but attempt, as the Supreme Court suggests, continuously to judge when those opinions, sympathies and prejudices are appropriate.”

It’s entirely appropriate to question Judge Sotomayor about this speech at her confirmation hearings. She is evidently more than capable of explaining in compelling, clear language what precisely she wanted to convey in this speech. But Judge Sotomayor is not a racist.

It is an insult of unimaginable proportion to unleash this charge on her, based on one sentence from her Berkeley, California, speech. It is not just irresponsible to make this charge against a sitting federal appeals court judge based on this flimsy record; it is—and here I’ll break the taboo—racist to do so.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Sherrilyn Ifill.

6784: Stayin’ Alive.

Oops. Wrote the epitaph too soon for JWT/Chicago. After agency honchos announced the shop would be shutting down for good, the staff wound up victorious in defending the Illinois Bureau of Tourism account, which requires maintaining an Illinois presence. You know you’re in a messed up company when leadership can’t even manage to go out of business.

6783: American History And Histrionics.

Comic stripping in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• Archie proposed to Veronica, dissing long-time girlfriend Betty. The spurned blonde cried, “I am so sad, I don’t even know what to say.” Jughead is probably making a move for some comic-book comfort sex.

• American Airlines will start going “cashless” on domestic flights, accepting credit and debit cards only for in-flight purchases. How can a business refuse to accept cash? At this point, you’d think the airline industry would be open to accepting livestock for services.

• Adios, Jose. A new Pew study shows the top Latino name for U.S. newborns has been declining in popularity over the years, possibly because of the “Americanization” of second-generation Latinos. Probably means we’ll be seeing a lot more Latino kids named Barack, LeBron and Usher.

6782: Tagging Diversity Ads, Part 20.

Corporations love producing diversity ads to hype commitment to an inclusive workforce. Yet these advertisers seem unconcerned about partnering with advertising agencies where diversity is almost viewed with adversity. Granted, many companies compensate by mixing up their AOR rosters with minority-owned shops. But does such a move really negate the contradictions of associating with agencies that have steadfastly resisted moving beyond predominately White work environments?

This week, MultiCultClassics presents actual corporate diversity ads that have been “tagged” with special messages to highlight the hypocrisy.

Click on the ad and read closely.

6781: “Now That’s Fucked Up.”

Back in April, MultiCultClassics commented on the 4As 2009 Leadership Conference, and wondered about a function organized by The Marcus Graham Project and Diversity in Media. Kenji Summers and Lincoln Stephens recently delivered a few details, attaching a press release for the event.

Under The Influence took place on April 28 in San Francisco, following a 4As panel discussion on diversity and inclusion. The industry mixer sought “to highlight new realities emerging in the advertising world by showcasing organizations and individuals who are leading the change in developing the next generation of diverse media & advertising industry professionals.”

Participants included Erin O. Patton, author of Under The Influence: Tracing the Hip Hop Generation’s Impact on Brands, Sports & Pop Culture. Patton made a brief presentation and signed books, with proceeds benefiting The Marcus Graham Project.

Here’s what Lincoln Stephens had to say:

“The 4As conference was a great opportunity for The Marcus Graham Project to make its industry debut, as we prepare to launch and pilot our programs. The panel that we were invited to participate in was called A New Reality in Diversity & Inclusion. Following the panel, The Marcus Graham Project hosted a networking event entitled Under The Influence that featured presentations by various organizations.

One of the disappointing facts is that out of the 300 CEO and attendees of the conference, many of which received invitations to our event, only two CEOS actually attended, Nancy Hill, CEO of the 4As, and Larry Woodard, CEO of Vigilante.

The challenge is to engage these CEOS to even attend events like Under The Influence, which featured comments from the brand architect behind brand Jordan, Erin O. Patton. The disappointment in their [lack of] attendance did not discourage me or the effort, though—it just gave it even more reason to be.”

Stephens’ spirit is strong and admirable. He’s moving in the right direction, and The Marcus Graham Project is sure to be a success and a force.

Yet one must express puzzlement over the no-shows. After all, this was the place where Nancy Hill continued to address diversity, and Dan Wieden delivered his controversial call-to-action. You’d think Wieden would have led his culturally clueless comrades to the affair. Instead, it looks like the CLIO Lifetime Achievement Award recipient talked the talk, then walked.

In Wieden’s own words, “Now that’s fucked up.”

6780: Talk That Talk Radio.

DJ Safi spoke with Cheeraz Gorman about diversity in advertising and beyond at W+K Radio. DJ Safi is pretty culturally clueless, but at least she tried to converse on the topic. Anyway, go listen to the discussion via podcast.

6779: Changing The Game.

Playing with the news in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• Whoever dies with the most toys wins. Toys “R” Us bought toy seller FAO Schwarz. Wonder if the deal was made with play money.

• O.J. Simpson’s lawyers appealed his conviction on Tuesday, arguing the trial was “fundamentally unfair.” Um, because being in prison prohibits Simpson from finding Nicole’s true killers?

6778: Tagging Diversity Ads, Part 19.

Corporations love producing diversity ads to hype commitment to an inclusive workforce. Yet these advertisers seem unconcerned about partnering with advertising agencies where diversity is almost viewed with adversity. Granted, many companies compensate by mixing up their AOR rosters with minority-owned shops. But does such a move really negate the contradictions of associating with agencies that have steadfastly resisted moving beyond predominately White work environments?

This week, MultiCultClassics presents actual corporate diversity ads that have been “tagged” with special messages to highlight the hypocrisy.

Click on the ad and read closely.

6777: Sotomayor Called Racist By Racists.

From The New York Daily News…

GOP Holy Trinity on Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor: She’s a ‘racist’

Daily News Staff

Never ones to shy away from a fight—even a losing one—the Holy Trinity of the GOP—Newt Gingrich, Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh—have taken to calling the Supreme Court justice nominee Sonia Sotomayor a ‘racist,’ with Gingrich even going so far as to ask her to withdraw.

The anger is aimed at comments Sotomayor made at a University of California-Berkeley lecture in 2001. “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,” Sotomayor said.

In a Twitter post Wednesday afternoon, Gingrich wrote, “Imagine a judicial nominee said ‘my experience as a white man makes me better than a Latina woman’ new racism is no better than old racism.”

“White man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw,” he added. “Latina woman racist should also withdraw.”

Conservative firebrand Ann Coulter echoed Gingrich on Wednesday’s “Good Morning America.”

“It does a disservice to minorities—to women and minorities—that we are supposed to be empathizing for,” she said. “Saying that someone would decide a case differently… because she’s a Latina, not a white male, that statement by definition is racist.”

Immediately after the announcement on Tuesday, Rush Limbaugh was the first to started banging the war drum by calling Sotomayor a “horrible choice” and “a racist … or reverse racist.”

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs quickly and easily threw water on the conservative fire.

“I think we’re satisfied that, when the people of America and the people of the Senate get a chance to look at more than just the blog of a former lawmaker… that they’ll come to the same conclusion that the president did,” Gibbs said. “I think when people get a chance to look at her record, I feel certain that partisan politics will… take a backseat to common sense and open-minded decisions based on a full examination of the record. And I think that’s what every Supreme Court and every judicial nominee deserves.”

6776: DJ Diversity.

Tune in on Thursday at 9:30am PST to W+K Radio and hear Dan Wieden’s 4As speech. Later, W+K staffers will discuss diversity in the advertising business and beyond. Is the turtle supposed to symbolize the industry’s movement on the issue?

6775: Fashion Trendsetters Not Present.

AdFreak spotted a fashion spread in American Express’ Departures Magazine featuring “Today’s Real Mad Men.” Um, these guys are stylish? And no one could find a single well-dressed Mad Man of color? Really?

6774: Tagging Diversity Ads, Part 18.

Corporations love producing diversity ads to hype commitment to an inclusive workforce. Yet these advertisers seem unconcerned about partnering with advertising agencies where diversity is almost viewed with adversity. Granted, many companies compensate by mixing up their AOR rosters with minority-owned shops. But does such a move really negate the contradictions of associating with agencies that have steadfastly resisted moving beyond predominately White work environments?

This week, MultiCultClassics presents actual corporate diversity ads that have been “tagged” with special messages to highlight the hypocrisy.

Click on the ad and read closely.

6773: Imagine That.

This actual ad placement makes the headlines, well, unimaginative.

6772: Bracelets And Benches.

Looking for a job in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• A couple of entrepreneurs have created bracelets that announce you’re unemployed. The hope is that wearing the bracelets will lead to conversations and even networking opportunities. You’d think one could communicate their unemployment status by simply wearing a depressed and destitute facial expression.

• President Barack Obama nominated federal judge Sonia Sotomayor for the U.S. Supreme Court. If approved, Sotomayor will be the first Latino member on the high court—as well as the second female in the current group. Which undoubtedly delights Clarence Thomas.

