For your consideration…
Consider New Mexico and Arizona, where the governors declared a state of emergency due to increased illegal immigration. Declarations of this magnitude are usually made in response to a natural disaster. For example, officials in Louisiana declared a state of emergency after Hurricane Katrina decimated New Orleans. Louisiana is dealing with a deluge of floodwaters. Arizona and New Mexico are facing a deluge of foreigners. Clearly, “state of emergency” is a highly subjective term.
Consider Shona Seifert, the advertising executive convicted of falsifying client billing records at Ogilvy & Mather. In addition to receiving a hefty fine and prison sentence, Seifert was ordered to draft a Code of Ethics for the advertising industry (see Essay 134). The ultimate document is uninspired — and critics claim it’s unoriginal, sharing similarities with the Advertising Federation of Australia’s Agency Code of Ethics. Guess it was a bad idea to seek ethical advice from a felon. Then again, it’s not unprecedented for ad hacks to rip off others’ concepts. Now Interpublic Group of Companies acknowledges “possible employee misconduct” with its accounting practices. Looks like illegal billing in advertising agencies will be analogous to steroid use in Major League Baseball. Although so far, no adpeople have pulled a Rafael Palmiero by insisting they’ve never done anything improper.
Consider the recent study presented by Education Trust-West, an advocacy group in Oakland. Based on a survey of salaries, it appears that California schools with predominately poor and minority students employ less-experienced and lower-paid instructors. In short, the kids with the greatest needs get the worst teachers. Factor in the worst facilities and resources to create a truly separate and unequal scenario. Then again, there’s nothing too shocking revealed here. The worst kid from the worst facility could have drawn the same conclusions without all the statistical data. For more details, visit www.hiddengap.org — or any school in California with mostly Black and Hispanic students.
Consider how the upcoming Advertising Week in New York truly reflects the industry. Except for a handful of programs highlighting the currently in vogue Hispanic marketing, there’s little evidence of diversity — aside from the ultra-segregated Diversity Achievement & Mosaic Awards, which isn’t even listed on the featured events. The overwhelming majority of photographs at the advertisingweek.com Web site showcase White people. In fact, the only colored folks include a shot of minority students (undoubtedly the recipients of some humanitarian public service initiative) and Tony the Tiger. However, Juan Valdez is reportedly the leading vote recipient in the icon contest. No word yet on the totals for Colt 45’s Billy Dee Williams. There’s a program being held at the Apollo Theater, where adpeople will compete in a special Amateur Night. It’s always uncomfortable watching White contestants perform on the famed stage. Sandman Sims will be working overtime.
Saturday, September 17, 2005
Thursday, September 15, 2005
Essay 149
Thank God It’s Almost Friday with MultiCultClassics Minutes…
• Michael Jackson revealed plans to create a song ala “We Are The World” to benefit Hurricane Katrina victims. New Orleans evacuees are cautioned to hide their children.
• Houston rap group the Legendary K.O. created a song inspired by Kanye West’s criticism of President Bush. The group actually worked West’s rant into their rap, producing the latest underground hit. Maybe they’ll follow it up with a track incorporating Barbara Bush’s commentary on evacuees in Texas.
• Another rap star may be facing a PR disaster as a result of Hurricane Katrina. Compton rapper the Game planned to unveil his designer kicks during the upcoming holiday season. Problem is, the shoes are named the Hurricane. Out of respect for the hurricane victims, the Game will donate proceeds from shoe sales to charity.
• California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is now facing attacks from fellow Republicans criticizing his record on Latino appointments. Schwarzenegger is quickly losing popularity in the community, as folks realize he hasn’t reached out to Latinos since hooking up with Maria Conchita Alonso in The Running Man.
• Not everybody was Kung Fu fighting. Especially at the Long Island whorehouse operated by Gao Xian — the martial arts expert and actor responsible for training folks for “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” Cops raided the kung fu studio-massage parlor-brothel and arrested Xian. And they didn’t even need a samurai army to take him down.
• Michael Jackson revealed plans to create a song ala “We Are The World” to benefit Hurricane Katrina victims. New Orleans evacuees are cautioned to hide their children.
• Houston rap group the Legendary K.O. created a song inspired by Kanye West’s criticism of President Bush. The group actually worked West’s rant into their rap, producing the latest underground hit. Maybe they’ll follow it up with a track incorporating Barbara Bush’s commentary on evacuees in Texas.
• Another rap star may be facing a PR disaster as a result of Hurricane Katrina. Compton rapper the Game planned to unveil his designer kicks during the upcoming holiday season. Problem is, the shoes are named the Hurricane. Out of respect for the hurricane victims, the Game will donate proceeds from shoe sales to charity.
• California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is now facing attacks from fellow Republicans criticizing his record on Latino appointments. Schwarzenegger is quickly losing popularity in the community, as folks realize he hasn’t reached out to Latinos since hooking up with Maria Conchita Alonso in The Running Man.
• Not everybody was Kung Fu fighting. Especially at the Long Island whorehouse operated by Gao Xian — the martial arts expert and actor responsible for training folks for “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” Cops raided the kung fu studio-massage parlor-brothel and arrested Xian. And they didn’t even need a samurai army to take him down.
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Essay 148
We don’t need another hero with MultiCultClassics Minutes…
• Ohio sheriff’s deputies discovered eleven kids locked in 3.5-foot cages rigged with alarms. The children reportedly slept in the cages with no pillows or blankets. A couple serving as adoptive and foster parents for the youngsters insisted the kids were not abused or neglected — and they also claimed a psychiatrist recommended putting the kids in cages. The nutcase couple must have consulted with the psychiatrist from One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. Where’s Randle Patrick McMurphy when you need him?
• A Hardee’s restaurant in Oak Grove, Missouri repeatedly refused to hire a woman because she has a disfigured face. Now the burger joint has to pay her $34,000 to settle the lawsuit she ultimately filed. Plus, Hardee’s must present a written apology and train its staff to be human beings. Not sure the last objective will be possible to achieve. Where’s Rocky Dennis when you need him?
• Comedic curmudgeon Bill Cosby brought his traveling racial rant to Cleveland, Ohio. Let’s hope he’s not planning to take the show to New Orleans. Where’s Cliff Huxtable when you need him?
• A man in Jacksonville, Florida burst into a restaurant and robbed patrons of $32 — all while wielding a samurai sword. Where’s Jet Li when you need him?
• Ohio sheriff’s deputies discovered eleven kids locked in 3.5-foot cages rigged with alarms. The children reportedly slept in the cages with no pillows or blankets. A couple serving as adoptive and foster parents for the youngsters insisted the kids were not abused or neglected — and they also claimed a psychiatrist recommended putting the kids in cages. The nutcase couple must have consulted with the psychiatrist from One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. Where’s Randle Patrick McMurphy when you need him?
• A Hardee’s restaurant in Oak Grove, Missouri repeatedly refused to hire a woman because she has a disfigured face. Now the burger joint has to pay her $34,000 to settle the lawsuit she ultimately filed. Plus, Hardee’s must present a written apology and train its staff to be human beings. Not sure the last objective will be possible to achieve. Where’s Rocky Dennis when you need him?
• Comedic curmudgeon Bill Cosby brought his traveling racial rant to Cleveland, Ohio. Let’s hope he’s not planning to take the show to New Orleans. Where’s Cliff Huxtable when you need him?
• A man in Jacksonville, Florida burst into a restaurant and robbed patrons of $32 — all while wielding a samurai sword. Where’s Jet Li when you need him?
Monday, September 12, 2005
Essay 147
Just another manic Monday with MultiCultClassics Minutes…
• How bad are things for California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger? He’s getting his old movie lines thrown back in his face — by people in his own party. Schwarzenegger is poised to veto numerous bills, which will ultimately polarize voters. One bill designed to give driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants has Republicans fuming. “If this bill should be passed…and the governor should sign it into law,” Republican Assemblyman Dennis Mountjoy proclaimed, “he will hear a cry of the people greater than ever before. And the cry of the people will be, ‘Hasta la vista, baby.’” Memo to Governor Schwarzenegger: You’re being terminated.
• Bill Cosby is once again reprimanding someone for displaying poor morals. Except this time the target of Cosby’s scorn is a guy in Tennessee using an Internet domain name including the words “Fat Albert.” The comedic icon insisted the domain name infringed his trademark rights; plus, it diverted surfers to a site selling sexually explicit items. Hey, hey, hey — wonder how Mr. Jell-O discovered the sexually explicit stuff.
• Tyson Foods is facing a discrimination lawsuit that includes accusations its Alabama plant had a bathroom displaying a “whites only” sign on the door. The company’s PR machine is running hard now, showcasing Tyson’s commitment to diversity and goodwill efforts and initiatives. Tyson also promised up to $1 million in food and aid to Hurricane Katrina victims. White meat or dark meat?
• Shortly after the city paid tribute to the fourth anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, a New York firefighter allegedly assaulted an immigrant worker for looking “like he’s al-Qaida.” The 27-year-old firefighter was arrested for injuring the 51-year-old Bangladesh immigrant with a piece of Plexiglas. Police are still trying to determine if the attack would be upgraded to a hate crime. Based on the reports, the firefighter is looking like he’s al-Campanis.
• Cornel West joined Kanye West in criticizing President Bush. “How can anyone conclude that the Bush administration has compassion for Black people?” West asked during a speech at Rutgers University. “Look at the Super Dome, a living hell for Black people. It’s not a big move from the hull of the slave ship to the living hell of the Superdome.” Actually, the Superdome has been a living hell for Saints fans for many seasons now.
• How bad are things for California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger? He’s getting his old movie lines thrown back in his face — by people in his own party. Schwarzenegger is poised to veto numerous bills, which will ultimately polarize voters. One bill designed to give driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants has Republicans fuming. “If this bill should be passed…and the governor should sign it into law,” Republican Assemblyman Dennis Mountjoy proclaimed, “he will hear a cry of the people greater than ever before. And the cry of the people will be, ‘Hasta la vista, baby.’” Memo to Governor Schwarzenegger: You’re being terminated.
• Bill Cosby is once again reprimanding someone for displaying poor morals. Except this time the target of Cosby’s scorn is a guy in Tennessee using an Internet domain name including the words “Fat Albert.” The comedic icon insisted the domain name infringed his trademark rights; plus, it diverted surfers to a site selling sexually explicit items. Hey, hey, hey — wonder how Mr. Jell-O discovered the sexually explicit stuff.
