7702: Rogers Consults With Johnson Publishing.

From The Chicago Sun-Times…

Desiree Rogers hired as Johnson Publishing consultant

By Sandra Guy, Staff Reporter

Former White House social secretary and Illinois Lottery director Desiree Rogers is working as a consultant with Johnson Publishing Co., owner of Ebony and Jet magazines, to help with corporate strategy, a Johnson Publishing spokeswoman said today.

The news comes just two days after Johnson Publishing Chief Executive Officer Linda Johnson Rice hired author and magazine turnaround expert Amy Dubois Barnett as the new editor-in-chief of Ebony magazine and declared that the company is not for sale.

A Johnson Publishing spokeswoman declined to give details about Rogers’ role.

Rogers left the Obama administration earlier this year after she got caught up in controversy over a White House security breach.

Johnson Publishing, the world’s largest African-American owned and operated publishing company, based at 820 S. Michigan, is facing the same dilemma as much of the print-media world—sharply declining advertising revenue. The company has recently redesigned Ebony and Jet magazines to appeal to younger readers and to reflect diverse opinions.

7701: BP Deepwater Horizon—Solution 1.

The Boston Globe published sobering photos of birds victimized by the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster. The brainstorms for dealing with the spewing oil have included turning to Kevin Costner and collecting human hair. But maybe the pictures inspire another idea: Dump millions of New York City pigeons into the Gulf of Mexico, and let them soak up the mess.

7700: Where There’s A Willis…

From The New York Daily News...

Todd Bridges, Gary Coleman’s ‘Diff’rent Strokes’ co-star, says he has late actor’s secret will

BY Tracy Miller, Daily News Staff Writer

What will you talkin’ ‘bout, Willis?

A week after Gary Coleman’s untimely death at age 42, his former “Diff’rent Strokes” co-star is speaking out about what he claims is the late actor’s secret will.

Todd Bridges, 45, who played older brother Willis to Coleman’s Arnold on the hit series, told “Entertainment Tonight” that he is in possession of a document containing his old friend’s final wishes.

“[A friend of mine and I] have paperwork, and we’ll bring it out soon, that will show what his wishes were and what he wanted,” Bridges said. “There’s a big fight going on with his parents and some other people involved, and after we bring this paperwork out, everybody’s going to shut up.”

Sue and Willie Coleman are seeking custody of their son’s body. Coleman had a tumultuous relationship with his parents, successfully suing them and a former business manager in 1989 for misappropriating the money he earned as a child star.

“Gary had certain wishes [to exclude his parents]. I’m not going to go against a dying man’s wishes,” Bridges continued. “There’s a reason why he didn’t speak to them for 23 years.”

Also in the picture is Coleman’s ex-wife, Shannon Price, whom he divorced in 2008 but remained extremely close to. Price placed the 911 call upon discovering Coleman had hit his head - and was also the one to order he be taken off life support following his brain hemorrhage, raising questions of whether she had the right to do so.

“I don’t think anyone is looking at criminal wrongdoing here, but this raises the issue of the appropriateness of her making the decision to take him off life support,” lawyer Randy Kester, who handled Coleman’s divorce from 24-year-old Price, told the Daily News.

It is unclear whether Price and Coleman may have remarried after their divorce.

“The arrangement we’re working on now is to get Gary back to his next of kin, which is his parents,” Coleman’s former manager and family spokesman Victor Perillo told The Associated Press. “The funeral home has been notified, the sheriff’s office, we’ve notified them that there is to be no communication on where the body is to go unless it’s dealt with legally with Gary’s next of kin, and that’s the way it stands right now.”

Bridges asked fans to have sympathy for Coleman’s health problems and the difficult life he had faced.

“Imagine having major health problems. Imagine getting ripped off of all your money. Imagine being raised in a household where he wasn’t taught how to love himself or to love others around him,” Bridges said. “So when he hit the world at an adult age, he wasn’t prepared.”

7699: Ebony To Go Multimedia.

From The Chicago Sun-Times…

Future of Ebony magazine
MAGAZINE | Top editor shares her plans to bring iconic journal to multiple media platforms

By Sandra Guy, Sun-Times Columnist

Amy DuBois Barnett, the new editor-in-chief of Ebony magazine, the Chicago-based voice of the African-American community struggling with declining revenues, intends to attract readers with a strong editorial voice on important issues that will ring out on people’s cell phones, iPads and other on-the-go media.

