6891: Advertising 101.

It’s not a good idea to boast about the power of your advertising with bad advertising.

6890: Celebrity Corpse Cavalcade.

From David Carradine to Michael Jackson to Billy Mays—and various bodies in between—we’ve recently witnessed more autopsies than Quincy, M.E.

6889: Vibe Magazine (1992-2009).

From The New York Times…

Vibe Magazine To Close Down Immediately

By Richard Perez-Pena

Vibe, one of the nation’s leading popular music magazines, is closing immediately, a spokeswoman said Tuesday.

Word was broken early this afternoon by the Web site dailyfinance.com and spread to other music and media news sites. The spokeswoman, Tracy Nguyen, said the Vibe staff would be formally notified in a meeting at 2 p.m. She said she did not know how many people would be laid off as a result of the closure.

Vibe’s closure leaves just one large-circulation magazine, The Source, focusing on hip-hop and R&B. The Source has had its own troubles, going through a bankruptcy and emerging under new ownership last year. A rock-focused magazine, Blender, folded last year.

In a memo to the staff announcing the closure, Steve Aaron, CEO of Vibe Media Group, wrote that for months, the company tried in vain to either find new investors or “to restructure the huge debt on our small company.”

“The print advertising collapse hit Vibe hard, especially as key ad categories like automotive and fashion, which represented the bulk of our top 10 advertisers, have stopped advertising or gone out of business,” he wrote.

The musician Quincy Jones and the company then called Time Warner created Vibe in 1992. The Wicks Group, a private equity firm, bought it in 2006. Vibe reported circulation of 818,000 in the second half of last year, a healthy figure, but like most magazines it suffered from falling advertising. It announced in February that in July, it would cut its rate base — the circulation promised to advertisers — from 800,000 to 600,000.

6888: Running On Empty.

Voluntarily separating with a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• Nothing runs like a Deere—except Deere employees presented with voluntary separation packages. About 800 salaried employees agreed to leave with the program, which will apparently save the company $75 million.

• Restaurant chain Benihana reported its net income dropped in the fiscal 4Q, citing charges related to the retirement of its CEO. Somebody should have called the Deere accountants for advice.

• Sears will introduce a buyer’s protection program to help customers who lose their jobs. The program applies to sales of appliances that exceed $399, purchased with a Sears credit card. Not sure if it includes Deere lawn mowers.

6887: Passing The Implicit Association Test.

From Newsweek, July 13, 2009.

6886: Racial Rules.

Court jesting in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• France recorded a first: A huge corporation has received a guilty verdict for systematic race discrimination. L’Oréal was found guilty of racial discrimination for recruiting White women only during a shampoo promotion in 2000. The ruling included a monetary fine and a three-month suspended jail sentence for company officials. Three-month suspended jail sentence? Damn, rap artists and supermodels have done more time for throwing cell phones. And it took nine years to decide the beauty company showed bias? However, let’s not be too quick to connect this ruling to the Beyoncé ”whitewashing” ad. That one probably belongs to the culturally clueless advertising agency versus the client.

• The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in favor of White firefighters in Connecticut who qualified for promotions by receiving good grades on a test that the city later tossed out because Black firefighters did not do well. The case had added significance because Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor originally ruled against the firefighters, and critics are using that fact to question her qualifications. “In reviewing the [firefighters] case, I am concerned that Judge Sotomayor may have lost sight of [the distinction between personal views and the law],” said Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell. “As we consider this nomination, I will continue to examine her record to see if personal or political views have influenced her judgment.” Hey, douchebag, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4. Will you be examining the existing Supreme Court Justices too?

6885: “Michael Is Family…”

From The New York Times…

In Jackson’s Death, Black Ambivalence Fades

By Marcus Mabry

Jamie Foxx, the host of the Black Entertainment Television music awards, was unequivocal on Sunday night.

“We want to celebrate this black man,” Mr. Foxx said of Michael Jackson. “He belongs to us and we shared him with everybody else.”

Around the world, Mr. Jackson was celebrated Sunday, but there was a special fervor in black neighborhoods and churches.

At the First African Methodist Episcopal church in South Los Angeles, the 10 a.m. service opened with the strains of “I’ll be There” by the Jackson 5, over a video tribute to Mr. Jackson. The congregation clapped and cheered.

“He may not be the king of kings,” the Rev. Carolyn Herron said, “but he’s the King of Pop.” He was, Ms. Herron said, “a gift from God.”

Mr. Jackson was to music what Michael Jordan was to sports and Barack Obama to politics — a towering figure with crossover appeal, even if in life some of Mr. Jackson’s black fans wondered if he was as proud of his race as his race was of him.

But since his death on Thursday, many African-Americans have embraced Mr. Jackson without ambivalence. In scores of interviews across the country over the weekend, few expressed the kind of resentment some once had for his strangeness, his changing appearance, his distance from the cherubic Michael of the Jackson 5.

Darrell Smith, 40, a filmmaker in Brooklyn, recalled that “when his skin started getting lighter,” many black people said Mr. Jackson did not want to be black.

Now, he said: “I honestly feel like I lost a brother. It’s a pain inside me.”

Some African-Americans said those most determined to discuss Mr. Jackson’s failings were white.

“The system likes to take black men down,” said Stan Jamison, a 61-year-old house painter, leaning against a fence on Sunday outside the old Jackson home in Gary, Ind. “They did it to Ali. They did it to Tyson.”

When Mr. Jackson was accused of child molesting, many African-Americans leaped to his defense because they felt he was being persecuted.

But even some blacks acknowledged that Mr. Jackson, like many African-Americans, had issues with his identity.

Gerald L. Early, a professor of African-American studies at Washington University in St. Louis, pointed to Mr. Jackson’s self-image as an adolescent who hated the fact that he had a broad nose. In some reports, his father was said to have told Mr. Jackson he was ugly.

“If blacks were not, in some degree, emotionally and psychologically scarred from their oppression,” Professor Early said in an e-mail message, “they would hardly have needed the Black Power and the Black is Beautiful movements of the 1960s, efforts to restore their mental health.”

“Jackson reminds me of Sammy Davis, Jr.,” he added. “Davis was a singer and dancer, like Jackson, and a man who felt inferior about his looks and who wanted to fit in with the white Hollywood environment in which he found himself.”

Still, it was Mr. Jackson’s changeability that, in part, allowed him to resonate with millions of people around the world.

“His race was very blurry,” said Ning Liu, 28, an electrical engineer who moved to the Chicago suburbs from China four years ago.

Mr. Liu, who went to Gary to place flowers outside Mr. Jackson’s childhood home, said: “His voice, his look, the way he did things — it didn’t fit the stereotype people had of black people. People were not afraid of him.”

Amy Whitlock, 38, and her husband, Dave, 42, who are white, drove 100 miles to Gary to pay their respects to the pop star. They described how a young Mr. Jackson had transformed the way white children saw race.

“I was from a small town in Illinois where there weren’t any black people,” Ms. Whitlock said, tears splashing down her cheeks. “There was prejudice in our town.

“The older people, they saw just some black guy dancing. But we saw someone who was extraordinary, someone who made us want to dance. Michael was for unity. And he made people my age want to be for unity.”

Meighan Maheffey, 27, who is white and grew up in North Carolina, said the Jackson 5 was the only black group her grandmother allowed her mother to listen to. “It was very nonthreatening to her,” Ms. Maheffey said.

But Mr. Jackson also staked out new terrain for black performers.

“He dubbed himself the King of Pop, which was a pretty daring act,” Professor Early said. “Previously in our culture, the King of Jazz was Paul Whiteman and the King of Swing Benny Goodman and the King of Rock and Roll was Elvis Presley, all white men.

“This, in a way, radically redefined the black performer’s relation to music, made Jackson an auteur. In this way, Jackson may have paved the way for Obama in the sense of black man as auteur and self-mythmaker.”

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who has been acting as a family spokesman in the past few days, said Mr. Jackson — like Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, James Brown and Josephine Baker — had redrawn the boundaries of black possibility by showing whites, and blacks, that the race was capable of more than had been previously acknowledged.

“The light cast by these luminaries was great and shined on the whole race, even when they did not intend to be ‘political,’ ” Mr. Jackson said.

The Black Entertainment Television music awards were not originally intended to be a tribute to Michael Jackson, whose hits dried up long ago. But plans were rushed through to change the program once he died. Over the course of the evening, Mr. Foxx wore different costumes from Mr. Jackson’s long career.

On Saturday, at the Malcolm X Blvd Pizzeria in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of New York, an impromptu dance party and memorial service for Mr. Jackson was set up. Just steps away from the oven, two dozen or so people danced to the blaring Michael Jackson marathon on the sidewalk outside, holding black, white and red balloons, some clutching candles and wiping away tears. Some wore T-shirts with Mr. Jackson’s face.

Eric Smith, 50, a social worker, snapped his fingers and stepped back and forth to the beat. “He was more than a musician,” Mr. Smith said. “He was a worldwide ambassador for love and peace.”

But Mr. Jackson may have helped bring about a world of multiracial acceptance that no longer understands his own obsession with his skin color.

The night that news of Mr. Jackson’s death came, Ingrid Deabreu, 49, a patient care and dialysis technician from Guyana who lives in Brooklyn, stayed up watching a marathon of his videos with her 7-year-old daughter Kimberly.

When the video of Mr. Jackson’s “Black and White” came on, her daughter turned to Ms. Deabreu and asked: “Mommy, he said it doesn’t matter if you’re black or white. So why’s he trying to make his skin white?”

Reporting was contributed by Ana Facio Contreras from Los Angeles; Jon Caramanica and Karen Zraick from New York; Malcolm Gay from St. Louis; Dirk Johnson from Gary, Ind.; and Janie Lorber and Ariel Sabar from Washington.

6884: Silos & Towers Create Long Garbage Chutes.

Others have likely made this comparison before, but MultiCultClassics will present it anyway.

Integrated Marketing is the new Tower of Babel.

Contrary to the lies hype generated by BDAs boasting integration, there simply isn’t much evidence to prove it. The key issue involves the forced combination of players speaking different languages and operating different business models. Oh, and the disciplines are making money in different ways too. The end result is chaos and failure to build anything. The vision of erecting the grand edifice is never realized.

In this case, however, the confounding confusion cannot be attributed to God. Rather, it’s solely the responsibility—or irresponsibility—of men unwilling to listen, learn and collaborate.

The 2009 Cannes International Advertising Festival, it should be noted, handed the Titanium & Integrated Lions to the Obama/Biden Presidential Campaign. There were no BDAs listed in the creative credits for the winning entry.

Not surprisingly, the advertising industry’s inability to integrate practices mirrors the inability to integrate people. It’s yet another diversity dream deferred.

6883: Billy Mays (1958-2009).

From FOX News…

‘Infomercial King’ Billy Mays Found Dead in Home

FOX News

Television pitchman Billy Mays — who built his fame by appearing on commercials and infomercials promoting household products and gadgets — died Sunday.

Mays, 50, was found unresponsive by his wife inside his Tampa, Fla., home at 7:45 a.m. on Sunday, according to the Tampa Police Department.

Police said there were no signs of forced entry to Mays’ residence and foul play is not suspected. Authorities said an autopsy should be complete by Monday afternoon.

“Although Billy lived a public life, we don’t anticipate making any public statements over the next couple of days. Our family asks that you respect our privacy during these difficult times,” Mays wife, Deborah, said in a statement on Sunday.

Mays was well known for his numerous television promotions of such products as Orange Glo and OxiClean. He was also featured on the reality TV show “Pitchmen” on the Discovery Channel, which followed Mays and Anthony Sullivan in their marketing jobs.

Born William Mays in McKees Rocks, Pa., on July 20, 1958, Mays developed his style demonstrating knives, mops and other “as seen on TV” gadgets on Atlantic City’s boardwalk. For years he worked as a hired gun on the state fair and home show circuits, attracting crowds with his booming voice and genial manner.

After meeting Orange Glo International founder Max Appel at a home show in Pittsburgh in the mid-1990s, Mays was recruited to demonstrate the environmentally friendly line of cleaning products on the St. Petersburg-based Home Shopping Network.

Commercials and infomercials followed, anchored by the high-energy Mays showing how it’s done while tossing out kitschy phrases like, “Long live your laundry!”

Recently he’s been seen on commercials for a wide variety of products and is featured on the reality TV show “Pitchmen” on the Discovery Channel, which follows Mays and Anthony Sullivan in their marketing jobs. He’s also been seen in ESPN ads.

His ubiquitousness and thumbs-up, in-your-face pitches won Mays plenty of fans. People line up at his personal appearances for autographed color glossies, and strangers stop him in airports to chat about the products.

“I enjoy what I do,” Mays told The Associated Press in a 2002 interview. “I think it shows.”

Mays was on board a US Airways flight that blew out its front tires as it landed at a Tampa airport on Saturday, MyFOXTampa.com reported.

US Airways spokesman Jim Olson said that none of the 138 passengers and five crew members were injured in the incident, but several passengers reported having bumps and bruises, according to the station.

Authorities have not said whether Mays’ death was related to the incident.

Discovery Channel spokeswoman Elizabeth Hillman released a statement Sunday extending sympathy to the Mays family.

“Everyone that knows him was aware of his larger-than-life personality, generosity and warmth,” Hillman’s statement said. “Billy was a pioneer in his field and helped many people fulfill their dreams. He will be greatly missed as a loyal and compassionate friend.”

6882: Jackson On Jackson.

Um, why is Jesse Jackson suddenly the official Michael Jackson spokesperson? He didn’t step in to address the mystery surrounding David Carradine’s death. Can we expect Al Sharpton to speak out for Farrah Fawcett? Seems like he emulated her hairdo back in the day.

6881: King Of Pop Stimulates The Economy.

Michael Jackson music sales are going through the roof. Somewhere Jacko is hollering, “Oh, now you muthafuckas wanna buy my shit? Where were y’all when I released Invincible?”

6880: Are You Ready For Some Fútbol?

Sporting news in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• Emilio and Gloria Estefan became minority owners of the Miami Dolphins, a move that some hope will spike fan interest among Latino audiences. Gloria is slated to perform a duet with Hank Williams of the iconic Monday Night Football theme song, “Are You Ready For Some Football?” Um, we’re not ready for that.

• Qantas canceled orders for 15 Boeing 787 planes, citing bad market conditions. Boeing will probably join the iconic koala bear in declaring hate for the airline.

• PETA and Angelica Huston convinced Sprint Nextel to stop using chimpanzees in its commercials. Wish the agreement included ending the use of monkey-boy Sprint CEO Dan Hesse.

6879: No Social Transformations Here.

From MSNBC.com…

Jar Jar again? 2 Transformers raise race issues

‘We’re just putting more personality in,’ director says of Skids and Mudflap

The Associated Press

LOS ANGELES — “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” introduces some 40 new mechanized characters of all shapes, sizes and even sexes — but it’s a pair of jive-talking ’bots that critics are singling out as more than just harmless comic relief.

Skids and Mudflap, twin robots disguised as compact Chevys, constantly brawl and bicker in rap-inspired street slang. They’re forced to acknowledge that they can’t read. One has a gold tooth.

As good guys, they fight alongside the Autobots and are intended to provide comic relief. But the traits they’re ascribed raise the specter of stereotypes most notably seen when Jar Jar Binks, the clumsy, broken-English speaking alien from “Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace,” was criticized as a racial caricature.

Wall Street Journal film critic Joe Morgenstern described Binks in 1999 as a “Rastafarian Stepin Fetchit,” a reference to a black character from the 1920s and ’30s that exploited negative stereotypes for comic effect. Extending that metaphor to the “Transformers” sequel was AP Movie Critic Christy Lemire, who calls Skids and Mudflap “Jar Jar Binks in car form.”

And Manohla Dargis, film critic for The New York Times, takes it a step further, writing that the “Transformers” characters were given “conspicuously cartoonish, so-called black voices that indicate that minstrelsy remains as much in fashion in Hollywood as when, well, Jar Jar Binks was set loose by George Lucas.”

Director Michael Bay insists that the bumbling ’bots are just good clean fun.

“We’re just putting more personality in,” Bay said. “I don’t know if it’s stereotypes — they are robots, by the way. These are the voice actors. This is kind of the direction they were taking the characters and we went with it.”

TV actor Reno Wilson, who is black, voices Mudflap. Tom Kenny, the white actor behind SpongeBob SquarePants, voices Skids. Neither immediately responded to interview requests for this story.

Bay said the twins’ parts “were kind of written but not really written, so the voice actors is when we started to really kind of come up with their characters.”

“I purely did it for kids,” the director said. “Young kids love these robots, because it makes it more accessible to them.”

Screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman said they followed Bay’s lead in creating the twins. Still, the characters serve no real purpose in the story, and when the action gets serious, they disappear entirely, notes Tasha Robinson, associate entertainment editor at The Onion.

“They don’t really have any positive effect on the film,” she said. “They only exist to talk in bad ebonics, beat each other up and talk about how stupid each other is.”

Hollywood has a track record of using negative stereotypes of black characters for comic relief, said Todd Boyd, a professor of popular culture at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, who has not seen the “Transformers” sequel.

“There’s a history of people getting laughs at the expense of African-Americans and African-American culture,” Boyd said. “These images are not completely divorced from history even though it’s a new movie and even though they’re robots and not humans.”

American cinema also has a tendency to deal with race indirectly, said Allyson Nadia Field, an assistant professor of cinema and media studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.

“There’s a persistent dehumanization of African-Americans throughout Hollywood that displaces issues of race onto non-human entities,” said Field, who also hasn’t seen the film. “It’s not about skin color or robot color. It’s about how their actions and language are coded racially.”

If these characters weren’t animated and instead played by real black actors, “then you might have to admit that it’s racist,” Robinson said. “But stick it into a robot’s mouth, and it’s just a robot, it’s OK.”

But if they’re alien robots, she continued, “why do they talk like bad black stereotypes?”

Bay brushes off any whiff of controversy.

“Listen, you’re going to have your naysayers on anything,” he said. “It’s like is everything going to be melba toast? It takes all forms and shapes and sizes.”

Tip to Kiss My Black Ads.

6878: Michael Jackson (1958-2009).