• Tyson Foods is facing a discrimination lawsuit that includes accusations its Alabama plant had a bathroom displaying a “whites only” sign on the door. The company’s PR machine is running hard now, showcasing Tyson’s commitment to diversity and goodwill efforts and initiatives. Tyson also promised up to $1 million in food and aid to Hurricane Katrina victims. White meat or dark meat?
• Shortly after the city paid tribute to the fourth anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, a New York firefighter allegedly assaulted an immigrant worker for looking “like he’s al-Qaida.” The 27-year-old firefighter was arrested for injuring the 51-year-old Bangladesh immigrant with a piece of Plexiglas. Police are still trying to determine if the attack would be upgraded to a hate crime. Based on the reports, the firefighter is looking like he’s al-Campanis.
• Cornel West joined Kanye West in criticizing President Bush. “How can anyone conclude that the Bush administration has compassion for Black people?” West asked during a speech at Rutgers University. “Look at the Super Dome, a living hell for Black people. It’s not a big move from the hull of the slave ship to the living hell of the Superdome.” Actually, the Superdome has been a living hell for Saints fans for many seasons now.
Sunday, September 11, 2005
Essay 146
Can’t help but wonder what’s going on across the country…
A New York Post article argues, “A growing number of Latino marketing executives and advertisers feel old-school advertising companies have an unfounded bias against English-language media and mistakenly believe that second- and third-generation Latinos favor Spanish-language media.” Can’t help but wonder how much responsibility for the issue should be placed on clients as well as “old-school” ad shops. After all, too many clients still view minority agencies and minority media as a means to satisfying corporate diversity objectives. Most “old school” agencies consistently beg for broader and bigger media plans. Most “old school” clients deny the requests, opting to keep minority efforts politically correct and ultimately segregated. On the other hand, general market agencies need to do a better job of utilizing and supporting minority media.
A Chicago Sun-Times analysis showed minority drivers are more than twice as likely as Whites to get stopped by police in specific Illinois suburbs — and minorities are nearly five times as likely to get pulled over in certain predominately White towns. While the study drew from state Department of Transportation data, police chiefs whose communities are high on the list insisted the conclusions are inaccurate and do not indicate racial profiling is involved. Can’t help but wonder how many more studies, research and scandalous incidents need to be published before everyone will confess there’s a problem. “If you’re Black and young, they will pull you over,” said a 20-year-old man in the Sun-Times story. “That’s how it is. Cops see a young Black man, and they think the car is stolen. That happens every day out here, anywhere.” Another Black male proclaimed, “In some places if there’s more than three Black people in a car, you’re getting pulled over, that’s automatic…You’ve got your seat belt on, you’re obeying the speed limit, you’re using your turn signals, but you’ll still get pulled over.” A retired Black cop admitted, “Anyone who says racial profiling doesn’t exist has his head in the sand…It’s alive and well.”
Chai Soua Vang, the Hmong immigrant and deer hunter charged with killing six people in Wisconsin last November, contends he acted in self-defense. In the trial’s opening day, the defense attorney claimed the other hunters physically intimidated Vang and verbally abused him with racial insults — calling him a “chink” and “gook.” Additionally, one hunter allegedly shot at Vang first. The entire incident apparently started when Vang accidentally trespassed onto private property. Can’t help but wonder how the race card will play out in this scenario. Plus, can’t help but wonder why people continue to enjoy a pastime that involves high-powered rifles. No offense, Soldier of Fortune enthusiasts.
In 1991 Jonathan Kozol introduced Savage Inequalities, a provocative book that presented school conditions nationwide and showed “what is happening to children from poor families in the inner cities and the less affluent suburbs.” Now Kozol unveils his latest book, The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America. The new book argues students today, particularly Blacks and Hispanics, continue to face savage inequalities on numerous levels. Can’t help but wonder why so little progress has been made over the past 15 years. In fact, it appears the chasm separating the haves and have nots has significantly increased. Whoever named the No Child Left Behind Act should be beaten with a ruler.
A fired employee of the prestigious Nahmad Gallery in New York has filed a $5 million sexual-harassment suit. The former saleswoman claims renowned art dealer David Nahmad made lewd and obscene advances, including an invitation to join a ménage-a-trois. The 58-year-old Nahmad also allegedly asked the woman to “dominate” him sexually as he dominated as “her boss” at the gallery — and Nahmad even requested that she “pee-pee” on him. The suit includes accusations that the old man exposed himself while proclaiming, “Look at what you do to me.” Can’t help but wonder how folks in the courtroom will keep a straight face throughout the proceedings. After all, the ex-employee’s name is Susan Dicker.
A New York Post article argues, “A growing number of Latino marketing executives and advertisers feel old-school advertising companies have an unfounded bias against English-language media and mistakenly believe that second- and third-generation Latinos favor Spanish-language media.” Can’t help but wonder how much responsibility for the issue should be placed on clients as well as “old-school” ad shops. After all, too many clients still view minority agencies and minority media as a means to satisfying corporate diversity objectives. Most “old school” agencies consistently beg for broader and bigger media plans. Most “old school” clients deny the requests, opting to keep minority efforts politically correct and ultimately segregated. On the other hand, general market agencies need to do a better job of utilizing and supporting minority media.
A Chicago Sun-Times analysis showed minority drivers are more than twice as likely as Whites to get stopped by police in specific Illinois suburbs — and minorities are nearly five times as likely to get pulled over in certain predominately White towns. While the study drew from state Department of Transportation data, police chiefs whose communities are high on the list insisted the conclusions are inaccurate and do not indicate racial profiling is involved. Can’t help but wonder how many more studies, research and scandalous incidents need to be published before everyone will confess there’s a problem. “If you’re Black and young, they will pull you over,” said a 20-year-old man in the Sun-Times story. “That’s how it is. Cops see a young Black man, and they think the car is stolen. That happens every day out here, anywhere.” Another Black male proclaimed, “In some places if there’s more than three Black people in a car, you’re getting pulled over, that’s automatic…You’ve got your seat belt on, you’re obeying the speed limit, you’re using your turn signals, but you’ll still get pulled over.” A retired Black cop admitted, “Anyone who says racial profiling doesn’t exist has his head in the sand…It’s alive and well.”
Chai Soua Vang, the Hmong immigrant and deer hunter charged with killing six people in Wisconsin last November, contends he acted in self-defense. In the trial’s opening day, the defense attorney claimed the other hunters physically intimidated Vang and verbally abused him with racial insults — calling him a “chink” and “gook.” Additionally, one hunter allegedly shot at Vang first. The entire incident apparently started when Vang accidentally trespassed onto private property. Can’t help but wonder how the race card will play out in this scenario. Plus, can’t help but wonder why people continue to enjoy a pastime that involves high-powered rifles. No offense, Soldier of Fortune enthusiasts.
In 1991 Jonathan Kozol introduced Savage Inequalities, a provocative book that presented school conditions nationwide and showed “what is happening to children from poor families in the inner cities and the less affluent suburbs.” Now Kozol unveils his latest book, The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America. The new book argues students today, particularly Blacks and Hispanics, continue to face savage inequalities on numerous levels. Can’t help but wonder why so little progress has been made over the past 15 years. In fact, it appears the chasm separating the haves and have nots has significantly increased. Whoever named the No Child Left Behind Act should be beaten with a ruler.
A fired employee of the prestigious Nahmad Gallery in New York has filed a $5 million sexual-harassment suit. The former saleswoman claims renowned art dealer David Nahmad made lewd and obscene advances, including an invitation to join a ménage-a-trois. The 58-year-old Nahmad also allegedly asked the woman to “dominate” him sexually as he dominated as “her boss” at the gallery — and Nahmad even requested that she “pee-pee” on him. The suit includes accusations that the old man exposed himself while proclaiming, “Look at what you do to me.” Can’t help but wonder how folks in the courtroom will keep a straight face throughout the proceedings. After all, the ex-employee’s name is Susan Dicker.
Saturday, September 10, 2005
Essay 145
Have A Nice Weekend with MultiCultClassics Minutes...
• Guilty pleas were submitted for the couple that stuck a human finger in a bowl of Wendy’s chili as part of a scheme to extort the fast food company for a fistful of money. Wendy’s claimed it lost at least $2.5 million in sales from negative publicity. Anna Ayala and Jaime Placencia face jail terms of up to 10 and 13 years, respectively, for the plot and other assorted crimes. Wonder what the duo will inevitably find in their prison gruel.
• McDonald’s claimed the introduction of its Premium Chicken Sandwiches sparked August sales increases of 3.4 percent versus the same period last year. Anna Ayala and Jaime Placencia also deserve credit for increasing McDonald’s sales.
• It’s a miracle! Edgar Ray Killen can walk again! The ex-Klansman convicted of the 1964 murders of three civil rights workers was originally granted bail after convincing the judge he was ill and confined to a wheelchair. But sheriff’s deputies spotted the murderer out and about, strolling around like a happy camper. So the judge ordered Edgar Ray Killen to walk straight to jail, even accusing the KKKiller of defrauding the court.
• Starting this season, ABC plans to offer all its prime-time programming in Spanish. The network’s pioneering initiative indicates a clear recognition of the expanding U.S. Hispanic population. Also, it gives a whole new audience the opportunity to agree sitcoms like According to Jim and Hope & Faith are really shitty.
• Let them eat King Cake. Former First Lady Barbara Bush is still catching heat for her remarks regarding New Orleans evacuees during a visit to relief centers in Houston. The controversial comments included, “And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this...this is working very well for them.” Look for Kanye West’s mother to proclaim, “Mrs. Bush doesn’t care about Black people.”
• Guilty pleas were submitted for the couple that stuck a human finger in a bowl of Wendy’s chili as part of a scheme to extort the fast food company for a fistful of money. Wendy’s claimed it lost at least $2.5 million in sales from negative publicity. Anna Ayala and Jaime Placencia face jail terms of up to 10 and 13 years, respectively, for the plot and other assorted crimes. Wonder what the duo will inevitably find in their prison gruel.
• McDonald’s claimed the introduction of its Premium Chicken Sandwiches sparked August sales increases of 3.4 percent versus the same period last year. Anna Ayala and Jaime Placencia also deserve credit for increasing McDonald’s sales.
• It’s a miracle! Edgar Ray Killen can walk again! The ex-Klansman convicted of the 1964 murders of three civil rights workers was originally granted bail after convincing the judge he was ill and confined to a wheelchair. But sheriff’s deputies spotted the murderer out and about, strolling around like a happy camper. So the judge ordered Edgar Ray Killen to walk straight to jail, even accusing the KKKiller of defrauding the court.