“It’s impossible to have a one-dimensional media brand. Extending the Ebony brand across many media platforms will be crucial in introducing it to new audiences,” while remaining respectful of the print magazine and its legacy, Barnett said in an exclusive interview with the Sun-Times.

She also intends to expand the Ebony brand to new products beyond its existing “Inspirations” line of greeting cards, but declined to give details.

And Barnett, 40, who was born in Hyde Park to parents who earned their PhDs at the University of Chicago, will introduce her trademark humor, fashion smarts and familiar tone to the iconic voice of black America. Her parents, who traveled the world on teaching assignments when Barnett was a child, gave her the distinctive DuBois middle name as a source of aspiration and inspiration, in honor of famous sociologist, historian and civil-rights leader W.E.B. DuBois.

“Being smart and dedicated doesn’t preclude being stylish and reflecting a more modern aesthetic,” said Barnett, who has already started work at Ebony and will move to Chicago later this summer from her home in New Jersey with husband Jeffrey Brown, a sales and marketing executive, and their son Max Robeson Brown, 4. (The middle-name tradition continues with Max.)

Barnett credited Ebony’s acting editor, Harriette Cole, who is leaving Johnson Publishing, with overseeing important updates to Ebony, including introducing last year a “Power 150” list celebrating black trailblazers in business, science, technology, education and other fields.

But Barnett has her work cut out for her in today’s fast-changing media industry. The Media Industry Newsletter reported in September that Ebony’s advertising pages were down 40 percent from January through October 2009 compared with 2008, and Web sites are filled with comments that Ebony has lost touch with today’s generation.

Barnett has transformed and reincarnated magazines before. Barnett did so by leveraging her early career experiences in corporate finance at Chase Manhattan Bank, as a buyer for Lord & Taylor, and as a cultural and style-and-fashion writer for first-generation Web sites Total New York and Fashion Planet. She is a Brown University graduate, studied writing and literature at University College Dublin in Ireland, and holds an M.F.A. in creative writing from Columbia University in New York.

Barnett won plaudits for being the first African-American woman in the country to head a major mainstream consumer magazine when she worked as managing editor at Teen People magazine.

Barnett was credited with leading a redesign that propelled Teen People to lead the teen category in audience with 14 million readers. Her redesign of the Web site, TeenPeople.com, was credited as among the first to bring video into regular Web content.

Barnett said she changed 65 percent of the content of Teen People and oversaw a “top-to-bottom visual redesign” from 2003 to 2005.

“I was trying to move (Teen People) toward what teens were interested in and talking about,” she said. “I wanted them to feel as though the magazine was by them, so I incorporated pages that looked like graph paper, quizzes, polls and other areas in which readers could contribute their opinions.”

Barnett introduced texting “news blasts” and a “fun fact of the day” to readers’ cell phones.

Prior to joining Teen People, Barnett was credited with doubling the circulation at Honey magazine. Barnett worked as the Editor-In-Chief from 2000-2003.

At Honey, Barnett’s monthly editor’s column became the best-read feature in the magazine, whose readers are 18 to 35-year-old ambitious, stylish and urban women of color.

“Honey magazine was my baby,” Barnett said. “I oversaw a complete redesign. I was able to combine my understanding and appreciation of the style industry with my intellectual curiosity about current affairs, along with my humor and sense of adventure.”

Barnett’s philosophy is spelled out in her book, “Get Yours: How to Have Everything You Ever Dreamed Of and More,” a sisterly compilation of advice that was nominated for the NAACP’s Image Award for Black Women.

She wrote the book after the 1992 death of her mother, Marguerite Ross Barnett, the first African-American woman to run a major research institution—the University of Houston.

“My mother was very, very inspirational to me,” Amy Barnett said. “I did a complete psychological 180-degree turn (after her death). I decided, ‘Only I own this life. I am the only person who can make myself happy. What am I doing to make myself happy? I stopped doing things that I couldn’t be passionate about, and I haven’t done them since.”

For the past three years, Barnett has run her own consulting firm, Polymath, out of her home. In that role, she has helped shape and launch Jones magazine and JONESMAG.com, a Houston-based shopping and lifestyle resource for multicultural women, and the Web site, Work Her Way, for Carolyn Kepcher, known for her role as Donald Trump’s executive vice president and role on “The Apprentice.”

