Misogyny, racism and worse! The Comedy Central Roast is a “purge” for despicable behavior.

A punch line on Comedy Central…

Over the years, I have been criticized –often justifiably- for being tone deaf to politically correct behavior. At times, I go to far with a “witty” observation. I don’t know when to stop a rant, diatribe or whatever best describes these sorts of things. I’m not pleading ignorance, necessarily; rather I just can’t stop playing with nasty, fun thoughts. If something is genuinely funny I have a hard time deeming it genuinely inappropriate. For me, going too far just means passing beyond the mainstream. Too soon means fresh. I could go on but you get the idea.

Regardless of your point of view, the ‘normal’ world is rapidly becoming more open-minded to bawdiness. Ungodly levels of it. Credit transparent yet anonymous social media as well as rampant competition for your entertainment dollars as two of the many reasons for the “ribaldification” of society.

So, are there lines we should never cross? Taboos? Not if you base your opinion on Comedy Central’s insanely over-the-top Roast of Justin Bieber.

Race. Sex. Age. Politics. Religion. 9/11. Isis. No stone was left unturned in this 2-hour orgy of insults, hurled by a motley crew of rappers, ballers and comedians. Women were sluts and whores. Black men were pimps and gangsters. Latinos were gardeners and valets. The N-word was dropped dozens of times. As was “retard” and other slang even I won’t print. Said of guest, Martha Stewart: “She hasn’t been with so many black people since she was in prison.” Or that her “pussy was 50 shades of grey.” Behemoth ex-Laker, Shaquille O’Neal’s “dick is so big he uses it as a selfie-stick.”

I think these jokes are freaking hilarious. And so did plenty of you. Bieber’s roast, like all the CC Roasts, got tremendous ratings.

Given the immense popularity of such bacchanalia, I can’t help but wonder about political correctness in general. Is there a time and place for such things or is it hypocritical to think so? I get confused sometimes, which is why I’m called tone deaf. Yet, one cannot tell me that saying the “N-word” is okay here but never anywhere else. Or that anal rape jokes are fine directed at Justin Bieber but unacceptable toward anyone else.

Justin Bieber. Portrait of a young man as douche bag…

The best argument for such ethics compartmentalization is that it’s fine if we have a choice in the matter. Therefore, racial and sexually demeaning jokes are okay on a cable TV show but not in the workplace.

Justify it all you want but this is a double standard.

And the more work and home converge the grayer this all becomes. For example, if I want to re-tell one of the above-mentioned Comedy Central jokes at work the next day does that mean I am crossing a line? Or worse yet make me a racist-misogynist? A short time ago I was asked by someone at work to take down a Facebook post I’d made regarding the riots in Ferguson, Missouri. Too sensitive a topic, I was told. People at work might be offended. Yet it was fair game on Comedy Central, a show these same people likely all watched. What gives?

Final note: Advertising tries desperately to ride the bleeding edge. But generally it is found chasing madly after it. Some of you may remember how Madison Avenue loved exploiting characters from SNL almost as fast as the show cranked them out. In terms of truly avant-garde, advertising is still bound by the typically conservative conventions of its many clients as well as antiquated ethics and suitability laws created for TV networks in the 20^th century.

Donald Sterling, the racist. As NBA owner, a tsunami of outrage. As slumlord, barely a trickle.

Donald Sterling, same as he ever was.

Slimy shit this business with Don Sterling. Lord knows I don’t need to weigh in on the topic. Everyone and their brother are doing that. For those living under a rock, Sterling, the owner of an NBA franchise (the Los Angeles Clippers), in a recording leaked to a gossip website (TMZ), made a torrent of racially divisive comments to his mistress (V. Stiviano) regarding certain black people she was cavorting with. You know the rest. It has become a shit storm to end all shit storms.

Yet…

How come there was no outcry when the same man blamed black people for “stinking up” a tenement building that he owned? He also made slurs about Mexicans being lazy and drunk. It’s all a matter of public record. He settled the case for a couple million bucks, a similar amount to what is being levied at him by the NBA.

My question is a rhetorical one. I think I know the answer. And I’ll get to it shortly. But first another question: Are not safe and secure living arrangements for the poor, in the face of an ignorant and racist slumlord, far more grave than what has transpired now?

Though his recent remarks are despicable they are by comparison benign. The African American players on the Los Angeles Clippers and, indeed, the rest of the NBA are all millionaires, some many times over. Nothing Sterling said can hurt their livelihoods unless they let it, by striking or boycotting. Which, of course, they won’t. Letting some old bigot’s comments interfere with their ability to perform would only give more power to his words. Win or lose, the Clippers are better than that. We all are.

The truth is the reason few people took notice of Sterling’s vulgar statements in the past, despite their real-world implications, is because those events were just plain news. A creepy old slumlord did what countless creepy old slumlords have done for centuries.

Then there were no secret recordings. No famous millionaires. No playoffs. No scorned mistress (and all that their sordid relationship implies). No TMZ or Deadspin. In the end it was just a crappy story about a crappy man doing crappy things. He was made to give restitution by the local courts. The world shrugged. And so did Sterling. Not that it matters, but I’m betting his racist views were only enhanced by these events.

