I started to write an entry regarding why I think NBC made an awfully bad decision in airing the video of the VTech murderer.
Tim Sanders saved me the effort by posting his thoughts here. I especially like Tim’s call to action:
If you know any advertisers or ad agencies, email them this post and tell them to refuse to pay for ad impressions served against this tragedy. If you know anyone at a newspaper, a web portal or a television station/outlet, tell them how you feel. I’ve done the best I can, contacting Jerry Yang at Yahoo, execs at GE and even major sites like Huffington Post and MSN. Let’s make a difference right now and show that backlash can control the fifth estate.
I took Tim’s advice and called my local affiliate as well as NBC headquarters. Here’s NBC’s number: (212) 315-9016. As a P&G shareholder, I also let them have my two cents- here is Procter and Gamble’s shareholder services phone number: (800) 742-6253.
The Kansas City Star’s Jason Whitlock helped me put the whole Imus mess into perspective.
Whitlock, an African-American, writes:
In the grand scheme, Don Imus is no threat to us in general and no threat to black women in particular. If his words are so powerful and so destructive and must be rebuked so forcefully, then what should we do about the idiot rappers on BET, MTV and every black-owned radio station in the country who use words much more powerful and much more destructive?
I don’t listen or watch Imus’ show regularly. Has he at any point glorified selling crack cocaine to black women? Has he celebrated black men shooting each other randomly? Has he suggested in any way that it’s cool to be a baby-daddy rather than a husband and a parent? Does he tell his listeners that they’re suckers for pursuing education and that they’re selling out their race if they do?
When Imus does any of that, call me and I’ll get upset. Until then, he is what he is — a washed-up shock jock who is very easy to ignore when you’re not looking to be made a victim.
No. We all know where the real battleground is. We know that the gangsta rappers and their followers in the athletic world have far bigger platforms to negatively define us than some old white man with a bad radio show. There’s no money and lots of danger in that battle, so Jesse and Al are going to sit it out.
Imus’ reprehensible comment is a straw-man distracting attention from what should be the real dialogue. We’ll see if anyone is interested in having this bigger discussion in a week from now.
April 12, 2007 at 6:42 am
· Filed under Uncategorized
Kurt Vonnegut passed away last night at age 84. Like millions of other American students, I first read Cat’s Cradle while in high school and then immediately devoured everything else he had written. He remained a favorite author throughout my college and young adult years.
I didn’t read his final book though- admittedly, I haven’t thought of Vonnegut for awhile. Tonight I’ll dig out my old copy of Slaughterhouse- Five, or maybe Breakfast of Champions, and rekindle an old flame.
We have a mission for you. As you’ve heard, the daughter of Yankee owner George Steinbrenner is divorcing the former heir-apparent to the baseball empire, on the heels of his arrest for DUI.
We need one of you to infiltrate this family.
Your mission is to woo the daughter, and curry favor with the old man. Kiss his sagging, speckled, hail-damaged, warty behind as often as possible. Whisper words of encouragement into his ear, such as: “I always thought Dave Winfield was up to no good”, or “you know, that whole Watergate thing was totally overblown”.
Click through to see suggestions on what you should do once you win over the old man and gain control of the Yankees.
A student has been suspended from school in America for coming to class dressed as a pirate.
But the disciplinary action has provoked controversy – because the student says that the ban violates his rights, as the pirate costume is part of his religion.
Bryan Killian says that he follows the Pastafarian religion, and that as a crucial part of his faith, he must wear ‘full pirate regalia’ as prescribed in the holy texts of Pastafarianism.
The school, however, say that his pirate garb was disruptive.
Pastafarians follow the Flying Spaghetti Monster (pictured) and believe that the world was created by the touch of his noodly appendage.
Furthermore, they acknowledge pirates as being ‘absolute divine beings’, and stress that the worldwide decline in the number of pirates has directly led to global warming.
Please click through and read the entire article. Priceless.
Perhaps you know that sinking feeling when a single keystroke accidentally destroy hours of work. Now imagine wiping out a disc drive containing an account worth $38 billion.
That may be how a computer technician at the Alaska Department of Revenue feels after deleting applicant information for an oil-funded sales account — one of state residents’ biggest perks.
While reformatting the disk drive during a routine maintenance check, the technician mistakenly reformatted the back up drive as well and, suddenly, all the data disappeared.
But the dread didn’t really set in until the department turned to its third line of defense, back up tapes that are updated nightly, only to find those tapes were unreadable.