6771: Tagging Diversity Ads, Part 17.

Corporations love producing diversity ads to hype commitment to an inclusive workforce. Yet these advertisers seem unconcerned about partnering with advertising agencies where diversity is almost viewed with adversity. Granted, many companies compensate by mixing up their AOR rosters with minority-owned shops. But does such a move really negate the contradictions of associating with agencies that have steadfastly resisted moving beyond predominately White work environments?

This week, MultiCultClassics presents actual corporate diversity ads that have been “tagged” with special messages to highlight the hypocrisy.

Click on the ad and read closely.

6770: Seductive Search Optimization.

Nice copy placement.

6769: Confidentiality Disagreement.

This actual job listing is pretty hilarious. A digital art director is sought by a CONFIDENTIAL agency. But the request ends by instructing candidates to apply with Arc Worldwide. Then again, it’s probably fine. Because everyone knows art directors—especially digital art directors—never read the copy.

6768: A Soldier’s Story.

From The Root…

In October 2006, First Sergeant Charles King was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq. He left behind a poignant, heartfelt journal for his infant son, filled with all the lessons he would never be able to teach him. Read an excerpt from A Journal for Jordan.

6767: Tagging Diversity Ads, Part 16.

Corporations love producing diversity ads to hype commitment to an inclusive workforce. Yet these advertisers seem unconcerned about partnering with advertising agencies where diversity is almost viewed with adversity. Granted, many companies compensate by mixing up their AOR rosters with minority-owned shops. But does such a move really negate the contradictions of associating with agencies that have steadfastly resisted moving beyond predominately White work environments?

This week, MultiCultClassics presents actual corporate diversity ads that have been “tagged” with special messages to highlight the hypocrisy.

Click on the ad and read closely.

6766: Who’s On First?

Firsts of fury in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• American Girl is introducing its first Jewish doll, Rebecca Rubin, the daughter of Russian immigrants living in New York in the early 1900s. Given that Addy the Black doll is a fugitive slave, look for Rebecca to struggle with life in the Jewish ghettos. Such sweet imagery for little girls.

• President Barack Obama picked former astronaut Charles F. Bolden to lead NASA. If approved, Bolden will be the first Black NASA administrator. Change has come to outer space too.

• Citigroup honcho Richard Parsons will soon be introducing his first love child, as the married executive is fathering a kid with model-philanthropist MacDella Cooper. Look for Parsons to offer bailout baby money.

• Kinda late on this news, but ex-NFL star Michael Vick left prison on Wednesday to serve his remaining sentence via house confinement. Hound-lovers probably think it should be doghouse confinement.

6765: Show Me The Lack Of Money.

Whatchu got? Um, a bankruptcy filing…?

6764: Xerox Adds Color.

From The New York Daily News…

Ursula Burns to head Xerox, will be first black woman to be CEO of Fortune 500 company

By Heidi Evans, Daily News Staff Writer

The new head of Xerox Corp. is a native New Yorker who grew up in a lower East Side housing project.

Xerox will be the first Fortune 500 company headed by a black woman when Ursula Burns, 50, takes the reigns this summer.

Burns replaces Xerox CEO Anne Mulcahy, 56, who told shareholders Thursday she would be retiring in July and had picked her lieutenant as her successor.

Burns climbed the corporate ladder at Xerox, beginning as a summer engineering intern in 1980 and rising to president of the printing giant in 2002.

As president, Burns oversaw a large chunk of the company’s operations including overseas research and development, engineering, manufacturing and marketing.

She helped to build Xerox into the world’s largest maker of high-speed color printers.

Last year, Burns ranked 10th on Fortune magazine’s top 50 Most Powerful Women in America. She’s the second-highest placed African-American woman behind only Oprah Winfrey, who was ranked No. 8.

Reached at their Rochester home Friday, Burns’ teenaged daughter, Melissa, 16, called her mom “a great person, a wonderful inspiration.”

“She has taken us back to the old neighborhood a few times,” said Melissa, a reference to Delancey St. on Manhattan’s lower East Side. “Apparently it’s a lot better now than it was when she was growing up.”

Burns, who attended Cathedral High School, was the middle of three children from two different absentee fathers.

In a 2003 interview with the New York Times, she described growing up poor in “the projects” - with “lots of Jewish immigrants, fewer Hispanics and African-Americans, but the common denominator and great equalizer was poverty.”

Burns’ mother took in ironing and ran a home day care center so she could send her kids to Catholic schools.

Burns, a math whiz, graduated from Polytechnic Institute in Brooklyn with an engineering degree. She got a master’s degree in mechanical engineering in 1981 from Columbia University.

After she was named president, she told a reporter, “My perspective comes in part from being a New York black lady, in part from being an engineer. I know I’m smart and have opinions worth being heard.”

Burns is married to Lloyd Bean, a retired Xerox scientist. The couple have two children.

She wouldn’t talk Friday, but in a letter to her staff, she said: “This company has … provid(ed) me with opportunities and experiences I couldn’t even dream of as a little girl growing up on the lower East Side of Manhattan. I feel so fortunate.”

She and her family celebrated by going out to dinner after the promotion became official.

“The house is filled with mail and flowers,” daughter Melissa said. “We are all happy for her.”

6763: Fresh Thoughts On Blogosphere.

Thought For This Day has been around since January, so MultiCultClassics is a little late to spot it. Better late than never. Alvin Gay, CEO of Footsteps, shares his thoughts on the business and life. It’s definitely worth checking out. Although the man needs a logo for his blog. Maybe Craig Brimm could help him out…?

6762: Illness-Causing Advertising.

There is a better way to communicate this message. But probably not a worse way.

6761: GlobalHue Mimicking White Agencies?

GlobalHue likely turns global hues of red every time Jim Edwards of BNET calls. Edwards has been reporting on all the drama surrounding the multicultural shop and the Bermuda Tourism account. From noting accusations of overbilling to race-based overreactions to potential political overthrows, Edwards has probably given the place more press than it’s ever received. A Google® search ranks the BNET posts among the top five results for GlobalHue. Edwards even chipped in a story on racial-ethnic strife between GlobalHue and Montemayor y Asociados Inc.

Whatever.

If everything negative turns out to be true, GlobalHue still looks like an amateur compared to the typical White agencies. The questionable bookkeeping won’t rival the schemes of Ogilvy & Mather, Doner or Leo Burnett. Omnicom alone has presented greater race-related obscenities worldwide, including consistent displays of homophobia and screwing minority shops.

Edwards called GlobalHue’s media buying for Bermuda Tourism weird, supposedly because the agency poured more loot into TV One and the Gospel Music Channel versus bridal magazines and the New York Times. Um, it’s SOP for multicultural shops to support minority media—and clients usually force the shops to do so. For a bigger crime worth uncovering, try exposing the way White agencies ignore minority media.

Regarding winning accounts through personal relationships and sans reviews, well, White agencies mastered those maneuvers from jump.

Not trying to defend GlobalHue here. MultiCultClassics has never been overly impressed by the enterprise, and regularly criticizes their corny and clichéd campaigns. If the agency is indeed breaking the rules, Edwards should continue the journalistic blitzkrieg. But based on the past actions of White agencies, any alleged financial improprieties can and will be remedied by simply writing a reimbursement check and calling it a day. The rest of the “misconduct” is Madison Avenue 101.

Hey, it’s a twisted sign of progress that multicultural shops can occasionally be corrupt too.

6760: TGIF Before Memorial Day Weekend.

Working for the holiday weekend in a MutiCultClassics Monologue…

• A meat producer in Illinois recalled about 96,000 pounds of beef, citing potential contamination. Great news for Memorial Day barbecues.

• In Chicago, the revised standards for craigslist ads formerly categorized as “Erotic Services” are getting mixed reviews from law enforcement. A Cook County sheriff’s official said, “Indications are that it is still being used to advertise prostitution.” Craigslist Chief Executive Jim Buckmaster insisted, “There is no nudity, illegal services or prohibited language in these ads, at all.” An attorney remarked, “It looks like they have toned it down quite a bit. There are still scantily clad individuals, but it’s nothing you can’t see in the telephone book.” Great news for Memorial Day orgies.

• Change has come to Philadelphia, Mississippi, as the city elected its first Black mayor this week. The city is known for the 1964 murders of three civil rights workers at the hands of Ku Klux Klan members. “This shows a complete change of attitude and a desire to move forward,” said new Mayor James A. Young. “When I campaigned, the signs on the doors said, ‘Welcome,’ and I actually felt welcome.”

6759: Monumental Bullshit.

The doctors at this place must do a better job of picking ads.

6758: The Hot Dogs Of War.

Digesting the news in a MultiCultClassics Monologues…

• Looks like the hot dog wars are nastier than we realized. The maker of Ball Park hot dogs is suing Oscar Mayer over the claims in its advertising. A spokesman for Ball Park declared, “Simply put, we believe that these untrue statements are all a bunch of baloney.” Well, that would mean the statements have more nutritional value than any brand of hot dog.