We gape and gawk now because the story is sensational. It has all the elements: see above paragraph. Though I get it, completely, something about it gnaws at my core: that badness needs to be entertaining in order to move us.

Sterling is rightfully being forced under the rock he came from. And he will die there. His story is almost over. But what about all the other stories out there? Must they have water-cooler value in order to be told and, moreover, listened to? For the most part, I’m afraid the answer is yes.

MLK’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” is, among other things, great copy for a big idea.

Imprisoned, King set forth to writing…

When I was in college, I took a course on rhetoric and debate in 20th century America. In it, we looked at numerous famous speeches made by famous people: Lincoln, Jefferson, King, etc. Learning from great persuaders how to fashion a rational and emotional argument would later become useful as a copywriter and presenter. During that semester, no document we studied was more powerful than Martin Luther King’s Letter From a Birmingham Jail.

I am not being glib when I say Letter from a Birmingham Jail is one of the finest pieces of long copy ever written. No question Equal Rights was and is a big idea. I like LFABJ better than King’s more famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Not because of content (both are awesome) but because of circumstances. King was alone in a jail cell when he wrote it.

On this, the anniversary of what would have been MLK’s 85th birthday; I think it a fine thing to reexamine this seminal document. An excerpt follows. The full text is linked below it.

“We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait.” But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”–then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html

MLK’s “Letter From a Birmingham Jail.” Among other things, remarkable body copy for a big idea.

Imprisoned, King set forth to writing…

When I was in college, I took a course on rhetoric and debate in 20th century America. In it, we looked at numerous famous speeches made by famous people: Lincoln, Jefferson, King, etc. (Learning from great persuaders how to fashion a rational and emotional argument would later become highly useful in my career as a copywriter –both as a writer and presenter.) During that semester, no document we studied was more powerful than Martin Luther King’s “Letter From a Birmingham Jail.”

I am not being glib when I say the “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” is one of the finest pieces of long copy ever written. Certainly Equal Rights is a big idea. I like it better than King’s more famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Not because of content (both are awesome) but because of circumstances. King was alone in a jail cell when he wrote it.

On this, the anniversary of what would have been MLK’s 84th birthday; I think it a fine thing to reexamine this seminal document. An excerpt follows. The full text is linked below it.

“We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait.” But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”–then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

Letter From a Birmingham Jail

Angels and Kings and Bears, oh my! Is racial profiling black sheep version of target marketing?

Angels & Kings. So nice and white.

Last week a group of Chicago Bears were denied entry into the Angels & Kings nightclub in Chicago. Apparently, they were told the club was already being leased for the night and that they were not welcome.

You know where this is going.

By next morning it was all over the Internet and in the press. The primary question was did the club deny entrance to the group because it was comprised of mostly black men? The fact that these guys were famous athletes made the story even more provocative. You’d think they’d want celebrities in the club.

In fairness to Angels & Kings, which is partially owned by Pete Wentz of Fallout Boy (ugh!), another entity was leasing the club that night. In addition, not all the players denied entry were black. And, finally, according to eyewitness accounts, several rejected Bears didn’t seem to give a shit. They would take their copious wads of money (arguably undeserved this year) to some other overrated club in Chicago’s touristy River North district, which is exactly what they did.

Still, the accusations of racial profiling by the club came fast and furious. Sorry, Mr. Wentz, but the “fallout” was brutal. Actually, it’s still going on. Inquiries are being made. The usual denials, rebuttals and arguments…

Why am I writing about racial profiling? Because not only is it disturbing and fascinating but to me it feels awfully similar to target marketing. An advertiser (Angels & Kings) targets a specific group (white men and women) to embrace his brand (upscale & hip), forsaking all others (blacks and other minorities). In fact, one could argue that maintaining the brand’s equity actually requires the brand manager to forsake all others.

Calm down. I’m not a hater; I’m just turning around an argument and framing it in the context of marketing.

But take this truth and suck on it: racial profiling occurs in every club with a gated entrance, bouncer, and cover charge. That’s what the rope is for: Keeping. People. Out.

I’ve spoken to several influential club owners in this town and they all freely admit to racially profiling customers. Furthermore, they claim it’s standard operating procedure. One told me his business wouldn’t succeed if it operated more democratically. How do they get away with it? The easiest trick is invoking a dress code. If an owner doesn’t want you in his club he needs only to find something inappropriate about your wardrobe. This happens all the time. Is it a racist agenda or is the proprietor just trying to protect his brand?

And it’s not just African-Americans getting “blacklisted.”

Recently, a popular club in Chicago’s so-called Viagra triangle became “overrun” with young Indians. According to the owner they were an invasive species, crowding out the regular customers. Via arbitrary dress codes and made up private parties, the bar’s owner began turning them away in droves. It worked. The “locusts” moved on to another field. His words not mine.

What do you think? Does a brand have a right to choose its customers? What about the age-old practice of charging men a cover but not women? Is that prejudiced? If so, where’s the uproar? Before answering any of these questions, ask yourself what you would do if, for example, you owned a club and your regular customers stopped coming in because another group was. Maybe you’re not so liberal in your own back yard.