Prior to that, Barnett spent six months as deputy editor-in-chief of Harper’s Bazaar, where she worked with Editor-In-Chief Glenda Bailey, whom Barnett described as “one of my publishing heroes.”

One of her key messages is that intelligent journalism doesn’t have to be boring and dressed in pinstripes.

“I freely use humor, and it’s hard to deliver a resonant package without putting it in a stylish, attractive package,” she said.

Expect to see Barnett’s unique stamp on Ebony, all the while elevating its status as a voice motivating African-Americans to act on issues of importance to them.

“Ebony is such an important and resonant brand for my community,” Barnett said. “It should be the definitive chronicle of African-American achievement.”

7698: Hardest-Working Nominee.

Mitchum anti-perspirant deodorant is running a lame promotion to find the hardest-working person around. MultiCultClassics has an obvious nominee.

7697: Dawn Cuts Grease, But Looks Oily.

This Dawn commercial is apparently about a year old, but the brand is now taking advantage of the BP Deepwater Horizon incident. You know the account team was high-fiving the minute news of the disaster broke from the Gulf of Mexico.

7696: Mickey D’s Shows Its Pride.

The New York Daily News reported on a French Mickey D’s commercial targeting gay customers. It’s hardly the first time the fast feeder has done this, as everyone knows The Hamburglar and Grimace have always been longtime companions.

McDonald’s targets gay customers with ‘come as you are’ ad on French TV

By Jeff Zalesin, Daily News Writer

The fast-food giant McDonald’s wants to be seen as a company that welcomes everyone. Judging by a new advertisement running on French television, that includes gays.

The ad shows a gay teen seated at a McDonald’s table, talking to his boyfriend on his cell phone. He hangs up when he sees his father coming.

The father, unaware of his son’s sexual orientation, proceeds to joke about the son’s all-male class at school. It’s a shame that there are no girls around, he says, because his son would get lucky if there were.

This spot is the latest in a long-running French campaign that uses the slogan “venez come vous etes,” meaning “come as you are.” Other ads in the series have featured flirtatious senior citizens chatting on laptops and a clever young girl who turns her mother’s scolding against her.

7695: SafeAuto Commercial Is A Car Wreck.

This SafeAuto spot shows Justin Case is no Justin Timberlake.

7694: The BP Disaster Is A Crime Scene.

The BP Deepwater Horizon disaster just gets worse every day. You know it’s bad when a “solution” dubbed Top Kill fails to even slow things down. BP is making the Exxon Valdez look like The Love Boat.


The apologetic advertising campaign is pretty pathetic too. Most peculiar is how BP welcomes volunteers. Why would anyone in their right mind offer free services to a gazillion-dollar corporation? In this case, saving a pelican requires working in highly toxic and hazardous conditions, folks. BP could actually generate positive spin by creating tons of new cleanup-related jobs, reversing unemployment trends and ultimately stimulating the economy.

In the meantime, MultiCultClassics volunteers an idea to fix the mess.

7693: Black And Poor In Memphis.

From The New York Times…

Blacks in Memphis Lose Decades of Economic Gains

By Michael Powell

MEMPHIS — For two decades, Tyrone Banks was one of many African-Americans who saw his economic prospects brightening in this Mississippi River city.

A single father, he worked for FedEx and also as a custodian, built a handsome brick home, had a retirement account and put his eldest daughter through college.

Then the Great Recession rolled in like a fog bank. He refinanced his mortgage at a rate that adjusted sharply upward, and afterward he lost one of his jobs. Now Mr. Banks faces bankruptcy and foreclosure.

“I’m going to tell you the deal, plain-spoken: I’m a black man from the projects and I clean toilets and mop up for a living,” said Mr. Banks, a trim man who looks at least a decade younger than his 50 years. “I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished. But my whole life is backfiring.”

Not so long ago, Memphis, a city where a majority of the residents are black, was a symbol of a South where racial history no longer tightly constrained the choices of a rising black working and middle class. Now this city epitomizes something more grim: How rising unemployment and growing foreclosures in the recession have combined to destroy black wealth and income and erase two decades of slow progress.

The median income of black homeowners in Memphis rose steadily until five or six years ago. Now it has receded to a level below that of 1990 — and roughly half that of white Memphis homeowners, according to an analysis conducted by Queens College Sociology Department for The New York Times.