• Starting this season, ABC plans to offer all its prime-time programming in Spanish. The network’s pioneering initiative indicates a clear recognition of the expanding U.S. Hispanic population. Also, it gives a whole new audience the opportunity to agree sitcoms like According to Jim and Hope & Faith are really shitty.
• Let them eat King Cake. Former First Lady Barbara Bush is still catching heat for her remarks regarding New Orleans evacuees during a visit to relief centers in Houston. The controversial comments included, “And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this...this is working very well for them.” Look for Kanye West’s mother to proclaim, “Mrs. Bush doesn’t care about Black people.”
Essay 144
The story below appeared in The Plain Dealer…
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Cleveland is a reflection of New Orleans, King says
Saturday, September 10, 2005
Robert L. Smith
Plain Dealer Reporter
The Rev. Bernice King, the youngest daughter of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., said that Clevelanders who look thoughtful and deep will see their own community reflected in the floodwaters of New Orleans.
She said the racial and class divisions exposed by a hurricane also emerge in the housing patterns and the distribution of wealth in Northeast Ohio. She challenged the city to commit itself to achieving greatness by pulling all of its citizens to higher ground.
“It seems to me that [Hurricane] Katrina revealed, once again, that this nation is still divided,” King told a City Club audience Friday. “It seems to me the soul of America is at stake.”
She blamed the disparity on selfishness and materialism and a reluctance to apply Christian values.
King’s appearance kicked off Unity Week, City Hall’s annual series of discussions and events exploring the city’s cultural diversity. The luncheon began with Mayor Jane Campbell presenting the second annual Mosaic Award for Diversity to immigration advocate Richard Herman.
Herman, a Cleveland attorney, said a multicultural work force is essential to the city’s success in a global economy.
The audience stirred as King moved behind the podium. She bears a resemblance to her late father, especially when her voice swells with emotion. She was 5 when he was assassinated, and she knew a difficult life. She once contemplated suicide. Instead, she became the only one of the King children to follow her father into the ministry.
King said her acceptance of the Gospel forced her to confront her own prejudices and to reach out to people of other cultures. She urged Clevelanders to reach across their fears to meet the other side.
“If we’re going to move to a deeper level, and create true diversity, then we’re going to have to get really close,” she said. “There are too many people who have drawn their conclusions from what they see on television.”
King said she sees a lesson for the region in the recent health troubles of her mother, Coretta Scott King, who is recovering from a stroke.
Her mother’s left side is vibrant while her right side is weak, she said. She added that none of the Kings will consider their mother fully healed until the whole of her is well.
“If the suburbs of Cleveland are prosperous, and the urban areas are not, you are on the verge of a stroke,” she said, and the multiracial audience applauded.
“We have to be willing, as my father would say, to stand up for right,” she said. “If we are going to create true unity, that’s what it’s going to take.” The audience gave her a standing ovation.
© 2005 The Plain Dealer
© 2005 cleveland.com All Rights Reserved.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Cleveland is a reflection of New Orleans, King says
Saturday, September 10, 2005
Robert L. Smith
Plain Dealer Reporter
The Rev. Bernice King, the youngest daughter of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., said that Clevelanders who look thoughtful and deep will see their own community reflected in the floodwaters of New Orleans.
She said the racial and class divisions exposed by a hurricane also emerge in the housing patterns and the distribution of wealth in Northeast Ohio. She challenged the city to commit itself to achieving greatness by pulling all of its citizens to higher ground.
“It seems to me that [Hurricane] Katrina revealed, once again, that this nation is still divided,” King told a City Club audience Friday. “It seems to me the soul of America is at stake.”
She blamed the disparity on selfishness and materialism and a reluctance to apply Christian values.
King’s appearance kicked off Unity Week, City Hall’s annual series of discussions and events exploring the city’s cultural diversity. The luncheon began with Mayor Jane Campbell presenting the second annual Mosaic Award for Diversity to immigration advocate Richard Herman.
Herman, a Cleveland attorney, said a multicultural work force is essential to the city’s success in a global economy.
The audience stirred as King moved behind the podium. She bears a resemblance to her late father, especially when her voice swells with emotion. She was 5 when he was assassinated, and she knew a difficult life. She once contemplated suicide. Instead, she became the only one of the King children to follow her father into the ministry.
King said her acceptance of the Gospel forced her to confront her own prejudices and to reach out to people of other cultures. She urged Clevelanders to reach across their fears to meet the other side.
“If we’re going to move to a deeper level, and create true diversity, then we’re going to have to get really close,” she said. “There are too many people who have drawn their conclusions from what they see on television.”
King said she sees a lesson for the region in the recent health troubles of her mother, Coretta Scott King, who is recovering from a stroke.
Her mother’s left side is vibrant while her right side is weak, she said. She added that none of the Kings will consider their mother fully healed until the whole of her is well.
“If the suburbs of Cleveland are prosperous, and the urban areas are not, you are on the verge of a stroke,” she said, and the multiracial audience applauded.
“We have to be willing, as my father would say, to stand up for right,” she said. “If we are going to create true unity, that’s what it’s going to take.” The audience gave her a standing ovation.
© 2005 The Plain Dealer
© 2005 cleveland.com All Rights Reserved.
Essay 143
Late Night with MultiCultClassics Minutes…
• 50 Cent offered his two cents on the success of Kanye West: “I feel like Kanye West is successful because of me…After 50 Cent, [hip-hop enthusiasts] was looking for something non-confrontational, and they went after the first thing that came along. That was Kanye West, and his record took off.” Not sure President Bush would call Kanye West non-confrontational.
• Child obesity in California has reached epidemic levels, with 28 percent of the state’s kids being overweight. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger should immediately institute a statewide regimen of weightlifting and steroids.
• State Sen. James Meeks of Chicago, Illinois staged a rally to demand Mayor Richard Daley and city aldermen make changes regarding the way cops investigate citizen complaints. Meeks starred in a controversial incident involving a traffic stop and an allegedly abusive officer. Some are speculating Meeks may now run for mayor. It's a safe bet Meeks won't win the endorsement of the Chicago Police Department.
• A story on DiversityInc.com asked why Native Americans have been virtually ignored during all the news surrounding Hurricane Katrina. The Answer: Because Native Americans occupy the lowest level on the minority totem pole — well below Hispanics, Blacks, Asians, People with Disabilities and Gays & Lesbians.
• Marketing y Medios, the Hispanic marketing magazine from the publishers of Adweek, ran a MultiCultClassics perspective in its September 2005 issue. As is often the case, the letter was edited. For the unabridged version, see Essay 84.
• 50 Cent offered his two cents on the success of Kanye West: “I feel like Kanye West is successful because of me…After 50 Cent, [hip-hop enthusiasts] was looking for something non-confrontational, and they went after the first thing that came along. That was Kanye West, and his record took off.” Not sure President Bush would call Kanye West non-confrontational.
• Child obesity in California has reached epidemic levels, with 28 percent of the state’s kids being overweight. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger should immediately institute a statewide regimen of weightlifting and steroids.
• State Sen. James Meeks of Chicago, Illinois staged a rally to demand Mayor Richard Daley and city aldermen make changes regarding the way cops investigate citizen complaints. Meeks starred in a controversial incident involving a traffic stop and an allegedly abusive officer. Some are speculating Meeks may now run for mayor. It's a safe bet Meeks won't win the endorsement of the Chicago Police Department.
• A story on DiversityInc.com asked why Native Americans have been virtually ignored during all the news surrounding Hurricane Katrina. The Answer: Because Native Americans occupy the lowest level on the minority totem pole — well below Hispanics, Blacks, Asians, People with Disabilities and Gays & Lesbians.
• Marketing y Medios, the Hispanic marketing magazine from the publishers of Adweek, ran a MultiCultClassics perspective in its September 2005 issue. As is often the case, the letter was edited. For the unabridged version, see Essay 84.
Thursday, September 08, 2005
Essay 142
MultiCultClassics Minutes presents a manic multicultural monologue…
• A Gallup poll sponsored by CNN and USA Today revealed shocking results regarding Hurricane Katrina. Only 13 percent of Americans blame President Bush for the post-disaster dilemmas — and the overwhelming majority of people do not think anyone should be fired for bad responses in the drama. It is important to note, however, that most figures show Blacks account for 13 percent of the U.S. population.
• Don’t need a Gallup poll to know this news item will generate an overwhelmingly negative response from illegal immigrant haters. The California Assembly passed a bill that will permit illegal immigrants to get driver’s licenses. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to terminate the bill. Unless a Gallup poll shows his dismal approval rating will improve by signing the measure.
• 200 Mexicans managed to cross into the U.S. on Thursday without being stopped by Border Patrol. The people were part of a Mexican army convoy delivering aid to victims of Hurricane Katrina. The members included military engineers, doctors and nurses heading for San Antonio. Afterwards, the group planned to pass through California to pick up driver’s licenses.
• Governor Schwarzenegger is also poised to veto a gay marriage bill. An aide said Schwarzenegger would reject the measure “out of respect for the will of the people.” Plus, everyone knows Arnold hates girly men.
• Governor Schwarzenegger is poised to sign a bill to ban sales of soda and fast food on public school campuses, including high schools — despite protests from gay illegal immigrant students with driver’s licenses.
• A non-Hawaiian student is pursuing a discrimination lawsuit against the Hawaiians-only Kamehameha Schools in Honolulu. The student was rejected by the private school in 2003. Wonder if the school vending machines offer Hawaiian Punch.
• Another lawsuit is being launched by foes of the new Georgia law requiring voters to present photo identification at the polls. Critics charge the law was created by Republicans to suppress minority voting. Ironically, illegal immigrants with California driver’s licenses should have no trouble casting their votes.
• Investigators decided the murder of DJ Jam Master Jay was not related to conflicts between 50 Cent and drug lord Kenneth “Supreme” McGriff. Police once suspected McGriff was involved in the death of the Run-DMC member and Fitty mentor. But now McGriff has been cleared of the crime. No word yet on all the other crimes McGriff probably is responsible for having committed.
• Busta Rhymes’ bodyguard busted the face of a fan seeking an autograph. The head busting occurred in a bustling Manhattan deli. But Busta bussed his bodyguard to the fan’s place of employment to bust down and apologize, probably to avoid a bust.
• A Gallup poll sponsored by CNN and USA Today revealed shocking results regarding Hurricane Katrina. Only 13 percent of Americans blame President Bush for the post-disaster dilemmas — and the overwhelming majority of people do not think anyone should be fired for bad responses in the drama. It is important to note, however, that most figures show Blacks account for 13 percent of the U.S. population.