From The Chicago Sun-Times…

Michael Jackson was real American thriller

Say what you will about Michael Jackson — and everything will be said in the next few days — he was an American thriller, one of the most brilliant talents of our times.

It is easy to forget this now. It is even easier, if one is young, to never have known. It is easy to see Michael Jackson only in the disturbing images of his last two decades — the freakish plastic surgery, the children he covered with paper bags, the alarming stories that leaked from his secretive California ranch, the unsettling Neverland.

But there was a moment — Michael’s moment. And a sound — Michael’s sound. And a way of moving — Michael’s way.

And nobody could do it better.

We watched Michael Jackson grow older, if not really grow up. He was the stunning child singer who fronted the Jackson 5 — the family singing group from Gary, Ind.

The group played “The Ed Sullivan Show” for the first time one Sunday night in 1969, and afterward Ed offered his crooked smile to this 11-year-old kid with the big Afro who had just twirled and sung like he’d been working the stage for 20 years.

Ed could see what we all could see — a natural-born star. Could the kid handle it?

In his art, Michael Jackson swallowed whole everything good in America. His music was funk and rock, black and white, power chords and ballads. And utterly infectious.

But in his personal life, he was America gone too far. He was the train wreck of a celebrity culture gone off the rails. He was America’s belief in reinvention taken to a grotesque extreme.

No matter. Not today.

Michael Jackson is dead, and all we really want to remember is how we danced to “ABC,” how we thrilled to “Thriller,” how we scraped across the floor trying to copy that moonwalk.

We couldn’t do it. Nobody could.

There was only one Michael Jackson.

6877: Cultural Cluelessness From Within.

At The Big Tent, Rochelle Newman-Carrasco presents a pretty sobering perspective on hiring practices at Latino advertising agencies. Newman-Carrasco reveals that Latino candidates face discrimination from their own, being judged by their skin color, social status and accents. The majority of comments left at the blog support her contentions. Hey, if Latinos battle bias amongst themselves, imagine what they encounter when arriving at the White shops.

Oddly enough, from MultiCultClassics’ viewpoint, most Latinos with heavy accents have turned out to be among the most gifted art directors, designers and writers ever. On the flip side, it seems like every White guy with a British accent is ultimately exposed as a clueless and talent-deficient hack—yet they always rise to high levels in the business. Go figure.

6876: Color Commentary On Brown.

From The New York Daily News…

Chris Brown plea deal in Rihanna beating sends bad message, say domestic abuse experts

By Carrie Melago
Daily News Staff Writer

Singer Chris Brown might have avoided jail time in his vicious attack on Rihanna, but domestic violence experts aren’t letting him off the hook so easily.

Advocates fear Brown’s plea deal, which gave him five years’ probation and community labor, is so cushy that it sends the wrong message to young men and victims.

“It sets a very poor example,” Roslyn Muraskin, director of the Long Island Women’s Institute, said Tuesday.

“This is a person who attacks a woman for no reason whatsoever and now gets away with the attack.”

Brown, 20, pleaded guilty Monday to one count of felony assault in the February attack on Rihanna after the couple left a Grammy party and fought over a text message.

After seeing pictures of Rihanna’s bruised and battered face, many initially figured Brown wouldn’t be able to avoid jail.

And now that he’s been spared from prison, experts fear other boys will expect leniency for abuse.

“Even Paris Hilton got more jail time!” National Organization for Women President Kim Gandy said in a statement.

“Young girls and boys watching this unfold on TV will see than men who commit violence against women practically go scot-free.”

Rita Smith, executive director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, said Brown’s sentence is typical for first offenders — a problem since it might not be harsh enough to stop future attacks.

“I don’t think it’s enough of a consequence,” she said. “If we give them a break, we give them a shorter sentence or less consequence, it basically just says this wasn’t such a big deal.”

Advocates are particularly troubled about the impact of the sentence on the many middle and high school students who look up to Brown and Rihanna.

But Patti Occhiuzzo Giggans, executive director of Peace Over Violence, thinks Brown should get some credit for owning up to the crime.

“I think there was something refreshing about seeing a celebrity admit guilt. We don’t see that often,” she said.

6875: Empirically Shown To Be Liars.

Advertising Age allowed two wonks from McCann Erickson New York—Leslie Long and Chris Cutone—to blather about their cutting-edge hiring practices. The column reads like the agency lawyers served as editors. The dim-witted duo admits that the shop is most actively seeking individuals offering immediate payoff. Which probably means you must have ties to a major account. Or you’re a cheap interactive developer with Flash skills.

Why, there’s even diversity-related gobbledygook:

We are also working on our diversity and inclusion efforts across every agency discipline and at every level of employment. Following the philosophy of Lori Senecal, president of our office, we believe we should be an innovator and leader in diversity, not only for the social good but also because diversity empirically has been shown to increase creativity.

Of course, they’re not sharing their innovative leadership schemes. And how can they declare that “diversity empirically has been shown to increase creativity” when the industry—and McCann Erickson New York—has no way to prove it, given the abject lack of diversity? Brilliant, ladies. Now would you please go back to your cubicles and focus on reducing employee health insurance benefits and eliminating employer 401(k) contributions?

6874: Cultural Dictionary. Word Up.

MultiCultClassics recently discussed the following with Danny G and Hadji Williams via Twitter, then spotted a related Miami Herald story. Ad agency Cramer-Krasselt produced a ”Cultural Dictionary” that ultimately demonstrates the lack of culture in our industry and beyond. The Miami Herald headline read, “Fresh dictionary for a phresh age.” Hey, it’s phat, homies. Def too. The challenge of collecting slang is that the compilation is usually tired about six months before publication, if not sooner. Once phrases reach the point of appearing in a Bud Light or Mickey D’s commercial, you know things are closer to being out than in. When an ad agency submits a list, well, it’s like watching a balding divorcee chase college coeds. Or Karl Rove rap. Besides, sources such as Urban Dictionary have been around forever. It’s odd, as C-K is a great shop that would never write a headline featuring any of the dictionary entries. “We do the dictionary primarily to educate our clients about our consumer behavior research,” claimed C-K’s senior vice president and assistant director of brand planning. “And to make ourselves as relevant as possible.” Oops. Next time, run it past the dudes in the mailroom.

6873: Free Sex Call.

Carmen Van Kerckhove of New Demographic is offering a FREE Teleseminar Event. Here are the details:

Love and Sex:
What’s Race Got to Do With It?

Wednesday, July 1, 2009
1:00 pm EST

Carmen will spend the hour discussing Interracial Relationships.

What is it about the combination of race and sex that makes it so explosive? How is race getting in the way of your relationships without you even knowing it? What racial dynamics are driving the unconscious choices you’re making when it comes to your relationships?

Learn the answers and more. Lines are limited, so register now!

Get the details and sign up here.

6872: CNN Black In America 2—4 Free.

Exclusive Free Screenings of CNN’s “Black In America Part 2” are being held nationwide—starting today. To find one in your area, click here.

6871: Botox, Booze & Beating The Rap.

Facing the news with a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• The Miami Herald presented a report on the increase in Botox treatments and plastic surgery for older workers seeking to remain competitive in the job market. “Youth is becoming more and more emphasized in the workplace,” said Dr. Steven Pearlman. “The seasoned experts, once pictured in ads with lots of wrinkles, have been replaced by young go-getters with multiple degrees and the appearance of boundless energy.” Especially in Just For Men advertisements.

• In Illinois, Walgreens is putting booze back on the shelves. The drugstore chain had stopped selling liquor about 20 years ago, claiming it wasn’t profitable. Given that Walgreens recently reported significant profit drops, the place can at least expect big booze sales with their own accountants.

• Chris Brown copped a plea deal to stay out of jail for beating up Rihanna. Foxy Brown, Naomi Campbell and T.I. are all thinking, “WTF?”

6870: Voting Rights Act Intact.

From The Chicago Tribune…

Supreme Court narrows but preserves Voting Rights Act
The justices leave Section 5 safeguards intact while allowing municipalities with a clean record to ‘bail out.’ Clarence Thomas dissents, saying he would strike down the provision.

By David G. Savage
Reporting from Washington

The historic Voting Rights Act—the 1965 law that ended a century of racial discrimination at the ballot box and gave blacks a political voice across the South—survived a strong challenge at the Supreme Court on Monday as justices pulled back from a widely anticipated decision to strike down a key part of the law as outdated and unfair to today’s South.

Instead, the justices agreed to narrow the law’s impact by allowing municipalities with a clean record to seek an exemption.

Though the court sided with the Texas water district that brought the case, its 8-1 decision preserved the core of the Voting Rights Act, including its special scrutiny for any changes in election rules by Southern states.

The ruling also protected the Roberts court from charges of conservative “judicial activism” in its refusal to tamper with an act of Congress, a often sensitive procedure fraught with political risk.

Monday’s decision, considered among the most important of the term, came as a surprise and a relief to civil rights advocates.

“This is a Pyrrhic victory for those who were behind bringing this case,” said Jon Greenbaum, legal director for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “We are glad that … the Voting Rights Act remains intact to protect the rights of voters.”

Civil rights lawyers and liberal activists were prepared to denounce Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and the court’s conservatives had they struck down one of the landmark laws of the civil rights era.

Read the full story here.

6869: The Seedy Sides Of Seabrook.

Wanted to spend a minute revisiting the recent revelations involving New York City Councilman Larry Seabrook. The man who has been a key figure in the Madison Avenue diversity drama is suddenly generating headlines for lots of lousy reasons.

In April, The New York Times reported the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board and the Council’s Standards and Ethics Committee were investigating Seabrook’s role in helping his sister land a job with Omnicom’s diversity committee. This month, Seabrook is under the microscope for allegedly running shady rental schemes.

So far, the councilman is as quiet as, well, advertising executives ditching a special diversity hearing. Madison Avenue honchos are probably snickering behind closed doors, hatching plenty of chicken-ass-related jokes.

It just goes to the global problem of the industry’s diversity battles being waged by outsiders. After all, Seabrook’s supposed indiscretions only confirm the fact that he’s a stereotypical big city politician. Nepotism, cronyism and real estate scandals are common occurrences in Seabrook’s world.

Does it disqualify the accomplishments Seabrook has made to bring inclusiveness to the industry? Are the statements he uttered and the injustices he exposed any less valid? Should his apparent bad acts negate the deliberate inequities that have infested Madison Avenue for generations?

Hey, nobody has denied the charges against the industry. Au contraire, Dan Wieden admits things are “fucked up,” 4As President and CEO Nancy Hill acknowledges the “dearth of African Americans in middle and senior ranks,” and 4As members declare, “We suck at [diversity].” Nope, Seabrook remains credible and even supported on his Madison Avenue positions.

Would it be better to have a more upstanding citizen on the starting squad? Perhaps. But until the multicultural messiah arrives, we’re forced to back the head huckster.

6868: Project MC Projects Its Voice.

From Adweek.com…

Project MC Talks, Hopes for Action
New initiative will be supported by a social network and plans to approach the ANA

By Andrew McMains

NEW YORK Jo Muse expected a few hours of venting at the launch meeting of Project MC, an initiative designed to define the role and importance of agencies that specialize in marketing to African-Americans, Asians and Hispanics. Instead, said Muse, lead organizer of the initiative, he got a full day’s worth of gripes related to such shops feeling marginalized by clients and general-marketing agencies.

Also, opinions varied among the 23 participants at the spring meeting on key issues such as whether minority shops should regularly compete for general-market assignments. To weigh issues and opinions—and foster a greater sense of community within the group—Project MC is turning to social networking for help. In mid-July, it will start a social-networking group on Ning.com that will feature a blog and enable executives from minority shops to share knowledge, find talent and debate hot-button issues.

“This community that we’re creating is going to be an opportunity for the founders [of Project MC] to articulate points of view, [identify] resources and opportunities and [open things up] to a broader view of people,” said Muse, CEO of Muse Communications, a multicultural shop in Hollywood, Calif.

Social networking “is a good idea,” said Vicky Wong, president of Dae Advertising, an Asian-American shop in San Francisco and a Project MC participant. “How much time people have to engage in that, we’ll have to see.”

In addition, Project MC hopes to meet with executives from the Association of National Advertisers soon to express ongoing concerns about clients cutting back on minority-targeted efforts and general-market shops treading on speciality shop turf.

Project MC includes CEOs from African-American agencies such as UniWorld Group, Carol H. Williams Advertising and Burrell Communications Group; Hispanic shops like The Vidal Partnership and La Agencia de Orci & Asociados; and Asian-American shops such as PanCom International. The group also includes leaders from the American Association of Advertising Agencies and general-market shops Wieden + Kennedy and Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners.

The initiative comes against the backdrop of a minority population surge in America—at the end of 2007, minorities represented 34 percent of the U.S population, up from 30 percent in 2000. Also, the ad industry again finds itself under scrutiny for its relative paucity of African-Americans, this time via civil rights attorney Cyrus Mehri and the NAACP.

A major topic of conversation within Project MC revolves around the pitfalls of being a specialist among generalists and whether specialists should regularly vie for general-market work. Some participants favor the latter, while others argue that you can’t have it both ways, even if general-market shops encroach on minority-market ground.

That said, minority agencies have created work—albeit from minority-market briefs—that has become mainstream. In 2006, for example, Hispanic shop Conill Advertising produced a spot for Toyota that ran on the Super Bowl. Also, spirits marketers from time to time employ minority shops as lead agencies. But those instances are relatively rare.

“If anything, the exceptions suggest that there is a common ground and that [it] isn’t exploited to the degree it could be,” said Muse.

Project MC’s short-term goal is to produce a guide for multicultural shops to most effectively operate in this economy that will be presented at the ANA’s Multicultural Marketing & Diversity Conference in October. Long term, Muse hopes the effort will attract more participants and ignite a dialog that will continue within the Ning.com group.

The bigger challenge, of course, is turning dialog into action. “It’s a good start and I do hope to see some meaningful tactics or actions,” said Wong. “Otherwise, it’s just talk. I don’t think that’s productive. We can always talk at parties. There’s a group together, [so] you want to achieve something.”

6867: Photoshop® Diversity.

Check out boingboing for the diverse details. This is actually similar to the way Madison Avenue shops doctor staffing figures to keep Cyrus Mehri at bay.

6866: Live Report From Cannes? More Like Dead.

Yes We Cannes with a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• USA TODAY reported attendance at Cannes is down about 40 percent this year, and entries are off by 20 percent. Hey, if President Obama displayed outrage over CEO bonuses, what will he think about ad honchos lounging in France—especially the wonks hoping to make General Motors’ “critical vendors” list?

• The FTC is preparing to target bloggers who receive compensation for reviews, creating new guidelines to follow. “If you walk into a department store, you know the (sales) clerk is a clerk,” said and FTC official. “Online, if you think that somebody is providing you with independent advice and … they have an economic motive for what they’re saying, that’s information a consumer should know.” In the meantime, everyone feel free to send money and swag to MultiCultClassics.

• Drugstore chain Walgreen reported fiscal 3Q profits dropped 9 percent. Note to Walgreen accountants: Cymbalta® can help.

• A new study shows great white sharks display many of the same traits as human serial killers. However, the Black sharks will still probably receive harsher sentences.

6865: Catch A Late Flight For Tuskegee Airmen.

From The Los Angeles Times…

L.A. museum honors the Tuskegee Airmen

A long-overdue tribute to pioneering black military pilots features photographs, uniforms and documentaries on the historic WWII unit. It runs at the California African American Museum through Nov. 1.

By Corina Knoll

Flight was always on his mind.

As he plowed soybean fields and chopped cotton in his tiny hometown of Heth, Ark., Jerry Hodges passed the time by imagining himself streaking across the sky in the cockpit of a Navy plane. As a teenager growing up in the 1930s, it seemed an impossible dream. There was no such thing as a black fighter pilot and the Navy was not about to accept its first.

But on Sunday, a gray-haired Hodges regaled a small audience with tales of flying bombers during World War II. The slim 83-year-old earned his wings in 1944 with the U.S. Army Air Corps’ all-black combat unit, known as the Tuskegee Airmen. And now those history-making pilots are featured in the California African American Museum’s latest exhibit, “Tuskegee: The Journey to Flight.”

Running until Nov. 1, the exhibit at the museum in Exposition Park will be supplemented by question-and-answer sessions with members of the Tuskegee Airmen, a paper airplane workshop, a theatrical performance and other programs.

Gathering the artifacts to display proved to be a challenge, said Tiffini Bowers, who curated the exhibit along with Dr. Christopher Jimenez Y West. Pilots have passed away and their belongings have been lost; items that are now coveted were not valued in the era of segregation.

“That’s because of the time period it took place,” Bowers said. “People were not of the mind-set that, ‘We need to save this, and this is historic and should be in a museum.’ Some of the Tuskegee Airmen’s efforts were underappreciated.”

Among the relics on display are olive-drab uniforms, giant replicas of squadron badges, pilot logs yellowed with age, and a royal-blue flight simulation plane, known among airmen as “the Blue Box.” Also on hand are original letters between pilot Cecil Peterson and Eleanor Roosevelt, who had been a supporter of the program. “Your letters and gifts have been very inspiring and have prompted me to try to be a better soldier,” Peterson wrote in green ink to the first lady on July 7, 1942.

Museum visitors Yvonne Pope, 37, and Michael Lockett, 36, said they were inspired after seeing the stories of the thousands who trained at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. The couple, on a weekend getaway from Sacramento, had stopped by the museum and browsed the exhibit for an hour before starting the drive back home.

Pope said the displays made her proud of her African American heritage and noted that the Tuskegee Airmen were not in her history books.

“It’s really profound,” she said. “You never see these pictures and it’s not spoken of that often.”

Lockett added, “It’s like the hidden truth.”

When 2nd Lt. Hodges entered the dimly lit room—decades after he had first dreamed of becoming a pilot—he leaned heavily on his cane and surveyed the model airplanes hanging from the ceiling, the giant black-and-white photos on the walls and the flat-screen TVs continuously playing documentaries.

“This is rather nice,” he said, slowly making his way to a photo of a group of pilots who received the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest expression of national appreciation awarded by Congress.

Now a Los Angeles resident with 16 great-grandchildren, Hodges has outlived many of his comrades. Such a tribute, he said, was long overdue.