Black middle-class neighborhoods are hollowed out, with prices plummeting and homes standing vacant in places like Orange Mound, White Haven and Cordova. As job losses mount — black unemployment here, mirroring national trends, has risen to 16.9 percent from 9 percent two years ago; it stands at 5.3 percent for whites — many blacks speak of draining savings and retirement accounts in an effort to hold onto their homes. The overall local foreclosure rate is roughly twice the national average.

The repercussions will be long-lasting, in Memphis and nationwide. The most acute economic divide in America remains the steadily widening gap between the wealth of black and white families, according to a recent study by the Institute on Assets and Social Policy at Brandeis University. For every dollar of wealth owned by a white family, a black or Latino family owns just 16 cents, according to a recent Federal Reserve study.

The Economic Policy Institute’s forthcoming “The State of Working America” analyzed the recession-driven drop in wealth. As of December 2009, median white wealth dipped 34 percent, to $94,600; median black wealth dropped 77 percent, to $2,100. So the chasm widens, and Memphis is left to deal with the consequences.

“This cancer is metastasizing into an economic crisis for the city,” said Mayor A. C. Wharton Jr. in his riverfront office. “It’s done more to set us back than anything since the beginning of the civil rights movement.”

Read the full story here.

7692: Old War Stories.

From The Chicago Sun-Times…

Great day for old war stories
Tuskegee Airman tells of crashing behind enemy lines in WWII

By Maudlyne Ihejirika, Staff Reporter

The 90-year-old South Side war veteran still vividly recalls the crash landing as if it were yesterday.

It was during World War II when Welton Taylor, a liaison pilot and member of the famed Tuskegee Airmen, America’s first black military air squad, was serving in the Pacific Theater of Operations, flying L-4 and L-5 aircraft with the 93rd Infantry Division.

Taylor saw combat on the Solomon Islands, New Guinea and the Philippines.

On a non-combat mission, delivering mail to the troops, his plane crashed behind Japanese lines.

“I was criminally attacked by a Japanese mountain 33 miles into Japanese territory, while flying a mission of mercy for my troops,” said Taylor, who later was to become a world-renowned scientist and educator. In 1985, the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta named a bacterium, Enterobacter taylorae, after him and a British colleague.

“I was carrying their mail, and I managed to deliver all my mail and was on my way home when I saw this horrible storm building up,” he said.

“I was trying to climb over the last of the mountains when I hit the mountain. But instead of hitting on my nose, which would have exploded the gas tank on my lap, I slid down a grassy slope, losing parts of the plane as I crashed.

“I had an observer in the plane with me. We both survived,” he recounts. “I was able to walk away with only my kneecaps showing, and so I pulled my skin up over my kneecaps, sprinkled some sulfa on it and two band-aids, and kept moving. I took the compass out of the plane, because south of the equator, you cannot walk in a straight line in a forest or jungle.

“We walked for two days, and made it past two Japanese camps. On the second day, we were rescued by our troops on the beach.”

Taylor, a descendant of President Zachary Taylor, is one of several members of the 332nd Fighter Group, commonly known as the Tuskegee Airmen, living in the Chicago area.

Huge WWII success
Members of the Chicago chapter, who will be marching in the annual Memorial Day Parade downtown today, were among the 450 fighter pilots who were trained at an air base in Tuskegee, Ala., to fly and maintain combat aircraft as a segregated unit. They broke barriers for African Americans.

“We’ll have our own float, with a large model of the P51 airplane, which is what the Tuskegee Airmen flew in combat in Italy,” Taylor said proudly.

The unit, which became one of the most successful flying squadrons in U.S. military history, protecting Allied bombers over some 200 escort missions in Europe, never lost one bomber under their protection to enemy fighters. They destroyed or damaged more than 400 German aircraft and more than 1,000 targets.

But despite their distinguished record, they faced discrimination back home when they returned and were never recognized until much later. In 2007, President George W. Bush collectively awarded some 300 members and their widows the Congressional Gold Medal.

“It was 61 years late. But I’m glad I stuck around and waited for it,” said the retired bacteriologist.

“Many of us are gone now. Another died yesterday at age 90, so I don’t think we’ll have as many on the float as in the past, but it’s been an unbelievable ride.”

7691: Memorial Day Tribute.

From The Root.

