Essay 3063

The missive above ran in a recent Advertising Age Letters To The Editor section. Don’t mean to overreact, but in many respects, it spotlights the growing issue of ageism on Madison Avenue.

F. Stone Roberts is undoubtedly a well-meaning, upstanding citizen. But he also appears to be a standard prick, representing his peeps in stereotypical fashion.

Roberts is divisive, judgmental and condescending—displaying the arrogance that contributes to our industry’s global exclusivity. The defensive tone, probably fueled by paranoia, comes off as offensive. Roberts’ exposition is rife with “we” and “us” versus “they” and “them.” Whassup with that?

Roberts boasts the 4As committee of “CEOs and the ‘influential of the industry’” probes topics ranging “from the ever-evolving industry model to emerging digital media to diversity in the workplace.” Hey, somebody draft a memo when our leaders hatch directions and solutions for any of the listed subjects.

Roberts notes the absence of specific folks at “the big-boy table.” His revelation speaks volumes. Would anyone not resembling a “big boy” even feel welcome at the summit?

The labeling of Young Turks widens the generational gaps, especially when delivered with sneering sarcasm. Can’t imagine Roberts and his posse would appreciate being tagged as Old Guns or Elder Hacks by the professional community. One can only guess how minorities are addressed in these meetings.

Roberts insists that if the Young Turks “are contributing, it certainly isn’t obvious to anyone.” Not sure why the Old Guns make such proclamations, as if deciding their own ignorance must be shared by everyone. Maybe it’s time for them to quit playing with their 401k plans long enough to observe the landscape and use their collective voice.

Roberts closes by announcing, “It is time to let the Young Turks out of the cage, but it’s our job to make sure they don’t blow up the place.” An admission of segregation and oppression coupled with an invitation featuring dictatorial restrictions.

Bravo, Old Gun, bravo!

Essay 3062

Essay 3061

This ad is anything but cute. Mom’s right hand placement borders on, um, never mind.

Essay 3060

From CNN.com…

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Immigration anxiety is cultural

By Ruben Navarrette Jr.
Special to CNN

SAN DIEGO, California (CNN) -- On Thursday, senators announced a rather remarkable bipartisan compromise on immigration reform that combines border enforcement, a guest worker program, a path to legalization for illegal immigrants, tougher employer sanctions, and an education/skills-based point system for future immigrants.

The same day, the Census Bureau reported what many Americans already know: The United States is becoming a Hispanic nation. Hispanics are the nation’s largest minority with 44.3 million people and they account for almost half the growth in the U.S. population. Meanwhile, since 2000, the white school-age population dropped 4 percent, and the white population shrank in sixteen states.

The stories are connected. Anti-illegal immigration crusaders claim their worries are entirely practical -- tied to border security or the cost of entitlements or the fact that illegal immigrants supposedly depress wages for the low skilled.

(That reminds me. Memo to the low skilled: “Grow up. Stop complaining. And go get more skills. Then you won’t have to suffer the humiliation of being driven out of the market by folks with a sixth-grade education who are here illegally and don’t even speak English.”)

But I digress …

As someone who has written about immigration for more than 15 years, and heard from hundreds of thousands of readers along the way, I can tell you that most of the anxiety over illegal immigration is cultural. People worry about changing demographics, the encroachment of Spanish, the fear that the country is becoming Hispanic-ized, etc. One sociologist called it “cultural displacement” -- the fear that your children will grow up in a world different than the one you grew up in, with fewer advantages, where they will have to work harder for what they accomplish.

One of the more fearful members of Congress is Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-California. Last year, while campaigning, he told a largely white audience near San Diego that if we don’t end illegal immigration, one day our children would live in a world where instead of electing to take Spanish in high school, they’ll have to take Spanish. Bilbray now heads the House Immigration Reform Caucus. That’s where members of Congress come together at regular meetings and complain about illegal immigration while counting the campaign contributions they collect from businesses back home, many of which undoubtedly profit from hiring illegal immigrants.

Last week, Bilbray popped up on one newscast after another and milked his 15 minutes. He opposes the Senate plan, which he calls -- wait for it -- amnesty. But, like most of the critics, he offers no alternate piece of legislation to solve the problem over which he claims to be worried sick.

