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Noxious Norman and Curious George

No matter how far we may have come as a society, there’s always a local yokel to remind people, “we’ve still got a ways to go”:

Marietta tavern owner Mike Norman says the T-shirts he’s peddling, featuring cartoon chimp Curious George peeling a banana, with “Obama in ’08” scrolled underneath, are “cute.” But to a coalition of critics, the shirts are an insulting exploitation of racial stereotypes from generations past.

“It’s time to put an end to this,” said Rich Pellegrino, a Mableton resident and director of the Cobb-Cherokee Immigrant Alliance. It was among the organizations planning to gather outside Mulligan’s Bar and Grill Tuesday afternoon to protest the “racist and highly offensive” shirts.

AJC: Cobb bar protested as racist for Obama T-shirts

While I might applaud Mr. Pellegrino’s initiative, I would also suggest this can be resolved with one simple phone call or email. From the bottom PBS’s Curious George page:

Curious George and related characters, created by Margret and H.A. Rey, are copyrighted and trademarked by Houghton Mifflin Company and used under license. Licensed by Universal Studios Licensing LLLP.

© 2008 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.

Despite the fact “Norman said proceeds raised from sales of the T-shirts will be donated to the Muscular Dystrophy Association,” I’m betting once Universal’s barrel o’ lawyers catch a whiff of this, they will shower Mr. Norman in a hail of “cease and desist.”

He may deserve more, but it’s not like he’s someone who has a mind that is open to change.

Time For Another Solution

And so we awake to another Groundhog Day. Or as I said on twitter back in March, “It’s Weasel Day: the weasel came out of his hole this morning, saw his shadow, and predicted seven more weeks of Democratic primary inanity.” The weasel now says he’s not coming out of his damn hole ever again. Like Round 15 in a Rocky movie, it would appear this could go on forever.

But there’s another way. I first suggested the possibility over a year ago. And now my Mom has made it real:

The only campaign promise I have is that I will do my very best to steal enough votes from somebody so that we might end this electoral Hell more swiftly.

Vote for them, and we’ll keep doing this again. Vote for me, and I’ll set you free.

This Personal Site

Recently Jeffrey Zeldman wrote about “The vanishing personal site”:

Our personal sites, once our primary points of online presence, are becoming sock drawers for displaced first-person content. We are witnessing the disappearance of the all-in-one, carefully designed personal site containing professional information, links, and brief bursts of frequently updated content to which others respond via comments.

Zeldman is talking primarily about the outsourcing of content, as people leave their links at del.icio.us, put our photos on flickr, and post our shortish random thoughts at twitter.

Increasingly, to the best of my knowledge, there are people who follow me on Twitter but do not read zeldman.com (and vice-versa). This is good (I’m getting new readers) and arguably maybe not so good (my site, no longer the core of my brand, is becoming just another piece of it).

...but it made me think about the other side of the vanishing personal site. By “personal” site, I mean a site where a person writes about the full range of their interests (online and offline), about the events going on in their life, the people close to them, the places they go, etc.

Today, you can only be “successful” starting up such a site if your name is David Byrne or Wil Wheaton or someone else who is already established as “an interesting person.” Today, if you are Joe or Jane Average and you want to start a “successful” blog, your starting point is much different than it was a mere five or six years ago.

Back then there were maybe 99,999 blogs as opposed to the 99,999,999 there are today. My traffic now is perhaps one quarter of what it was during this site’s “hey day,” as a thousand times more blogs “compete” for a piece of the traffic pie. But that’s only part of the reason.

Today, you first want to choose a niche topic for your blog, stick solely to that topic, and pound out a dozen or more posts per day on that topic. You probably want to have more than one person contributing to “your” blog, for the sake of volume and so you can take a day off now and then. And when there is a breaking news story within your niche topic, you need to post a pithy 800 word column on it within an hour of it breaking.