7690: Jamaican Vacations Are A Riot.

From Advertising Age…

Jamaica Tourist Board Suspends Ad Campaign Due to Riots

Violence in Kingston Overshadows Relative Safety of Resorts

By Michael Bush

NEW YORK — Immediately after rioting broke out in Kingston, Jamaica earlier this week the Jamaica Tourist Board decided to shelve its national cable TV campaign in the U.S. until the fighting ends, the board’s deputy director said.

Rioting broke out this past Sunday after Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding announced he would extradite gang leader Christopher Coke to the U.S. where he is wanted on drug and gun-running charges. While Jamaican authorities are still searching for Mr. Coke, more than 70 people have been killed in the rioting.

For a country and people that rely very heavily on the revenue generated from tourism, resorts and the money spent at local shops, the rioting could not have come at a worse time. Donnie Dawson, deputy director of tourism at the Jamaica Tourist Board, said despite the fact that the fighting is taking place away from its biggest vacation spots like Montego Bay, Ocho Rios and Negril, he felt it was best to pull the TV spots.

“We didn’t want to have people see images of the rioting in Kingston on the news and then commercials [touting] the beautiful isle of Jamaica right next to it,” Mr. Dawson said. “That didn’t make a lot of sense so we decided to suspend all advertising right now.”

Online marketing continues
Mr. Dawson said the ad buy, which he estimated to be worth $1.6 million, was scheduled to run until mid-June. He said it will continue its marketing efforts online on travel sites and the co-op marketing efforts it currently has with other tour operators.

“Once everything is finished in Kingston we will continue with our TV ads,” he said. The board works with Interpublic Group of Cos.’ Draftfcb’s New York office.

It is doing a minimal amount of outreach to vacationers to reassure them that the country is safe to visit for vacation. Mr. Dawson said it is e-mailing select customers and those that contact them directly for information.

“There is no massive outreach [on our part] happening yet,” Mr. Dawson said. “We’re getting a certain amount of e-mails, not a whole lot, but once they are reassured that the vacation areas aren’t affected they feel comfortable. And we haven’t gotten a lot of people saying they aren’t going or canceling.”

He said there are currently no plans to produce or run any TV spots promoting the safety of the island’s vacation spots.

7689: Univision Uniracist.

From The Huffington Post…

Univision TV Owes an Apology for Racist Skit

By Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Univision President and CEO Joe Uva have some explaining to do. On Friday, May 28, Univision aired an outrageous, racially demeaning skit on Despierta America. The show is billed as America’s leading Spanish-language morning show.

The skit was a parody on the upcoming World Cup soccer games in South Africa. Four program participants and hosts dance and mug around the TV set with spears and outlandish Afro hair wigs to a faux jungle music beat. They seem to be thoroughly enjoying their romp through every vile, vicious and offensive stereotype that’s come down the pike on Africans. Even worse, Univision brags about its partnership with the International Federation of Association Football to televise the World Cup games.

The skit is an over the top slap in the face at the unwavering support civil rights leaders have given to Latino organizations and Latino media in their fight against racial profiling and stereotyping in the immigration battle. Al Sharpton, the NAACP, and the Congressional Black Caucus have repeatedly and loudly condemned the draconian Arizona immigration law. And their major point of attack is that the law opens the door wide to racial profiling.

But that’s not all. The skit dredges up another ugly racial skeleton in the often thorny history of black and Latino relations. And that is inter-ethnic racism. Many Latinos refer to dark skinned persons as negritos or little black people. This is not seen as racially offensive, but rather as a term of affection even endearment. For years in Mexico, a popular afternoon telenovela had a comedian in blackface chasing madly after light complexioned actresses in skimpy outfits. Ads have featured blacks in Afros, black face, and distorted features. The most popular screen stars in film and on TV in some Latin countries, and the models featured on magazines and billboards, are white or fair skinned with sandy or blond hair. That’s the standard of beauty, culture, and sophistication that’s held up as the penultimate standard to emulate, and that standard is unabashedly commercialized, and peddled as top commodities in Mexico and other Latin American countries. In 2005, the Mexican government ignited a firestorm when it announced sale of the racially offensive cartoon character Memin Pinguin as a commemorative stamp. And now there’s the Univision skit.

The racist skit mocks and demeans Africans and African-Americans and reinforces old, stale and reprehensible stereotypes about Africa and Africans. Uva and Univision should do quick damage control and apologize for it and make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press).