The Senate compromise isn’t perfect. But it’s bold and thoughtful, and it’s a start. It also did something that’s very significant -- dividing traditional allies and uniting traditional adversaries.

If the deal crumbles, we’ll return to the status quo. Illegal immigrants will still come to the United States do jobs that Americans won’t do. And employers will still hire them. Nothing will change. No one will be punished or held accountable. There’s a word for that. I know -- wait for it: amnesty.

[Ruben Navarrette Jr. is a member of the editorial board of The San Diego Union-Tribune and a nationally syndicated columnist.]

Essay 3059

The casting in this Lunchables ad makes it look like a diversity recruitment message.

Essay 3058

Essay 3057

For the Latino market, Mickey D’s (or is it Miguel D’s?) positions its Southwest Salad as having 400 years of history. Wonder if the menu item will last even 400 days.

Essay 3056

From The New York Times…

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Will Gentrification Spoil the Birthplace of Hip-Hop?

By DAVID GONZALEZ

Hip-hop was born in the west Bronx. Not the South Bronx, not Harlem and most definitely not Queens. Just ask anybody at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue — an otherwise unremarkable high-rise just north of the Cross Bronx and hard along the Major Deegan.

“This is where it came from,” said Clive Campbell, pointing to the building’s first-floor community room. “This is it. The culture started here and went around the world. But this is where it came from. Not anyplace else.”

O.K., Mr. Campbell is not just anybody — he is the alpha D.J. of hip-hop. As D.J. Kool Herc, he presided over the turntables at parties in that community room in 1973 that spilled into nearby parks before turning into a global assault. Playing snippets of the choicest beats from James Brown, Jimmy Castor, Babe Ruth and anything else that piqued his considerable musical curiosity, he provided the soundtrack savored by loose-limbed b-boys (a term he takes credit for creating, too).

Mr. Campbell thinks the building should be declared a landmark in recognition of its role in American popular culture. Its residents agree, but for more practical reasons. They want to have the building placed on the National Register of Historic Places so that it might be protected from any change that would affect its character — in this case, a building for poor and working-class families.

[Click on the essay title above to read the full story.]

Essay 3055

Um, not too sure about the name of this new product…

Essay 3054

From The Los Angeles Times…

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L.A. gang members go union

A rising number of gangbangers are moving into well-paid futures as members of the region’s building trade unions.

By Sam Quinones, Times Staff Writer

Shortly after his release from prison four years ago, Julio Silva entered the apprenticeship program in the Ironworkers Union Local 433 in La Palma.

To his alarm, he learned that ironworkers called all first-year apprentices “punk.”

He had been an East Los Angeles gang member, a drug user, and a car burglar in and out of jail. In that world, a “punk” was someone’s prison sex slave.

But Silva tried not to let it bother him. The more he worked at his new job, the more his skills improved. Ironwork became the one legal thing he had done well. It also paid $29 an hour, plus benefits.

Glimpsing a future, Silva’s desire to do drugs was replaced by his determination to master the use of sleever bars and spud crescents.

After Silva’s first year on the job, the ironworkers simply called him Julio.

“I never thought my history would allow me to have something more than $7 an hour,” said Silva, 37. “I don’t see this happening nowhere else but in the union. It’s given me the best opportunity of my life.”

Silva is among a large and growing number of Southern California gang members who have joined building-trade unions over the last decade as construction work has boomed. These good-paying jobs were once reserved for those with family connections, as fathers recruited sons.

But today, beset by nonunion competition and an aging membership, unions have stepped up recruitment in minority enclaves where many young men have criminal pasts. Now homeboy recruits homeboy.

[Click on the essay title above to read the full story.]

Essay 3053

From The New York Daily News...

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Thugs make a killing at society’s expense

By Stanley Crouch

When we look back on this era of especially muddled thinking we will celebrate Harlem’s Geoffrey Canada for not being afraid to step out by himself and pin the tail on the donkey of hip hop for aiding and abetting the criminal culture that oppresses so many so-called minorities in our country.

I was most impressed when Canada came out against the way that hip hop celebrates those who refuse to inform on criminals, otherwise known as snitching.

Kansas City journalist Jason Whitlock says of this trend that the most popular hip-hop recordings now promote what he calls “prison values,” or the criminal vision that comes from the dark world behind bars, where the siren song of those who make the streets so mean was once heard most clearly and influentially.