6864: Gorilla Marketing.

Did the NBC “We The People” series on Latino culture cover Moco de Gorila® hair styling products? Made in Mexico, the “gorilla snot” provides a powerful hold. It makes “There’s Something About Mary” seem almost tame.

6863: Recession-Proof Not Proven.

This actual craigslist ad offers employment opportunities in a recession-proof industry. Not so fast, Mr. Facts Fluffer. Reports indicate that profits are going limp in the adult marketplace too. Plus, Advertising Age cited a study showing brand loyalty is eroding during the economic crisis. Will consumers also proceed to purchase generic lubricants, dildos and butt plugs? It’s only a matter of time, good citizens.

Opportunity Knocking With Adult Wholesale Company
Reply to: job-yft3u-1232195136@craigslist.org
Date: 2009-06-21, 8:28AM CDT

We have been providing online retailers, home party reps and brick-and-mortar businesses with an amazing selection of products for the past 7 years. Each year has been better than the past and this year promises to be another successful one! If you are interested in becoming part of a recession-proof industry with exploding growth potential, you found the right company!

6862: Relivin’ La Vida Loca.

At The Big Tent, Laura Martinez wonders about the recent NBC “We The People” series that focused on Latino culture in the United States. The program presented many of the usual suspects—from Ricky Ricardo to Gloria Estefan to Shakira to Dora the Explorer—to show how Latinos are “changing the face of America.” Technically, Dora is changing the cartoon face of America. Wonder if the series paid homage to Terminator’s “Hasta la vista, baby,” or Bart Simpson’s “¡Ay, caramba!” Madison Avenue has certainly chipped in cultural contributions with the Frito Bandito and Taco Bell’s Mariachi Band—the former created by FCB and the latter by Draftfcb. Anyway, check out Martinez’s perspective here.

6861: Everyone’s A Hustler.

Kicking it with a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• A California cop initially gained semi-positive notoriety when videotaped kicking a gang member in the head after a high-speed chase. Then it was revealed that the officer also runs a business on the side—selling “authentic jailhouse wear” online. The clothing includes t-shirts with gang symbols. Maybe he was kicking the banger after he failed to pay for some gear.

• Um, haven’t the fast feeders learned their lessons regarding free food giveaways?

6860: Enforcing Diversity.

From The Los Angeles Times...

All the colors that make blue
Police Academy graduation spotlights changes in the department since the arrival of Chief William J. Bratton.

By Sandy Banks

It had the hallmarks of a typical graduation ceremony—awards, speeches and hordes of excited families.

But these graduates were not in caps and gowns. They wore blue uniforms, white gloves and holstered guns.

And from my vantage point on the Police Academy lawn, the 44 cadets who graduated into the Los Angeles Police Department on Friday looked impressively tough—and impossibly young.

At the morning ceremony, I was invited to join the procession of officials passing down the row of cadets, checking the “function and lubrication” of each graduate’s gun. But I looked past the Glocks and into their eyes, studying the name tags pinned to their chests.

Sosa and Singh, Doherty and DelGado, Maynard, Moya and Vaidhayakul.

I heard accents that tied some to foreign countries. And saw a hint of street swagger in some of their marches.

There were veterans with military ribbons. And diminutive women, hair tucked under their caps, with “Sharpshooter” badges.

Some came to the LAPD straight out of college. Others left careers to join: accountant, musician, locomotive conductor. One—the wife of a cop—was 34. A young man from Florida had just turned 21.

And for all we joke dismissively about the “melting pot,” it was a pleasure to see, through their ranks, what our city—and our police force—has become.

Read the full story here…

6859: House Music.

From The New York Times…

Music in the (White) House

By Rush & Molloy

White House social secretary Desirée Rogers is firing back at critics who think the Obamas are letting pop culture cheapen the presidential residence.

The administration took some heat when it recently let Mariah Carey’s husband, Nick Cannon, use the North Lawn to tout “America’s Got Talent.” But Rogers tells us, “The President wants the White House to be a stage.

“We want Americans feeling they’re part of the house,” the stylish Rogers told us at a gathering of the Creative Coalition this week.

The Obamas’ populism — and this woeful economy — explain why they’ve chosen to host fewer grand state dinners and more public events where children are invited.

“It’s great to see a performance there,” she said. “It is more than great when you’re also teaching.”

On Monday, Wynton Marsalis was there teaching jazz. On July 21, the subject will be country music.

The Obamas dig country?

“They like all kinds of music,” said Rogers, who promised classical and Latin will follow.

And, since the White House screening room has only 42 seats, she said, “We might have a big screen on the lawn.”

Rogers, who schmoozed with a Coalition crowd that included Dana Delany, Tim Daly, Rocco Landesman and designer Nanette Lepore, said she was told the black-tie crowd at state dinners would never dance.

“So we got Earth, Wind and Fire,” said Rogers, the first African-American to hold the job. “And by the end, they were doing a conga line.”

6858: Give The Gift Of Meat.

Nothing like heading to the slaughterhouse to find the perfect gift for Dad.

6857: Bermuda Short.

Don’t expect Jim Edwards of BNET to get invited to Bermuda anytime soon. Ditto Southfield, Michigan, the home of Globalhue. Edwards continues to report on the alleged scandals surrounding Globalhue and the Bermuda Tourism account. In the latest news, Bermuda’s former auditor declared it’s a “fact” that Globalhue overbilled the client, and he hinted at “possible criminal activity.” Let’s hope it doesn’t involve New York City Councilman Larry Seabrook.

6856: Beef And Bull.

Digesting the news with a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• Mickey D’s is primed to launch its Anus Angus Burger, the third-pound slab of beef on a bun. Um, isn’t the fast feeder a little slow to market with this product? At this point, even Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and Starbucks are probably offering Angus burgers.

• Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, seeking to end the controversy ignited by Republicans, ended her membership with a women’s club. Let’s hope Sotomayor was never a Girl Scout. Regardless, the move should accelerate her admission into the Supreme Boy’s Club.

6855: Knight Shift.

This actual craigslist ad seeks Free Lance Artists. Volunteer knights with jousting skills are encouraged to apply.

Free Lance Artists (Illinois)

Reply to: job-hyrhj-1229350613@craigslist.org
Date: 2009-06-19, 10:19AM CDT

Free Lance artist we are a textile print shop in Northern Illinois seeking creative graphics related to the motorcycle (biker) market place. We are looking to market creative V twin, biker, motorcycle, Gothic-related designs. Designs should be creative and able to print in one or two colors either full back with a left chest or a full front. Designs can be related to appeal to one or either sex. We need designs for women and others that would be considered unisex and also those directed towards men. We are willing to purchase the art. All design MUST be original concepts. Vectored art in CS2 is preferred or more detailed art in Photoshop can also be used. If you have a really kick-ass design we want to talk to you. We plan to run several designs in the next month—why not make some money with us? Thanks for looking. If interested send me a sample of your work or a letter of interest and we can discuss your work.

6854: iLove iPhone, iHate AT&T.

Here’s another reason why there’s a growing hate for AT&T. USA TODAY presented a story on the recent Senate panel exploring the impact of the exclusivity deals like AT&T’s iPhone monopoly.


But when visitors click on the headline for the full story, they are first greeted with an annoying ad brought to you by—you guessed it—AT&T.

6853: Old News.

Aging gracefully with a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• The Supreme Court made it more difficult to succeed with age-bias lawsuits after overturning a jury award originally won by a 54-year-old employee who was demoted. The court ruling declared employees bear the full burden of proving that age was the deciding reason for dismissal or demotion. Better break out the Just For Men hair dye, guys.

• KFC is facing a lawsuit over the grilled chicken promotion gone awry, with angry customers charging the fast feeder with false advertising, fraud, unfair business practices and more. In the United States, it’s easier to get away with ageism than bungled free chicken dinners.

• Miami is about to name its first Black Fire Chief. Maurice Kemp, who has been the deputy chief since 1999, is a 24-year department veteran who worked his way up the ranks. Hey, how come Tubbs never got promoted after all his years of service on Miami Vice?

6852: Senate Says, “Sorry, Slaves.”

From The New York Daily News…

U.S. Senate apologizes for slavery

By Michael Mcauliff

Daily News Washington Bureau

Washington — The U.S. Congress is saying sorry for slavery.

The Senate voted unanimously Thursday for a resolution acknowledging “the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality and inhumanity of slavery and Jim Crow laws,” which authorized the segregation that followed the Civil War.

If the House passes a similar measure next week, as expected, it would mark the highest official mea culpa for the hundreds of years of discrimination that had been enshrined by the Constitution and courts.

“Slavery and Jim Crow, and their continuing consequences, are not the historical baggage of one state, one region or one company,” said Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), the resolution’s sponsor. “They are an enduring national shame.”

Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush had both expressed remorse for slavery. And Congress has recognized other injustices, such as the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

“No one pretends that a mere apology — or any words — can right the wrongs of the past,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. “But it represents our recognition of that past and our commitment to more fully live up to our nation’s promise.”

The measure does have one caveat. It says it doesn’t imply support for paying reparations.

6851: Lunchbox News.

Jamming with a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• J.M. Smucker reported fiscal 4Q profits more than doubled, citing the 2008 acquisition of Folgers coffee. Or maybe the lousy economy has more Americans drinking cheap joe and eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

• The Brooksville City Council in Florida passed a new employee dress code mandating that city workers wear underwear and use deodorant. The measure also prohibits exposed underwear, clothing featuring foul language and piercings anywhere except the ears. Not sure how the rules will be enforced, and don’t really want to know.

6850: Seabrook Is Fishy.

Great. The New York Times is reporting that New York City Councilman Larry Seabrook—a key figure in the diversity drama with Madison Avenue advertising agencies—is now being investigated for shady rental schemes. Let’s hope he’s not involved with the new Ogilvy headquarters.

Subpoenas Issued to Landlords Who Rented to Councilman

By Ray Rivera

Federal investigators have begun issuing subpoenas to landlords who leased space to City Councilman Larry B. Seabrook and several nonprofit groups closely linked to him after a published report last week that the groups had billed New York City more than $100,000 in inflated rent payments.

At least one of the landlords confirmed receiving a subpoena this week from the Justice Department but said he was instructed not to discuss it.

“I got it, that’s all I can say,” said Herb Brooks, who leases a building at 3687 White Plains Road in the Bronx and sublets it to Mr. Seabrook for his City Council district office and for nonprofit groups linked to him.

The New York Times reported last week that in at least two cases, Mr. Seabrook rented buildings from landlords at one price and struck side deals with the landlords to share the space, for an additional fee, with a nonprofit organization he founded. The organization, the African-American Bronx Unity Day Parade Inc., then sublet the space at far higher rates to three other nonprofit groups that were run by the councilman’s associates and funded through his Council discretionary funds, city records and interviews showed. Two of the nonprofit groups also billed the city for a building they did not occupy.

From July 2004 through March 2007, the city paid more than $156,900 in rent reimbursements for space that cost the parade organization only $40,000 to rent, The Times found.

Mr. Brooks, for example, said Mr. Seabrook personally arranged a deal with him in 2005 to rent part of the building at $30,000 a year for his district office to be paid directly by the City Council, and to use the remaining space for nonprofit groups for an additional $10,000 a year.

But city records show that two nonprofit groups, the Northeast Bronx Redevelopment Corporation and the African-American Legal and Civic Hall of Fame, submitted invoices to the city indicating they had paid $72,000 a year, on top of the $30,000 paid by the Council. The invoices listed the African-American Bronx Unity Day Parade as the landlord. Mr. Brooks said he had nothing to do with the city billings and only received the $40,000 he billed directly to Mr. Seabrook.

A lawyer for another landlord said he could not discuss whether his client had been subpoenaed. A third landlord said she had not yet been contacted by the authorities.

The subpoenas appear to be an expansion of an investigation underway by the city’s Department of Investigation and the United States attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, which have been looking into the spending practices of nonprofit groups that receive money through the City Council and other government agencies. The inquiry has led to the arrests of two Council aides and two nonprofit officials, but has not implicated any council member. Both agencies declined comment on Wednesday, and calls to Mr. Seabrook’s office were not returned.

Russ Buettner contributed reporting.

6849: Remembering The Past.

Uncle Ben offers economic advice and declares, “Remember, I’ve been through a couple of these recession things myself.” And remember, you’ve been a racial stereotype too.

6848: Going Nowhere Fast.

Bad business news in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• FedEx saw 1Q profits plunge 55 percent, and predicts tough times ahead as fewer people send packages overnight. The truth is, overnight delivery simply isn’t fast enough for today’s demanding business wonks. FedEx is absolutely, positively fucked.

• Best Buy is seeing some worst sales, as 1Q profits dropped 15 percent. Wonder if Geek Squad has accounting skills.

• Eddie Bauer filed for bankruptcy. The outdoorsy apparel should come in handy when employees are thrown out into the streets.

6847: Direct Male.

Not sure the government would approve this economic stimulus package. The math is a little fuzzy too.

6846: More Sorry Acts.

Saying you’re sorry in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• What the hell is the matter with GOP morons? An executive assistant for Tennessee State Rep. Diane Black emailed the “Historical Keepsake Photo” depicted above. Wonder if she sent it to GOP activist Rusty DePass.

• David Letterman said he was sincerely sorry to Governor Sarah Palin and her family for his recent offensive joke. Palin accepted the apology. But the GOP still holds a commanding lead in the offensive jokes category for the week.

6845: Minority Unity.

From The Los Angeles Times…

For Latinos and blacks, a call for unity, not hate

Without blacks’ sacrifice, Latinos would be 30 years behind in the fight for civil rights.

By Hector Tobar

Earlier this year, I attended one of those sedate conferences writers get invited to every so often. I talked for an hour or so very politely about books, until the audience rose up in rebellion and told me to stop.

I’d been invited by USC to be on a panel discussing the topic of blacks and Latinos in Los Angeles literature. But the mostly student audience didn’t want a writerly chat. They wanted to talk about the reality of a divided, angry city.

“There’s certain parts of Watts and Compton where blacks can’t go,” a young black man told us, rising up from his seat to describe Latino gang members’ slurs and threats.

A high school teacher rose to his feet, too, to talk about his Latino students’ ignorance of African American history and the intolerance he often hears from the Spanish-speaking immigrants around him.

It hurts me deeply to hear of these things. I suppose, like a lot of people, I’ve been in a sort of denial about what’s happening in my hometown.

Earlier this month, a few idiots with spray paint, and hate in their hearts, ran an African American family out of a predominantly Latino neighborhood in Duarte. It was the latest in a series of incidents in which suspected Latino gang members have committed crimes against black people.

These acts of intolerance are obviously the work of a tiny minority of delinquents. And yet they feed a larger malaise among African Americans. A lot of black people feel they’re being crowded out and disrespected by the growing plurality of Latinos around them.

I know that mostly our two peoples are working, living in peace and even starting families together. And yet the seeds of a deeper intolerance lie all around us, ready to sprout.

More often than we care to admit, our people segregate themselves from blacks in schools and churches.

And how many of us Latinos have been at family gatherings and heard some obnoxious old uncle drop a racist remark? Generally speaking, do we have the courage to stand up and tell the guy to shut up? No. We’re Latinos, and we don’t like to make an “escándalo” if we can avoid it.

Still, it is those who publicly and privately speak ill of African Americans whom I address today, because the “escándalo” can’t be put off any longer.

Listen up, raza. We’re walking in the footsteps of giants. Black people have bled and been beaten in the name of equality, and without their sacrifice, we’d be 30 years behind where we are today.

The long African American struggle for civil rights has blossomed into an oak tree of justice whose large canopy protects all of us, no matter our color. And these days there are more of us Latinos huddled under its branches, seeking shelter from discrimination, than any other group.

Let’s start with the basic fact of our citizenship. Like thousands of others Angelenos, I am the son of immigrants. I thus owe my citizenship to Dred Scott, a slave who sued for his freedom in 1857, and to people like Frederick Douglass, who took up his cause.

Scott provoked the Supreme Court into one of the most shameful rulings in American history. Scott vs. Sandford declared that no one of African descent could be a U.S. citizen.

After the Civil War, the black struggle to erase Scott vs. Sandford from American jurisprudence led to the passage of the 14th Amendment, which grants citizenship to those born in the United States. But these days, the children of Mexicans and Central Americans are its chief beneficiary.

Scott and Douglass lived a long time ago, it’s true. But they’re not the only people who helped pave the way for us.

If you’re Latino and have had the pleasure of voting for someone with a Spanish surname, if you live in an integrated neighborhood, you have the dead and battered of 1960s Birmingham and Selma, Ala., to thank for it. Their martyrs are our martyrs too, because their sacrifice made the civil and voting rights we now enjoy possible.

Every Latino civil rights leader knows this. It’s why Cesar Chavez treasured the telegram he received from Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, just a month before King was killed.

“As brothers in the fight for equality, I extend the hand of fellowship and goodwill … to you and your members,” King wrote. “Our separate struggles are really one—a struggle for freedom, for dignity and for humanity.”

There’s history and then there’s present-day reality. There, too, our debts are clear.

Many of the new Latino neighborhoods in Los Angeles and surrounding cities have been established in historically black communities.

There was no organized black resistance to the “browning” of South-Central Los Angeles or Compton. Yes there were isolated crimes against Latino people in those places, but the more common, everyday truth was that African Americans accepted the arrival of strangers into their neighborhoods.

I saw this firsthand in 1992, when I lived in South-Central on assignment, with my Times colleague Charisse Jones to profile a community in transition from black to brown. We met African Americans who had learned a few words of Spanish and who remembered how whites tried to keep them out of the neighborhood in the 1950s.

“I was once in the same boat they are,” a 70-year-old black resident said of his Latino neighbors. “I don’t mistreat them because I didn’t want to be mistreated.”

I benefited from African American hospitality even before I was born. Which brings me to what may be the real reason I’ve written this column.

If anyone out there knows a black man named Booker Wade who lived in Hollywood in the early 1960s, let me know. He was a neighbor of my mother and father, newly arrived Guatemalan immigrants.

They spoke a language he didn’t understand, but when my mother went into labor, he drove her to the hospital.