7688: Mob Ministry.

From Gambit…

The Goodie Mob

Using an eye-opening billboard that’s become famous around the world and some frank talk, a local church and its ‘mobsters’ take aim at New Orleans’ STD rates

By Alex Woodward

With an appearance on Vh1’s Best Week Ever and as an Internet meme around the globe, a New Orleans billboard was one of 2009’s favorite Web stars. In big, bold red letters near the Louisiana Superdome was the phrase, destined to be emailed, remailed and blogged to infinity:

“HIV… It’s Time to Take Control of This GANGSTA!”

The names and faces of the gangbusting crew (dubbed the “HIV Prevention Mobsters” and written in a Godfather-style script) are displayed underneath, led by da Condom Godfather, with da Trich Terminator, da Crabs Assassin, da Chlamydia Crusher and da Herpes Hitwoman — among others.

The crew belongs to the St. John No. 5 Baptist Faith Church and Camp ACE HIV Program, a faith-based organization offering free condoms and frank, open discussions about sex and sexually transmitted diseases — and their phones rang off the hook once the billboard made headlines.

“We got calls, people saying, ‘Can I speak to the mobsters?’ And we start laughing,” says executive director Tamachia Davenport. “‘Which one are you? What’s your name? Let me speak to da Gonorrhea Crusher.’”

Davenport also was surprised at the April 22 New Orleans City Council meeting, where the program directors, wearing bright red T-shirts, promoted the group’s May 15 event, the second annual HIV Awareness Extravaganza. Councilmembers Arnie Fielkow and Cynthia Willard-Lewis showered the group with praise, commending them for their service. Davenport says she knew the council had her back, but she didn’t expect councilmembers to know her name.

“St. John (No. 5) provides a wonderful program that is vitally important given the increase of HIV in New Orleans, especially in minority communities,” City Council President Arnie Fielkow said in an email to Gambit. Fielkow also encourages people to take advantage of testing programs to protect themselves and their families.

“That’s an advantage of being faith-based in this fight,” Davenport says. “We’ve been the faith-based (organization) that provides the testing, provides the sessions, provides the events, the conversation, that distributes condoms. We’re probably on the extreme end of the fight, but we’ve been seeing more faith-based (organizations) — whether it’s churches, mosques, synagogues, Seventh Day Adventists, Catholics — evolve in the fight we started 14 years ago.”

St. John No. 5 started the Camp ACE (Alert Community Empowerment) social ministry program in 1989. Following the opening of a summer camp, the church started offering other programs, including an education department offering afterschool tutoring and GED prep.

Through that education program, Davenport says, the church saw the need to address HIV. Kids were talking about it, and some church members disclosed to pastor Bruce Davenport Sr. they had tested positive for the syndrome (he had come across some HIV-positive members of his flock while he was visiting others in the hospital). The pastor didn’t understand why HIV-positive members weren’t asking the church for help.

“They feared they’d be ostracized — exiled — from church,” Tamachia says. “He decided the church itself needed to take a stand. The community as a whole was asking faith-based organizations to step up and deal with HIV.”

Read the full story here.

7687: Not-Very-Smart Advertising.

Campaign comedy in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• General Motors is being sued for an advertisement using a likeness of Albert Einstein. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem owns the property rights to the iconic genius, and university officials think the ad doesn’t portray Einstein in a proper style. On the other hand, GM insists they had secured usage rights. A GM spokesperson said, “We did what responsible advertisers do. We used a well-known, reputable firm to license the image. That comes with a guarantee that they have the appropriate usage rights.” Um, since when has GM been a responsible advertiser?

• Kraft has launched a new campaign for its Macaroni & Cheese Dinner that targets adults. The food maker has recently been curtailing its ads targeting kids, citing an alleged concern for the childhood obesity epidemic and kids’ overall well-being. Kraft is apparently balancing the efforts by now peddling its junk food to grown-ups.

7686: You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby.

From The Chicago Sun-Times…

Big tobacco shifts ads to target world’s women
Marketing focuses on flavored brands, shiny packaging

By Christine Mathias

A sweeping survey of over a dozen developing countries and their attitudes toward tobacco has found that young women are increasingly being lured into the death trap that is cigarette addiction.