Then you have me, the Anti-Blogger. I post about anything and everything that’s on my mind or going on in my life. The only other person you’ll ever see posting on this site is my wife … to tell you I cannot move my fingers to do so myself. And as for that “breaking news” bit, well, Mr. Zeldman posted his article last Sunday, and seven days later I’ve finally gotten around to writing about it.

I’m lucky if I make a dozen posts in a month, never mind a day. It wasn’t always that way. Five or six years ago I seemed to be a lot less busy with Real Life than I am today, and there were often multiple posts per day. Today, any late night energy I might have goes instead to ticking off another item on my nightmarish “To Do” list.

I no longer feel as compelled to comment on ongoing news events in the way I once did. Unless they truly outrage me. Which in turn can make this site seem “angry” much of the time, though that’s not my intent either. I was recent told in e-mail that I “write precisely-worded, well-researched opinion pieces.” Which, frankly, made me think I need to do more drunk-blogging. But since I had just told him “You’re like the formerly constipated man who finally accepted his Depends, and just let go,” I suppose I had it coming.

I think maybe I spend too much time writing about things I think I need to tell you, or things I think I need to get out of my head, rather than just telling you things for fun. Which is truly the deepest root of this particular personal web site, begun in January of 1997. A palette for creative expression. Fun.

But nearly a dozen years on, the landscape has changed mightily. Back to Sir Zeldman:

If your goal in creating a personal site way back when was to establish an online presence, meet other people who create websites, have fun chatting with virtual friends, and maybe get a better job, well, you don’t need a deep personal site to achieve those goals any more.

No, you don’t. In March of 1996 when I wanted to put my first page on the web, my options were to [1] pay someone to do it for me, or [2] learn HTML. Today, an order of magnitude more people want to put their first page on the web and chat with virtual friends. And have no desire or time or capability to learn how to hand code HTML. And today they have a host of options; MySpace and Facebook, or with a pinch more complexity, Blogger, Typepad, Wordpress, etc.

MySpace and Facebook in particular, I think, have become the places people go to “have a web page.” With a few clicks and some widgets, they can quickly have their own personal page, at a place where many of their friends already have accounts. They also become part of a monetized audience, but I guess that’s part of the trade-off for ease of access.

But the end result is that, as time goes on, fewer and fewer people will buy their own domain and create a truly personal site, one that isn’t a pre-fab templatized portion of some large business.

There will be those who fight the trend, and try to pass it on to the youngsters, but I think our days are numbered.

Angry White Men

Apparently, being a liberal female author and screenwriter, like Nora Ephron, gives one license to engage in what might be considered sexist racist talk about people who look different from you:

This is an election about whether the people of Pennsylvania hate blacks more than they hate women. And when I say people, I don’t mean people, I mean white men.

To put it bluntly, the next president will be elected by them: the outcome of Tuesday’s primary will depend on whether they go for Hillary or Obama, and the outcome of the general election will depend on whether enough of them vote for McCain. A lot of them will: white men cannot be relied on, as all of us know who have spent a lifetime dating them. And McCain is a compelling candidate, particularly because of the Torture Thing. As for the Democratic hope that McCain’s temper will be a problem, don’t bet on it. A lot of white men have terrible tempers, and what’s more, they think it’s normal.

Nora Ephron: White Men

If I were to suggest that I believe … let’s pick a sex/race combo … “black women cannot be relied on and have terrible tempers,” a lot of people would rightfully castigate me and suggest that such a sweeping generalization about an entire genetic subset of our species qualifies as bigotry and prejudice. Ugly things that usually disqualify further consideration.

Unless you are someone who gets paid by the word.

Ms. Ephron continues: “...these last primaries will show which of the two Democratic candidates is better at overcoming the bias of a vast chunk of the population that has never in its history had to vote for anyone but a candidate who could have been their father or their brother or their son, and who has never had to think of the president of the United States as anyone other than someone they might have been had circumstances been just slightly different.”

Excuse me, Nora, but this white male from Georgia (certainly, in the mind of a Hollywood screenwriter, a state filled with as many primitive white males as rural Pennsylvania) did not have to vote for someone who does not look like me.