I’ve never met Mr. Wade, who was my godfather. But I owe him about a thousand thank-yous.

And maybe in a way all of us in Latino L.A. have black godparents we need to make the effort to acknowledge.

6844: Sotomayor Explains The Girl’s Club.

From The New York Times…

Sotomayor Defends Ties to Association

By Charlie Savage and David D. Kirkpatrick

WASHINGTON — Judge Sonia Sotomayor on Monday defended her membership in an all-female networking club, telling senators preparing for her Supreme Court confirmation hearing that the group did not discriminate in an inappropriate way.

Judge Sotomayor made the remarks in a cover letter for 10 documents the White House submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee. The papers supplement a trove of documents and videos, along with a response to a questionnaire, that she turned over earlier this month.

Her remarks indicate that some senators have taken an interest in her membership in the group, Belizean Grove, which she mentioned in the questionnaire response.

“I am a member of the Belizean Grove, a private organization of female professionals from the profit, nonprofit and social sectors,” Judge Sotomayor wrote. “The organization does not invidiously discriminate on the basis of sex. Men are involved in its activities — they participate in trips, host events and speak at functions — but to the best of my knowledge, a man has never asked to be considered for membership.”

She added: “It is also my understanding that all interested individuals are duly considered by the membership committee. For these reasons, I do not believe that my membership in the Belizean Grove violates the Code of Judicial Conduct.”

The code says judges should avoid giving the appearance of “impropriety” by holding “membership in any organization that practices invidious discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion or national origin.” An organization is said to “discriminate invidiously if it arbitrarily excludes from membership” on the basis of such factors “persons who would otherwise be admitted to membership,” it says.

According to the Belizean Grove’s Web site, the group is a “constellation of influential women” who are building “long-term, mutually beneficial relationships.” It was founded as a counterpart to the all-male Bohemian Grove, a legendary club of elite politicians, businessmen and other leaders.

The group’s roughly 115 “grovers,” as members call themselves, include ambassadors and top executives of Goldman Sachs, Victoria’s Secret and Harley-Davidson. They meet each year for an annual retreat in Belize or another Central American destination, as well as occasionally in New York and other cities for outings described as “a balance of fun, substantive programs and bonding.” The group’s Web site does not appear to mention any roles for men.

6843: The Old Realities Of New Realities.

Wanted to briefly comment on the panel discussion featured in a previous post. The New Realities of Hiring & Inclusion presented a handful of executives discussing diversity in advertising at the 4As 2009 Leadership Conference. Overall, it was an engaging and provocative step towards keeping the topic on the industry’s radar.

It would be great for future panels to star more active advertising agency figures, especially from the creative, account and media disciplines. Hearing personal stories firsthand would be enlightening and inspiring.

It would also be nice to integrate the proceedings. Creating an inclusive culture demands giving everyone a role in the revolution. Latinos, Asian Americans, LGBT and others should be represented at such roundtables.

More importantly, White people must participate too. They should not be relegated to audience status, as it only perpetuates the propensity for delegating diversity.

In fact, someone should organize a panel comprised entirely of Whites, and let them share their specific tactics to eliminate exclusivity. The truth is, minority executives will best motivate minorities. But White executives will best motivate their peers. Of course, this requires identifying White executives making a difference.

Finally, during the Q&A section, an audience member spoke about diversity and confessed, “We suck at it.” He then asked the panel to forget politeness and deliver advice and instruction. Here’s where the panel dropped the ball. The response should have been something like the following:

You’re right—you do suck at it. Why? And why are you comfortable openly admitting it?

We’re at the 4As 2009 Leadership Conference, which implies most of you are leaders. It’s 2009, people. Where have you been for the past 40+ years on this issue?

This is not a new problem. Yet you’re content to settle for old solutions that have consistently proven unsuccessful. You’re asking us for input? We don’t have hiring authority. You do. Why the hell aren’t you coming up with answers?

It’s unacceptable to sheepishly say, “We suck at it,” as if your self-deprecating comment absolves your abject ignorance and failure. “We’ve got to do better.” “There’s a lot more we can do.” “We’ve got miles and miles to go before we sleep.” Repeating these types of statements over and over makes you look disingenuous—and pathetic.

If you were unable to crack a client’s problem for four decades, would you still be in business? Wouldn’t your ineffective bumbling warrant immediate termination?

This event is symbolic of your chronic behavior. You sit on the sidelines and watch. You recognize the dilemma and do nothing. You express heartfelt concern, yet your actions indicate you really don’t give a shit.

Before you can embrace New Realities, you must abandon Old Realities.

6842: Wow! Study The Copy Carefully!

Here’s another ad for the Wow! Collection. But check out the copy. You can reduce your cholesterol with a diet featuring two 1-1/2 cup servings of Cheerios® cereal daily. You’re supposed to eat the shit for breakfast and dinner?

6841: Riot Squad Ramblings.

Los Angeles revelers more violent than Iranian protesters?

6840: Dead Men Walking.

Sorry statements in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• GOP activist Rusty DePass has made his own life a living hell, as he’ll likely face a storm of criticism for his racist remark involving First Lady Michelle Obama. The moron commented on a Facebook report about the escaped gorilla at a South Carolina zoo by writing, “I’m sure it’s just one of Michelle’s ancestors—probably harmless.” DePass apologized, of course, and even compounded the problems by insisting he was referring to a statement made by the First Lady. “The comment was hers, not mine,” explained Depass, saying Obama recently remarked that humans descended from apes. Not sure what DePass descended from.

• Activists are organizing to protest the sexual harassment women routinely face while riding public transportation in Chicago. Riders have been surveyed, indicating incidents of harassment are frequent. “A lot of people don’t realize that when they’re getting catcalled or someone touches them in the wrong way, that’s harassment,” said one activist. “They think that’s just part of their day.” However, no one thinks Rusty DePass is cool.

• Captain America is not dead after all. After getting killed two years ago, the iconic comic book hero is being resurrected in a series titled, “Captain America Reborn.” His first mission will involve kicking the ass of Rusty DePass.

6839: Automaker Reinvents, But Will Admakers?

Wanted to briefly revisit the recent story featuring ex-General Motors VP-marketing and advertising Mike Jackson, as it connects to other MultiCultClassics perspectives and posts on the automaker.

Jackson criticized the automaker for having a “PowerPoint Culture” that crushed “all passion and creativity” in nearly every area. Plus, he questioned GM’s ability to truly evolve.

One has to seriously wonder about the advertising agencies that have serviced GM throughout the decades. It’s no secret that BDAs are quick to appease and even mirror clients. And everyone knows the typical shop is also addicted to PowerPoint—it’s an account person’s crack.

General Motors has been put on notice. The corporation must demonstrate extraordinary changes as part of the deal for bailout funds. Marketing budgets have already been slated for slashing. Product lines are being cut too. The contrived new commercial talks about a reinvention, where GM will be leaner, greener, faster and smarter.

What about the advertising agencies? There’s been little indication in the past years that BDAs are capable of operating lean, green, fast or smart. Yet the dinosaurs are begging to remain GM AORs, and many will likely retain their status.

Why?

Let’s be completely honest. Advertising agencies share responsibility for the auto industry’s demise. The campaigns churned out were as uninspired and unoriginal as the vehicles on the assembly lines. The Madison Avenue business model is as broken as anything in Detroit.

MultiCultClassics has offered recommendations again and again and again. It’s time to consider shops that know how to be leaner, greener, faster and smarter—and reject the fatter, Whiter, slower and dumber car wrecks.

6838: Gray Hair Affects Gray Matter.

Here’s a promotion that exploits the anxieties and paranoia associated with modern-day job hunting. Monster.com and Just For Men team up to teach guys to deal with ageism. Why, simply troll the Web listings and color your graying hair—you’re on your way.

BTW, has anyone ever actually landed a job through Monster.com? Seems like a pretty outdated method for seeking employment.

6837: Racy, Racing And Racism.

Sex and slurs in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• A Calvin Klein billboard is sparking controversy in New York’s SoHo area. The image appears to show a teenage girl in a threesome, and many think it’s going too far. “It shows a lack of respect for our society, especially for young people,” said the Rev. Don Wildmon. “It’s a sad thing in America when the only thing they want is money and they’ll keep using sex to get it.” No comments yet from Sarah Palin and David Letterman.

• Bryan Berry, the crew chief of NASCAR driver Brendan Gaughan, was indefinitely suspended for using racial slurs against Black driver Marc Davis. The comments took place after a collision involving Gaughan and Davis, and BlackVoices.com indicated Gaughan was suspended too. NASCAR constantly fights the perception that it’s a racist sport with a predominately White audience. It would be ironic, although not surprising, if NASCAR sought image advice from Madison Avenue.

6836: Indian Health Care Pales In Comparison.

From The New York Times…

Promises, Promises: Indian Health Care’s Victims

By The Associated Press

Crow Agency, Mont. (AP) -- Ta’Shon Rain Little Light, a happy little girl who loved to dance and dress up in traditional American Indian clothes, had stopped eating and walking. She complained constantly to her mother that her stomach hurt.

When Stephanie Little Light took her daughter to the Indian Health Service clinic in this wind-swept and remote corner of Montana, they told her the 5-year-old was depressed.

Ta’Shon’s pain rapidly worsened and she visited the clinic about 10 more times over several months before her lung collapsed and she was airlifted to a children’s hospital in Denver. There she was diagnosed with terminal cancer, confirming the suspicions of family members.

A few weeks later, a charity sent the whole family to Disney World so Ta’Shon could see Cinderella’s Castle, her biggest dream. She never got to see the castle, though. She died in her hotel bed soon after the family arrived in Florida.

“Maybe it would have been treatable,” says her great-aunt, Ada White, as she stoically recounts the last few months of Ta’Shon’s short life. Stephanie Little Light cries as she recalls how she once forced her daughter to walk when she was in pain because the doctors told her it was all in the little girl’s head.

Ta’Shon’s story is not unique in the Indian Health Service system, which serves almost 2 million American Indians in 35 states.

On some reservations, the oft-quoted refrain is “don’t get sick after June,” when the federal dollars run out. It’s a sick joke, and a sad one, because it’s sometimes true, especially on the poorest reservations where residents cannot afford health insurance. Officials say they have about half of what they need to operate, and patients know they must be dying or about to lose a limb to get serious care.

Wealthier tribes can supplement the federal health service budget with their own money. But poorer tribes, often those on the most remote reservations, far away from city hospitals, are stuck with grossly substandard care. The agency itself describes a “rationed health care system.”

The sad fact is an old fact, too.

The U.S. has an obligation, based on a 1787 agreement between tribes and the government, to provide American Indians with free health care on reservations. But that promise has not been kept. About one-third more is spent per capita on health care for felons in federal prison, according to 2005 data from the health service.

In Washington, a few lawmakers have tried to bring attention to the broken system as Congress attempts to improve health care for millions of other Americans. But tightening budgets and the relatively small size of the American Indian population have worked against them.

“It is heartbreaking to imagine that our leaders in Washington do not care, so I must believe that they do not know,” Joe Garcia, president of the National Congress of American Indians, said in his annual state of Indian nations’ address in February.

Read the full story here.

6835: My Hot Dog’s Bigger Than Yours.

The Hot Dog Wars rage on, with all competitors claiming best taste. Now Ball Park says independent professional chefs prefer their hot dogs. Um, why are professional chefs judging hot dogs?


Meanwhile, Hebrew National is slaughtering calves cows for the premium cuts.

6834: Money Problems.

Identity issues in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• Make the logo smaller. AIG removed its logo from employee badges and corporate charge cards after workers were being harassed. Management went so far as to issue a memo stating, “Due to a growing sense of public attention fueled by increased media scrutiny,” workers should avoid sporting AIG-branded gear, travel in pairs during the evening and be suspicious of strangers lurking near AIG offices. Employees are also encouraged to remove all mentions of AIG from their résumés.

• Walletpop believes its wallet is being lifted by Mickey D’s, criticizing the fast feeder over the price of Chicken McNuggets. Apparently, the more McNuggets you buy, the higher the price per McNugget—versus the typical cost-per-unit reduction most customers expect to receive. Actually, the price you pay for eating lots of McNuggets involves some really nasty bowel movements.

• Six Flags is filing for bankruptcy. Hey, the amusement park has been creatively bankrupt for a long time.

6833: Scrutinizing Sotomayor.

From The Chicago Sun-Times…

Is Judge Sotomayor playing race card?

Like a stopped clock that is accurate twice a day, Rush Limbaugh is sometimes actually funny.

After Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor tripped and broke her ankle Monday, Limbaugh said, “I hope she can find a wise Latina doctor to set that ankle, as opposed to an average white doctor, because the wise Latina doctor has much richer experience with broken ankles.”

Oh, come on. That is funny.

Or at least reasonably clever, Sotomayor having said 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.”

I have defended Sotomayor for making that statement, while the White House has not. “I’m sure she would have restated it,” President Barack Obama said shortly after the storm broke over Sotomayor’s remarks.

Sotomayor has been making the rounds on Capitol Hill, assuring senators that what she meant to say was that “there is only one law” and she would follow that law “ultimately and completely.”

But you can see why Democrats are nervous. Roland Burris, a political hack, muscled his way into the Senate by nakedly playing the race card, and now everybody is jumpy about any comments that seem to indicate one race should be favored over another. (Unless it is white people being favored, in which case there is rarely a controversy.)

Burris, whose main claim to fame was that in 16 years of holding public office in Illinois he had not been indicted even once, was appointed to the U.S. Senate by Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who a few weeks earlier had been led away in handcuffs, accused of trying to sell that Senate seat.

Initially, the White House and the Senate’s Democratic leadership wanted to delay Burris’ appointment until Blagojevich was impeached so the new, untainted governor of Illinois could fill the seat.

But Team Burris quickly moved into action. Rep. Bobby Rush dared the Senate to deny a black man the seat that had been held by Barack Obama.

“There are no African Americans in the Senate, and I don’t think that anyone, any U.S. senator who is sitting right now, would want to go on record to deny one African American from being seated in the U.S. Senate,” he said.

After Burris stood outside the Senate in the rain after being rebuffed from taking his seat on Jan. 6, Rush went on “Hardball With Chris Matthews” and said: “It reminded me of the dogs being sicced on children in Birmingham.”

With that, opposition to the quick seating of Burris collapsed.

After going back to Illinois and swearing under oath that he had never tried to buy the Senate seat from Blagojevich, Burris returned to Washington and was sworn in as the junior senator from Illinois.

All has not gone well, however. Two weeks ago, the transcript of a secretly recorded phone call between Burris and the brother of Blagojevich was released in federal court. In the phone call, Burris offers to write a check to the Rod Blagojevich campaign and says, “I’m very much interested in, in trying to replace Obama, OK.”

The Senate Ethics Committee is looking into all of this, but some senators are now nervous and angry. They folded in the face of the race card when it came to Burris, but now some are aflame over what they see as Sonia Sotomayor’s playing of the same card.

“We need to know, for example, whether she’s going to be a justice for all of us or just a justice for a few of us,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a member of the Judiciary Committee, said on “This Week With George Stephanopoulos.”

Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the committee, said on “Meet the Press” with David Gregory that while he would not use the word “racist” to describe Sotomayor, “I think that she is a person who believes that her background can influence her decision. That’s what troubles me.”

The Democrats are sticking with Sotomayor. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wrote an op-ed piece recently in the Miami Herald that began: “Some slivers of my past: a dust storm. A one-room schoolhouse. The teacher who gave me boxing gloves.”

Reid writes that all those things shaped his life, just as Sotomayor’s life “as a Latina” shaped hers. He says that as he talked to Sotomayor recently, he saw a “reflection of myself and of the fabric of this country.”

“She is the quintessential American story. How is this a detriment to the highest court in the land?”

A good question. And, as her nomination hearings begin July 13, one that is sure to be asked repeatedly.

6832: Throwing Down The Hammer.

From Adweek.com…

A&E’s ‘Hammer Pants Dance’ = Viral Gold

By Mike Shields

NEW YORK A&E has a viral sensation on its hands thanks to the gold pants and retro dance moves of rapper MC Hammer.

The network, as part of an extensive digital promotional effort for its upcoming reality series Hammertime, commissioned a group of 60 amateur dancers for a flash mob. The group entered a Los Angeles clothing store on Sunset Boulevard, collectively donned Hammer-inspired pairs of gold baggy pants, and performed the artist’s unique set of horizontal moves to the tune of his 1990 hit “U Can’t Touch This”—all before a group of somewhat startled shoppers.

The clip, Hammer Pants Dance, has generated over 900,000 views on YouTube in the past week, as well as another 200,000 or so on both MSN and Break.com. A&E plans to create a similar public dancing spectacle at New York’s Grand Central station as part of its Hammertime promotional push.

As part of that push, the network has rolled out Twittertime, a collection of MC Hammer’s Twitter entries, and watchhammertime.com, where fans can sign up to receive text messages and phone calls from the rapper, who once famously claimed that “I’m dope on the floor and magic on the mic.”

Hammertime premieres on A&E on June 14 at 10 p.m. EST.

6831: GM’s PowerPoint Culture Is Clueless.

Based on this Ad Age story, President Barack Obama isn’t the only Black man who thinks General Motors needs to make serious changes.

How GM Stifled ‘Passion and Creativity’ in Its Marketing Ranks
Former GM Exec Mike Jackson Blasts Automaker’s ‘PowerPoint Culture’

By Jean Halliday

DETROIT -- The former VP-marketing and advertising at General Motors Corp. believes its culture is “so bureaucratic it stifles all passion and creativity” with bloated processes, woeful inefficiencies and an approach to its agencies that is threatening rather than productive.

So says Mike Jackson, who left GM two years ago after seven years, pulling no punches in a recent guest column in Automotive News entitled “GM Must Overhaul Marketing.”

In an interview with Advertising Age elaborating on the column, Mr. Jackson, now a partner in digital agency SarkissianMason, New York, said the automaker’s U.S. operations have too many layers for approval of ads. Work on major launches begins with the divisional ad manager, and ads for crucial models must move all the way up to top management for approval. It wasn’t unusual, he said, for 15 or 20 people to present the work in meetings.