• Don’t need a Gallup poll to know this news item will generate an overwhelmingly negative response from illegal immigrant haters. The California Assembly passed a bill that will permit illegal immigrants to get driver’s licenses. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to terminate the bill. Unless a Gallup poll shows his dismal approval rating will improve by signing the measure.
• 200 Mexicans managed to cross into the U.S. on Thursday without being stopped by Border Patrol. The people were part of a Mexican army convoy delivering aid to victims of Hurricane Katrina. The members included military engineers, doctors and nurses heading for San Antonio. Afterwards, the group planned to pass through California to pick up driver’s licenses.
• Governor Schwarzenegger is also poised to veto a gay marriage bill. An aide said Schwarzenegger would reject the measure “out of respect for the will of the people.” Plus, everyone knows Arnold hates girly men.
• Governor Schwarzenegger is poised to sign a bill to ban sales of soda and fast food on public school campuses, including high schools — despite protests from gay illegal immigrant students with driver’s licenses.
• A non-Hawaiian student is pursuing a discrimination lawsuit against the Hawaiians-only Kamehameha Schools in Honolulu. The student was rejected by the private school in 2003. Wonder if the school vending machines offer Hawaiian Punch.
• Another lawsuit is being launched by foes of the new Georgia law requiring voters to present photo identification at the polls. Critics charge the law was created by Republicans to suppress minority voting. Ironically, illegal immigrants with California driver’s licenses should have no trouble casting their votes.
• Investigators decided the murder of DJ Jam Master Jay was not related to conflicts between 50 Cent and drug lord Kenneth “Supreme” McGriff. Police once suspected McGriff was involved in the death of the Run-DMC member and Fitty mentor. But now McGriff has been cleared of the crime. No word yet on all the other crimes McGriff probably is responsible for having committed.
• Busta Rhymes’ bodyguard busted the face of a fan seeking an autograph. The head busting occurred in a bustling Manhattan deli. But Busta bussed his bodyguard to the fan’s place of employment to bust down and apologize, probably to avoid a bust.
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
Essay 141
There’s a lack of diversity in the diversity ads in DiversityInc.
What compels an advertiser to force fit corporate taglines and positions with an alleged commitment to diversity?
PricewaterhouseCoopers asks, “when you left for work this morning, what did you leave behind?*” The asterisk connects to “connectedthinking” — a copyrighted phrase from the advertiser. Don’t get the connection.
Reed Smith portrays a Black employee with the headline, “When You’re Human Resources Counsel To More Than Two Thousand People, Quality Matters” — which ties to the organization’s “Quality Matters” slogan. Heaven forbid quality should matter in companies with fewer employees. Or in Reed Smith ads.
“Energizing Opportunities With Diverse Suppliers,” states Sempra Energy utilities. Fight the power.
The United States Tennis Association lobs an interesting notion. “At the USTA, we believe nothing should separate people…except maybe the net.” Right. Tennis is suddenly a Multicultural Mecca. Let’s see, there are the Williams sisters. And James Blake. And the Williams sisters’ Dad. And the Williams sisters’ Mom. And…ummmm.
Starbucks serves up a strange brew. “The steam that rises as we share coffee creates inspiration. The energy that rises as we share ideas creates growth.” The nonsense is signed off with, “Honoring our origins. Enriched by our blends.” Makes you want to switch to Folgers.
Pitney Bowes starts a parade of diversity messages exhibiting “We Are The World” pictures of employees — and the ad even features a guy in a wheelchair. Now that’s breakthrough.
“Not Everyone at PepsiCo Sees Things the Same Way.” However, countless advertisers have executed the same thought in the same way, even using the same words.
Darden Restaurants brag, “What We Serve Is As Diverse As Who We Are.” The roster includes Olive Garden Italian Restaurant and Bahama Breeze, where you’ll probably never see Italian or Bahamian employees. Go figure.
“A diversity of great technology and solutions starts with a diversity of great people,” according to the stereotypically diverse team representing Raytheon.
HSBC proclaims, “Imagine…an organization as individual as you are.” Directly below is the photo of a completely generic Black woman.
Monster roars, “Unique perspectives make businesses better.” Email to Monster: Unique headlines make ads better.
Deloitte tries a twist with “Different perspectives. Diverse minds create solutions.” The layout depicts pairs of shoes. Please wipe this idea before entering.
Nothing proves diversity like awards and endorsements. Pitney Bowes lists honors from Fortune, Asian Enterprise Magazine, Hispanic Magazine, LATINA Styles and DiversityInc. PepsiCo boasts top ten rankings in seven minority categories. HSBC mentions earning recognition from “numerous national and local publications.” Southern Company holds a threepeat in Fortune Magazine’s Most Admired Companies. SBC records Hispanic Magazine, Essence, the Annenberg Public Policy Center, Fortune and DiversityInc among its admirers. WellPoint is another Fortune favorite. Marriott takes applause from Working Mother, Fortune and DiversityInc.
And it’s rather disturbing to peruse the diversity and recruitment communications from the U.S. Department of State, the Air National Guard, the Central Intelligence Agency, Homeland Security and National Security Agency.
Finally, SBC shows the simple image of an SBC coffee mug filled with a variety of writing instruments. The headline reads, “We’re Proud Of Our Diversity In The Workplace.” While not totally original, it comes the closest to being decent.
What compels an advertiser to force fit corporate taglines and positions with an alleged commitment to diversity?
PricewaterhouseCoopers asks, “when you left for work this morning, what did you leave behind?*” The asterisk connects to “connectedthinking” — a copyrighted phrase from the advertiser. Don’t get the connection.
Reed Smith portrays a Black employee with the headline, “When You’re Human Resources Counsel To More Than Two Thousand People, Quality Matters” — which ties to the organization’s “Quality Matters” slogan. Heaven forbid quality should matter in companies with fewer employees. Or in Reed Smith ads.
“Energizing Opportunities With Diverse Suppliers,” states Sempra Energy utilities. Fight the power.
The United States Tennis Association lobs an interesting notion. “At the USTA, we believe nothing should separate people…except maybe the net.” Right. Tennis is suddenly a Multicultural Mecca. Let’s see, there are the Williams sisters. And James Blake. And the Williams sisters’ Dad. And the Williams sisters’ Mom. And…ummmm.
Starbucks serves up a strange brew. “The steam that rises as we share coffee creates inspiration. The energy that rises as we share ideas creates growth.” The nonsense is signed off with, “Honoring our origins. Enriched by our blends.” Makes you want to switch to Folgers.
Pitney Bowes starts a parade of diversity messages exhibiting “We Are The World” pictures of employees — and the ad even features a guy in a wheelchair. Now that’s breakthrough.
“Not Everyone at PepsiCo Sees Things the Same Way.” However, countless advertisers have executed the same thought in the same way, even using the same words.
Darden Restaurants brag, “What We Serve Is As Diverse As Who We Are.” The roster includes Olive Garden Italian Restaurant and Bahama Breeze, where you’ll probably never see Italian or Bahamian employees. Go figure.
“A diversity of great technology and solutions starts with a diversity of great people,” according to the stereotypically diverse team representing Raytheon.
HSBC proclaims, “Imagine…an organization as individual as you are.” Directly below is the photo of a completely generic Black woman.
Monster roars, “Unique perspectives make businesses better.” Email to Monster: Unique headlines make ads better.
Deloitte tries a twist with “Different perspectives. Diverse minds create solutions.” The layout depicts pairs of shoes. Please wipe this idea before entering.
Nothing proves diversity like awards and endorsements. Pitney Bowes lists honors from Fortune, Asian Enterprise Magazine, Hispanic Magazine, LATINA Styles and DiversityInc. PepsiCo boasts top ten rankings in seven minority categories. HSBC mentions earning recognition from “numerous national and local publications.” Southern Company holds a threepeat in Fortune Magazine’s Most Admired Companies. SBC records Hispanic Magazine, Essence, the Annenberg Public Policy Center, Fortune and DiversityInc among its admirers. WellPoint is another Fortune favorite. Marriott takes applause from Working Mother, Fortune and DiversityInc.
And it’s rather disturbing to peruse the diversity and recruitment communications from the U.S. Department of State, the Air National Guard, the Central Intelligence Agency, Homeland Security and National Security Agency.
Finally, SBC shows the simple image of an SBC coffee mug filled with a variety of writing instruments. The headline reads, “We’re Proud Of Our Diversity In The Workplace.” While not totally original, it comes the closest to being decent.
Welcome, New and Old Readers.
Welcome to MultiCultClassics.blogspot.com
The blog launched in March 2005. The initial goal was to spark discussions and debates about multiculturalism in the advertising industry — including all the good, bad and ugly complexities and contradictions.
Admittedly, there wasn’t a master plan or long-term strategy. Just decided to begin typing and see where it might go.
Six months and nearly 150 essays later, the plan is no clearer. The strategy is being reworked daily too.
Nonetheless, the conversation continues — despite the fact that it’s more of a monologue versus dialogue.
Here’s what MultiCultClassics.blogspot.com offers you:
If you’re deep into the multicultural advertising scene, this is the place for relatable, relevant insights and more. It’s all the stuff you’d toss around the virtual water cooler.
If you’re semi-clueless to the world outside of your personal universe, this is the place for you as well. One deliberate tactic here is to expose the masses to progressive, 21st century diversity. It’s not something exclusive to the human resources department. Think of the blog as delivering a recommended daily allowance of culture.
Please read the blog starting at Essay One. You’re encouraged to agree or disagree with anything posted.
Please visit often. Admission is free. Open to the public 24 hours a day.
Finally, please share the blog with everyone you know. It works best with an inclusive spirit.
The blog launched in March 2005. The initial goal was to spark discussions and debates about multiculturalism in the advertising industry — including all the good, bad and ugly complexities and contradictions.
Admittedly, there wasn’t a master plan or long-term strategy. Just decided to begin typing and see where it might go.
Six months and nearly 150 essays later, the plan is no clearer. The strategy is being reworked daily too.
Nonetheless, the conversation continues — despite the fact that it’s more of a monologue versus dialogue.
Here’s what MultiCultClassics.blogspot.com offers you:
If you’re deep into the multicultural advertising scene, this is the place for relatable, relevant insights and more. It’s all the stuff you’d toss around the virtual water cooler.
If you’re semi-clueless to the world outside of your personal universe, this is the place for you as well. One deliberate tactic here is to expose the masses to progressive, 21st century diversity. It’s not something exclusive to the human resources department. Think of the blog as delivering a recommended daily allowance of culture.