• Barnes & Noble reported 1Q losses at $2.7 million. Even the most bibliophilic Barnes & Noble employees don’t want to read the company books.

• John Deere 2Q profits dropped 38 percent. Not sure the company produces a contraption capable of digging them out of that hole.

• DreamWorks announced plans to create the first big-screen movie of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. However, the dream may be deferred, as two of MLK’s kids are threatening to sue because they weren’t involved in the film deal. Guess someone forgot to sit down together at the table of brotherhood and contract negotiations.

6757: Talent Competition Or Popularity Contest?

Did Adam Lambert fail to win American Idol because he didn’t fit the All-American profile?


Even Helen Keller would agree Lambert’s talent far exceeded anyone else’s in the entire competition.

6756: Talk To The Hand.

Show of hands—who thinks it’s really necessary to segregate ads like this?

6755: Downsizing Digest.

Quick hits in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• Nike announced plans to kick out 1,750 workers. Not sure how many will be sweatshop employees from Third World nations. Just do it.

• American Express will dump 4,000 workers. Membership does not have its privileges.

6754: Mad Men In Black.

Mat Burnett of Chicago-based advertising and marketing agency Super Genius examines the classic Johnson Publishing campaign. Catch it all at EbonyJet.com.

6753: Don’t Know Diddly About Doodling.

Um, you’ll have to do a little better than this to become a professional designer.

6752: Hot Dog-Eat-Dog World.

When did the hot dog category become so hard-sell and competitive? Plus, attacking Hebrew National seems anti-Semitic.

6751: CEA Needs CashCall.com…?

Just wanted to quickly comment about the Advertising Age story on the Center for Advertising Excellence at Howard University’s John H. Johnson School of Communications.

The CEA requires a $1 million annual budget to execute its goals. The 4As pledged financial support to the tune of $250,000 per year—and emotional support in the efforts to raise the additional $750,000 annually. However, the 4As payments are contingent upon the CEA’s success in collecting $750k yearly. To date, the CEA has netted over $270,000, spiked by a $100,000 donation from Wieden + Kennedy.

As always, any contribution made toward creating a more inclusive industry is commendable. Yet we can’t help but think the scenario is another symbol of Madison Avenue’s penchant for delegating diversity—and displaying a lack of true commitment to progress.

For starters, the CEA appears to be a collaborative initiative between the 4As and Howard University, but it really isn’t. Sources claim officials from the historically-Black institution hatched the idea and sold it to former 4As honcho O. Burtch Drake. So it sorta looks like outsiders developed a solution and must also act as fundraisers to make it happen.

That aside, the struggle to acquire $750,000 is disturbing, even in these lousy economic times. Indeed, it’s pretty outrageous when considering the following factoids:

• Omnicom leader John Wren—who allegedly demanded his agencies come into compliance with the pacts signed with New York City’s Commission on Human Rights—recently nabbed a bonus of $25 million. Incidentally, Wren’s agencies failed to meet his mandate, and the shops boast the worst hiring records of the bunch.

• IPG leader Michael Roth enjoyed a 21 percent increase in his over $11 million annual salary. And his cronies grabbed wads of loot too.

• Doner in Detroit supposedly owes ex-employee John DeCerchio $55 million.

• Leo Burnett paid $15.5 million to settle a lawsuit charging the shop overbilled the U.S. Army.

Meanwhile, the industry pours money into spectacles such as the irrelevant CLIO Awards, handing trophies to Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner and NBA bad boy Mark Cuban. And how much cash will be burned at the Cannes International Advertising Festival?

Agencies nationwide allocate serious resources to boost digital capabilities, while offering mere shillings to boost diversity. Why?

Hell, Dan Wieden coughed up $100,000, and he’s neither a 4As cardholder or among the 16 agencies working with the NYCCHR.

Madison Avenue recruits other people to fix its exclusivity problems, then ducks out when the freelancers’ bill arrives. Expect the next player in this continuing drama to be Gary Coleman.

6750: Letters From Moe, Larry And Curly.

The letters below appeared at Advertising Age. A brief MultiCultClassics response immediately follows…

Anger over cuts to Chrysler’s budget

RE: “Obama Halves Chrysler’s Planned Marketing Budget” (AA, May 11). This is sick. If Obama wanted to be a CEO of a business, he should have gone into the business world. According to his supervisor at the law firm he worked at in Chicago, Obama had a hard time grasping the “big picture,” and this was on cases that involved rents, furnace repairs, etc. Maybe that is why he has run up unsustainable debts, i.e., he really doesn’t know how much a trillion is. This is clearly unconstitutional and a blatant abuse of power.
Richard Cowart
Dubuque, Iowa

Obama’s cut of Chrysler’s marketing budget is a bald-faced violation of the First Amendment. A suit should be brought immediately and driven as fast as possible to the Supreme Court. The suit should be joined by all media since it is a direct assault on them, as well.
Fred Johnson
Savannah, Ga.

Barry is an absolute idiot. When the auto industry needs more advertising, he unconstitutionally “cuts” Chrysler’s budget. He is a tyrant, and he needs to be taken down a notch. We are dealing with someone who has never run a business, owned a business, or ever had to make sure to meet a payroll.
William Goodman
El Paso, Texas

The Three Stooges responsible for these letters clearly haven’t been reading the news. Or living on Earth.

Chrysler is moving to dump 25 percent of its dealerships, admitting the system is outdated and messed up. Looks like President Barack Obama was on the money in recognizing the automaker failed to properly run its business.

Plus, the marketing Obama developed to secure the presidency far exceeds anything hatched by Chrysler and its agencies in the last decade at least. So Barry is a better adman too. Perhaps Messrs Cowart, Johnson and Goodman have been responsible for Chrysler’s local dealership campaigns…?

6749: Will Work For Ammo.

This actual craigslist seeks a hired gun. Literally. Maybe they can sign up T.I. as a spokesman.

Marketing and Sales For Gun School (Entire Chicago Area)
Reply to: gigs-buzge-1173869124@craigslist.org
Date: 2009-05-16, 11:26AM CDT

We are Sharp Shooters (www.shootallday.com), Chicago areas’ only professionally licensed and insured introductory gun school. We teach first time shooters the fun and thrill of shooting in a safe, non-intimidating private range.

We are seeking to add a partner to grow our business and share in the revenue. You’ll need the drive and experience to increase class participation (revenue), improve our marketing and PR and explode our exposure. You have to be willing to work hard and overcome obstacles. Your compensation will be a share of the revenue.

Please visit our website at:

www.shootallday.com

6748: Center For Advertising Excellence Hype.

From AdAge.com…

Howard, 4A’s Kick Off Fundraising Efforts for New Center
Center for Excellence in Advertising Launches First Classes This Fall

By Marissa Miley

Diversifying the agency world is the common goal, but what the Madison Avenue Project is doing with legal threats, the Center for Advertising Excellence at Howard University’s John H. Johnson School of Communications is doing by collaboration. As the CEA celebrated its inaugural major fundraising event yesterday in Manhattan, it demonstrated its focus on building partnerships with advertising execs, not bulldozing ahead with potential lawsuits.

“I hope the CEA is the last diversity initiative to be created,” said newly appointed executive director Adrianne Smith, a 15-year veteran of the industry. “This should be the last stop.”

The CEA was co-founded last year by Howard University and the 4A’s to increase the numbers of African-Americans at advertising agencies, particularly in middle- and high-ranking roles. It was a vision years in the making, said Jannette L. Dates, dean of the Johnson School of Communications. The 4A’s approved its funding for the CEA in February 2008, and the program officially launched last September.

The 4A’s pledged $250,000 to the CEA for the next five years to get the program off the ground and vowed to work with the organization to raise an additional $750,000 each year. (The 4A’s continued support is contingent upon the CEA’s ability to meet the rest of its $1 million annual budget.) So far this year, the CEA has reached over $270,000 of this fundraising goal, said Ms. Smith, thanks to a $100,000 donation made by Wieden & Kennedy announced yesterday, and additional support from over 20 agencies and companies.

In its first year in operation, the CEA fleshed out its professional education program and hired Ms. Smith, who came on board in March. It plans to kick off its first academic modules this fall. Among the pilot programs: “Moving up in Advertising,” “Building Diverse Management Teams,” and “Making a Lateral Move in Advertising.” While the program is based on Howard’s campus in Washington, modules will be held around the country from Los Angeles to New York, depending on “what makes sense,” Ms. Dates said.

“This year we want to get more legs under us, get the modules up and running, and bring on more partners,” she said.

With those goals in mind, the CEA is taking cues from Barack Obama’s “Yes We Can” presidential campaign—quite literally. At yesterday’s fundraising event, Mr. Obama’s 2008 chief campaign manager, David Plouffe, shared how he relied on a diverse team to lead an unprecedented political effort.