He dubbed GM as a “PowerPoint culture” and a “bureaucracy of meetings culture.” During his tenure at the automaker, Mr. Jackson said that “there were no meetings where people just sat down, had a discussion and made a decision.”

Mr. Jackson also was critical of GM for putting engineers and finance people with no marketing training in key marketing positions. That means the agency teams often presented their work to executives with less experience and often no experience outside the auto industry, though he added that his former employer has lots of company in this arena across the auto industry.

Moreover, Mr. Jackson said GM doesn’t treat its ad agencies like partners but rather as vendors. If an agency doesn’t fall in line with the marketer’s demands, the client threatens to move the business. The roster creative agencies learn to fall in line and their priority, according to Mr. Jackson, is account retention, not necessarily what’s best for their client. The agencies present work they know will get approved, not cool, risky creative, he said. As a result, ho-hum work is perpetuated.

A GM spokeswoman declined to comment.

Mr. Jackson said his comments have nothing to do with sour grapes. He said he’s concerned that GM will return to its business-as-usual ways after a new GM emerges from Chapter 11 bankruptcy. “I just want GM to get better,” he said.

6830: Casual Friday.

Wardrobe malfunctions in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• A sports agent says he owns the suit that O.J. Simpson wore when he was acquitted of double murder. However, the agent won’t completely admit it’s the actual attire. “I’ve had [the suit] in my possession since the morning after the verdict,” said the man at the beginning of a recent interview. But later, he added, “When I told you that before, I wasn’t under oath.” Somebody please give Simpson a pistol and let him retrieve the outfit.

• Men’s Wearhouse founder George Zimmer is probably telling Filene’s Basement, “You’re not going to like the way you look. I guarantee it.” The discount retailer put itself back on auction after initially declaring an affiliate of Men’s Wearhouse had won the bidding process. Next time, the place should just use eBay.

• American Airlines predicts fewer passengers, and is cutting 1,600 jobs. Travelers can rest assured that the reductions will not affect lost luggage figures, which will remain steady.

• Over 1,500 Chicago city employees will receive layoff notices today. The cuts will likely affect services like garbage collection, rodent control, tree trimming and streetlight repairs. Hey, if streetlights go out, at least citizens won’t notice the mess at night.

6829: Fiery Talk.

You’re Fired Up in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• Donald Trump fired Miss California Carrie Prejean, although he insisted it had nothing to do with the woman’s politics, porn or general insanity. A pageant official said, “This was a decision based solely on contract violations, including Ms. Prejean’s unwillingness to make appearances on behalf of the Miss California USA organization.” No word if Celebrity Apprentice champion Joan Rivers will take over for Prejean.

• Reverend Jeremiah Wright is saying the wrong things again. While discussing his relationship with President Barack Obama, Wright declared, “Them Jews aren’t going to let him talk to me. I told my baby daughter that he’ll talk to me in five years when he’s a lame duck, or in eight years when he’s out of office. … They will not let him talk to somebody who calls a spade what it is … I said from the beginning: He’s a politician; I’m a pastor. He’s got to do what politicians do.” Actually, Wright often sounds more like a politician than a pastor.

• James von Brunn, the man arrested for the deadly shooting at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, claims he worked as a copywriter for BBDO about 50 years ago. He’s probably just saying that to initiate the inevitable insanity plea.

6828: The American Way.

American Apparel is selling scrunchies with the image above. In case you didn’t notice.

6827: Entitlement And Executive Excrement.

Jim Edwards at BNET brilliantly pointed out a pile of bullshit, brought to you by Madison Avenue. Saatchi & Saatchi CEO Kevin Roberts pontificated on talent recruitment in the modern era and actually proclaimed, “The days of fat and surplus will disappear. Entitlement will disappear … working together will be what makes the difference, not personal gain.”

Edwards then noted that Roberts’ son is the Talent Director for Saatchi & Saatchi Europe and the Middle East.

Add Kevin Roberts to the list of people Cyrus Mehri can call to the stand for the impending discrimination lawsuit against the advertising industry.

Plus, Roberts can join Howard Draft and Dan Wieden to form The Three Stooges of Cultural Cluelessness.

6826: Drafting Cultural Cluelessness.

Declaring Howard Draft is a lying, fucking moron is like announcing the sky is blue. Nonetheless, MultiCultClassics will spend a moment stating the obvious.

We’ve witnessed the expulsion of culturally clueless crap from Draftfcb that offended Italian Americans, Asian Americans, Blacks, Latinos, Women and anyone with half a mind—which likely excludes senior management at the IPG BDA. Granted, brainless insensitivity is not necessarily a unique phenomenon in the advertising industry. Yet Draft compounds the crimes every time he looks into a camera lens to deliver gobbledygook on his self-proclaimed Agency Of The Future. In one particularly inane video, the man blathers about his shop’s ability to use consumer insights to generate breakthrough creative. Additionally, Draft insists he’s eliminated silos, creating a fully integrated unit. It must also be noted that Draftfcb boasts multicultural expertise.

If Draftfcb is so damned smart with consumer insights, and features non-segregated multicultural wunderkinds, why does the place consistently display such absolute ignorance?

For the answer, reread the opening sentence.

6825: The Obvious And The Inevitable.

No surprises in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• American Idol runner-up Adam Lambert admitted he’s gay in the latest issue of Rolling Stone. “I don’t think it should be a surprise for anyone to hear that I’m gay,” said Lambert, adding, “I’m trying to be a singer, not a civil rights leader.” Actually, it would be cool if American Idol produced a spin-off show to search for the next civil rights superstar.

• The Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal over the Chrysler-Fiat deal, and the Italian automaker sealed the sale. FOX will probably produce a reality TV show to document the auto industry bankruptcies.

6824: Booty Call.

For Black audiences, the headline would be revised to read: It’s Bootylicious.

6823: Grilled Garbage.

Missed this earlier while shitting on the KFC promotion. The site also hypes a phone app with the line, “Get Your Grill On.” To be safe, Colonel Sanders depicted a White chick sporting grills. Nice. This entire fiasco is another puddle of vomit from Draftfcb, the culturally clueless company responsible for offending Italian-Americans, Latinos, Women and George Parker.

The Agency Of The Future hasn’t even managed to progress beyond fucking lions.

6822: Out Of Touch, Out Of Print…?

From BlackVoices…

Bottom Line With Dr. Boyce: Why Ebony & Jet May Be Doomed

Posted by Dr. Boyce Watkins, PhD

I was saddened to hear about the recent financial trauma of Ebony and Jet Magazines. These two magazines formed powerful prototypes for success in black media, and may now find themselves to be casualties of the general decline of the magazine industry. They were black-owned and profitable economic institutions who set the standard for black business in America. What is saddest is that I saw this coming 3 years ago.

Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor, saw the same thing, but he saw a more general demise for both newspapers and magazines. When asked if he would ever buy into the print media industry, Buffett had this to say:

“For most newspapers in the United States, we would not buy them at any price,” he said. “They have the possibility of going to just unending losses.”

Ebony and Jet were no exception. The problem is that they didn’t seem prepared for the changing world around them.

The newspaper industry is shot and so are many magazines. Media has changed and these outlets are no longer the only game in town. Advertisers have more effective and cost efficient ways to get their message to the target audience and the extraordinarily high advertising costs of Ebony and Jet Magazine are no longer necessary.

The thing about Ebony and Jet (both owned by the Johnson family) is that much of their financial demise could possibly have been averted. If management had taken stronger steps to adjust to the advent of the Internet, perhaps they could have remained profitable. Essence magazine took note of the trend long ago, as they invested heavily in revamping their online business model. They now have one of the strongest black news websites in America (with traffic roughly 1/4 - 1/3 of AOL Black Voices, according to Alexa.com). Ebony and Jet didn’t seem to follow the lead of Essence, still holding onto the same old way of doing business that has worked for the past 40 years. That is what may cause them to go down with the rest of the industry.

It must be noted, however, that Essence Magazine was acquired by Time Warner, which may have given them a competitive advantage. Ebony Magazine did have the option of raising additional funds from the public to finance their multimedia expansion, but they did not seize this opportunity. Consistent tracking of their online growth implied that they were not transitioning as quickly as other media outlets.

There is an added challenge that perhaps the Johnson family was a little too anxious to “keep it in the family.” Sharron Hunter-Rainey, an Assistant Professor of Management at North Carolina Central University states that “Throughout the history of Ebony/Jet, Johnson Publishing seems to have been more insular. Mr. (John) Johnson positioned his (adoptive) daughter to run the firm after she completed her Kellogg MBA. Clearly she knew the most important person in this decision process, but the nepotism involved in the succession planning process obviously restricted the range of candidates in the applicant pool.”

During my recent trip to Nigeria, a business consultant explained that the strength of Ebony Magazine may have been it’s greatest weakness. Mr. Johnson, the founder of Ebony Magazine, was a tireless visionary. He was very hands-on and never took “no” for an answer. His models for the publishing industry were tried and true and he almost single-handedly turned his publishing empire into one of the great business models of the 20th century.

The problem is that some entrepreneurs have a difficult time letting go or adapting their management style to fit new operating environments. This argument may not apply completely to Johnson and his family, but the truth is this: The magazine subscription ship was sinking, and your online presence became your life raft. Those publishers who were not able to make the adjustment in enough time found themselves charging 1980s prices in a new millennium advertising market. Such an outcome is simply unsustainable.

Dr. Carlos Thomas, a professor of Management and E-Commerce at Southern University, argues that there is a general struggle that some family owned businesses have when it comes to securing the rational mindset necessary to expand and grow as the environment changes.

“There is extensive literature which cites that entrepreneurs who are used to micromanaging the company can sometimes have trouble adjusting their business model,” says Dr. Thomas.

Alliant International University Professor Alfred Lewis agrees with Dr. Thomas.

“Ebony and Jet failed to respond to the ‘Paradigm Shift’ in the industry-at-large by sticking to that which is familiar,” says Dr. Lewis. “There is also the socio-economic shift in that African Americans have been moving away from ‘traditional’ black/African American publications and Ebony & Jet may have missed this shift or decided to stay the course.”

Ebony and Jet Magazine are two publications that should receive black support. But this financial support should not come in the form of donations or fund-raising campaigns. It should come in the form of public financing in exchange for equity ownership in the company. The black community should not just give money to support the Johnson family, the Johnson family should give something in exchange.

6821: Outrageous Charges.

Accident reports in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• Starbucks admits to accidentally double-charging customers at over 7,000 stores on Memorial Day. The coffee seller claims all the bad charges were resolved. But it says something that so many customers didn’t even realize the error themselves.

• Zagat awarded Mickey D’s a No. 1 ranking for value and having the best value menu; plus, the fast feeder was recognized for having the best French fries and breakfast sandwiches. All of those honors might be impressive until you consider the competition. Best breakfast sandwiches?

• The Supreme Court put the Chrysler-Fiat deal on hold, saying it needed more time to consider the complaints against the government-orchestrated sale. Let’s hope Fiat doesn’t use the delay to take a second look under the proverbial hood.

• The CEO of teddy-bear maker Steiff is facing a lawsuit from an ex-employee, who charges he sexually harassed and even raped her. But he probably sent her a nice teddy bear afterwards.

6820: Ching-Chong Chicken.

Will somebody please explain the Asian dudes in this KFC promotion? Should we call Mr. Miyagi or Master Po for enlightenment?

6819: White Boyz N The Hood.

Adfreak spotted the bullshit above from Chicago-Lake Liquors in South Minneapolis. There are TV commercials too. Of course, the advertiser would never consider targeting minorities with such messages, despite the likely reality that they comprise a sizeable portion of store customers.

6818: The New Realities Of Hiring & Inclusion.

For those who missed it, here’s the 4As 2009 Leadership Conference panel: The New Realities of Hiring & Inclusion.

6817: Fire Crackers…?

Phantom Fireworks presents the latest in explosive stereotypes.


After watching The Sopranos, light up Bada Bing! Bada Boom!


Paint the sky red with Apache Firedance Fountain.


Ignite Chinatown Celebration Fireworks—an hour later, you’ll be hungry for more.


Bombz N The Hood with Hasta La Vista Baby! Fountain and King Of Bling.

6816: The Problem With Princesses.

From The Root…

Enough With the Princesses!
Forget about whether the new Disney princess is black or white. The problem is with princesses. Period.

By Monique Fields

There was Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Pocahontas and Mulan.

Tiana arrives this fall in the first Disney film featuring a black American princess.

Set in 1920s New Orleans, The Princess and the Frog tells the story of a young waitress and gifted chef who dreams of following her father’s lead and owning a restaurant. The trailer can be viewed online or on the big screen in the previews of Disney Pixar’s Up, which opened May 29.

Tiana’s creation has been lauded as a milestone. She is a first in a long succession of Disney princesses, which began more than 70 years ago. The toys she inspires will acknowledge the beauty of young black women as children of all colors identify with Tiana.

Still, as the mother of two young girls, I fear I will be doing damage control for years after the credits roll.

In a recent New York Times article, critics railed on whether or not Tiana conquers racial stereotypes. Forget about all that. The problem is with the princess mentality.

The princess mentality is pervasive in our society. Everything from baby bibs to bicycles is scrawled with the P-word. A mother has to shop long and hard to find clothing that isn’t glittery or pierced with rhinestones. Just when you think you’ve defeated the princess marketing monster, someone else shows up on your doorstep with the cutest thing ever.

I’m not the wicked stepmother when it comes to princesses. I just want a dash of reality thrown into my daughter’s entertainment from time to time.

Unlike princesses, my daughters, 4 and 2, will be disappointed. They will want something my husband and I can’t afford, or they will miss the mark for some achievement. There will be no magic wand to go poof and make their dreams come true.

While I’d like for them to run away with a prince and live happily ever after, they had better get college degrees first. All princesses need to have their own money.

Sure, they can dress up for dance recitals, prom and other events, but I’ll be sure to warn them that outward superficialities like glitter and makeup will not compensate for any deeper flaws some women try to hide.

Disney and other toymakers are selling a fantasy, pure and simple. What is troubling is when fantasy mingles with reality. Some little girls are telling anyone who will listen that they want to be princesses when they grow up. If nothing else, I expect a more ambitious and attainable goal from children who haven’t yet learned to read or write. Their goals don’t have to be engraved in their scrapbooks, but thoughts of becoming lawyers, doctors or entrepreneurs is a start.

A princess? Whatever in the world do princesses do? More importantly, how do they get paid? Real life is not a fairy tale, and few folks live happily ever after. So just what are we telling our girls when we dress them up in frilly dresses, dust them with makeup and put glitter in their hair before they really know who they are? We’re telling them outward beauty is more valuable than being responsible, trustworthy citizens who don’t always get what they want. If we aren’t clear what’s acceptable now, we’re setting them up for a time in the not-too-distant future when they want something they can’t have and have no way of dealing with rejection.

Consider this: Simone is my oldest child, and a few days ago, she rushed up to a dress in a department store and cooed, “Oooh, sparkles.”

I have what is called a girly girl—a child who only wants to wear dresses or what she calls big tutus. These days she even casts aside skirts, known to her as little tutus. Shorts and pants aren’t even part of her wardrobe. So she spotted this big tutu from afar, and it looked a lot like, well, a wedding dress—and she wanted it.

“We’re not buying today,” I told her. I distracted her with some more modest dresses, and then we walked away.

Not two minutes later, she scampered up to a counter. “Ooh, sparkles.”

This time she was in the jewelry department.

When the salesman asked if there was anything he could show me, as I arrived a good five paces behind Simone, I informed him we weren’t in the market for engagement rings and wedding bands.

Simone gladly skipped off to the next thing. She didn’t ask for or expect anything. But I shot my husband a concerned look. If she does this at 4, what is she going to be like at 14, when she may not be as easily distracted? Many girls grow out of the princess fascination, while others request the star treatment from their parents and friends for the rest of their lives.

I’m not going to wait around to find out, especially with a black princess making her debut later this year. As soon as I see an opening, the evil stepmother in me is going to pull Simone aside and tell her that princesses don’t make any money.

Monique Fields is a regular contributor to The Root.

6815: How Minorities Get Played In Adland.

Just wanted to post a quick addendum to the Illinois State Lottery scenario, as it also connects to an earlier perspective on the shaky state of affairs for Black advertising agencies.

In January, R.J. Dale Advertising lost the lottery account, and the Black-owned shop is probably destroyed by the event. Its remaining client duties include minority work for a local grocery chain and assorted projects for a handful of brands.

Burrell Communications picked up a special contract with the lottery estimated at $6.4 million. The shop participated in a shootout involving three other minority firms, although the pitch was held months after Energy BBDO won the lion’s share of billings. So Burrell will likely have little say in the overall campaign direction, ultimately relegated to producing Black versions of the mass-market campaign.

This illustrates another challenge for minority shops. These days, it seems like the non-White enterprises find themselves in various positions of powerlessness when competing for accounts:

1. If tied to a network, the minority shop will “team up” with its White sibling—although it’s actually closer to a master-servant relationship. You can guess who assumes the servant role.

2. If no network is involved, but the client wants integrated marketing, minority shops will “team up” with White strangers—and find themselves in a different master-servant dynamic that Alberto J. Ferrer described as the Frenemy Era.

3. If the client wants integrated marketing and the White agency cannot find a suitable partner-servant, the White agency has the option of inventing a minority shop.

4. If the client feels like it, they can hire a minority shop after selecting a White AOR, as the Illinois State Lottery did. This common practice displays disrespect for multicultural marketing. The minorities are after-thoughts, hauled in to assimilate via the segregated smokescreen of synergy.

5. If the client feels like it, they can let the White agency handle the jobs traditionally awarded to a minority shop.

And that’s how the minority advertising game is played, folks.

6814: Baked Right From The Toaster…?

Wonder when Kellogg’s will introduced Grilled Pop-Tarts.

6813: Taking Her Rightful Seat In History.

From The New York Daily News…

Claudette Colvin: A civil rights pioneer gets due recognition

By Patrice O’Shaughnessy

She was a civil rights hero — a 15-year-old girl in the segregated South who refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger, almost a year before Rosa Parks.

Yet for decades, Claudette Colvin has lived in anonymity in the Bronx, where co-workers, neighbors and even friends had no clue about her pivotal role in history.