Please read the blog starting at Essay One. You’re encouraged to agree or disagree with anything posted.
Please visit often. Admission is free. Open to the public 24 hours a day.
Finally, please share the blog with everyone you know. It works best with an inclusive spirit.
Monday, September 05, 2005
Essay 140
The stories surrounding New Orleans are bad, and it appears things may get significantly more ugly. Don’t want to add fuel to the flames, as plenty of folks are already criticizing the situation from all angles.
For insightful perspectives, check out columnist Mary Mitchell at suntimes.com. Mitchell is a thoughtful and brilliant writer who has traveled to New Orleans to help, report and reflect. Definitely worth reading.
For insightful perspectives, check out columnist Mary Mitchell at suntimes.com. Mitchell is a thoughtful and brilliant writer who has traveled to New Orleans to help, report and reflect. Definitely worth reading.
Sunday, September 04, 2005
Essay 139
The Sunday Evening News with MultiCultClassics Minutes…
• Time magazine dubbed him “Hip-Hop’s Class Act.” He rejects the gangsta lifestyle. His words can be positive and uplifting. He cried for rappers to end gay-bashing lyrics. His style is sophisticated and clean. Critics have called him a voice for this or any other generation. Then… he bashed President Bush. On live TV. During a charity benefit broadcast by NBC. He even said, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.” Hey, maybe Kanye West could perform a duet with classical pianist Condoleezza Rice.
• Bush top aides met with Black leaders to discuss issues and plans surrounding the relief efforts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. “I think they wanted to make sure that the leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus, the Urban League and the NAACP knew that they were very sensitive to trying to make sure that things went right from here on out. And I think they wanted to try to dispel any kind of notions that the administration did not care about African American people — or anyone else,” said meeting attendee Rep. Elijah E. Cummings. No word yet on when the Bush aides will meet with Kanye West.
• A Chicago alderman is catching heat for a memo in which she stated a neighborhood’s increased trash and rodent problem was “due to the enormous amount of Latinos residing in the” area. The alderman has received phone calls, including a racist message, from unhappy community members. She claimed a staff member wrote the memo, and she signed it without carefully reviewing it. Which sort of sounds like a bunch of garbage.
• American Express is experiencing the downside of celebrity sports spokespersons. The financial client bankrolled a splashy multimedia campaign starring Andy Roddick to run during the U.S. Open. Unfortunately, Roddick lost in the first round. Ironically, the only chance of spotting the wunderkind at this point is by viewing the commercials and print ads. The campaign plays off “Andy’s Mojo.” The concept should be revised to “Andy’s No-Show.”
• The Charlotte Observer conducted a study that revealed Blacks who purchased homes were significantly more likely to receive mortgage loans at higher rates versus lower market rates. In fact, the figures showed Blacks were four times as likely as Whites to get hit with loans at higher rates. Plus, the top 10 banks rejected Blacks twice as often as Whites. Wonder if George and Weezy Jefferson faced similar challenges when they were movin’ on up.
• The Chicago Public Health Department is releasing a report titled, “The Challenge To An Apple A Day.” The pioneering study details the types of food and products available to people in different communities. One particularly disturbing finding: Folks in poor, inner-city neighborhoods have few outlets offering fresh, high-quality produce. It’s pretty sad when your produce options lead with Froot Loops and Apple Jacks.
• Time magazine dubbed him “Hip-Hop’s Class Act.” He rejects the gangsta lifestyle. His words can be positive and uplifting. He cried for rappers to end gay-bashing lyrics. His style is sophisticated and clean. Critics have called him a voice for this or any other generation. Then… he bashed President Bush. On live TV. During a charity benefit broadcast by NBC. He even said, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.” Hey, maybe Kanye West could perform a duet with classical pianist Condoleezza Rice.
• Bush top aides met with Black leaders to discuss issues and plans surrounding the relief efforts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. “I think they wanted to make sure that the leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus, the Urban League and the NAACP knew that they were very sensitive to trying to make sure that things went right from here on out. And I think they wanted to try to dispel any kind of notions that the administration did not care about African American people — or anyone else,” said meeting attendee Rep. Elijah E. Cummings. No word yet on when the Bush aides will meet with Kanye West.
• A Chicago alderman is catching heat for a memo in which she stated a neighborhood’s increased trash and rodent problem was “due to the enormous amount of Latinos residing in the” area. The alderman has received phone calls, including a racist message, from unhappy community members. She claimed a staff member wrote the memo, and she signed it without carefully reviewing it. Which sort of sounds like a bunch of garbage.
• American Express is experiencing the downside of celebrity sports spokespersons. The financial client bankrolled a splashy multimedia campaign starring Andy Roddick to run during the U.S. Open. Unfortunately, Roddick lost in the first round. Ironically, the only chance of spotting the wunderkind at this point is by viewing the commercials and print ads. The campaign plays off “Andy’s Mojo.” The concept should be revised to “Andy’s No-Show.”
• The Charlotte Observer conducted a study that revealed Blacks who purchased homes were significantly more likely to receive mortgage loans at higher rates versus lower market rates. In fact, the figures showed Blacks were four times as likely as Whites to get hit with loans at higher rates. Plus, the top 10 banks rejected Blacks twice as often as Whites. Wonder if George and Weezy Jefferson faced similar challenges when they were movin’ on up.
• The Chicago Public Health Department is releasing a report titled, “The Challenge To An Apple A Day.” The pioneering study details the types of food and products available to people in different communities. One particularly disturbing finding: Folks in poor, inner-city neighborhoods have few outlets offering fresh, high-quality produce. It’s pretty sad when your produce options lead with Froot Loops and Apple Jacks.
Essay 138
Here’s another excellent perspective from another excellent writer, which appeared in The New York Times…
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
September 4, 2005
What Happens to a Race Deferred
By JASON DePARLE
WASHINGTON
THE white people got out. Most of them, anyway. If television and newspaper images can be deemed a statistical sample, it was mostly black people who were left behind. Poor black people, growing more hungry, sick and frightened by the hour as faraway officials counseled patience and warned that rescues take time.
What a shocked world saw exposed in New Orleans last week wasn’t just a broken levee. It was a cleavage of race and class, at once familiar and startlingly new, laid bare in a setting where they suddenly amounted to matters of life and death. Hydrology joined sociology throughout the story line, from the settling of the flood-prone city, where well-to-do white people lived on the high ground, to its frantic abandonment.
The pictures of the suffering vied with reports of marauding, of gunshots fired at rescue vehicles and armed bands taking over the streets. The city of quaint eccentricity — of King Cakes, Mardi Gras beads and nice neighbors named Tookie — had taken a Conradian turn.
In the middle of the delayed rescue, the New Orleans mayor, C. Ray Nagin, a local boy made good from a poor, black ward, burst into tears of frustration as he denounced slow moving federal officials and called for martial law.
Even people who had spent a lifetime studying race and class found themselves slack-jawed.
“This is a pretty graphic illustration of who gets left behind in this society — in a literal way,” said Christopher Jencks, a sociologist glued to the televised images from his office at Harvard. Surprised to have found himself surprised, Mr. Jencks took to thinking out loud. “Maybe it’s just an in-the-face version of something I already knew,” he said. “All the people who don’t get out, or don’t have the resources, or don’t believe the warning are African-American.”
“It’s not that it’s at odds with the way I see American society,” Mr. Jencks said. “But it’s at odds with the way I want to see American society.”
Last week it was how others saw American society, too, in images beamed across the globe. Were it not for the distinctive outlines of the Superdome, the pictures of hovering rescue helicopters might have carried a Somalian dateline. The Sri Lankan ambassador offered to help raise foreign aid.
Anyone who knew New Orleans knew that danger lurked behind the festive front. Let the good times roll, the tourists on Bourbon Street were told. Yet in every season, someone who rolled a few blocks in the wrong direction wound up in the city morgue.
Unusually poor (27.4 percent below the poverty line in 2000), disproportionately black (over two-thirds), the Big Easy is also disproportionately murderous — with a rate that was for years among the country’s highest.
Once one of the most mixed societies, in recent decades, the city has become unusually segregated, and the white middle class is all but gone, moved north across Lake Pontchartrain or west to Jefferson Parish — home of David Duke, the one-time Klansman who ran for governor in 1991 and won more than half of the state’s white vote.
Shortly after I arrived in town two decades ago as a fledgling reporter, I was dispatched to cover a cheerleading tryout, and I asked a grinning, half-drunk accountant where he was from, city or suburb. “White people don’t live in New Orleans,” he answered with a where-have-you-been disdain.
For those who loved it, its glories as well as its flaws, last week brought only heartbreak. So much of New Orleans, from its music and its food to its architecture, had shown a rainbow society at its best, even as everyone knew it was more complicated than that.
“New Orleans, first of all, is both in reality and in rhetoric an extraordinarily successful multicultural society,” said Philip Carter, a developer and retired journalist whose roots in the city extend back more at least four generations. “But is also a multicultural society riven by race and class, and all this has been exposed by these stormy days. The people of our community are pitted against each other across the barricades of race and class that six months from now may be last remaining levees in New Orleans.”
No one was immune, of course. With 80 percent of the city under water, tragedy swallowed the privilege and poor, and traveled spread across racial lines.
But the divides in the city were evident in things as simple as access to a car. The 35 percent of black households that didn’t have one, compared with just 15 percent among whites.
“The evacuation plan was really based on people driving out,” said Craig E. Colten, a geologist at Louisiana State University and an expert on the city’s vulnerable topography. “They didn’t have buses. They didn’t have trains.”
As if to punctuate the divide, the water especially devastated the Ninth Ward, among city’s poorest and lowest lying.
“Out West, there is a saying that water flows to money,” Mr. Colten said. “But in New Orleans, water flows away from money. Those with resources who control where the drainage goes have always chosen to live on the high ground. So the people in the low areas were hardest hit.”
Outrage grew as the week wore on, among black politicians who saw the tragedy as a reflection of a broader neglect of American cities, and in the blogosphere.
“The real reason no one is helping is because of the color of these people!” wrote “myfan88” on the Flickr blog. “This is Hotel Rwanda all over again.”
“Is this what the pioneers of the civil rights movement fought to achieve, a society where many black people are as trapped and isolated by their poverty as they were by legal segregation laws?” wrote Mark Naison, director of the urban studies program at Fordham, on another blog.
One question that could not be answered last week was whether, put to a similar test, other cities would fracture along the same lines.