The crowd—a blend of folks from general agencies, multicultural agencies and Howard University—seemed optimistic and lively.

David Prince, VP-talent management at the 4A’s, said the CEA was not out to point fingers about past discrimination but to “hold up those who are doing things right” and work with these agents of change to “push diversification forward.”

6747: Building On The Positive…?

Not sure why Lowe’s is hyping its customer satisfaction rating when profits continue to slide. There aren’t any customers to satisfy.

6746: Mixed Up Metaphor.

Um, if algebra were like boxing, wouldn’t that make Mike Tyson a mathematical genius?

6745: Getting Dealers Off The Street.

Dealing with bad news in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• General Motors followed Chrysler’s lead, announcing a move to dump 2,600 of its 6,200 dealerships. The automaker admitted there were too many dealerships under-performing or competing with each other. An industry analyst remarked, “No longer will people be able to shop between three or four dealers within 15 minutes of each other for the best cutthroat price.” Actually, Americans have been ignoring all three or four GM dealers within 15 minutes of each other.

• Rapper T.I. is heading to Arkansas, where he’s scheduled to begin his prison sentence for federal weapons charges starting on May 26. No word if he’ll be dumping his arms dealers before reporting to jail.

• The Air Transport Association predicted U.S. airlines will carry nearly 14 million less summer passengers. However, the organization anticipates there will be zero reduction in lost luggage.

6744: Downloading Digital Dumbness.

Erickson Stock says, “Download Your Next Campaign.” For what—more of these annoying life insurance banners?

6743: A Dollar Short Of A Concept.

We’ll send a dollar to anyone capable of explaining these ads.

6742: Dumping, Pumping And Slumping.

Blaming it on the economy in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• Chrysler wants to dump about 25 percent of its dealerships—789 in total—by early June, admitting that its system is outdated and too fat. The automaker claims 50 percent of its dealerships account for nearly 90 percent of U.S. sales. So why are they settling on dumping only 25 percent? Lee Iacocca used to declare, “If you can find a better car, buy it.” Looks like everyone continues to do just that.

• Pfizer says it will offer free Viagra and Lipitor to uninsured and unemployed Americans. Hey, guess the people at 789 Chrysler dealerships have something to look forward to.

• Census figures show the population growth of Latinos and Asians in the U.S. has slowed, probably because of tougher immigration laws and the lousy economy, leading the government to revise the timeframe for when minorities will become the majority by almost a decade. Which means minorities can expect to be adequately represented on Madison Avenue in about 10,000 years.

6741: CLIO Celebrates Cultural Cluelessness.

Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner received an honorary CLIO Award for his series depicting the advertising industry’s racist exclusivity. Diversity-distressed Dan Wieden picked up a Lifetime Achievement Award. You’d think the CLIO Committee would have tried to balance things out with a special trophy for Putney Swope.

6740: Curb This Dog.

Kinda dig the designs, but you need a road map to follow the message.

6739: Colder Than A Chicago Winter.

Check out this actual craigslist ad:

Start Up Ad Agency Needs Advice (S. Chicagoland)
Reply to: gigs-ebkgw-1167886584@craigslist.org
Date: 2009-05-12, 6:29PM CDT

I am starting an ad agency and I need some advice on rates to charge, billing, etc. I’m looking for someone who owns an ad agency or someone who knows the business of running one.

Um, can’t think of a single Chicago advertising agency executive capable of offering useful tips. Not a single one.

6738: Supreme Silliness.

Pollish jokes in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• A Gallup poll showed 64 percent of Americans don’t care if President Barack Obama appoints a woman to the Supreme Court; plus, 68 percent and 74 percent don’t care if Obama names a Latino or Black person, respectively. “It is unclear how much the average American knows about the current demographic composition of the Supreme Court,” noted the editor-in-chief of the Gallup poll. “Still, as was the case four years ago, the current results suggest that — for whatever reason — there is simply no large groundswell of demand from the American public for the appointment of a new justice” who is a woman or minority. The figures probably jump to 100 percent among respondents on Madison Avenue.

• Craigslist, apparently responding to public pressure, is dumping its “erotic services” ads. However, the naughty classifieds will be replaced by an adult category that will be patrolled by site employees. Candidates for this new role can apply through the “erotic services” section.

• The Circuit City brand and website were sold at an auction. Maybe craigslist will rename its “erotic services” section as Circuit City.

6737: Corporate Culture Is Vanilla Like Ice.

The Russo Group’s co-founder wrote at TalentZoo about the importance of corporate culture in the workplace. The agency video intended to demonstrate her point actually makes their culture look, well, clueless.

6736: Coors Light Heavy On Clichés.

Celebrating a new beat… Singing a new song. With a collection of old clichés.

6735: Cross Your Heart And Hope To Lie.

Food and Drug for Thought in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• The Food and Drug Administration says the healthy claims printed on boxes of Cheerios are not accurate, spanking General Mills for “serious violations.” The FDA also gave the cereal maker 15 days to fix the messages. To pull that off, they’d better eat their Wheaties.

• Donald Trump declared that Miss California Carrie Prejean will keep her crown, despite stirring controversy with nude pictures and her views against gay marriage. Can’t help but think Trump backed Prejean just to piss off Rosie O’Donnell.

• New Detroit Mayor Dave Bing won’t be moving into the official mayoral mansion, hoping to turn it into a profit center for the city. “We have the gem and take care of the gem, so we need to use it to our advantage,” said Bing. “I have no desire to live there. It’s a beautiful structure, and I want to see it become an asset for the city and its residents.” Maybe he can rent it to Kwame Kilpatrick.

6734: Ghost In The Machine: Digital Multiculture.

Sexy smart presentation.

6733: When Life Gives You Lemonade Stands…

You see little girls working a lemonade stand.
We see entrepreneurs in the making.
MultiCultClassics sees a contrived, clichéd concept.

6732: Hasta La Vista, Viva Viagra.

Hard news in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• Virginia Representative Jim Moran is sponsoring a bill to ban advertising for erectile dysfunction drugs from daytime and prime time TV. The bill proposes labeling such messages as “indecent” and running them late at night. You know, when impotent old guys are never watching TV. And while they’re at it, can somebody please nix the KY lubricant commercials too?

• HBCU officials plan to fight President Barack Obama’s education budget, as it doesn’t include $85 million they’ve been receiving annually for the past two years. Guess the officials are seeking a Historically Black Bailout.

6731: When Comedians Attack.

From The New York Daily News…

David Feherty shouldn’t get pass for tasteless joke — but neither should Wanda Sykes

By Mike Lupica

Here is what David Feherty, a golf guy who poses no threat to the memory of Lenny Bruce, wrote in a Dallas magazine recently:

“If you gave any U.S. soldier a gun with two bullets in it, and he found himself in an elevator with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Osama Bin Laden, there’s a good chance that Nancy Pelosi would get shot twice, and Harry Reid and Bin Laden would be strangled to death.”

Not funny. An old joke, tastelessly retold. Feherty of CBS — who once wrote a book called “Somewhere in Ireland a Village is Missing an Idiot” — is drawing fire because of it. But you have to wonder how a similar joke might have played at the White House Correspondents’ dinner on Saturday night, as long as it was about a Republican.

Because here are a couple of jokes Wanda Sykes wrote and then delivered to that crowd:

“You know, you might want to look into this, [President Obama], because I think maybe Rush Limbaugh was the 20th hijacker, but he was just so strung out on OxyContin he missed his flight. …

“Rush Limbaugh hopes the country fails? I hope his kidneys fail, how ‘bout that?”

Somehow Ms. Sykes got laughs with this material, and draws no fire. It is all supposed to be about the setting, or so we are told. President Obama was there, the dinner is always the Washington version of a Friars Club Roast, just without the Sopranos language.

So Sykes, a comedian, gets a pass because of where she was, and whom she was talking about. And maybe who she is. David Feherty, who fancies himself a bit of a comic himself, doesn’t, at least not so far. As always, the rules on all this change from day to day like baseball’s strike zone.

This isn’t about condoning what Feherty wrote. It sure isn’t about running interference for Limbaugh. He has become the clown at the right-wing circus and has had the bully pulpit for a long time, not just banging away at people who think like President Obama — or Wanda Sykes for that matter — for a long time.

Limbaugh is another gasbag in this country who has gotten rich on meanness, and so if he is getting a taste of his own medicine now, prescription or otherwise, that is probably just swell with the people he has trampled on the way to the buffet table. Then the bank.

But what if Limbaugh, white talk show host, goes on the air and says that Sykes, black comedian, is about half-a-terrorist and that, oh by the way, he hopes she dies? Is he allowed to say he’s just an entertainer, and tell everybody to lighten up?