That’s changing a bit with the publication of “Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice,” a lauded new book for young adults.

A self-described loner, Colvin has even spoken at a few schools about her jailing, trial and participation in a landmark court fight against segregation of Alabama’s buses.

“I say to the kids, ‘How would you like it if you went to a mall and you couldn’t try on shoes, because what white person would put their foot in the shoe after you tried it?’ You couldn’t try on dresses or Easter hats,” Colvin said.

A retiree with a thick Heart of Dixie drawl and deep dimples when she smiles, Colvin’s eyes grow wide when she speaks about those days.

She didn’t shout her story from the rooftops because she didn’t think anyone in the city wanted to hear it.

“People up here were not interested,” she said.

“They had the same skin color as me, but they speak a different language. They are from the Caribbean, or Africa. They have no idea what it was like for a black person in the South.”

For author Phillip Hoose, Colvin’s story “was the book I wanted to do the most.”

“It’s the best example of a young person making a difference that I’ve ever heard,” he said.

“And then having the guts in a Klan-soaked atmosphere to put her name on a lawsuit against the city and state. I was determined to find her to get her story for teens.”

Colvin’s moment of infamy happened March 2, 1955, when she was sitting in the Negro section of a bus in Montgomery.

Because there were no seats left in the white section, the bus driver ordered her to get out of her row so a white woman could sit there.

Colvin refused, and cops dragged her off the bus as she yelled, “It’s my constitutional right!”

She was tried for violating the segregation laws and sentenced to probation. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. told her he was “proud” of her; most people referred to her as “the girl in the bus thing.”

“She was not considered a good spokeswoman for the cause. She was a teenager. She was outspoken,” Hoose said.

“The NAACP was looking for an icon, and they thought I’d be militant,” Colvin laughed. “Then they got Angela Davis.”

Colvin’s notoriety in the South drove her to New York, where she’s lived since 1967.

“I couldn’t get a job down there. People recognized me,” she said. “My sister was up here, and people were getting jobs.”

She found the North to be “as segregated as the South, but people were courteous.”

Colvin recalled that when she first arrived, she was at a drugstore and a white man held the door open for her. She stood frozen in disbelief.

“I didn’t realize he was holding it for me, and he was looking at me and I was looking at him,” she laughed.

When she came north, Harlem was not the storied place she had heard about; it was ravaged by poverty and riots.

“Harlem was not appreciative of Dr. King. People were more interested in Malcolm X,” she said.

“I was at a bar with co-workers at 125th St. and Seventh Ave. and a guy was on the corner saying, ‘Burn those buildings down!’ and next thing I know a block of buildings was burned down.”

She said the man’s disparaging remarks about King upset her.

“I was crying and someone asked me what was the matter … How was I going to explain? They didn’t understand how King was trying to clear the way. He wanted to show we weren’t lazy Negroes and all those labels they put on us.”

Colvin had shaken King’s hand at a meeting, and then after her arrest she met with him.

“He was a little, average guy, someone you would pass right by on the street,” she said. “But once he opened his mouth to speak he was like Moses, when Charlton Heston played him.”

After moving to New York, Colvin worked at the Mary Manning Walsh nursing home on the East Side as a nurse’s aide from 1968 until she retired in 2004.

She is the mother of two sons; one is deceased and the other is a CPA in Atlanta. She has five grandchildren, including one in medical school, one in the Air Force, one at the Pentagon.

Compelling as her story is, it was all but forgotten after she left Alabama. “By the 1970s, Rosa Parks had a mythological place in history,” Hoose explained.

Colvin joked that she’s “too old to be excited” about Hoose’s book, but she’s clearly pleased.

“I’m so glad that someone is setting the record straight for the youth to know and appreciate what we’ve done and the sacrifices we made,” she said.

6812: Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting.

Martial Arts & Crafts in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• Was David Carradine actually killed by kung fu assassins? Carradine’s friends and family are urging the FBI to investigate, claiming the actor may have run into trouble while trying to uncover groups scheming in the martial-arts underworld. Why not ask The Bride to get involved too?

• Men’s Wearhouse bought Filene’s Basement at a bankruptcy auction. Wonder if George Zimmer told Filene’s Basement executives, “You’re going to like the way you look; I guarantee it.”

• Opponents of Chrysler-Fiat sale are attempting to apply the brakes to the proposed deal, calling on the Supreme Court to intervene. Somebody should ask to read the CARFAX® Report.

• John Stamos is considering appearing in a movie remake of “Full House.” Can somebody please request the Supreme Court block this move too?

6811: The Supreme Court’s New Odd Couple.

From The New York Times…

For Sotomayor and Thomas, Paths Diverge at Race

By Jodi Kantor and David Gonzalez

If Judge Sonia Sotomayor joins Justice Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court, they may find that they have far more than a job title in common.

Both come from the humblest of beginnings. Both were members of the first sizable generation of minority students at elite colleges and then Yale Law School. Both benefited from affirmative action policies.

But that is where their similarities end, and their disagreements begin. For the first time, the Supreme Court would include two minority judges, but ones who stand at opposite poles of thinking about race, identity and opportunity. Judge Sotomayor and Justice Thomas have walked parallel paths and yet arrived at contrary conclusions, not only on legal questions, but on personal ones, too.

Judge Sotomayor celebrates being Latina, calling it a reason for her success; Justice Thomas bristles at attempts to define him by race and says he has succeeded despite the obstacles it posed. Being a woman of Puerto Rican descent is rich and fulfilling, Judge Sotomayor says, while Justice Thomas calls being a black man in America a largely searing experience. Off the bench, Judge Sotomayor has helped build affirmative action programs. On the bench, Justice Thomas has argued against them with thunderous force.

The two may sit together on a court that is struggling over whether race and ethnicity should be a factor in legal thinking, each pitting his or her hard-won lessons against the other’s. Both judges are passionate about minority success, dedicating countless hours to mentorship. But Judge Sotomayor sees herself as the successful product of diversity initiatives, whereas Justice Thomas, who thinks of himself as a scarred survivor of those efforts, believes they often backfire.

The two judges have lived, not just argued, the strongest cases for and against affirmative action, said Barry Friedman, a law professor at New York University. With both on the court, he said, “their voices are going to come to exemplify the contending positions.”

When Ms. Sotomayor and Mr. Thomas arrived at college — she at Princeton in 1972, he at Holy Cross in 1968 — they worried about the same thing: what others would think when they opened their mouths.

Ms. Sotomayor had grown up in the Bronx speaking Spanish; Mr. Thomas’s relatives in Pin Point, Ga., mixed English with Gullah, a language of the coastal South. Both attended Catholic school, where they were drilled by nuns in grammar and other subjects. But at college, they realized they still sounded unpolished.

Ms. Sotomayor shut herself in her dorm room and eventually resorted to grade-school grammar textbooks to relearn her syntax. Mr. Thomas barely spoke, he said later, and majored in English literature to conquer the language.

“I just worked at it,” he said in an interview years later, “on my pronunciations, sounding out words.”

For many East Coast colleges, it was a new era. After the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, Holy Cross pledged to do its part in the civil rights movement by recruiting black students; just a few months later, Mr. Thomas became one of six in his freshman class.

Princeton was integrating not only by race and ethnicity, but also by gender. Ms. Sotomayor was one of 20 Hispanics in her class, students estimate. Princeton had admitted women just a few years earlier, and “husband-hunters,” as one of the alumni still campaigning against their presence called them, were vastly outnumbered at the college.

When the students arrived, they were subject to constant suspicion that they had not earned their slots. “It was a question echoed over and over again, not only verbally but in people’s thoughts,” said Franklin Moore, a former Princeton administrator. Ms. Sotomayor and Mr. Thomas, honors students in high school, considered themselves qualified. But to prove their critics wrong, they studied with special determination.

“We can’t let these people think we just came off the street without anything to offer Princeton,” said Eneida Rosa, another member of the Hispanic contingent, describing how seriously she and Ms. Sotomayor took their studies.

The two future judges led similar student organizations — Mr. Thomas helped found a black student group, while Ms. Sotomayor was co-chairwoman of a Puerto Rican one — and shared the same liberal politics. They graduated at the top of their classes. And afterward, they each headed to Yale Law School.

Interpretations

But perhaps because of their backgrounds, Judge Sotomayor and Justice Thomas came to view their campus experiences in very different ways.

Even by the standards of the Jim Crow South, Mr. Thomas’s childhood was marked by bitter blows and isolation. He was taunted not only by classmates at his all-white high school but also by blacks, who called him “ABC,” for “America’s Blackest Child,” on account of his dark skin. A black among Catholics and a Catholic among blacks, he sometimes seemed to fit in nowhere at all.

Mr. Thomas learned he could rely only on himself. His father left when he was a toddler. A few years later, his mother sent him to live with his grandparents, dumping his possessions in grocery bags and sending him out the front door, he wrote in his autobiography, “My Grandfather’s Son.”

Ms. Sotomayor also grew up without a father; hers died of heart problems when she was 9. But her mother was a sustaining force, supporting the family by working as a nurse. In a recent speech, Judge Sotomayor recalled her mother and grandmother chatting and chopping ingredients for dinner. “I can’t describe to you the warmth of that moment for a child,” she said.

In New York, Puerto Ricans were pitied for poverty and blamed for crime. Popular images were dominated by the gangs of “West Side Story” and bumbling comics with broken English. According to friends, Ms. Sotomayor was not active in her high school’s small Latino club. Ethnicity was not something to be ashamed of, they said, but they did not really celebrate it either.

But on Princeton’s manicured campus, Ms. Sotomayor explored her roots in a way she never had on trips to Puerto Rico or in “Nuyorican” circles back home. In a Puerto Rican studies seminar, she absorbed the literature, economics, history and politics of the island, and by senior year, she was writing a thesis on its first democratically elected governor. In its dedication, she sounds newly enchanted with her heritage.

“To my family,” she wrote, “for you have given me my Puerto Rican-ness.”

“To the people of my island, for the rich history that is mine,” she continued.

Back to Their Roots

Ms. Sotomayor was not alone; for many minority students who arrived at elite colleges, the first thing they wanted to study was their own backgrounds. “What we did on campus was to use its resources to understand ourselves in a larger context,” said Eduardo Padro, a New York State Supreme Court justice who was raised in East Harlem and arrived at Yale in 1971, part of the first group of working-class Puerto Ricans there.

Ms. Sotomayor also became a passionate advocate for Hispanic recruitment. She took a work-study job in the admissions office, traveling to high schools and lobbying on behalf of her best prospects. As co-chairwoman of Accíon Puertorriqueña, she wrote a complaint accusing Princeton of discrimination, convinced the leaders of the Chicano Caucus to co-sign it and filed it with the federal Department of Health, Education and Welfare.

But Ms. Sotomayor was no campus radical. She was more likely to mete out discipline than to be subjected to it: in an early turn at judgeship, she sat on a panel that ruled on student infractions.

William Bowen, Princeton’s president at the time, recalled in an interview that he used to call her for advice on Hispanic issues. After all, the university’s leadership wanted to make it more diverse, and Ms. Sotomayor’s activism helped them make their case. As a result of her efforts, other students said, Princeton hired its first Hispanic administrator and invited a Puerto Rican professor to teach.

While Ms. Sotomayor embraced her ethnicity in college and helped bring more Hispanics to campus, Mr. Thomas began to worry about the consequences of racial categorizations and grew skeptical of Holy Cross’s efforts to enroll blacks.

He flirted a bit with black nationalism, reading Malcolm X’s autobiography until the pages were worn. He drank in Ayn Rand’s ideas about individualism. He identified with the protagonists of Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison novels, whose destinies were determined by racial stereotypes.

“I began to think of myself as a man without a country,” he wrote in his autobiography about his increasing alienation.

Some of his black classmates were losing their way, failing classes or falling into drug use, and he began to think of the college’s recruitment efforts as misguided. In his autobiography, he wrote of “these gifted young people being sacrificed on the altar of an abstract theory of social justice.”

Ms. Sotomayor and Mr. Thomas missed each other at Yale by only a few years, but they might as well have studied at entirely different institutions.

Given her standout record at Princeton, said James A. Thomas, a former dean of admissions, Ms. Sotomayor’s background had little role in her acceptance to the school. Again, she immersed herself in Puerto Rican issues, winning a spot on the law review with an article about Puerto Rico’s rights to resources in its seabed, leading the minority students’ association and urging the administration to hire a tenured Hispanic faculty member. (A quarter-century later, she is still pressing the school on the issue.)

Mr. Thomas, though, felt out of place from the moment he arrived and only became more disaffected. He had listed his race on his application and later felt haunted by the decision.

“I was among the elite, and I knew that no amount of striving could make me one of them,” he wrote. He ran into financial troubles and applied for scholarship money from a wealthy Yale family, a process he found humiliating. Friends recall that he insisted on dressing like a field hand, in overalls and a hat.

Shared Rejection

Mr. Thomas and Ms. Sotomayor did have one experience in common: law firm interviewers asked them if they really deserved their slots at Yale, implying that they might not have been accepted if they were white.

Ms. Sotomayor fought back so intensely — against a Washington firm, now merged with another — that she surprised even some of the school’s Hispanics. She filed a complaint with a faculty-student panel, which rejected the firm’s initial letter of apology and asked for a stronger one. Minority and women’s groups covered campus with fliers supporting her. Ms. Sotomayor eventually dropped her complaint, but the firm had already suffered a blow to its reputation.

Mr. Thomas was more private about the experience — even some friends do not recall it — but he took it hard. With rejection letters piling up, he feared he would not be able to support his wife and young son.

The problem, Mr. Thomas concluded, was affirmative action. Whites would not hire him, he concluded, because no one believed he had attended Yale on his own merits. He felt acute betrayal: his education was supposed to put him on equal footing, but he was not offered the jobs that his white classmates were getting. He saved the pile of rejection letters, he said in a speech years later.

“It was futile for me to suppose that I could escape the stigmatizing effects of racial preference,” he wrote in his autobiography.

From Yale, Mr. Thomas and Ms. Sotomayor took what seemed like entirely different paths: he as a Reagan official who helped dismantle affirmative action programs; she as a prosecutor and litigator.

But once in a while, their stories have converged. In their nominations to the Supreme Court, both were presented as barrier-breaking success stories. Both have seen those nominations become bogged down in debates about race and ethnicity.

And at times, each of them has viewed opposition to their confirmations in racial or ethnic terms. When Democrats opposed Justice Thomas’s nomination because of sexual harassment accusations, he called it a “high-tech lynching,” a triumph of stereotype.

Judge Sotomayor saw a hitch in her own confirmation for the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in a not entirely dissimilar light. Senate Republicans had held up her nomination for a year, and shortly afterward, she said they made assumptions about her views simply “because I was Hispanic and a woman.”

“I was dealt with on the basis of stereotypes,” she said.

David D. Kirkpatrick contributed reporting, and Kitty Bennett contributed research.

6810: It’s Hard Out Here For A Pimp.

In the zone with a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• Melody Morales sued the Hawaiian Tropic Zone restaurant in New York after she was refused a job, allegedly by a manager who told her she was “too ghetto.” Now the HTZ’s lawyer says she’s appeared on porn sites hawking adult services, essentially calling her a hooker. As if the Hawaiian Tropic Zone managers aren’t essentially pimps.

• General Motors announced the Saturn brand will be sold to a dealership group owned by racing legend Roger Penske. Hey, it makes sense. A guy like Penske is used to dealing with car wrecks.

• European low-cost airliner RyanAir plans to charge passengers to use the toilet. Not sure if the fee will be waived if passengers can shit their belongings in the overhead compartment.

6809: Internees Help Future Interns.

From The Los Angeles Times…

Helped during misfortune, World War II internees now help others

Acting out of a traditional sense of duty, Japanese Americans open college doors for Cambodian refugees.

By Teresa Watanabe

They are complete strangers, born of different cultures nearly eight decades apart.

But a twist of historic fate has bound Fred Hoshiyama, a 94-year-old Japanese American, and Chimchanbo Uk, an 18-year-old Cambodian native: The families of both have experienced displacement amid political turmoil.

Hoshiyama was forcibly removed from his Northern California home and sent to a bleak internment camp in Utah after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941. There he languished until the American Friends Service Committee and other groups organized a program to free more than 4,500 Japanese Americans from the camps, place them in colleges and award them scholarships.

Uk’s mother lived through three years of rule by the murderous Khmer Rouge, witnessing killings and starvation as she and her siblings were forced from the cities to toil on the land in rural Cambodia. She made her way to the United States in 1996, bringing her children.

The two communities plan to join their stories today as Hoshiyama and other Japanese Americans present scholarships to Uk and other Southeast Asian students at a ceremony in Long Beach.

The scholarship program reflects the Japanese value of giri, a sense of duty and obligation that compels those who receive benevolence to return it to others, community organizers say.

“We got help so we want to help others,” said Hoshiyama, a Culver City resident. “You have to model something if you believe in it strongly.”

Uk said she is overwhelmed by the kindness of strangers.

“They have no clue who I am,” Uk said. “It is so selfless, and I am so grateful.”

The scholarship program, called the Nisei Student Relocation Commemorative Fund Inc., was started in 1980 by a group of largely West Coast Japanese Americans who ended up in New England after the war.

Two of them were Yosh and Nobu Hibino, Bay Area residents who had attended UC Berkeley at the time war broke out. Both were sent to Topaz internment camp in central Utah, a place fellow internee and Berkeley alumnus Hoshiyama described as a sweltering, shadeless stretch of desert and sagebrush.

Physically, Hoshiyama said, he got used to the dreary routine of communal confinement. The psychological wounds of being targeted and treated as an enemy alien by his own country took longest to heal, he said.

But when word reached him that the American Friends Service Committee, YMCAs and YWCAs and others had put together a college program for young Japanese Americans like himself, he was elated. The National Japanese American Student Relocation Council, formed in 1942, raised funds for scholarships, cut through security protocols and red tape and persuaded at-times reluctant university leaders to accept the students, organizers said.

After four months at Topaz, Hoshiyama became one of the first students to leave for college. He attended Springfield College in Massachusetts, earning a master’s degree in education.