At one level, everything about New Orleans appears sui generis, not least its location below sea level. Many New Orleanians don’t just accept the jokes about living in a Banana Republic. They spread them.
But in a quieter catastrophe, the 1995 heat wave that killed hundreds of Chicagoans, blacks in comparable age groups as whites died at higher rates — in part because they tended to live in greater social isolation, in depopulated parts of town. As in New Orleans, space intertwined with race.
And the violence? Similarly shocking scenes had erupted in Los Angeles in 1992, after the acquittal of white police officers charged with beating a black man, Rodney King. Newark, Detroit, Washington — all burned in the race riots of the 1960’s. It was for residents of any major city, watching the mayhem, to feel certain their community would be immune.
With months still to go just to pump out the water that covers the city, no one can be sure how the social fault lines will rearrange. But with white flight a defining element of New Orleans in the recent past, there was already the fear in the air this week that the breached levee would leave a separated society further apart.
“Maybe we can build the levees back,” said Mr. Carter. “But that sense of extreme division by class and race is going to long survive the physical reconstruction of New Orleans.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
September 4, 2005
What Happens to a Race Deferred
By JASON DePARLE
WASHINGTON
THE white people got out. Most of them, anyway. If television and newspaper images can be deemed a statistical sample, it was mostly black people who were left behind. Poor black people, growing more hungry, sick and frightened by the hour as faraway officials counseled patience and warned that rescues take time.
What a shocked world saw exposed in New Orleans last week wasn’t just a broken levee. It was a cleavage of race and class, at once familiar and startlingly new, laid bare in a setting where they suddenly amounted to matters of life and death. Hydrology joined sociology throughout the story line, from the settling of the flood-prone city, where well-to-do white people lived on the high ground, to its frantic abandonment.
The pictures of the suffering vied with reports of marauding, of gunshots fired at rescue vehicles and armed bands taking over the streets. The city of quaint eccentricity — of King Cakes, Mardi Gras beads and nice neighbors named Tookie — had taken a Conradian turn.
In the middle of the delayed rescue, the New Orleans mayor, C. Ray Nagin, a local boy made good from a poor, black ward, burst into tears of frustration as he denounced slow moving federal officials and called for martial law.
Even people who had spent a lifetime studying race and class found themselves slack-jawed.
“This is a pretty graphic illustration of who gets left behind in this society — in a literal way,” said Christopher Jencks, a sociologist glued to the televised images from his office at Harvard. Surprised to have found himself surprised, Mr. Jencks took to thinking out loud. “Maybe it’s just an in-the-face version of something I already knew,” he said. “All the people who don’t get out, or don’t have the resources, or don’t believe the warning are African-American.”
“It’s not that it’s at odds with the way I see American society,” Mr. Jencks said. “But it’s at odds with the way I want to see American society.”
Last week it was how others saw American society, too, in images beamed across the globe. Were it not for the distinctive outlines of the Superdome, the pictures of hovering rescue helicopters might have carried a Somalian dateline. The Sri Lankan ambassador offered to help raise foreign aid.
Anyone who knew New Orleans knew that danger lurked behind the festive front. Let the good times roll, the tourists on Bourbon Street were told. Yet in every season, someone who rolled a few blocks in the wrong direction wound up in the city morgue.
Unusually poor (27.4 percent below the poverty line in 2000), disproportionately black (over two-thirds), the Big Easy is also disproportionately murderous — with a rate that was for years among the country’s highest.
Once one of the most mixed societies, in recent decades, the city has become unusually segregated, and the white middle class is all but gone, moved north across Lake Pontchartrain or west to Jefferson Parish — home of David Duke, the one-time Klansman who ran for governor in 1991 and won more than half of the state’s white vote.
Shortly after I arrived in town two decades ago as a fledgling reporter, I was dispatched to cover a cheerleading tryout, and I asked a grinning, half-drunk accountant where he was from, city or suburb. “White people don’t live in New Orleans,” he answered with a where-have-you-been disdain.
For those who loved it, its glories as well as its flaws, last week brought only heartbreak. So much of New Orleans, from its music and its food to its architecture, had shown a rainbow society at its best, even as everyone knew it was more complicated than that.
“New Orleans, first of all, is both in reality and in rhetoric an extraordinarily successful multicultural society,” said Philip Carter, a developer and retired journalist whose roots in the city extend back more at least four generations. “But is also a multicultural society riven by race and class, and all this has been exposed by these stormy days. The people of our community are pitted against each other across the barricades of race and class that six months from now may be last remaining levees in New Orleans.”
No one was immune, of course. With 80 percent of the city under water, tragedy swallowed the privilege and poor, and traveled spread across racial lines.
But the divides in the city were evident in things as simple as access to a car. The 35 percent of black households that didn’t have one, compared with just 15 percent among whites.
“The evacuation plan was really based on people driving out,” said Craig E. Colten, a geologist at Louisiana State University and an expert on the city’s vulnerable topography. “They didn’t have buses. They didn’t have trains.”
As if to punctuate the divide, the water especially devastated the Ninth Ward, among city’s poorest and lowest lying.
“Out West, there is a saying that water flows to money,” Mr. Colten said. “But in New Orleans, water flows away from money. Those with resources who control where the drainage goes have always chosen to live on the high ground. So the people in the low areas were hardest hit.”
Outrage grew as the week wore on, among black politicians who saw the tragedy as a reflection of a broader neglect of American cities, and in the blogosphere.
“The real reason no one is helping is because of the color of these people!” wrote “myfan88” on the Flickr blog. “This is Hotel Rwanda all over again.”
“Is this what the pioneers of the civil rights movement fought to achieve, a society where many black people are as trapped and isolated by their poverty as they were by legal segregation laws?” wrote Mark Naison, director of the urban studies program at Fordham, on another blog.
One question that could not be answered last week was whether, put to a similar test, other cities would fracture along the same lines.
At one level, everything about New Orleans appears sui generis, not least its location below sea level. Many New Orleanians don’t just accept the jokes about living in a Banana Republic. They spread them.
But in a quieter catastrophe, the 1995 heat wave that killed hundreds of Chicagoans, blacks in comparable age groups as whites died at higher rates — in part because they tended to live in greater social isolation, in depopulated parts of town. As in New Orleans, space intertwined with race.
And the violence? Similarly shocking scenes had erupted in Los Angeles in 1992, after the acquittal of white police officers charged with beating a black man, Rodney King. Newark, Detroit, Washington — all burned in the race riots of the 1960’s. It was for residents of any major city, watching the mayhem, to feel certain their community would be immune.
With months still to go just to pump out the water that covers the city, no one can be sure how the social fault lines will rearrange. But with white flight a defining element of New Orleans in the recent past, there was already the fear in the air this week that the breached levee would leave a separated society further apart.
“Maybe we can build the levees back,” said Mr. Carter. “But that sense of extreme division by class and race is going to long survive the physical reconstruction of New Orleans.”
Essay 137
Here’s an excellent column by an excellent writer in Chicago…
-------------------------------------------------------------
Blacks must monitor how hurricane victims are treated
September 4, 2005
BY MARY MITCHELL SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
My decision was made the moment I heard my colleague’s loud sobs on the phone. I had tossed and turned the entire night before, haunted by the images of desperate black people stranded in the New Orleans Superdome surrounded by sewage, garbage and dead bodies. First they were at the mercy of a natural disaster. Now they were at the mercy of an inept federal government that had so badly bungled their rescue that New Orleans’ Mayor C. Ray Nagin broke down and started cursing during a radio call-in show.
‘Who is available to go?’
Besides sending money and donating clothes or material goods, black people of conscience will have to go to the New Orleans and Mississippi region, not only to aid the victims, but to monitor how these victims are being treated. I wasn’t the only person who reached that conclusion.
“Who is available to go to Louisiana and Mississippi,” pleaded Monique Caradine in an e-mail. The host of “Mo Talks,” a cable talk show, and the former radio personality at WVON-1450, Caradine was both sad and outraged.
“It is sickening that [the survivors] are being portrayed as looters, outlaws and criminals. The National Guard is patrolling the streets with automatic weapons. These people are not looters. They are trying to survive,” she said.
Four days after Hurricane Katrina turned the bustling city of New Orleans into a modern-day Atlantis, thousands of black survivors were still at the mercy of the elements -- and now hunger, thirst, lack of sanitation and medical treatment and alleged armed thugs.
‘Margins of society’
Many who managed by some miracle to survive ended up dying in the sweltering, filthy aftermath because no one had bothered to come up with a workable plan to get them out.
I understood my friend’s breakdown. People of all nationalities were affected by the storm, but African Americans especially were in shock. Day after day, we are bombarded with images of immense suffering and excuses about why aid has been trickling into New Orleans.
And to add insult to injury, now these survivors -- and that’s what they are, survivors, not refugees as they are being called by so many media as though we are talking about people from a foreign country rather than Americans in a devastated U.S. city -- are now being portrayed as out-of-control, wild animals.
I thought about that Friday as I listened to two white patrons in a restaurant chat about how “those people are shooting at rescue helicopters.” “What sense does that make?” one guy asked the other. “They are shooting at the helicopters and saying you better get my family.”
It’s a frightening story and one that has been used to justify why rescue workers were unable to quickly deliver food. Yet, it’s the same story being told over and over again -- not a similar story, but the same story. I haven’t seen one photograph of gun-toting thugs, or armed gangs or anything to suggest that a great number of the New Orleans survivors are on a pillaging rampage, or, as also alleged, raping and trying to murder the people who are trying to help them.
“I just don’t know how widespread the violence is, or if there’s really any measurable violence at all,” Caradine said.
How were they left behind?
While “No Child Left Behind” has been a mantra for the Bush administration, Americans have watched as a national crisis ravages tens of thousands of people who were left behind to face a hurricane -- simply because most of them lacked the means to escape. How were all these black Americans left behind while so many white people were able to flee?
What is it about our society that separates human beings like wheat from chaff?
On Friday, the New York Times finally broached the obvious -- African Americans, usually on the “margins of society” in a city known as a worldwide tourist attraction, were now thrust in the “center of the tragedy,” its headline proclaimed.
“I think a lot of it has to do with race and class,” the Rev. Calvin O. Butts III, pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem told the paper. “The people affected were largely poor people. Poor, black people.”
I knew that I would go
In days to come, experts will explain how it came to be that poor people were clustered in the most vulnerable areas of the city while the more affluent and mostly white population lived on higher ground. And government officials will try to explain the unfathomable bottle-neck in aid that left thousands of survivors in third-world conditions -- without even water, nor food -- for four days.