Feherty? He has been condemned by representatives from Pelosi and Reid and even the PGA Tour. CBS issued a statement that said, “Feherty’s column for a Dallas magazine is an unacceptable attempt at humor and is not in any way condoned.”

It remains to be seen whether Feherty, whose work on television I usually like, and whose writing I like a lot, will be forced to issue an apology. Or if he might even lose his job over this. This is what Pelosi’s spokesperson, Nadeam Elshami, said about the things Feherty wrote in D magazine, in what was supposed to be a piece about George W. Bush moving back to Dallas:

“Such comments are beyond the pale and an insult to our patriotic men and women in uniform.”

Really? It sounds like they are a whole lot more insulting to Speaker Pelosi and Sen. Reid. But if context does matter here — which it only occasionally does when the thought police get righteously cranked up about something and turn into vigilantes — it is worth pointing out that Feherty has become a tireless, passionate advocate for injured soldiers. Pelosi went to Iraq this weekend? Feherty has been there, too.

It doesn’t get him over on what he said. We’ll probably find out soon enough exactly how much trouble he has gotten himself into. He thought Pelosi, liberal Democrat, was fair game. Limbaugh thinks everybody who disagrees with him is fair game.

Wanda Sykes thought Limbaugh, a loudmouth white conservative, was big game, thought she could say whatever she wanted because she had the bully pulpit for a night, and she didn’t have to take it from Limbaugh anymore, she could dish it out.

And if Nancy Pelosi had been in the room, she would have laughed along with everybody else, for the best reason in the world: It wasn’t about her.

6730: Say Uncle Already.

You’d think Mars (formerly Masterfoods) would use the country’s current anti-CEO mood as an excuse to dump the poorly conceived Uncle Ben’s® campaign.

6729: Same Old, Same Old Is Getting Old.

The letter below appeared at Advertising Age. A MultiCultClassics response immediately follows…

Diversity efforts need to aim younger

Dan Wieden’s swerve to talk diversity instead of his planned presentation at the Four A’s Leadership Conference took the audience by surprise. It was a good surprise. And it was a challenge we all needed to hear. Like Dan, I have not frequented the annual conference, although not for the same reasons. I was glad that I took the time and funds to attend the conference this year.

I was heartened to realize, that, like Dan Wieden, I am with an organization that is making strides on diversity in our industry.

For the past 13 years, the Boston Ad Club has recognized workplace diversity via the Rosoff Awards. This year we upped the ante. Partnering with corporations and universities, we gave $100,000 worth of scholarships to Boston high-school students. We don’t just write a check and send them on their way. By capturing their interest in advertising at a young age (high school vs. college) and assigning them a mentor in the industry to keep them on track, we are working to cultivate diversity. Marketing mentors from agencies and the client side will check in throughout a scholarship recipient’s college career to help him navigate the world of internships and, hopefully, the first job of many in our field.

While attendance is down at many industry events because of the economy, we had double the attendance at this year’s Rosoff Awards. We also have a commitment from a major corporation to help fund our effort and implement a training program.

As Arnold Rosoff (the founder of Arnold) said at the Rosoff Awards this year to Kathy Kiely (president of the Ad Club)—and I’m paraphrasing—it is too bad that we still need to do this.

But we do.

Andrew Graff
Chairman, Ad Club of Boston
CEO, Allen & Gerritsen

As always, MultiCultClassics appreciates any effort to make the advertising industry more inclusive.

Yet the propensity to embrace youth outreach programs is truly perplexing. Does it indicate some sort of concession, perpetuating the belief that qualified minority candidates at mid- and senior-levels simply do not exist? Is there an inherent laziness at play, with executives settling for the easy and expected tactic?

The AAF’s Most Promising Minority Students Program launched in 1997, while the 4As Multicultural Advertising Intern Program has been around since 1973. Nonetheless, both trade organizations acknowledge the continuing dearth of diversity. “We’ve still got a lot more work to do” has become a cliché in every discussion on the dilemma. Youth outreach programs are tried-yet-not-true fixes.

It’s incredible to watch advocates for change like Tiffany R. Warren forced to repeat the same advice again and again. It’s also amazing to hear Sanford Moore repeat his positions for generations. Oddly enough, there are never open responses from Madison Avenue. Instead, executives scurry back to their offices and emerge months later to announce another youth outreach program. Or the promotion of a Chief Diversity Officer. Or a contrived scheme to delegate diversity.

Why can’t the industry boasting awesome creative problem-solving skills come up with new ideas? Why does everyone appear so unwilling to deal with minorities already holding a college degree and of legal drinking age?

It’s time to draft and mandate best practices for recruitment, hiring and retention. It’s time to establish more adult outreach programs. It’s time to invent educational initiatives to teach the current majority (i.e., White folks) how to end the exclusivity and cultural cluelessness. It’s time for the ruling class to receive multicultural mentoring.

It’s time for Mad Men to stop acting like schoolchildren.

6728: Saluting Moms.

The Navy has a site exclusively for mothers with children in the Navy and moms who have questions about Navy life for their children. This isn’t exactly a shipshape ad, however, as it appeared at first blush to be recruiting moms for military service.

6727: Unthinking Of Mom.

How thoughtful. On Mother’s Day, subject your mom to long lines and unruly mobs for free fast food.

6726: Scent Of A Spokeswoman.

No amount of Pine-Sol could reduce this ad’s stink.

6725: Snake And Dogg Bites.

When animals attack in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• Something’s fishy about the snake head that turned up in a diner’s broccoli dish at T.G.I. Friday’s. The broccoli had been cooked, but the snake head had not, leading some to speculate it was planted into the meal. Police are now investigating. Actually, people should have been suspicious when the diner ordered a cooked broccoli dish.

• A civil jury ruled Snoop Dogg did not beat up a fan who jumped onto the stage during a 2005 concert. However, Snoop’s posse apparently did attack the man, and he’ll collect about $450,000 from a record label and certain attackers. The victim originally sought $22 million for his beating. As it is, you have to believe future concertgoers will consider bounding the stage to make some easy money.

6724: Change Has Come To Playboy.

From KansasCity.com…

Playboy introduces its 50th Playmate of the Year: Ida Ljungqvist

Playboy introduced Ida Ljungqvist as its iconic “Playmate of the Year” over the weekend at a celebration in Las Vegas, and even Hugh Hefner himself uttered a “wow” as he greeted her, according to reports.

Ljungqvist is the 50th Playmate of the Year, and the magazine’s first African-European to have the honor. Hefner called the 27-year-old Swedish/African stunner — 2008’s Miss March — “truly unique.”

“She was born to a Tanzanian mother and a Swedish father and she traveled the globe while her father worked for UNICEF. She is fluent in three languages — English, Swedish and Swahili,” he said.

Ljungqvist dedicated the honor to her late mother and said she almost turned down the first offer to pose for the magazine.

“This was never a dream for me; I didn’t even know what Playboy was and I was scared at first,” she admitted. “I have a lot of over-achiever in me so I am self-critical. But after I met Hef and saw how beautifully they portray women I was really excited. This experience has inspired me to broaden my horizons, to take chances in life.”

And speaking of taking chances, Hef’s former girlfriend, Holly Madison, was at the bash too. Observers noted how she seemed anxious to be standing so close to Hefner and his new No. 1 gal, Crystal Harris, on the red carpet

(We hear that Madison had her Playboy bunny tattoo removed last week.)

Madison and 2007 Playmate of the Year, Sara Jean Underwood, are credited with discovering Ljungqvist in 2007 when Underwood spotted the 5-foot-4 beauty working at a Bebe clothing store on Rodeo Drive.

Underwood told Madison about her and “Holly asked Ida, with the ‘Girls Next Door’ TV cameras rolling, if she would like to pose for Playboy,” Hefner said. “And the rest, as they say, is history.”

Ljungqvist quit her job at Bebe a month later and appeared on the cover of Playboy in March of last year. She said her parents were hardly proud when she told them she was going to bare all for Playboy. “My mother didn’t speak to me for a month,” she said.

Still, she said her parents eventually came around. “They saw my first pictorial and they realized that it is beautiful,” she said.

The 27-year-old hopes being Playmate of the Year opens doors for her; she’d love to act.

And from now on, she says, she’s keeping her clothes on in photos.

6723: The Rain Check Is In The Mail.

Grilling the news in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• KFC is still reeling from mobs seeking free grilled chicken, thanks to downloadable coupons that were available on Oprah’s website. The fast feeder is mailing rain checks to customers denied the freebies when restaurants ran out of chicken. KFC needs to unthink its marketing promotions.

• Maryland became the first state to protect the homeless under hate-crime laws. Violent acts against homeless people have become more common, according to advocacy groups. The economy isn’t helping matters, as more Americans might find themselves struggling with poverty and homelessness. But hey, they can get rain checks for free grilled chicken at KFC.

• Toyota reported 1Q losses at $7.7 billion, creating its worst fiscal year since being founded in 1937. Oh, what a feeling.