I chose to do so, voluntarily, and joyfully. For reasons that have nothing to do with physical appearance.

Furthermore, to suggest that America is a place that will always line up “by type” and never advance as a society is a depressingly conservative idea for such a liberal to spout, and is contrary to the view of history. Just during my lifetime and Ms. Ephron’s.

I realize there is indeed 10-15% of this country who will not vote for a candidate simply because they are black or a woman. I don’t think they are all white men. And I also think that, in any group of any type at any place, 10-15% of them will behave, shall we say, irrationally. I call it the Butthead Factor (when I’m feeling polite). They’re everywhere, but in small enough numbers they are easily overwhelmed by the more rational among us.

Indeed, a lot of people have said a lot of stupid things during this interminably long campaign, and I suppose Ms. Ephron is due her share. Others, however, have sucked up their entire quota for this century, as well as that of several other people. Yet keep going:

“I think that they played the race card on me. We now know, from memos from the campaign that they planned to do it along.” – President Bill Clinton.

And that’s how President Clinton begins his answer to WHYY’s Susan Phillips who, during a phone interview earlier this evening, asked the President how he feels about one Philadelphia official who says she switched her support after interpreting Clinton’s remarks in South Carolina as an attempt to marginalize Obama as “the black candidate.”

Clearly, Clinton seems clearly frustrated by the question or the suggestion by anyone – either the reporter or the Philadelphia official whom she quoted – that he was somehow making a negative statement about Obama (or Jesse Jackson) based on their race. His frustration comes through towards the end of the recording when, apparently unaware that he was still on the line, Clinton asks whoever is with him, “I don’t think I should take any shit from anybody on that, do you?”

President Bill Clinton says the Obama campaign “played the race card”

Update: Bill now denies saying that, even though it was a radio interview, i.e., it’s on tape. “No, no, no. That’s not what I said. You always follow me around and play these little games, and I’m not going to play your games today.” Golly, Steve Jobs isn’t the only one with a Reality Distortion Field surrounding him.

Myself, I just don’t feel as “put upon” as Bill does. And as for what he should have to “take,” perhaps he should talk to his wife about the kitchen. Recently she’s been crowing that if it is too hot in there, you should get out.

Go find a fainting couch somewhere. Or maybe the men’s room. There’s apparently a bunch of white guys in there commiserating, licking their wounds, and collectively deciding who should be the next President.

I'm 49, Not Retired

In the mail yesterday, I got something that, at first, I thought was misdelivered. The envelope said it was from the AARP and that my card was enclosed.

Couldn’t be for me, I’m nowhere near retirement age, I work for a living.

But it was indeed correctly addressed to me, and the AARP was soliciting this 49 year old to join. Reading on, I see they now take people as young as 50, and I guess I’m in some database somewhere that shows I’m turning 50 this year.

I’m reminded of Facebook, which started out as I understand it as a social connection site solely for college students. And then they expanded to include high school students. And then they expanded to include anyone who has eyeballs and a computer. Because they were no longer about providing a service to a specific community/demographic, they were about making money and collecting as many users as possible.

On this literature the AARP sent me, nowhere did it spell out exactly what the letters AARP stand for. Not on the envelope, not in the letter, not in the fine print on the back of the letter. AARP simply is not defined.

Why? Because when you’re 49 and get a letter form the American Association of Retired Persons, you think, yeah, right, come back in a decade or so.

However, the AARP would like me to send them $12.50 for an annual membership. Today. And every year for that “decade or so” before I retire. So they therefore intentionally mask their real name in their solicitation.

They do it on the web, too. I didn’t have time to waste clicking everywhere, and I’m sure it’s somewhere, but on the home page, the About page, and the AARP Overview page, they simply refuse to spell out what AARP is. Even in the fine print.

I find that both bizarre and on the borderline of misleading advertising.

Shut Up And Drive

This topic is a real pet peeve of mine, on the basis of responsibility to your fellow travelers. But often the only way things change is when it hits the wallet.