Asked how he felt when he walked out of camp as a free man bound for college, Hoshiyama leaned back in his chair, flung out his arms and let out a long “Ohhhh.”

“It felt like night and day, from being imprisoned to the freedom of being a man again,” he said.

Yosh Hibino, 89, earned a master’s degree in commerce from the University of Texas while his wife, Nobu, graduated from Boston University with an undergraduate degree in psychology, said their daughter, Jean.

The couple stayed in the New England area and began socializing with other Japanese Americans there. As they began to realize that most of them were recipients of the wartime college program, they came up with the idea to give back with a scholarship program for others.

With stories of Vietnamese boat people filling the news at the time, the founders proposed that the fund help Southeast Asians displaced by war rather than their own relatively assimilated and economically comfortable community, said Jean Hibino, whose mother died in 1998.

“The Southeast Asian students reflected their own wartime experience of kids whose lives and educations were disrupted by war,” she said.

So far, the fund has granted scholarships ranging from $500 to $2,000 each to 540 students, with total disbursement at $503,800. The fund rotates among cities; this year the recipients were chosen from Long Beach.

Uk, one of this year’s 30 recipients, has maintained a 3.5 grade-point average despite family troubles and a part-time job at a fast-food restaurant she needs to help supplement the family income.

As she prepares to accept her scholarship today, Uk said she hopes to continue the cycle of giving back. Her dream is to enter college, graduate in international studies and work for the United Nations.

Her sources of inspiration are Oprah Winfrey, for her charitable work in Africa, and her Khmer language teacher, who collects recyclables during the year to buy food and school supplies for Cambodian children each summer.

“Although I myself have struggled a bit in the past, I was fortunately given the opportunity to strive for a better future,” she wrote in her scholarship essay. “I feel every individual should deserve the opportunity that was introduced to me.”

6808: How The Lottery Is Won In Adland.

Last January, MultiCultClassics noted the Illinois State Lottery advertising account was won by Energy BBDO, ending the controversial and unprecedented handling of the chores by Black-owned R.J. Dale Advertising. The account’s contract features an initial term of two years, with a couple of single-year renewal options. Adweek estimated the total value for Energy BBDO at $105 million.

Now comes news that Burrell Communications was named African-American Agency of Record for the lottery, and the shop will deliver public relations and advertising targeting Black audiences. Burrell’s multi-year contract is worth $6.4 million.

Sources report that Blacks and Latinos have routinely generated the highest lottery sales in Illinois. Indeed, R.J. Dale’s work produced some of the greatest results ever for the brand—among all consumers.

So let’s review the figures. $105 million for the White guys versus $6.4 million for the Black guys.

Yep, sounds about right.

6807: Marketing And Mind Games.

Reporting and studying in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• The Los Angeles Times reported on the likely residual effects to come from General Motors’ reinvention, focusing on the collateral damage to advertising and marketing. Reduced budgets will rock everything from advertising agencies to media outlets to sponsorships. Which means multicultural agencies will really get screwed. And there will surely be a dramatic increase in robot suicides.

• Studies from California universities indicate online social networks could result in psychological—and potentially moral—harm to avid fans and followers. One study speculated that the quick, instant transfer of information on social media sites does not provide people with enough time to develop a moral response. “If things are happening too fast, you may not ever fully experience emotions about other people’s psychological states and that would have implications for your morality,” said a researcher. This could explain why social media is so attractive to advertising executives, who have traditionally displayed a complete lack of morality.

6806: Diversity Controversial For Court Role…?

From The New York Times…

Speeches Show Judge’s Steady Focus on Diversity and Struggle

By Peter Baker and Jo Becker

WASHINGTON — In speech after speech over the years, Judge Sonia Sotomayor has returned to the themes of diversity, struggle, heritage and alienation that have both powered and complicated her nomination to the Supreme Court.

She has lamented the dearth of Hispanics on the federal bench. She has exhorted young people to value immigration. She has mulled over the “deeply confused image” America has of its own racial identity. And she has used on more than one occasion a version of the “wise Latina” line that she has spent much of this week trying to explain.

Dozens of her speeches released by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday underscore the dynamics that have defined her case for the court. As President Obama’s nominee to replace Justice David H. Souter, Judge Sotomayor would be the first Hispanic and third woman to serve on the Supreme Court, distinctions that have generated much excitement. But her discussion of ethnicity and gender issues has provided fodder for critics who call her a judicial activist.

The debate has focused more on her off-the-bench public addresses than her court rulings, which even some critics have called more moderate than her words. As it submitted her answers to a Senate questionnaire Thursday, the White House called on lawmakers and the public to assess her based on her deep experience as a prosecutor, corporate litigator and federal judge.

The White House counsel, Gregory B. Craig, said in a statement, “The answers demonstrate how Judge Sotomayor’s three-decade career and her significant contributions to the law and her community provide her with unique and unprecedented qualifications to be the next Supreme Court justice.”

Accompanying the 172-page questionnaire sent to the Judiciary Committee were five boxes of her speeches, writings and other materials, which both sides began poring through for evidence to validate their arguments. Republicans on the committee withheld comment while they studied the documents.

The nominee emerging from the papers is a prosecutor who tried violent criminals like the so-called Tarzan Murderer, a lawyer who represented silk-purse clients like Fendi and Ferrari, and a judge who ruled on subjects as varied as a strike by baseball players and the exclusionary rule. After 17 years on the district court and now the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, Judge Sotomayor has accumulated so little money that her credit card and dental bills nearly match her total savings.

The documents reveal that the White House contacted her about a possible Supreme Court nomination on April 27, three days before Justice Souter’s plan to retire was publicly reported. From that point on, she wrote, she had “near daily phone calls” with White House officials, indicating how serious Mr. Obama was about her as a candidate from the beginning.

Unlike Mr. Obama, who as president has largely avoided overt discussion of his racial identity, Judge Sotomayor has made her ethnicity a regular theme of her public addresses, touching on it to make points with audiences that were sometimes largely Hispanic and sometimes not. At times, she portrayed herself as a stranger in a strange land.

“Somewhere all of us Puerto Ricans and people of color have had a defining moment when we were shocked into learning that we were different and that American society treated us differently,” she told the National Puerto Rican Coalition in 1998. “The shock and sense of being an alien will never again, I suspect, be as profound for any of us as that first experience, because I know from personal experience that our education and professional training have equipped us to deal better in this sometimes alien land.”

In another 1998 speech, she said the United States was often ambivalent about how to deal with its diversity. “America has a deeply confused image of itself that is a perpetual source of tension,” she said. “We are a nation that takes pride in our ethnic diversity, recognizing its importance in shaping our society and in adding richness to its existence.

“Yet we simultaneously insist that we can and must function and live in a race- and color-blind way that ignores those very differences that in other contexts we laud.”

Her speeches also indicate that she is not afraid to take on opponents. In 1998, after she was confirmed to the appeals court, she recounted how she was vigorously questioned by senators based on what she called “mischaracterization and misunderstanding of three of my decisions” by Rush Limbaugh. In recent days, Mr. Limbaugh has led the fight against her nomination, calling her a “reverse racist.”

In a 2001 speech, Judge Sotomayor attributed the yearlong delay before her confirmation to “Senate Republican leaders who believed that I was a potential for the Supreme Court one day.”

On another sensitive topic, Judge Sotomayor said in 2004 that international law held “very limited formal force” in the United States but that judges should not “close their minds to good ideas.”

She added: “If the idea has validity, if it persuades you, then you’re going to adopt its reasoning. If it doesn’t fit, then you won’t use it.”

That was the same year she made the comment about how a “wise Latina” could make a better decision than a white man. The White House has called that a poor choice of words, but it was not the only time she used them. In 1994, she said something similar, although she referred to women generally, not just Latinas. And in 2003, she said a “wise Latina woman” would “reach a better conclusion” but did not say better than whom.

The White House argued that the fact that she had used a similar formulation in 1994 without its being questioned during the 1998 confirmation process showed that it was now being manufactured as a false issue. And to rebut the notion that she would let her background blur her jurisprudence, the administration pointed to a 2000 speech in which she said, “I have to unhook myself from my emotional responses and try to stay within my unemotional, objective persona.”

The documents submitted to the Senate underscored how much more modest Judge Sotomayor’s finances were than those of many of her would-be colleagues. Judge Sotomayor, who makes about $180,000 a year, owns no stock and has just $31,985 in savings. Her two-bedroom apartment in Greenwich Village, which she bought in 1998 for $360,000, is her only major asset, valued at just under $1 million.

After refinancing several times, she owes $381,775 on the home as well as $15,000 for credit card bills and $15,000 for dental bills, making her net worth just over $740,000.

Federal judges who spend at least 15 years on the bench, as Judge Sotomayor has, are entitled to an annual retirement benefit equal to their full salary for life starting at age 65.

Reporting was contributed by Adam Liptak, Charlie Savage and Bernie Becker.

6805: Delayed D-Day Heroes Decoration.

From The New York Daily News…

All-black battalion that landed in Normandy, France on D-Day to be honored on anniversary of siege

By Linda Hervieux, Special To The News

CAEN, France - William Garfield Dabney, a 20-year-old enlistee, landed on the beaches of Normandy 65 years ago Saturday. Tethered to his waist was a bomb-armed helium balloon, meant to bring down a German dive bomber.

George Davidson, then 22, ferried messages between American commanders under the cover of night, dodging enemy fire with nothing but his wits to guide him.

Both men, members of the same all-black unit, survived the bloody D-Day landings that launched the Allied liberation of France. But because they were black, they disappeared into oblivion — a historic wrong that at last is being rectified.

Dabney on Friday will be among 50 U.S. veterans awarded the Legion of Honor, France’s highest decoration, in Paris. The vets will return to Normandy tomorrow for the official D-Day ceremony with President Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

“The whole group should have been decorated,” Bill Davidson, of Waynesburg, Pa., said of his father, who died in 2002. “The contribution of blacks has never been acknowledged.”

Few of the 900,000 African-American vets who fought in World War II received medals. Photos of black soldiers were long conspicuously missing from exhibits commemorating major World War II battlefields.

To Dabney, who grew up in small-town Altavista, Va., the exclusion was no surprise — but it still hurt.

“It makes you feel bad, when you don’t get the recognition like the white soldiers, that they threw your name in the garbage,” he said.

Carmella LaSpada, executive director of the White House Commission on Remembrance, was searching for living D-Day veterans and found Dabney only last week. She gave up her own plane ticket so he could attend the ceremony.

“Even though it’s 65 years later, it’s never too late,” LaSpada said.

For Dabney and his buddies, the journey back from obscurity began with a single grainy photo spied by a curious Frenchwoman, a professor of English literature at the University of Caen named Alice Mills. She made it her mission to learn the soldiers’ story and share it with the world.

During the 60th anniversary D-Day ceremonies in 2004, “There were no photos of black soldiers in Normandy,” Mills said. “This was an injustice. It became clear I had to find the truth.”

Mills, 59, who is married to an American, chanced upon a photo of black soldiers in the 320th Anti-aircraft Artillery Balloon Barrage Battalion beneath a giant bomb-armed balloon, one of many raised aloft in an aerial curtain to protect Allied troops.

A German plane that crossed a balloon’s fine steel tether cables risked being blown to bits.

Mills knew that the African-American soldiers were well-liked, so she crisscrossed Normandy, collecting the memories of aging Normans who were children during the war, particularly in Cherbourg, the strategic port where nearly all of the 30,000 American soldiers were black.

She traveled to the U.S., eventually finding records and a treasure trove of photos of the all-black units, including photos of George Davidson. She was thrilled to learn Davidson kept a detailed diary of his months in Normandy in 1944.

The photos she uncovered drew wide attention when they were published in the French press, and they are on display for this weekend’s commemoration ceremonies in Normandy. “They have been rewritten back into history,” Mills said, smiling.

“All my life I’ve felt that because I’m not speaking German, because I’m free, it’s because of the Americans,” she said. “So I had to get the stories of the black soldiers.”

6804: Generational Differences.

Generation Y: David Carradine star of Kill Bill series
Generation X: David Carradine star of Kung Fu series
Greatest Generation: David Carradine son of John Carradine

Hat Tip To MTLB

6803: Open And Honest Morons.

Speakers talking shit in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• Newt Gingrich backpedaled on his remarks that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is a racist. “My initial reaction was strong and direct—perhaps too strong and too direct,” explained Gingrich. “The sentiment struck me as racist, and I said so. Since then, some who want to have an open and honest consideration of Judge Sotomayor’s fitness to serve on the nation’s highest court have been critical of my word choice.” Heaven forbid Gingrich would want to join an open and honest consideration.

• Senate committee members spanked automaker honchos for dumping dealerships. Senator John D. Rockefeller griped, “Let me be very clear—I don’t believe that companies should be allowed to take taxpayer funds for a bailout and then leave local dealers and their customers to fend for themselves with no real notice and no real help. It’s just plain wrong.” Wait until the committee sees how automakers treat multicultural advertising agencies.

• The good news: Walmart claims it will create 22,000 new jobs in 2009. The bad news: the jobs require working at Walmart.

6802: Koko Taylor (1928-2009).

From The Chicago Sun-Times…

Chicago legend and ‘Queen of the Blues’ Koko Taylor dead at 80
Obituary | Koko Taylor, whose fiery delivery set standard for blues, dies at 80

By Dave Hoekstra

Koko Taylor was an iconic figure in Chicago—a Picasso for the people, a tower of blues power.

And no one will forget her gold-toothed smile that stretched from the North Side to the South Side. She was a radiant “Queen of the Blues” from New York City to Hollywood, where David Lynch cast her in his film “Wild At Heart.”

Mrs. Taylor died Wednesday at age 80, the result of complications from surgery on May 19 to correct a gastrointestinal bleed. She died at Northwestern Memorial Hospital surrounded by family and friends, including Alligator Records label founder Bruce Iglauer. He signed Mrs. Taylor to his label in 1975.

In 1965 Mrs. Taylor recorded the Willie Dixon composition “Wang Dang Doodle,” which became a million seller and her signature song. The year before Dixon had brought Mrs. Taylor to Chess Records, where she remained until 1972.

Mrs. Taylor included Dixon’s “Don’t Go No Further” on her 2007 Alligator release “Old School,” her final recording.

Blues legend Buddy Guy played guitar on “Wang Dang Doodle.”

“She was very shy, and so was I, so we hit it off,” Guy said Wednesday. “Willie Dixon and I had to get her out of her shell for ‘Wang Dang Doodle.’ She was one of the last of the greats of Chicago and did what she could to keep the blues alive here, like I’m trying to do now.”

Dixon saw Mrs. Taylor as a conduit for his rhythmic counterpoints and devout work ethic.

“He’d call me up in the middle of the night and say, ‘Kok, I’ve got the perfect song for you,’ “ Mrs. Taylor told me after Dixon’s death in 1992. “He would stay on me all day and all night until we got it right. He started me on my way.”

In 1972, Mrs. Taylor became a fixture at Wise Fools Pub on North Lincoln when David Ungerlider became the first North Side club owner to book South Side blues. Mrs. Taylor sat in with close friend Mighty Joe Young because she didn’t have her own band. Young also played on Mrs. Taylor’s smoking 1975 Alligator debut, “I Got What It Takes.” She began to cultivate a crossover audience through her North Side appearances.

Bluesman Lonnie Brooks met Mrs. Taylor after he moved to Chicago in 1958. He played on her 1990 release “Jump for Joy” and 1985’s “Queen of the Blues.” He was planning to begin a tour of Spain next week with Mrs. Taylor. “She had a strong voice like an old bluesman,” Brooks said Wednesday. “She was one of the most powerful blues ladies I ever met.”

Mrs. Taylor was born Cora Walton on a sharecropper’s farm outside of Memphis, Tenn. She was nicknamed “Koko” as a girl because of her love of chocolate. Mrs. Taylor heard blues on B.B. King’s and Rufus Thomas’ radio shows on WDIA in Memphis. Her family also sang gospel music in church.

The glory of Mrs. Taylor’s gritty voice was her ability to shape those styles into one distinct sound.

“We built all of her records around her vocal style,” Iglauer explained. “We listened to where she would bear down on a song and where she would lighten up and build the arrangement around her feel. Koko was tireless. She would do songs over and over and never wanted to record to a previous track. She always wanted to record with the live band to urge them on.”

In 1952, Mrs. Taylor and her soon-to-be-husband, the late Robert “Pops” Taylor, migrated from Memphis to Chicago. Pops found work in meatpacking, and Mrs. Taylor cleaned houses on the North Shore. At night they explored the city’s blues clubs searching for Delta echoes.

Between 1999 and 2001, Mrs. Taylor owned Koko Taylor’s Celebrity nightclub in the South Loop. She closed the club because her daughter and club manager Joyce Threatt had asthma and could not deal with secondhand smoke. Threatt now manages the Koko Taylor Celebrity Aid Foundation, which assists destitute blues performers.

Eight of Mrs. Taylor’s nine Alligator albums were Grammy-nominated. She won a Grammy in 1984 for her work on the compilation album “Blues Explosion” for Atlantic Records.

Mrs. Taylor’s final performance was on May 7 in Memphis at the Blues Music Awards (formerly the W.C. Handys), where she sang “Wang Dang Doodle” after receiving her award for Traditional Blues Female Artist of the Year. She won 29 Blues Music Awards, more than any other artist.

Besides Threatt, survivors include Mrs. Taylor’s husband, Hays Harris; two grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. Funeral arrangements are pending.

Contributing: Jeff Johnson

6801: MillerCoors Is CulturallyClueless.

No surprise here. MillerCoors pulled its latest “Protection” campaign starring actors from “The Sopranos” after protests from Italian-American groups. “We seem to be the last breed in America that ad agencies think they can take a shot at,” said Lou Rago, leader of the Italian American Human Relations Foundation of Chicago. MillerCoors officials initially tried to blow off the complaints. But the threat of a potential boycott changed their small minds.

At this point, adpeople and advertisers should know better. In the past year, we’ve seen similar garbage get dumped by Verizon and The New York State Lottery. Even the usually brilliant Goodby, Silverstein & Partners regurgitated the clichés for Denny’s.