• General Motors’ latest restructuring plan calls for more cars to be built overseas. Nice. Taxpayers will provide bailout money to a company that proposes moving jobs to other countries. Oh, what a feeling.

6722: Transforming Change.

This poster has been around for a while, but it’s still pretty cool.

6721: Deaf And Dumb.

Adweek presented a poll on the reaction to Dan Wieden’s call for diversity. Ironically, the CLIO Awards will hand Wieden the Lifetime Achievement Award next week. Yet the premier advertising legend can’t even persuade his peers to change. Wonder if he’ll mention diversity in his acceptance speech.

6720: Sign Of The Timelines.

Hey, free grilled chicken sure beats soup, coffee and doughnuts.

6719: Snakes On A Plain Salad.

Food for thought in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• A T.G.I. Friday’s customer in New York found a severed snake’s head in his vegetable dish. The customer was not charged for his meal. However, the restaurant will be revising the latest promotion to $5 sandwiches, salads and snakes.

• KFC in NYC went MIA when too many people showed up bearing coupons for free chicken on Tuesday, leading customers to cry WTF. But the fast feeder made good on its deal the next day. “I’m just really hungry,” said a postal worker enjoying the offer. “Anything for free in New York, you got to take it.” Um, have you been to T.G.I. Friday’s?

• General Motors reported 1Q losses at $6 billion, and the automaker’s CFO whined the threat of bankruptcy is scaring off customers. Heaven forbid the lame GM cars might have anything to do with it.

• Michael Jackson’s publicist and general manager is suing him for $44 million, claiming she wasn’t paid after cutting deals for the King of Pop. It’s only a matter of time before Jacko taps Obama for a bailout.

6718: The Black Power McMovement…?

The Black Power Movement is holding an event in Atlanta this month. But check out the website image above. The Ministry of Youth is represented by a Mickey D’s advertisement. Never realized Ronald was so revolutionary.

6617: Progressive Is Progressive.

Hey, will the Progressive chick come out of the closet too?

6716: Pork Barrel Spending Down. Pork Too.

No, really, it’s cool to eat it. But just to be on the safe side, thoroughly wash your hands and wear a mask.

6715: Scores And Low Lights.

Winners and losers in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• He shoots. He scores. NBA legend Dave Bing pulled out a victory in the special mayoral election in Detroit. No word if Kwame Kilpatrick sent a congratulatory text message.

• R.R. Donnelley reported 1Q profits dropped 92 percent. Better check the Yellow Pages for bankruptcy assistance. Or start printing money.

• Sprint reported 1Q losses at $594 million. The Now Network is now tanking.

6714: Uses For The Useless.

Came across this classic cartoon. Not sure who produced it or where it might have originally appeared.

6713: Cinco De Mayor.

Voting for good news with a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• Detroit citizens will cast ballots today for the next mayor, pitting current Mayor Ken Cockrel Jr. against ex-NBA star Dave Bing. Voter turnout is expected to be low. Maybe folks should be allowed to cast votes via text message.

• Kraft Foods reported 1Q profits rose 10 percent, despite a drop in sales. If sales had completely evaporated, would Kraft profits have gone through the roof?

• Motorola announced plans to cut spending by an additional $200 million, and imagines its new smart phones will be a success. Wanna bet $200 million on that prediction?

• Mickey D’s is launching a huge campaign for its premium coffee, taking aim at the struggling Starbucks brand. Fine, just don’t start calling the crew McBaristas.

6712: The World According to Google—Part 10.

The World According To Google presents content discovered while searching for other things.

Today’s search words: Gary Coleman.

6711: Membership Has Its Privileges.

David Barton continues the bizarre advertising. The artist doesn’t seem focused on the model’s ass, but rather, his membership.

6710: Polls And Politics (Prostitutes Too).

Odd opinions in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• A new poll indicates New Yorkers would prefer having Eliot Spitzer back as governor versus his successor, David Paterson. No word if people would also prefer to see Ashley Dupré as the first lady in the governor’s mansion.

• Rev. Jesse Jackson thinks the NAACP should act to help the struggling auto industry. This would mean helping the companies that cut spending with minority-owned advertising agencies, right?

• Discount retailer Filene’s Basement has “filened” for bankruptcy.

6709: Mamacita, Por Favor.

Job listings are getting increasingly and ridiculously specific, but this one warrants special consideration. An advertising agency seeks a copywriter who is a Mexican mother. Maybe the place is one Latina shy of making its diversity goals.

6708: Shacking Up With Nutcases.

Marketing mania in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• A Radio Shack customer received a woodshed beating after demanding to speak with the store manager. An employee in Wisconsin went postal on an irate customer, beating her so violently that another customer dialed 911. Wonder how new Radio Shack ad agency Butler Shine will spin this one.

• PETA reneged on its proposal to use convicted dog-killer Michael Vick as a spokesman after the ex-NFL star refused to take a psych test for anti-social personality disorder. Actually, you’d have to be crazy to appear in a PETA ad. After all, the organization has hooked up with celebrities like Naomi Campbell—who ironically ended the relationship because she thought PETA was nuts.

6707: Optimism Has Come to America…?

From The New York Times…

Voices Reflect Rising Sense of Racial Optimism

By Susan Saulny

MILWAUKEE — Although the civil rights movement gave Samuel Sallis equality under the law a long time ago, he was left wanting most of his life, he says, for the subtle courtesies and respect he thought would come with it. Being a working-class black man downtown here meant being mostly ignored, living a life invisible and unacknowledged in a larger white world.

Then Mr. Sallis, 69, noticed a change.

“I’ve been working downtown for 30 years, so I’ve got a good feeling for it,” Mr. Sallis said. “Since President Obama started campaigning, if I go almost anywhere, it’s: ‘Hi! Hello, how are you, sir?’ I’m talking about strangers. Calling me ‘sir.’”

He added: “It makes you feel different, like, hey — maybe we are all equals. I’m no different than before. It’s just that other people seem to be realizing these things all around me.”

In dozens of interviews in seven states over the last several days, black men and women like Mr. Sallis said they were feeling more optimistic about race relations than even a year ago, when Mr. Obama emerged as a serious presidential contender after a string of primary and caucus victories. Many whites said they were feeling better, too, expressing an invigorated sense of openness toward people of other races.

Yet no one claims that racial prejudice has disappeared.

In a recent report to law enforcement agencies, the Homeland Security Department warned that right-wing extremists could use Mr. Obama’s election as a recruiting tool. And the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups, reported finding 926 active groups in the United States in 2008, up 50 percent from 2000.

Still, Mr. Sallis said, “it feels like there’s a possibility now that wasn’t there before.”

In Tampa, Fla., Milton Patrick, 33, an auditor who is black, went to a baseball game this spring for the first time at the invitation of his white colleagues. In Karen Jackson’s multiracial Los Angeles office, where race, politics and religion were once taboo subjects, Ms. Jackson, a black woman, said people were engaging her in friendly and meaningful discussions. And in Brooklyn, Shel Harris, a black man, said he dropped his “skeptical, more on guard” attitude toward whites after working alongside so many on the Obama campaign.

“Whenever they said something, I was always looking out for their ulterior motives,” said Mr. Harris, 62, a retired phone company worker. “Now I find that I take white people’s statements more on face value.”

The interviews reflect findings in the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, in which two-thirds of Americans said race relations were generally good, with the percentage of blacks who said so doubling since July.

In just over 100 days, Mr. Obama’s presidency seems to have done much to alter the greater American public’s perception of race relations.

And perhaps, in some cases, even the reality.

“I feel a lot more comfortable starting up a conversation with people of other races on the streets now than I did before,” said Mitch Hansch, 29, a white waiter in New York City. “Since Obama was elected, racial tensions seem a little lower. I think it’s fantastic.”

Northeast of Los Angeles, M. J. J. Schmidt, 62, a real estate executive who is white, said he also felt something different.

“I go to a gym where there are a number of black people,” Mr. Schmidt said. “We don’t often communicate. They tend to have their own circle of friends. But now, there’s been more communication. Now you have an opener. After the election, I started saying hello. I said, ‘Hey, what do you think of Obama, about our new president?’ ”

The power of positive images of the Obama family has no doubt played a role for both races.

“From my vantage point, what contributes to African-American numbers is just the outright awesome pride we feel when we see President Obama stand up with world leaders,” said Clifford Whitby, 46, a black real estate developer in Macon, Ga., referring to the poll. “That does a great deal for the psyche of African-American people. If those numbers weren’t as high as they are, I would think there was something wrong with the polls.”

Some whites pointed to a slightly different dynamic.

“I didn’t vote for Obama,” said Chris Miller, 46, a boat builder in Johnstown, N.Y., who is white. “But just what I saw during the campaign — you had people, white, black, yellow, green, gray, every race and nationality out there together supporting that man. That right there showed me, hey, things are changing, things are better here. I had never seen anything to that extent.”