But there’s just no explaining why authorities suspended rescue and evacuation efforts to focus instead on looting. Americans died while police were trying to stop people from taking items that eventually would sink in the mud or burn in the fires. There’s no explaining why material things left behind by those who escaped meant more to government officials than human lives.
By the time my colleague had hung up the phone, I knew that I would go to Louisiana and try to do something more than wonder what went so deadly wrong.
Copyright © The Sun-Times Company. All rights reserved.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Blacks must monitor how hurricane victims are treated
September 4, 2005
BY MARY MITCHELL SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
My decision was made the moment I heard my colleague’s loud sobs on the phone. I had tossed and turned the entire night before, haunted by the images of desperate black people stranded in the New Orleans Superdome surrounded by sewage, garbage and dead bodies. First they were at the mercy of a natural disaster. Now they were at the mercy of an inept federal government that had so badly bungled their rescue that New Orleans’ Mayor C. Ray Nagin broke down and started cursing during a radio call-in show.
‘Who is available to go?’
Besides sending money and donating clothes or material goods, black people of conscience will have to go to the New Orleans and Mississippi region, not only to aid the victims, but to monitor how these victims are being treated. I wasn’t the only person who reached that conclusion.
“Who is available to go to Louisiana and Mississippi,” pleaded Monique Caradine in an e-mail. The host of “Mo Talks,” a cable talk show, and the former radio personality at WVON-1450, Caradine was both sad and outraged.
“It is sickening that [the survivors] are being portrayed as looters, outlaws and criminals. The National Guard is patrolling the streets with automatic weapons. These people are not looters. They are trying to survive,” she said.
Four days after Hurricane Katrina turned the bustling city of New Orleans into a modern-day Atlantis, thousands of black survivors were still at the mercy of the elements -- and now hunger, thirst, lack of sanitation and medical treatment and alleged armed thugs.
‘Margins of society’
Many who managed by some miracle to survive ended up dying in the sweltering, filthy aftermath because no one had bothered to come up with a workable plan to get them out.
I understood my friend’s breakdown. People of all nationalities were affected by the storm, but African Americans especially were in shock. Day after day, we are bombarded with images of immense suffering and excuses about why aid has been trickling into New Orleans.
And to add insult to injury, now these survivors -- and that’s what they are, survivors, not refugees as they are being called by so many media as though we are talking about people from a foreign country rather than Americans in a devastated U.S. city -- are now being portrayed as out-of-control, wild animals.
I thought about that Friday as I listened to two white patrons in a restaurant chat about how “those people are shooting at rescue helicopters.” “What sense does that make?” one guy asked the other. “They are shooting at the helicopters and saying you better get my family.”
It’s a frightening story and one that has been used to justify why rescue workers were unable to quickly deliver food. Yet, it’s the same story being told over and over again -- not a similar story, but the same story. I haven’t seen one photograph of gun-toting thugs, or armed gangs or anything to suggest that a great number of the New Orleans survivors are on a pillaging rampage, or, as also alleged, raping and trying to murder the people who are trying to help them.
“I just don’t know how widespread the violence is, or if there’s really any measurable violence at all,” Caradine said.
How were they left behind?
While “No Child Left Behind” has been a mantra for the Bush administration, Americans have watched as a national crisis ravages tens of thousands of people who were left behind to face a hurricane -- simply because most of them lacked the means to escape. How were all these black Americans left behind while so many white people were able to flee?
What is it about our society that separates human beings like wheat from chaff?
On Friday, the New York Times finally broached the obvious -- African Americans, usually on the “margins of society” in a city known as a worldwide tourist attraction, were now thrust in the “center of the tragedy,” its headline proclaimed.
“I think a lot of it has to do with race and class,” the Rev. Calvin O. Butts III, pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem told the paper. “The people affected were largely poor people. Poor, black people.”
I knew that I would go
In days to come, experts will explain how it came to be that poor people were clustered in the most vulnerable areas of the city while the more affluent and mostly white population lived on higher ground. And government officials will try to explain the unfathomable bottle-neck in aid that left thousands of survivors in third-world conditions -- without even water, nor food -- for four days.
But there’s just no explaining why authorities suspended rescue and evacuation efforts to focus instead on looting. Americans died while police were trying to stop people from taking items that eventually would sink in the mud or burn in the fires. There’s no explaining why material things left behind by those who escaped meant more to government officials than human lives.
By the time my colleague had hung up the phone, I knew that I would go to Louisiana and try to do something more than wonder what went so deadly wrong.
Copyright © The Sun-Times Company. All rights reserved.
Essay 136
Mickey D’s implored consumers to “keep your eyes on your fries.” Now the tagline is downright prophetic.
For starters, McDonald’s is still embroiled — maybe deep-fried is the appropriate term — in lawsuits involving its World-Famous Fries. The fast-food dinosaur has not met the legally mandated deadline to change the cooking oil of its product, which contains notorious trans fatty acids. Mickey D’s excuse? They’re having trouble finding an alternative that tastes as good. Please. Since when has taste ever motivated a decision at The Golden Arches?
A California judge ordered Mickey D’s to pay $8.5 million to school the public on the fat it uses. The American Heart Association will receive $7 million for educational programs about trans fatty acids. McDonald’s will use the remaining $1.5 million to announce its failure to meet the deadline. While substantial, the amount is not very much for Mickey D’s. Significantly more loot was spent promoting the McGriddles® sandwich. Additionally, the last time McDonald’s produced public service announcements on this topic, legalese-filled print ads were discreetly placed in publications (see Essay 25).
The judge should have forced the company to create a McDonaldland character as part of the settlement. McTransFattyAcid would be a friendly muppet who encourages the rest of the gang to undergo biopsies.
Recent medical studies found a potential link between french fries and breast cancer. The suspected culprits for the problems are none other than trans fatty acids. Better think twice about handing your kids that Happy Meal, folks. Children could probably benefit more from ingesting the toy surprise versus the fries.
California Attorney General Bill Lockyer is taking the game to another level. Lockyer wants to place warning labels on potato chips and french fries. The warnings would alert consumers to the presence of acrylamide in chips and fries, a chemical thought to cause cancer. Imagine a label similar to the Surgeon General’s warnings currently on cigarette packages and advertising. There certainly are eerie parallels between Big Tobacco and Big Macs.
Mickey D’s doesn’t appear too fazed by the bad press. Indeed, the corporate leaders in Oak Brook are laughing all the way to the bank, as sales figures continue to rise with America’s collective blood pressure.
Makes you wonder what to do when the rude order taker barks, “Would you like fries with that?”
For starters, McDonald’s is still embroiled — maybe deep-fried is the appropriate term — in lawsuits involving its World-Famous Fries. The fast-food dinosaur has not met the legally mandated deadline to change the cooking oil of its product, which contains notorious trans fatty acids. Mickey D’s excuse? They’re having trouble finding an alternative that tastes as good. Please. Since when has taste ever motivated a decision at The Golden Arches?
A California judge ordered Mickey D’s to pay $8.5 million to school the public on the fat it uses. The American Heart Association will receive $7 million for educational programs about trans fatty acids. McDonald’s will use the remaining $1.5 million to announce its failure to meet the deadline. While substantial, the amount is not very much for Mickey D’s. Significantly more loot was spent promoting the McGriddles® sandwich. Additionally, the last time McDonald’s produced public service announcements on this topic, legalese-filled print ads were discreetly placed in publications (see Essay 25).
The judge should have forced the company to create a McDonaldland character as part of the settlement. McTransFattyAcid would be a friendly muppet who encourages the rest of the gang to undergo biopsies.
Recent medical studies found a potential link between french fries and breast cancer. The suspected culprits for the problems are none other than trans fatty acids. Better think twice about handing your kids that Happy Meal, folks. Children could probably benefit more from ingesting the toy surprise versus the fries.
California Attorney General Bill Lockyer is taking the game to another level. Lockyer wants to place warning labels on potato chips and french fries. The warnings would alert consumers to the presence of acrylamide in chips and fries, a chemical thought to cause cancer. Imagine a label similar to the Surgeon General’s warnings currently on cigarette packages and advertising. There certainly are eerie parallels between Big Tobacco and Big Macs.
Mickey D’s doesn’t appear too fazed by the bad press. Indeed, the corporate leaders in Oak Brook are laughing all the way to the bank, as sales figures continue to rise with America’s collective blood pressure.
Makes you wonder what to do when the rude order taker barks, “Would you like fries with that?”
Friday, September 02, 2005
Essay 135
The MultiCultClassics Police Blotter…
> The scenario involving Rev. James Meeks and a Chicago cop appears to be closing. Chicago Police Supt. Phil Cline announced an investigation determined the cop “under the circumstances, acted properly.” However, the officer will receive a written reprimand for using profanity. The investigation reported Meeks was instructed to return to his vehicle three times before the cop pulled his firearm. “When a citizen is told by a uniformed police officer to get back in the car, they have to do it,” said Cline. “Our officers can pull their weapon when they feel a threat to their safety.” Meeks insists things unfolded differently, claiming the weapon was brandished immediately upon exiting his car. Meeks went on to call for voters to express themselves at the polling booths and “use our energy to make sure elected officials come up with concrete laws to protect our citizens.” So maybe the issue isn’t closing yet.
> Officers at the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol have reported a record-breaking number of illegal immigrant deaths for the year. The death toll has reached 415 in the past 11 months. The increase is attributed to many factors, including greater heat and more desperate, dangerous tactics by smugglers.
> There are new allegations of police abuse involving the NYPD. But the cops are the victims in this case. Officers filed a labor grievance over getting cut and bloodied while providing hair samples during random drug tests. The complaining officers also said they were subjected to unclean conditions. Guess Dirty Hairy cops just weren’t feeling lucky, punk.
> The scenario involving Rev. James Meeks and a Chicago cop appears to be closing. Chicago Police Supt. Phil Cline announced an investigation determined the cop “under the circumstances, acted properly.” However, the officer will receive a written reprimand for using profanity. The investigation reported Meeks was instructed to return to his vehicle three times before the cop pulled his firearm. “When a citizen is told by a uniformed police officer to get back in the car, they have to do it,” said Cline. “Our officers can pull their weapon when they feel a threat to their safety.” Meeks insists things unfolded differently, claiming the weapon was brandished immediately upon exiting his car. Meeks went on to call for voters to express themselves at the polling booths and “use our energy to make sure elected officials come up with concrete laws to protect our citizens.” So maybe the issue isn’t closing yet.