Having successfully conquered the global male demographic, the tobacco industry is shifting its focus to the female market with flavored brands and bright-and-shiny packaging.

I started smoking when I was 15, despite having crazy asthma, probably because kids I knew smoked, my mom smoked, and I was convinced of my own invincibility.

I told myself throughout my 20s that I would quit when I decided to have a baby, because I refused to be one of those girls with the bulging abdomen, a glass of Gallo and ash hanging off the end of my Pall Mall. Now I’m in my early 30s, with no desire to have a kid, and my best-laid-plan has gone kaboom.

My husband and I are on the nicotine patch, and I’ve cut my intake by 75 percent, but that last 25 percent seems like a climb.

But I have the benefit of easy access to smoking cessation products, hotlines, free literature and support groups, and, to a lesser degree, skyrocketing tobacco prices to act as a deterrent. The women in the surveyed countries, including Bangladesh, Thailand, and Uruguay aren’t going to walk into Costco and buy three weeks of Nicoderm for 30 bucks.

And with incredibly high numbers of male smokers in these regions, no national campaigns to guilt people into quitting and very few restrictions on advertising and marketing, not smoking begins to lose its luster. Because despite the risks, smoking is delicious—nicotine addiction is insidious and persistent and wonderful all at once.

You might have heard about Kelly Clarkson’s run-in with tobacco marketing overseas—an Indonesian company was sponsoring her concert and put her face on a huge billboard with a pack of smokes; the U.S. outrage was profound and noisy. But it’s par for the course there, where advertising strategies are both audacious and cloying.

We perfected this kind of pandering in the U.S., and the greediest facets of our brand of capitalism have snaked their way into areas of the planet that don’t have the resources to dedicate to prevention.

Christine Mathias is a San Francisco-based writer and radio producer.

7685: Gary Coleman (1968-2010).

From The New York Times…

Gary Coleman, ‘Diff’rent Strokes’ Star, Dies at 42

By Anita Gates

Gary Coleman, the former child star of the hit television series “Diff’rent Strokes,” who dealt with a well-publicized string of financial and personal difficulties after the show ended, died in Provo, Utah, on Friday. He was 42 and lived in Santaquin, a small town near Provo.

Mr. Coleman was taken to Utah Valley Regional Medical Center on Wednesday as a result of a head injury caused by a fall. He suffered an intercranial hemorrhage and died after being removed from life support, a hospital spokeswoman, Janet Frank, told The Associated Press.

Mr. Coleman had been hospitalized twice earlier this year with seizure-related problems. But he had also been in and out of hospitals all his life because of congenital kidney disease, the treatment for which stunted his growth.

Mr. Coleman was 4 feet 8 inches tall. He had his first kidney transplant at 5, and his second when he was 16.

“Diff’rent Strokes,” seen on NBC from 1978 to 1985 and on ABC from 1985 to 1986, was a comedy about a wealthy white New Yorker (Conrad Bain) who adopts two underprivileged black sons. Mr. Coleman’s role made his character, Arnold Jackson, the little-boy version of America’s sweetheart. The show was a sensation, and Mr. Coleman became its breakout star. But there was an undercurrent to the show’s portrayals.

“At the time, Arnold struck audiences as an endlessly endearing trickster figure, whose Harlem-based sensitivity to being hustled had been reduced to a sweetie-pie affectation: ‘What you talkin’ about, Willis?’ ” Virginia Heffernan wrote in The New York Times in 2006, quoting Mr. Coleman’s signature line. “Arnold was supposed to be shrewd and nobody’s fool, but also misguided; after learning his lessons, he was easily tamed and cuddled.” Ms. Heffernan declared the characterization a form of minstrelsy.

As he grew up and looked back, Mr. Coleman saw himself as having been used. He sued his parents and his former manager in 1989 for misappropriation of his trust fund. In 1999 he filed for bankruptcy.

Beginning in the 1990s, he was also arrested several times, charged with assault and disorderly conduct. Just a year ago he was arrested on domestic violence charges. He and his wife, the former Shannon Price, appeared on the reality show “Divorce Court” in 2008 but remained together.

Gary Wayne Coleman was born on Feb. 8, 1968, in Zion, Ill., a small city in the state’s northeastern corner. He was adopted as an infant by W. G. Coleman, a forklift operator, and his wife, Edmonia Sue, a nurse practitioner.