Alan Ingram, 29, a Web site designer in Milwaukee, agreed. “People had more of an opportunity to get together with this election and all of its events,” said Mr. Ingram, who is black. “You literally saw people of all kinds of backgrounds finding common ground.”

In a cafe on Friday, Mr. Ingram struck up an easy conversation with Nicole Nelson, a white law student, who agreed with his assessment.

“I went to an Obama rally, and I saw everything,” Ms. Nelson said. “I voted for him despite being brought up with conservative, small-town values in a place that had no diversity. I think it was a matter of exposure that changed how I looked at life.”

For some blacks, the subtlest changes have made a difference.

Kevin Chaison, a 39-year-old telemarketer in St. Louis who is black, said he used to feel invisible. “I get more of a sense that I belong now,” Mr. Chaison said. “Now I’m getting more of a, ‘Hey, how you doing?’ than I was a year ago.”

Chester J. Fontenot Jr., 59, an English professor and the director of Africana studies at Mercer University in Macon, said some of the social isolation he long felt as one of the few black professors on campus was beginning to soften.

“I think what’s happened with a number of white people who have come up and started talking to me is they feel comfortable with him,” Dr. Fontenot said, speaking of Mr. Obama, “and that makes it O.K. to come up and engage me. They feel like they have something in common with me now, we have something to talk about.”

Mr. Patrick, the auditor in Tampa, emphasized how even small good-will gestures resonated with him.

Still, he harbors no illusions.

“I’m not trying to sugarcoat things,” Mr. Patrick said. “Things could still be better. But they’re better than they were.”

“Now you get the head nod, or a smile that you just didn’t get a year or two ago,” he added. “For me, it was like, ‘I’m not even going to acknowledge this black person.’ They’d just keep on their merry way. But now, I get acknowledged.

“I’m not saying that the playing field is even, but having elected a black president has done a lot.”

Reporting was contributed by Rebecca Cathcart from Los Angeles, Shaila Dewan from Atlanta, Malcolm Gay from St. Louis, Christopher Maag from New York and Malia Wollan from Oakland, Calif.

6706: Michelle Obama—Chief Diversity Officer.

From Newsweek.com…

Michelle Hits Her Stride
The first lady’s diverse approach to diversity.

By Allison Samuels

There have been plenty of un-veiling ceremonies for new statues at the U.S. Capitol. But when Michelle Obama peeled the cover off the bronze bust of abolitionist Sojourner Truth last week, the moment was heavy with symbolism. Truth is the first African-American woman to be honored with a statue in the Capitol. In a way no first lady before her ever could have done, Obama connected the dots between herself and the black feminist pioneer. “Now many young boys and girls like my own daughters will come to Emancipation Hall and see the face of a woman who looks like them,” she told the gathering. “I hope that Sojourner Truth would be proud to see me, a descendant of slaves, serving as the first lady of the United States of America.”

It was just the kind of scene I’d been hoping for when Barack Obama won the presidency last fall. I knew that Michelle Obama was already changing the way we see ourselves as African-American women. But I also hoped she would begin to knock down ugly stereotypes and educate people about American black culture. What’s remarkable now—just over that much-hyped 100-day mark—is how quickly and decisively Michelle has taken on the issues that matter most to us.

From the start, Michelle never shied away from being an African-American role model. “I think it’s clear that Michelle Obama is very comfortable in her own skin,” says Debbie Walsh, director of the Center of American Women in Politics at Rutgers University. “She’s not sending a message that I’m the first lady who just happens to be African-American. She’s saying I’m an African-American first lady. There is a difference, and she’s not afraid to show that.”

One place that difference is already showing up: the White House guest list. When Michelle held a daylong program for Women’s History Month in March, white celebs Sheryl Crow and Fran Drescher were among the invited “role models.” But “I would say that 80 percent of the women role models were African-American,” says Debra Lee, chairman and CEO of BET Holdings, who was asked to speak. “And that was just amazing to be a part of because these women are just not given that type of recognition enough.”

While black stars like WNBA champ Lisa Leslie and singer Alicia Keys fanned out to talk to students at D.C. schools, Michelle herself headed to Anacostia High School, one of the city’s most troubled. Michelle shared her own modest background and described the ridicule she faced from neighborhood kids for “acting white” when she got good grades. “To have her sit right before us like that and seem so real and sincere was like a movie or something,” says La Tisha Butler, 17. “We were all tripping because she said getting good grades wasn’t acting white … I could tell she really cared about us. It wasn’t just some speech.”

Later that night, more than 150 girls—also mostly minorities—were invited back to dinner at the White House, where they were paired up with women like actress Debbie Allen, black female astronaut Mae Jemison and Rutgers University basketball coach Vivian Stringer. “I can only imagine as a young black girl what that would have meant to me to see and hear all those women tell me I could be what I wanted,” says Stringer, who juggled coaching games in the NCAA playoffs to attend.

There are few photo-ops that show the first lady with anything but a diverse group. “Mrs. Obama’s agenda has always been to include everyone and make sure the White House is open to all people,” says Katie McCormick Lelyveld, Michelle’s press secretary. “We make a point at each event to make sure you see all types of faces of people with different types of stories. It’s exactly the same thing she did on the campaign trail.”

Friends say that Michelle’s own self-confidence and comfort in navigating between different cultures has made it easy for her to implement her own agenda now. “She’s her own woman with her own ideas, and that wasn’t going to change just because she got into the White House,” said one friend who asked not to be identified discussing private details about the Obamas. “She knows she’s the first role model black women have seen at this level and she knows the incredible opportunity she has to uplift them.”

Obama’s outreach to her own community has also meant granting interviews to publications that don’t normally rate a seat in the White House briefing room. In her cover story with Black Hair, Michelle described her morning routine of getting the girls ready for school. (The magazine also featured styling tips from Michelle’s hairdresser.) This month, Michelle and her mother, Marian Robinson, are on the cover of Essence; inside, they speak about raising confident and successful children in the black community. And this is her second Essence cover since January. “Our audience is fascinated by this woman and her family,” said Angela Burt-Murray, editor of Essence. And she is gracious enough to share that with us. She knows what she means to our community.”

You might think all this focus on African-Americans might be a turnoff to the nonblack part of the nation. But so far Michelle’s approval ratings match or even surpass her husband’s. Last month, she hit 72 percent in a Gallup poll. “Who could have seen this coming after the New Yorker cover and all the other negative press she received last year,” says Walsh.

Part of Michelle’s appeal may stem from her diverse approach to diversity. She turned the White House fountains green for St. Patrick’s Day and, along with the president, hosted the White House’s first-ever Passover seder. “She did exactly the same thing when she was an executive in Chicago—put a group of different people together and allowed voices to be heard that hadn’t been before,” said Mellody Hobson, president of Ariel Capital and who has known the Obamas for more than 10 years. “That’s who she is—it’s a natural thing for her to do.”

Michelle’s agenda is playing out in subtler ways, too. The first lady has made a point of wearing a variety of lesser-known, minority designers—a habit that has infuriated some established designers. But model Naomi Campbell thinks the first lady’s clothes are meant to send a distinct message to designers who rarely hire black models. “Why would she concern herself with mainstream designers who don’t even put their clothes on women who look like her in ads or fashion shows?” Campbell asks.

There will continue to be endless opportunities for Mrs. Obama to make a difference in the African-American community over the next four years. And endless opportunities for critics to assess her impact. But for many African-American women like me—who still stop in awe when we see her face on magazine covers—just knowing Michelle Obama is comfortable in her own skin is a pretty good start.

6705: Swine Flu And Racist Pigs.

From The New York Times…

Symptoms of Ignorance and Bigotry

By Jim Dwyer

The world is full of side effects. Earlier this week, a student arrived for a class on Photoshop at a social services center for Mexican immigrants inside an old church rectory.

“One of the students, a restaurant worker, said his boss told him, ‘I’m going to hire some other workers, please tell your people and friends to apply and come in for an interview,’ ” said Joel Magallan, the director of the center, Asociación Tepeyac de New York, on West 14th Street in Manhattan.

“Then the owner said, ‘Please, don’t bring Mexicans, because they could have the swine flu.’”

So far this year, about 13,000 people have died from ordinary, garden-variety flu in the United States, about four people every hour, every day. There was not a recorded peep from Joseph R. Biden Jr., the vice president, about this.

Then one person, a toddler in Texas, was reported to have died from swine flu. Mr. Biden went on television and said he’d advise his own family to stay off airplanes and subways. Later, the White House team in charge of pulling the vice president’s foot out of his mouth issued a statement saying that what he really meant was that the people who should stay off airplanes and subways were those suffering from swine flu.

More people die of loneliness or lard. More people died in a few minutes when a man went berserk in Binghamton, N.Y., last month. Since August, there have been 14 deaths by gun in schools in the United States.