As Canada told Anderson Cooper on television recently, advocating the refusal to cooperate with police is saying something very destructive to black youth.

“It’s like we’re saying to the criminals, you can have our community. Just have our community. Do anything you want, and we will either deal with it ourselves, or we will simply ignore it,” Canada said.

If one looks at the level of urban oppression that is shown in the national rise of homicides committed with guns, Canada must be taken seriously. The black and Latino victims constitute the largest numbers of the murdered. The epidemic rise of murders with firearms in Newark prompted James Ahearn to write, “Typically, shooter and victim are both black, male, young, with arrest records, uneducated, with dim life prospects. The killers act with careless indifference to the enormity of what they have done, or to the likelihood that they in turn will be cut down, in retribution.”

As they display the gilded imbecility of “bling” while riding in the most expensive cars and living in gated communities, the rappers who promote the idea that informing to the police is some sort of sin have become another menace to society.

They have expanded upon their identities as buffoon thug minstrels so that they could now easily be considered the most dangerous Uncle Toms of the moment.

This may be hard for those who can never accept the idea of black people having anything at all to do with their group’s oppression. The young are dazzled by the vulgar finery of the rappers while the black middle class is overly impressed by the riches of these young men.

Once again it is obvious that the civil rights establishment has fallen asleep at the wheel by failing to stand up for the rights of those they purportedly represent. The civil rights establishment should be no more concerned about being called old-fashioned than those whom Southern white racists accused of being “outside agitators” during the 1960s.

Ironically, what we now have is an urban version of the Southern violence that gave such a bloody reputation to the members of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizen’s Council. Gangs like the Crips and the Bloods are exactly the same — ever ready to murder and intimidate the witnesses to their crimes.

Albert Camus once wrote that he preferred to look his fate in the eyes. For too many in the black lower class, their fate is to be murdered, mutilated and brutalized by contemptuous street gangs and by the criminals who have been made into an elite by the worst of hip hop. It is time for all of us to look that fate in the eyes and move to change it by whatever means are as legal as they are necessary.

Essay 3052

Essay 3051

Pimp My Infant—the morons at Munchkin actually trademarked BLING™

Essay 3050

Trash talking in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• Former President Jimmy Carter called the current administration “the worst in history” in international relations. “I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history,” said Carter. “The overt reversal of America’s basic values as expressed by previous administrations, including those of George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon and others, has been the most disturbing to me. … We now have endorsed the concept of pre-emptive war where we go to war with another nation militarily, even though our own security is not directly threatened, if we want to change the regime there or if we fear that some time in the future our security might be endangered. But that’s been a radical departure from all previous administration policies.” Carter appears to be launching a pre-emptive war of words.

• A lawmaker in Massachusetts is introducing legislation to protect fat and short folks. “This is one of the last physical aspects of people that you can acceptably laugh about,” said the Massachusetts Democrat. “You can be a shock jock on the radio and talk about fat people for a solid week, and no one would ever think of having you lose your job. It’s still acceptable.” The proposal applies mostly to the workplace, but also deals with landlords and real estate. This could mean trouble for Donald Trump and his constant trashing of Rosie O’Donnell.

Essay 3049

Your eyes will think it’s a shitty ad. Your stomach will turn.

Essay 3048

From The Chicago Sun-Times…

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Playa hatin’

Why do women take it when Hip-Hop insists on ‘keeping it real’?

BY AMY ALEXANDER

Here is a cultural paradox for you: Young, smart, seemingly self-confident women of color who put up with even the most raunchily misogynistic rap and hip-hop music. We're all familiar with the commercial and cultural trajectory of the music and how, since its emergence in gritty New York neighborhoods 25 years ago, it has become a global phenomenon, generating billions of dollars in sales and spawning fashion, linguistic and sociopolitical trends that have entered the mainstream.

Along with all the bling and snap, the rise of the Hip-Hop Nation also has earned negative attention for its more unsavory behavioral byproducts, including violence in the name of “keeping it real” and a normalization of a “get rich or die trying” ethos.

But more troubling than the mainstreaming of violence and acquisitive values has been the rise in misogynistic attitudes among performers and their acceptance by fans of both sexes, according to Pimps Up, Ho’s Down, by T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting.