> Officers at the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol have reported a record-breaking number of illegal immigrant deaths for the year. The death toll has reached 415 in the past 11 months. The increase is attributed to many factors, including greater heat and more desperate, dangerous tactics by smugglers.
> There are new allegations of police abuse involving the NYPD. But the cops are the victims in this case. Officers filed a labor grievance over getting cut and bloodied while providing hair samples during random drug tests. The complaining officers also said they were subjected to unclean conditions. Guess Dirty Hairy cops just weren’t feeling lucky, punk.
Essay 134
Adage.com posted a copy of Shona Seifert’s court-mandated essay — check it out. Then enjoy the MultiCultClassics response below.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Asking Shona Seifert to draft an essay on the Proposed Code Of Ethics For The Advertising Industry is like asking O.J. Simpson to deliver a thesis on Healthy Relationships With Ex-Wives.
Seifert’s proposal makes a strong case for extending her prison sentence. You don’t have to read between the lines to see Seifert has not come to accept her own unlawful acts. Her negative and illegal thinking is blatantly clear. She throws blame on everything and everyone but herself, which is actually the standard behavior for a pathological felon — or a senior level account person in the Larry Tate mold. Then again, Tate’s shenanigans never warranted jail time.
Seifert also insults the business leaders and icons quoted throughout her exposition. These people never recommended cheating, lying or deliberate misconduct (a few of Woody Allen’s fictional characters excluded). Seifert is closer to a religious charlatan or even a fanatical terrorist who twists spiritual teachings to justify evil deeds. She should instead reference Hussein or Hitler — they’re more her style.
The judge who instructed Seifert to author the how-to manual probably had noble intentions. But the end result may generate greater harm than good. Seifert casts a bad light on the field, creating a net impression that unethical practices are the norm versus the exception.
Let’s keep things in proper perspective. Michael Jackson does not represent ideal parenting and childcare. The rogue officers at Abu Ghraib do not represent the U.S. Army. Jose Canseco does not represent Major League Baseball. Doctor Kervorkian does not represent the AMA. Enron executives do not represent American business. Shona Seifert does not represent the advertising industry.
Breaking the rules is admirable from a creative standpoint. But breaking the law is an entirely different story.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Asking Shona Seifert to draft an essay on the Proposed Code Of Ethics For The Advertising Industry is like asking O.J. Simpson to deliver a thesis on Healthy Relationships With Ex-Wives.
Seifert’s proposal makes a strong case for extending her prison sentence. You don’t have to read between the lines to see Seifert has not come to accept her own unlawful acts. Her negative and illegal thinking is blatantly clear. She throws blame on everything and everyone but herself, which is actually the standard behavior for a pathological felon — or a senior level account person in the Larry Tate mold. Then again, Tate’s shenanigans never warranted jail time.
Seifert also insults the business leaders and icons quoted throughout her exposition. These people never recommended cheating, lying or deliberate misconduct (a few of Woody Allen’s fictional characters excluded). Seifert is closer to a religious charlatan or even a fanatical terrorist who twists spiritual teachings to justify evil deeds. She should instead reference Hussein or Hitler — they’re more her style.
The judge who instructed Seifert to author the how-to manual probably had noble intentions. But the end result may generate greater harm than good. Seifert casts a bad light on the field, creating a net impression that unethical practices are the norm versus the exception.
Let’s keep things in proper perspective. Michael Jackson does not represent ideal parenting and childcare. The rogue officers at Abu Ghraib do not represent the U.S. Army. Jose Canseco does not represent Major League Baseball. Doctor Kervorkian does not represent the AMA. Enron executives do not represent American business. Shona Seifert does not represent the advertising industry.
Breaking the rules is admirable from a creative standpoint. But breaking the law is an entirely different story.
Thursday, September 01, 2005
Essay 133
Official MultiCultClassics Minutes…
• Orange County officials officially apologized for scheduling a special primary during a special Jewish holiday (see Essay 116). The apology includes offering early voting at synagogues and city halls. But others are attempting to create a bill that will allow Governor Schwarzenegger to pick an entirely new date. Schwarzenegger is rumored to be leaning toward moving the election to December 25. Just kidding.
• LAPD officials officially declined to apologize for actions involving Nation of Islam leader Tony Muhammad. Muhammad claimed he was kicked in the face after being handcuffed. The LAPD denied the charges. Guess the cops kicked Muhammad’s face before cuffing him. But only after failed attempts to kick him in the groin. Just kidding.
• London subway system officials officially banned Jerry Hall’s ads for her new reality show. The show has Hall seeking a younger boy toy from a stable of 12 studs — with the “winner” nabbing a six-figure wad of loot. The posters for the program depicted Hall with half-naked men wearing leashes. The subway system has a rule prohibiting images of people as sex objects. However, it’s OK for Londoners to engage in sex acts in the subways. Just kidding.
• No official apologies are necessary in a case of alleged police abuse in New York. A prisoner in Queens claimed cops roughed him up following his arrest. But a video camera showed the prisoner deliberately slammed his own head against a cell wall to create the injuries. The videotape captured cops urging the prisoner to stop, warning him, “You’re going to knock yourself out.” “I want to knock myself out and blame it on you guys,” the prisoner responded. Hope the judge inevitably pummels the prisoner with his gavel. Not kidding.
• The issue of media bias has officially risen along with the waters in New Orleans. Blacks are depicted looting stores. Whites are depicted looking for food. Only in America does a natural disaster become a racial disaster. Look for the aid concerts to be broadcast exclusively on BET.
• Orange County officials officially apologized for scheduling a special primary during a special Jewish holiday (see Essay 116). The apology includes offering early voting at synagogues and city halls. But others are attempting to create a bill that will allow Governor Schwarzenegger to pick an entirely new date. Schwarzenegger is rumored to be leaning toward moving the election to December 25. Just kidding.
• LAPD officials officially declined to apologize for actions involving Nation of Islam leader Tony Muhammad. Muhammad claimed he was kicked in the face after being handcuffed. The LAPD denied the charges. Guess the cops kicked Muhammad’s face before cuffing him. But only after failed attempts to kick him in the groin. Just kidding.
• London subway system officials officially banned Jerry Hall’s ads for her new reality show. The show has Hall seeking a younger boy toy from a stable of 12 studs — with the “winner” nabbing a six-figure wad of loot. The posters for the program depicted Hall with half-naked men wearing leashes. The subway system has a rule prohibiting images of people as sex objects. However, it’s OK for Londoners to engage in sex acts in the subways. Just kidding.
• No official apologies are necessary in a case of alleged police abuse in New York. A prisoner in Queens claimed cops roughed him up following his arrest. But a video camera showed the prisoner deliberately slammed his own head against a cell wall to create the injuries. The videotape captured cops urging the prisoner to stop, warning him, “You’re going to knock yourself out.” “I want to knock myself out and blame it on you guys,” the prisoner responded. Hope the judge inevitably pummels the prisoner with his gavel. Not kidding.
• The issue of media bias has officially risen along with the waters in New Orleans. Blacks are depicted looting stores. Whites are depicted looking for food. Only in America does a natural disaster become a racial disaster. Look for the aid concerts to be broadcast exclusively on BET.
Essay 132
International/National News: A Swaziland princess held a party with rowdiness and drinking to celebrate the end of a chastity decree. The traditional rite does not call for booze and loud music. So a Swazi official reacted in a proper traditional manner — he beat the princess and her pals with a stick. Meanwhile, the United States Postal Service unveiled more stamps commemorating important events including Civil Rights, Voting Rights and the Freedom Riders. Mexican President Vicente Fox may join the efforts by presenting stamps featuring Memin Pinguin and Little Black Sambo.
Police News: Reports now claim the Texas cops who stopped Al Sharpton’s speeding car had their revolvers drawn. One witness stated the police aimed their guns at Sharpton. Hard to believe these stories — if true, Sharpton would certainly be ranting and rhyming. Meanwhile, community groups in L.A. are demanding the firing of police involved in the incident with Nation of Islam leader Tony Muhammad. Muhammad claims he was kicked in the face after being handcuffed. This all makes Rev. James Meeks’ experience seem downright tame. Or downright typical.
Nazi News: A retired carpenter in Chicago is no longer a U.S. citizen, thanks to a federal judge who determined the man was a former Nazi operative. The judge declared the man worked with Nazis as a member of the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police during World War II, and he entered the country illegally 50 years ago. Meanwhile, the mayor of London is in trouble for comparing a Jewish reporter to a Nazi. The mayor had inquired if the reporter was a “German war criminal” — then he said the reporter was “just like a concentration camp guard. You’re just doing it because you’re paid to, aren’t you?” Sergeant Schultz denied involvement with the carpenter or reporter, firmly insisting, “I know nothiiiiiiiing!”
Medical News: A New Hampshire doctor is being examined for allegedly telling an obese patient that only Black men might be interested in her (the physician claims reading polls showing Black men are attracted to overweight women). According to the woman’s complaint, the doctor told her, “Let’s face it, if your husband were to die tomorrow, who would want you? Well, men might want you, but not the types you want to want you. Might even be a black guy.” Or a Dove brand manager.
Police News: Reports now claim the Texas cops who stopped Al Sharpton’s speeding car had their revolvers drawn. One witness stated the police aimed their guns at Sharpton. Hard to believe these stories — if true, Sharpton would certainly be ranting and rhyming. Meanwhile, community groups in L.A. are demanding the firing of police involved in the incident with Nation of Islam leader Tony Muhammad. Muhammad claims he was kicked in the face after being handcuffed. This all makes Rev. James Meeks’ experience seem downright tame. Or downright typical.
Nazi News: A retired carpenter in Chicago is no longer a U.S. citizen, thanks to a federal judge who determined the man was a former Nazi operative. The judge declared the man worked with Nazis as a member of the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police during World War II, and he entered the country illegally 50 years ago. Meanwhile, the mayor of London is in trouble for comparing a Jewish reporter to a Nazi. The mayor had inquired if the reporter was a “German war criminal” — then he said the reporter was “just like a concentration camp guard. You’re just doing it because you’re paid to, aren’t you?” Sergeant Schultz denied involvement with the carpenter or reporter, firmly insisting, “I know nothiiiiiiiing!”
Medical News: A New Hampshire doctor is being examined for allegedly telling an obese patient that only Black men might be interested in her (the physician claims reading polls showing Black men are attracted to overweight women). According to the woman’s complaint, the doctor told her, “Let’s face it, if your husband were to die tomorrow, who would want you? Well, men might want you, but not the types you want to want you. Might even be a black guy.” Or a Dove brand manager.
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