The difference with swine flu, of course, is not simply foolish remarks by the vice president. When seasonal influenza is lethal, it is usually older people who die, or those in poor health. But in Mexico, swine flu apparently killed young people.

Just because one problem may turn out to be less dangerous than others — so far, no more than 25 people are confirmed as having died in Mexico from the swine flu, compared with more than 6,000 killed by drug violence in that country last year — does not undercut the genius of modern public health surveillance, which quickly recognizes changes in the course of an illness.

This important news has been quickly outpaced by alarm that has traveled faster than the virus, and sprinted well ahead of the known facts. The gaps in information are spackled with guesses, ignorance, even bigotry.

“I’ve been hearing all week at college: Stay away from the Mexican restaurants,” said Jocelyn Ponce, 18, who is in her first year at Baruch College. “Friends are telling me to be careful about those kinds of places.”

As Ms. Ponce spoke, she stood a few feet from a machine that is practically the foundation of Mexican restaurants around New York: the tortilla line at the Tortilleria Chinantla on Grand Street in Brooklyn.

The tortillas glide down the conveyor, six at a time, spilling into a basket. About a million a day come down the line. A machine stacks them. Then they are packed into plastic bags by four workers clad in hairnets and uniforms. One of them, Sandra Maceda, pressed the air out of the bags with the palm of her hand, then tied a red band at the top and loaded them into cardboard cases.

“Yes, I do think the flu is a big problem,” she said, speaking as her hands never stopped working the bags of tortillas.

Ms. Maceda, who is from Puebla, Mexico, has been following the news from home with anxiety. The Mexican economy has been frozen by the shutdown of businesses and schools.

In 1976, a young soldier died of an earlier version of swine flu; the United States launched a mass vaccination program that, some experts say, ultimately killed more people than the disease itself. In 2002, Dick Cheney, then vice president, urged that the entire country be vaccinated against smallpox, a disease that has effectively been eradicated from the world. Mr. Cheney argued that Iraq might have the ability to use a weaponized version of the smallpox pathogen to attack the United States. The side effects from a smallpox vaccination program, public health officials said, would probably have included several hundred deaths and thousands of serious illnesses. And, as it turned out, Iraq did not have any smallpox or any other biological weapons.

Before the news about the emergence of the new swine flu strain, Ms. Maceda said, her top worries were “immigration, schools for the kid, my job. And the security of the subways — the service cuts here, and the big fare increase.”

Not quite what Joe Biden had in mind.

6704: Babyface In The Boardroom.

From The Chicago Sun-Times…

Black CEOs better off if they have a baby face

Kellogg School of Management | Study shows youthful features help African Americans in Business

By Mike Thomas

“Baby face, you’ve got the cutest little baby face,” goes the classic lover’s ode.

As it turns out, having an innocent-looking, oh-so-pinchable countenance may be attractive in non-amorous ways as well.

But only if the baby face is black, according to a study spearheaded by Professor Robert Livingston of Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. His findings—titled “The Teddy Bear Effect: Does babyfaceness benefit black CEOs?”—will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science.

Livingston, an assistant professor of management and organizations, and co-author Nicholas Pearce defined “babyfaceness” by the following physical traits: rounder face, larger forehead, smaller nose, larger ears and fuller, pouty lips. They’re all part of what Livingston refers to as “disarming mechanisms.”

“It’s any feature, trait or quality of a person that makes them appear to be less threatening and less hostile, and we believe that’s really critical for black males,” said Livingston, who has studied such areas as social inequality and institutional discrimination for nearly a decade. “Because the default, based on stereotypes in the society, is that many people perceive black males to be hostile and threatening. And so if you have some sort of feature that signals, ‘Hey, you don’t have to be afraid of me,’ or ‘I’m just like you,’ then that makes people feel more comfortable with these individuals in positions of power.”

The study asked non-black men and women to evaluate head-shot photos of 10 black men and 30 white women and men. The 10 blacks all were current or former CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.

Participants rated each photo based on perceived babyfaceness, attractiveness, age and appearance. They were also asked about perceived personality traits, how warm the person seemed and whether he or she would be a competent leader.

Across the board, the black CEOs were thought to be warmer and more baby-faced. In addition, the more baby-faced black CEOs were thought to draw higher salaries. The perceptions turned out to be true: The more baby-faced the CEO, the more prestigious the company he led.

Conversely, past studies have shown that babyfaceness hinders rather than helps white males who aspire to positions of power.

6703: Unsettling News.

Settlements and setbacks in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• New York Governor David Paterson cost taxpayers $300,000, as the state quietly settled a racial-discrimination lawsuit charging Paterson fired a White Senate photographer to replace him with a Black photographer. The alleged act took place in 2003 when Paterson was Senate minority leader. Gee, Paterson sometimes makes his predecessor, Eliot Spitzer, look like a Boy Scout.

• Under Armour Inc. is recalling over 200,000 athletic cups, citing the protective devices can break when hit, potentially causing serious injury. Exactly how do these things get safety-tested to begin with? The company probably employs ex-CIA personnel with torture expertise—or dominatrixes.

• The CEO of Monster.com saw his compensation decline 37 percent in 2008. Granted, he still collected $8.2 million, so it’s not like he’ll be trolling his company’s job listings anytime soon.

6702: Pushing Progress.

Just wanted to add a few muddled thoughts regarding diversity issues raised at the 4As Leadership Conference.

4As President and CEO Nancy Hill made poignant observations in her speech through historical quotes:

“How have we as an industry, and as individual agencies, discharged our responsibility to our fellow human beings,” namely African Americans?

“The Federal Equal Opportunity Commission has told us this. The New York City Commission on Human Rights has told us this. It is high time we told ourselves—and did something about it.”

That’s an excerpt from a thoughtful and prescient speech titled, “A Look in the Looking Glass,” given by former 4A’s chairman Jock Elliott at a past 4A’s annual meeting.

It may come as a surprise to some that Mr. Elliott’s words were spoken in 1968, but it should be downright shameful to us all that the exact same words still apply today, in light of the continuing lack of minorities at agencies—specifically African Americans in middle and senior ranks.

It was interesting that Hill would stress the remarks are over 40 years old. It certainly hammers the industry’s abject failure to bring inclusiveness to the game. Yet consider the following quote:

“My belief in giving [Blacks] the business opportunities to which they are entitled is not a matter of ‘tolerance.’ It’s just a better way to do business. It gives you that many more people from which you can choose the best. Send me applicants for jobs and I’ll judge them side by side with applicants of any other color, on their merits.”

That statement was delivered by advertising agency founder Milton Biow. In the 1940s. And Blacks have struggled to gain access into the business since at least the 1930s. The “downright shameful” lack of progress on Madison Avenue is actually closer to 80 years old.

Dan Wieden injected controversy with his speech by admitting, “I essentially hire a bunch of white, middle-class kids, pay them enormous, enormous sums of money to do what? To create messages to the inner-city kids who create the culture the white kids are trying like hell to emulate.”

Wieden’s observations recall another noteworthy quote:

“White teenagers have long regarded [Blacks] their own age as fashion trend setters. Fashion starts in the streets and filters up, not merely from youth to age, but from lower economic class to upper.”

That statement was delivered by advertising agency founder Junius Edwards. In 1971. It seems to support Sanford Moore’s contention that the industry has consistently hijacked Black culture while holding back Black executives.

This was not the first time Wieden has acknowledged his own diversity shortcomings. He said in a 2006 USA TODAY interview, “I will not stand here and try to make excuses for the number of African-Americans we’ve hired. It’s pathetic. There’s a lot more we can do.” In 2009, Wieden is still dissatisfied with his shop’s efforts. To be clear, Wieden + Kennedy is chipping away pretty well—and they are not even among the shops that signed pacts with New York City’s Commission on Human Rights. So why can’t Wieden express pride over the accomplishments to date? Does he realize his agency could and should still be doing a lot more? What’s preventing W+K from getting there?

Equally disturbing is Wieden’s suggestion that others embrace youth outreach programs. Now, there’s nothing wrong with youth outreach programs. Indeed, these initiatives are integral to achieving the dream. But they don’t come close to solving everything, especially the immediate need for mid- and senior-level employees. Plus, how many youth outreach programs do we need? And why does it appear that youth outreach programs are the only idea people can come up with? In an advertising scenario, Wieden would never allow his creative teams to present one concept that has been done for decades. Why is he so quick to push a cliché in this instance? Somebody needs to send Wieden back to the drawing board.

To be clear, MultiCultClassics is not trying to beat up Hill and Wieden. Hell, these two are doing far greater good than the overwhelming majority. It’s also imperative that White honchos speak out and demonstrate commitment to the cause. No, the outrageous and frustrating part is seeing two leading proponents for change regurgitate the past and display cultural cluelessness—and knowing the overwhelming majority are far less engaged and far less enlightened.