Director of African-American and diaspora studies at Vanderbilt University, Sharpley-Whiting argues, with mixed results, that a general coarsening of hip-hop culture -- in its lyrics and the videos and marketing built around the music -- claims women as its biggest victims. She observes that some of the women who subscribe to the culture do so willingly, even as they are denigrated and abused onstage and off. It is not a new observation, but in this slim volume, she gets at the heart of the paradox.

“As much as the sexploitation of young black women is necessary to the ‘keep it real’ mantra of hip hop artists, corporate bottom lines, and marketing strategies, we must acknowledge our own role in this troubling relationship.”

Sharpley-Whiting tosses off an incendiary notion that requires more exploration than she provides: Young black women you see shaking their nearly naked rumps in all those videos or who serve as groupies to male rappers or who appear in increasingly popular underground hip-hop porn films are willing, if misguided, participants in their own debasement.

They are not alone, Sharpley-Whiting argues, in falling into the cesspool of rot that is laying waste to many aspects of American pop culture. It’s just that few of them believe they have other options for artistic or commercial success, and fewer still see themselves as taking part in third-wave feminism, the “sex-positive” movement that has made public displays of sexuality more acceptable for white women. In stating her case, Sharpley-Whiting cites a wide range of sources, from the black intellectual Frantz Fanon to journalists Greg Tate and Stanley Crouch to Pamela Des Barres, author of I’m With the Band: Confessions of a Groupie. But, like many academics who write about pop culture, Sharpley-Whiting fails to connect with readers in clear, layman’s language:

“And even more mind-bending than the length, girth, and bland performances of the churlish cabal of male hip-hop stars are the motivations articulated by the women in ‘Groupie Confessions,’” she writes, all but defying readers to make sense of that sentence. The result is a frustratingly enigmatic discussion that encapsulates a grand theme without coaxing forth the emotional punch that might allow readers to grasp it.

Surprisingly, it is left to a rap performer to point out the paradox that underlies Sharpley-Whiting’s premise -- how successful, “respected” black women like Oprah Winfrey, Condoleezza Rice and Halle Berry exist on the same continuum with Karrine Steffans, author of the best-selling roman a clef, Confessions of a Video Vixen, and her numerous nubile counterparts who are seen shaking their moneymakers in videos.

In a 1989 interview, former 2 Live Crew frontman Luther Campbell said, “Traditionally black people are really conservative. They’re more conservative than whites are, in my opinion. … With this whole tradition of sexuality (in hip-hop) most black people are nervous about that.”

So how do black female hip-hop consumers reconcile their love of the genre? And what can be done to bring them to a healthier place, in terms of their own self-image and to erase their vulnerability to hip-hop’s less savory side? Sharpley-Whiting doesn’t have the answers, and maybe no one does, but at least she’s put the discussion on the turntable.

[Amy Alexander is a free-lance writer. This review first appeared in the Washington Post.]

Essay 3047

Method to the madness in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• Method Man was busted for smoking and possessing marijuana after a cop pulled him over for an expired car sticker. The arresting officer caught the rapper with two blunts and about 28 grams of dope. Doesn’t that stuff come standard with rapper rides?

• NBC announced its prime-time fall lineup for next season, and “The Apprentice” was not on the list. Donald Trump responded by telling NBC he’s quitting and “moving on from ‘The Apprentice’ to a major new TV venture.” Um, somebody explain to Trump that you don’t quit after being fired.

Essay 3046

Massachusetts: Committed to Diversity. But not committed to competent art direction.

Essay 3045

From The Chicago Sun-Times…

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Frivolous ad trivializes heart-rending decision

BY PATRICK T. MURPHY

For the past two years, I have been hearing divorce and domestic violence cases. Divorce lawyers sometimes get a bad rap. However, I have been impressed by most of the lawyers who have appeared in front of me. Most attempt to shepherd their clients through difficult and painful times with minimum stress and rancor while charging a reasonable fee. Most.

Recently two divorce lawyers sponsored a billboard in Chicago that gained nationwide notoriety. The billboard gave the names and phone number of the attorneys and stated: “Life’s short. Get a divorce.” The billboard contained two enormous photographs -- one of a nearly naked young woman with apparently surgically enhanced breasts and one of a nearly naked young man with an apparently steroid-enhanced body.