The MillerCoors shit was expelled from the assholes at Draftfcb, where cultural cluelessness is common practice. This place is also responsible for the awful Taco Bell commercial pushing Latino and sexist stereotypes. For an enterprise boasting to be “The Agency Of The Future,” the IPG cesspool displays all the frat boy humor and sensibilities of the early 1990s—as well as the ignorance of pre-Civil Rights America. Bada-bing!

6800: Strange Brews And News.

Starbucking in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• Coffee shops in Southern California’s Little Saigon are busting out, serving Vietnamese brew and breasts. The baristas work in bikinis, lingerie and assorted forms of sexy outfits. One employee remarked, “I think it’s kind of like Starbucks meets Hooters.” Except there’s a totally different reaction when you order a grande.

• Ex-Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was three days late and $3,500 short on last month’s payment ordered as a component of the criminal case that ousted him from power. Somebody check to see if he was in Little Saigon in May.

• Former Kmart chairman and CEO Joseph Antonini is being sued by five banks charging he defaulted on over $2.3 million in loans and promissory notes. When Kmart dumped Antonini in 1995, he collected $1.3 million in severance and a lifetime annual pension of $527,000. In other words, he’ll never be spotted shopping in Kmart.

6799: There Is No Great White Hope For GM.

Wanted to spend a little more time examining the General Motors scenario and its implications for minority advertising agencies.

New York Post reporter Holly Sanders Ware wrote that General Motors’ AORs “are hoping to be included on a court-approved list of ‘critical vendors’ that will receive timely payments for their work while GM winds its way through bankruptcy.” Um, why? One could easily argue the White agencies have blundered along with the automaker, consistently failing to spark consumer interest for vehicles. President Barack Obama saw fit to fire GM honcho Rick Wagoner. Would the Commander-In-Chief really want to continue down the same road with marketing dinosaurs that have shown an inability to change and deliver fresh ideas—in addition to demonstrating an adversity to diversity?

Are GM’s minority shops even under consideration for “critical vendors” status? Based on the way GM has treated them in recent years, it’s highly unlikely. Let’s remember that the automaker has shifted accounts traditionally handled by multicultural experts and reassigned the work to White guys. Ironically, General Motors decided to completely dump its Asian-American ad partners, yet sold Hummer to a Chinese company. Nice.

MultiCultClassics has repeatedly recommended that GM should name a minority shop to lead a brand. The automaker is now declaring, “Reinvention is the only way we can fix this.” So reinvent already.

6798: Listen Up. Read All About It.

Listen to what Michael Eric Dyson has to say about President Barack Obama. Then read what Tolu Olorunda has to say about Michael Eric Dyson.

6797: General Marketing.

Accelerating through the news with a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• General Motors reportedly found a buyer for its Hummer brand. Now the automaker is trying to sell Saturn and Saab, in addition to dumping Pontiac. At this point, they might have to go to a singular versus plural form: General Motor.

• The New York Post reported advertising agencies will stick with GM, despite being owed boatloads of money. The shops hope to make the automaker’s court-sanctioned “critical vendors” list, to receive prompt payments while GM rides through bankruptcy. Wonder how many multicultural advertising agencies will make the “critical vendors” roster—versus going into critical condition.

6796: Fight For The Right To Survive.

Sanders\Wingo was recently named the Advertising Agency Of The Year by Black Enterprise. On the one hand, kudos to the Texas shop for securing the honor.

Yet the event also inspires concern over the shaky state of affairs for Black advertising agencies.

If you read the BE article alongside tributes for past Black shop winners for virtually every like award, you’ll see similarities. Sanders\Wingo definitely does strong, solid work. Is it significantly different than the rest in the category? Additionally, Sanders\Wingo executives stress that they really strive to know and understand their audiences. Um, can’t think of a single multicultural shop not making identical claims. It’s a mandate for the field.

But this perspective doesn’t mean to criticize Sanders\Wingo. Again, they are deserving of the recognition. Rather, let’s consider all the hoopla surrounding the shop’s growth over the years.

In the minority advertising world, the available clients are limited, especially compared to the revenue-generating opportunities for general market agencies. And there’s zero indication that the space will grow. So when Sanders\Wingo hauls in General Motors, the incumbent shop—in this case, Carol H. Williams—is decimated. Plus, GM has already shown a willingness to screw minority partners. One can only imagine how Sanders\Wingo will fare when the automaker emerges from bankruptcy.

This phenomenon of inequity goes beyond Sanders\Wingo. When GlobalHue won Walmart, incumbent shop E. Morris & Associates was absolutely crippled—and GlobalHue has yet to produce better work than E. Morris for the mega-retailer. Has anyone heard from The True Agency since Nissan rolled off?

Some might insist that minority shops must compete harder to secure and retain clients, and build broader client rosters. And hey, winning and losing accounts is part of the game. Agreed. But there’s something messed up with a system where there is literally not enough business to sustain the players. And it doesn’t help when the table scraps typically reserved for the minorities are being snatched by general market agencies—or entirely eliminated. Let’s be honest. The situation has been sorry long before the economy tanked.

It’s time for Black agencies—as well as agencies currently focused on Latino, Asian and other special segments—to be allowed to vie for billings beyond their segregated niches.

Everybody deserves the right to fight for survival.

6795: Rough Ride For Minority Car Dealers.

From The Chicago Tribune…

‘Difficult time’ for minority car dealers
Minority car dealers feeling the pain of shutdowns in particular

By Greg Burns

Desmond Roberts takes the phone calls all day long from his fellow car dealers, and Monday will be no exception.

They call to discuss who has received “the letter” saying their automakers will be dropping them.

They call about banks pulling the credit they need to stock vehicles, or suppliers refusing to renegotiate an unaffordable contract.

Often, they call to egg him on, urging him to speak up and fight the good fight. “We get the calls all the time,” said Roberts, who runs three suburban car dealerships and serves as chairman of the National Association of Minority Automobile Dealers.

With General Motors Corp. in dire straits, Roberts feels the heat. “It is a very difficult time,” he said. “Particularly, it is a difficult time for minority dealers.”

Before the recession, the nation’s 1,200 minority dealers accounted for about 5 percent of the total. With the numbers so low, and certain to go much lower, Roberts and his trade group feel the effects of each shutdown.

Minority dealers tend to have less capital and higher expenses, especially compared with second- or third-generation competitors who inherited land, facilities and franchises. The best locations typically were taken before they entered the business, so they’re vulnerable.

Chrysler and GM have adopted rigorous standards to weed out the weakest players, and Roberts has no problem with that. “It is not a deliberate decision to target minority dealers,” he said. “We don’t want to be treated better or worse.”

Roberts is pushing to moderate the plans for rapid-fire cutbacks. He wants greater consideration for less-established operations, so the most promising young dealerships aren’t snuffed out prematurely.

He acknowledges, however, that reducing the numbers will help those that remain, himself included. “That would be a good thing for me, though you don’t like to prosper at the expense of somebody else,” he said.

Roberts credits good timing. He had bought and sold two out-of-state dealerships when he launched Advantage Chevrolet in southwest suburban Hodgkins at the end of 1999. During the boom years of 2003, 2004 and 2005, he prospered.

Less than three years ago, he bought a Chrysler dealership in Des Plaines, and another Chevy lot in Bolingbrook a few months later. He took on relatively little debt, kept his hiring in check and renovated frugally: “We didn’t go in and build a Taj Mahal.”

Even so, he has had to impose layoffs, slash advertising and reduce profit margins. Without Hodgkins as an established base, his newer stores would be hard-pressed, he said.

On Tuesday, car and truck manufacturers will report sales for May, and no one expects good news. J.D. Power and Associates has forecast U.S. sales of just 10 million vehicles for 2009, the worst in three decades. “We’re now scrapping more than we’re putting on the highway,” noted Paul Kasriel, chief economist at Chicago’s Northern Trust.

Sales probably have hit bottom, Kasriel said, but it will be a slow trip back up again. Americans will be looking to rebuild their balance sheets and boost their savings before they start upgrading to the latest models, he predicted. “We’re seeing a fundamental change in household spending from the last 10 years,” he said.

Car sales will get back to the range of 16 million or 17 million “eventually,” Roberts said, but not soon. “It’s not going to be anywhere near that for at least several years.”

Meantime, he’ll be hunkering down, or, as he put it, “Surviving.”

6794: Dolls And Dollars.

Change is really coming in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• The new Jewish American Girl doll has sparked attention, as it turns out her name is shared by a suspect wanted by the F.B.I. Rebecca Rubin—the suspect, not the doll—is an arsonist fugitive. Law officials say she’s armed and dangerous. No word if the doll will be changed to include flammable accessories and firearms.

• General Motors is filing for bankruptcy. Reports indicate GM will tap turnaround executive Al Koch as the automaker’s chief restructuring officer. Koch helped Kmart through its bankruptcy. Um, was Kmart successful with its rebirth…?

6793: I Got All My Sisters With Me.

The New York Times ran this piece in April, but MultiCultClassics missed it. Better late than never, which also applies to the perspective immediately following the story.

N.Y. Councilman’s Role in Sister’s Hiring Is Examined

By Ray Rivera and Russ Buettner

A few years ago, when New York City was pressuring advertising agencies to hire more black executives, City Councilman Larry B. Seabrook, chairman of the Council’s Civil Rights Committee, approached one of the largest companies with a plan to address the issue.

The company, the Omnicom Group, ultimately endorsed Mr. Seabrook’s plan to create a high-powered diversity committee and agreed to spend $2.25 million on initiatives. It also decided to retain a consultant from Atlanta whom Mr. Seabrook had proposed to help run the committee.

The City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, praised the plan. H. Carl McCall, a former state comptroller, agreed to serve on the committee. And Omnicom saw the plan as an effective response to concerns that just 2 percent of the higher-ranking jobs at New York advertising firms were held by blacks.

But Ms. Quinn, Mr. McCall and the company say they were never told that the candidate recommended by Mr. Seabrook in early 2007 was his sister.

Omnicom officials said they did not learn of the sibling relationship until they discovered it on their own, shortly before they settled on Mr. Seabrook’s sister, Priscilla A. Jenkins, for the job of coordinating the committee’s work.

Ms. Jenkins was a former college administrator who ran a consulting business out of her home. Company officials said they were not concerned that Mr. Seabrook never mentioned the relationship to them. And the officials would not say what the company pays Ms. Jenkins.

The company decided to retain Ms. Jenkins as the committee’s executive director because of her “extremely impressive résumé,” said Weldon H. Latham, the company’s outside legal counsel on diversity.

“Her experience in management, administration, education, diversity and corporate and community liaison made her an attractive candidate,” added Mr. Latham, who said he could not release her résumé. He said that apart from recommending Ms. Jenkins, Mr. Seabrook played no role in the decision to retain her.

Ms. Quinn referred the matter this month to the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board and the Council’s Standards and Ethics Committee after learning of the relationship from a reporter.

City regulations prohibit elected officials from using their positions to obtain financial gain or personal advantage for themselves or close family members.

“Obviously, now that we have knowledge of this, it’s an issue we take very seriously,” Ms. Quinn said.

Mr. Seabrook, a Bronx Democrat, and his sister did not respond to several requests for comment. But Cleveland Beckett Jr., a spokesman for Mr. Seabrook, said the company had reviewed other candidates and had complete control over the selection. “This was by all means an open process,” he said.

Ms. Jenkins’s duties include administrative, communication and coordination tasks, and she plays a role in setting the committee’s agenda, the company said. In addition to hourly consulting fees commensurate with industry standards, Ms. Jenkins is compensated for her expenses, including travel costs from Atlanta, Mr. Latham said. The committee and its subcommittees have met numerous times and “have been instrumental in helping shape and enhance Omnicom and its agencies’ diversity efforts,” he said.

When Mr. Seabrook came up with his plan to address diversity, the city’s Commission on Human Rights, a mayoral agency, was just finishing a two-year investigation of hiring practices in the advertising industry.

The commission had investigated 16 of the city’s largest agencies and was threatening to hold potentially embarrassing hearings if the companies did not sign pacts agreeing to set hiring goals and to report on their progress annually. Patricia L. Gatling, the agency’s commissioner, said she had not been aware that Mr. Seabrook was working with Omnicom on a separate plan.

Most of the companies signed agreements with the commission. But four agencies affiliated with Omnicom objected to numeric hiring goals and instead pursued the proposal by Mr. Seabrook, who was also planning hearings.

As a result of its discussions with Mr. Seabrook, the firm agreed to provide $1.25 million to the eight-member committee over five years to finance programs on diversity and to devote an additional $1 million to establish a marketing and communications curriculum at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn. Omnicom’s plan with Mr. Seabrook did not satisfy the Human Rights Commission, however, and two weeks later, the company signed the pact with the commission.

In the most recent numbers released by the city, the advertising industry reported that it was largely meeting the hiring targets that it had agreed to with the commission. In 2008, for example, 30 percent of those hired into upper-echelon positions were minorities, according to the industry numbers.

Before assuming her role with Omnicom, Ms. Jenkins, 55, directed the Center for Academic Excellence and Leadership at Morris Brown College in Atlanta. She worked at the small historically black college for 15 years, until 2003. Many staff members left the college after it lost its accreditation in 2002. The program she had managed was designed to offer remedial assistance and to help students find internships, and she oversaw a staff of two to four people, according to Milford W. Greene, a former professor and a former assistant dean at Morris Brown.

She also helped the school’s staff apply for grants, Dr. Greene said.

“Priscilla was a very dedicated and hard worker who was very serious about her work,” he said.

After that, she set up a consulting business with her sister. The scope of the consulting work Ms. Jenkins has performed is unclear. Omnicom would not specify her professional credentials.

According to city records, Ms. Jenkins has also done consulting work for at least three Bronx-based nonprofit groups financed by Mr. Seabrook through City Council discretionary funds.

The groups, the Mercy Foundation, the Northeast Bronx Redevelopment Corporation and the African-American Legal and Civic Hall of Fame, were run at the time by Gloria Jones-Grant, a close associate of Mr. Seabrook’s. The groups are among those that investigators are scrutinizing as part of an investigation that began last year into how the Council spends its discretionary funds.

Since Mr. Seabrook joined the Council in 2002, the groups have secured more than $1 million in city contracts, mostly through Mr. Seabrook.

The Mercy Foundation, which paid Ms. Jenkins $7,500 in 2007 to help with what city records describe as an immigration seminar, has received nearly $200,000 in grants from the Council. It is unclear how much Ms. Jenkins has been paid by the groups in total because the city would not release additional documents, citing the continuing investigation.

In the mid-1990s, when Mr. Seabrook was a state legislator, federal investigators looked into his role in financing the Northeast Bronx Redevelopment Corporation and how the money was spent. The investigation did not produce any criminal charges, but a state audit later criticized how the group had spent $260,000 it had received, saying that it should return $46,000 because it had not adequately documented the expenses.

In approaching Omnicom, Mr. Seabrook envisioned an industrywide committee, with a full-time executive director, that would work with the Council and use a combination of public and private money, Mr. Latham said. Later, Mr. Seabrook gave the company a list of recommendations for committee members and one name for executive director, Ms. Jenkins’s, Mr. Latham said.

As discussions continued, he said, Omnicom realized that it would be the only source of financing and that this would be, essentially, its committee. Omnicom made the executive director position part time, Mr. Latham said, and discovered that Ms. Jenkins was Mr. Seabrook’s sister. He said the company never brought it up with Mr. Seabrook.

Mr. McCall, the Omnicom committee’s chairman, said of Ms. Jenkins: “The fact is she had a job and she did the job. I don’t know how she got the job.”

--------------------------------

It’s odd that few sources picked up this story, with Jim Edwards at BNET being nearly the only person to comment on it.

Or maybe not. Diversity in advertising continues to generate little interest in the scheme of things, especially as the industry implodes along with the collapsing economy. The hiring of Councilman Larry Seabrook’s sister for a private Omnicom group receiving $1.25 million over five years is nothing compared to, say, Doner in Detroit messing with its employee pension fund and apparently owing one ex-executive $55 million. Even in alleged scandals, the minority efforts receive significantly less money than the White majority maneuvers.

MultiCultClassics won’t speculate on the legal issues surrounding Seabrook’s actions, as New York City’s Conflicts of Interest Board and the Council’s Standards and Ethics Committee will hopefully figure it out. Rather, let’s examine the scenario from a variety of scattered angles.

First, the Omnicom Diversity Development Advisory Committee was always bullshit, a seemingly stereotypical PR stunt designed to deflect attention from the holding company’s dismal minority-hiring record. Plus, the DDAC represents yet another instance of delegating diversity.

It is peculiar to discover Seabrook suggested the idea—although its ultimate form did not match his original hope for an industry-wide collective. Perhaps it became a negotiating chip for the politician; that is, it was a concession attached to the $1 million to establish special curriculum at Medgar Evers College. Or maybe Seabrook truly believed the DDAC would work. Or it just shows that outsiders who don’t understand how the business really operates often experience difficulty when trying to ignite change. The possible reasons are endless. Whatever.

Was Seabrook wrong to recommend a family member for a DDAC role? Probably. It certainly looks bad. Yet Omnicom was aware when they hired Jenkins. And based on the comments, company officials believe the woman performed her duties. Remember, Omnicom shops whine that it’s tough to find qualified minorities for agency positions. Imagine their reaction to attempting to locate candidates for a committee invented to bring diversity to Madison Avenue. There can’t be many résumés listing qualifications in that fantasy category.

Besides, nepotism and cronyism are completely familiar to Omnicom. At DDB, for example, leaders like Keith Reinhard and Bob Scarpelli have offspring in the industry—and in the network. Any adperson who wants to cry foul here is the pot calling the kettle black. Madison Avenue is actually displaying evolution by expanding its nepotism and cronyism to include minorities. Think of it as taking baby steps.

Of course, there will be those who use this as an excuse to blast the global goal and delay forward movement. Complainers will brand Seabrook as an opportunistic race-baiter in the Jesse Jackson-Al Sharpton mold. However, it’s important to note that Seabrook has been pushing the cause for many years, originally facing off with past 4As leader O. Burtch Drake. He didn’t orchestrate everything to land a gig for his sister.

Did Seabrook pull a fast one—or simply beat Madison Avenue at its own game? Folks better check to see if the councilman plucked their asses clean.