As a young boy, he was cast in a commercial for a Chicago bank, offering a toy lion as a promotion. “You should have a Hubert doll,” the boy told viewers. Years later, Bob Greene, the Chicago Tribune columnist, recalled Mr. Coleman’s impact in that local ad campaign: “If there is chemistry with the camera, six words can make you a star.”

He was spotted by an agent for the television producer Norman Lear and brought to Hollywood for a project that never came to fruition, a new version of the “Our Gang” comedies. Instead he was cast in “Diff’rent Strokes” and was soon earning thousands of dollars per episode.

But after the series ended, his career spiraled downward. He made 20 or so television appearances during the two decades that followed the end of the series, as well as a handful of feature films. (His last was “Midgets vs. Mascots,” a broad 2009 comedy.) But he also tried earning a living outside show business, even working as a security guard at one point.

His difficulties are parodied in the Tony Award-winning musical “Avenue Q,” in which a character named Gary Coleman was the superintendent of a run-down building in a highly undesirable neighborhood. Mr. Coleman talked about suing the show’s producers, but nothing ever came of the threats.

His survivors include his wife.

Mr. Coleman readily talked to interviewers about how unhappy his television success and its trappings had made him. “I would not give my first 15 years to my worst enemy,” he told The Vancouver Province, a Canadian newspaper. “And I don’t even have a worst enemy.”

7684: Get Off The Bus.

From The New York Daily News…

Detroit bus system rejects ‘Leaving Islam?’ ads as ‘pure anti-Muslim hate’

By Anjali Khosla Mullany and Corky Siemaszko
Daily News Staff Writers

Motown has no use for the anti-Muslim ads plastered across the sides of buses in New York City.

Detroit’s SMART bus system has rejected the button-pushing placards that read “Fatwa on your head? Is your community or family threatening you? Leaving Islam?” — and direct Muslims to a Web site urging them to leave the “falsity of Islam.”

“It’s a purely anti-Muslim hate issue,” Dawud Walid of the Council on American-Islamic Relations told the Detroit News on Friday.

“The SMART bus company, or any bus company, should not be used to marginalize a minority group.”

Defenders of the ads, dreamed up by Manhattan-based right wing blogger Pamela Geller and the New York-based Stop the Islamization of America, say it’s a free speech issue and they have sued.

“Americans have a right to know the truth; Islam is a religion of intolerance and violence,” said Michigan lawyer Richard Thompson, who filed the suit.

“Christians, Jews and other non-Muslim minorities are persecuted in every country where Islam dominates.”

The MTA has not tried to remove the 40 ads, which Geller said cost her group $10,000 for a one-month run, because they do not violate agency advertising guidelines.

In April, the Miami bus system at first rejected the ads but relented when Geller’s group threatened to sue.

A leader in the fight against the proposed mosque near Ground Zero who has Tea Party ties, Geller has been branded a bigot by CAIR and other groups.

She also caused a stir in the right-wing blogosphere by videotaping a denunciation of Palestinian terrorists — while dressed in a bikini.

In an interview with The Daily News, Geller said she didn’t care if Muslims were offended by the ads. “Will it bother Islamic supremacists? Yes,” she said.

7683: Coleman In Critical Condition.

From The Washington Post…

‘Diff’rent Strokes’ star Gary Coleman in critical condition in Utah hospital

From The Associated Press

SALT LAKE CITY—Former child television star Gary Coleman is in critical condition near his Utah home with what his family calls a “serious medical problem.” Utah Valley Regional Medical Center spokeswoman Janet Frank said Coleman, 42, was admitted to the Provo facility Wednesday but she couldn’t release any other details.

Coleman’s Utah lawyer, Randy Kester, said he had communicated by text message with Coleman’s wife, Shannon Price, and that the family did not want to release any additional details at this time. “Anything they could say would be premature because they don’t know the full extent of his condition right now,” Kester said.

Price and her father released a statement Thursday to KUTV-TV saying Coleman was taken to the hospital with “a serious medical problem.” The statement asks for prayers, adding: “We hope those prayers are answered and that Gary will be able to recover and return home soon.”

The former star of TV’s “Diff’rent Strokes” has had a string of financial and legal problems, in addition to continuing ill health from the kidney disease he suffered as a child. Coleman has had at least two kidney transplants and receives dialysis.

Last fall, Coleman had heart surgery that was complicated by pneumonia, Kester said.