Some critics have inferred that the message of the billboard was: Get a divorce, and if you hire these lawyers you most certainly will end up with a much more exciting companion. And I suspect that the subliminal message had this or some equally sleazy message. But anyone who actually believes this drivel deserves the lawyers, and their spouse is most certainly better off without him or her. The real problem with this frivolous ad is that it trivializes one of the most painful and momentous events in the lives of many people.

Often couples find that they cannot continue in the relationship. They grow apart. Finances, children, in-laws and debt pick people apart. Arguments increase. Words become vicious. Children cower in corners. The pain becomes overwhelming, and the parties must separate and divorce, for their own sanity and that of their children.

Recently, I dealt with the case of a wonderful young couple and their five beautiful and intelligent children. Divorce was inevitable. But the children were torn, as were the parents. The kids obviously want their parents to stay together and to be happy, but at some level recognized that this was impossible. One child, a 10-year-old boy, wished to live with his dad although he loved his mom and wanted to see her. The others were ambivalent but wanted to remain together.

The parents desperately loved all their children. In the end, one will become the residential parent while the other will visit three or four days every two weeks but miss much of the excitement that goes with having the children every day. And even the residential parent will suffer by not having the children on a daily basis.

The parties will also have to sell their home because neither can afford to keep it up without the assistance of the other. Nothing frivolous or trivial here.

Every day, men and women step up in front of me with tears welling up in their eyes, even sobbing, while becoming divorced. They are recalling the courtship, the first kiss, the wedding day, the news of the first pregnancy, the sacrifices to purchase the first home, the day one of them lost a job, the serious illness suffered by one of the kids, the great report card, the day the son got suspended for fighting in school, the picnic in the park, the trip to Disneyland, the cold nights in a warm bed together. In most divorces, there still is a great deal of love, appreciation for what was and warmth for the other party.

Yes, there are the recriminations, pettiness, jealousy and hatred. But most frequently, the good and the bad emotions are all swirling around together. And that is what creates the pain and misery in even the most inevitable of divorces.

Most who are muddling through a divorce need the help of an attorney dedicated to his or her needs and sensitive to his or her pain. The billboard in question did little for the dignity of the divorce bar. Worse, it gives those going through divorces little confidence in finding an understanding attorney to help them through this most complex and emotional of times.

Patrick T. Murphy is a judge in the Domestic Relations division of the Circuit Court of Cook County and hears divorce and domestic violence cases.

Essay 3044

From The Chicago Tribune…

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Racial demons rear heads

After months of unrest between blacks and whites in Louisiana town, some see racism and uneven justice

By Howard Witt
Tribune senior correspondent

JENA, La. -- The trouble in Jena started with the nooses. Then it rumbled along the town’s jagged racial fault lines. Finally, it exploded into months of violence between blacks and whites.

Now the 3,000 residents of this small lumber and oil town deep in the heart of central Louisiana are confronting Old South racial demons many thought had long ago been put to rest.

One morning last September, students arrived at the local high school to find three hangman’s nooses dangling from a tree in the courtyard.

The tree was on the side of the campus that, by long-standing tradition, had always been claimed by white students, who make up more than 80 percent of the 460 students. But a few of the school’s 85 black students had decided to challenge the accepted state of things and asked school administrators if they, too, could sit beneath the tree’s cooling shade.

“Sit wherever you want,” school officials told them. The next day, the nooses were hanging from the branches.

African-American students and their parents were outraged and intimidated by the display, which instantly summoned memories of the mob lynchings that once terrorized blacks across the American South. Three white students were quickly identified as being responsible, and the high school principal recommended that they be expelled.

“Hanging those nooses was a hate crime, plain and simple,” said Tracy Bowens, a black mother of two students at the high school who protested the incident at a school board meeting.

But Jena’s white school superintendent, Roy Breithaupt, ruled that the nooses were just a youthful stunt and suspended the students for three days, angering blacks who felt harsher punishments were justified.

“Adolescents play pranks,” said Breithaupt, the superintendent of the LaSalle Parish school system. “I don’t think it was a threat against anybody.”

Yet it was after the noose incident that the violent, racially charged events that are still convulsing Jena began.

[Click on the essay title above to read the full story.]