Vanessa McGrogan never noticed the car ahead of her own speeding vehicle until it was too late. Jeffrey Stasium didn’t see the auto crossing the intersection until his pickup truck slammed into the driver’s door. The crashes, separated by three years and 160 miles, had two things in common. Both drivers were distracted by their cellphone use, according to lawsuits filed against them. And their employers wrote big checks in recent months to settle those suits in Fulton County.

In December, McGrogan’s employer, International Paper, agreed to pay $5.2 million to settle an accident in which a woman’s car was forced off the road and her arm was later amputated. In February, Modern Continental Construction Co. agreed to pay $750,000 to a woman whose car was struck by Stasium.

Workers on cell phones cost their companies big bucks in wrecks

Big checks totaling nearly $6 million, and that’s just two cases. One lawyer “pointed to a study that shows drivers on cellphones are as inattentive as those who are legally drunk and another that says drivers using hands-free devices are no better off than those using hand-held cells.”

Do you drink and drive? Would you drive with an open fifth of Jack Daniels between your legs? No? Then stay off your cell phone while rolling, shut up, and drive, because it’s the same damn thing.

I know, we’re all modern techno-people who have developed vast capabilities to multitask, but let’s break this down. Your brain must focus on two things: [1] making split-second decisions to control a rapidly moving ton of iron parts amongst other human lives who also happen to be wrapped in a ton of iron, and [2] a phone call to make sure your spouse picked up milk, only to find they also want to argue about the credit card bill that arrived today.

Now, I’m sorry, when I’m one of those other humans wrapped in iron hurtling along beside you … I get priority. You can pull over at the turn-off you’d have to make to go to the store to phone about the milk, and you can fight about money most any time.

I get priority over your ability to drink alcohol and drive, and I get priority when it comes to other behavior that makes you drive as if you were drunk.

And you do. Let there be no doubt about it. When I get cut off or nearly sideswiped by some fellow traveler in a hurtling ton of iron, invariably, they are on the phone. And when I watch passing drivers at busy intersections, fully a third of people appear to be talking into some device. Good as drunk. Scary numbers, those.

It matters not to me whether the call is personal or business, but some lawyers are mopping up on that data point. However, I do understand what drives a lot of this. As the article notes:

McArthur said even though cellphone use while driving is dangerous, attorneys are getting mixed messages. She recently attended a seminar for lawyers and said they got advice on how to call in and dictate messages from the car. “It’s a way to get things done while driving,” McArthur said.

Here in Atlanta, a lot of people suffer through daily commutes of an hour or more. And they feel they must ... be ... productive. I, on the other hand, work mostly from home these days. My morning commute involves dodging small furry critters, not humans driving as if they were drunk.

And I hope to keep it that way. Because you cell-phoning commuters scare me. And I see no sign whatsoever that people (outside of the above courtrooms) acknowledge the potential danger.

Dear Hillary

I know you’re very busy, but I felt the need to respond since you said something about me the other day:

“My take on it is a lot of Senator Obama’s supporters want to end this race because they don’t want people to keep voting,” she told CBS affiliate KTVQ in Billings, Mont. “That’s just the opposite of what I believe. We want people to vote.”

msnbc.com: Clinton: Obama wants to stop votes

First, a Media Note. Notice how Clinton’s statement about “Obama’s supporters” wanting the race to end morphed into a headline that reads “Clinton: Obama wants to stop votes.”

That’s not what she said. Or else I wouldn’t be writing this. She specifically said that Obama’s supporters want to end the race because we don’t want people voting, as opposed to Hillary, who says “We want people to vote.”

Unless it’s in a caucus, because, well, you know, they’re not democratic and are dominated by extremists, and, oh yeah, Hillary has not had any luck winning one. So, other than caucuses, and states that are supposedly permanently “red” (like Texas, since she just lost the final delegate count there), or states that have a higher than average percentage of African Americans, or states that are “population challenged,” Hillary would like the voting to continue.

At one point someone counted up 20 some states whose votes “were insignificant,” according to the logic emitting from the Clinton campaign. And, let’s not forget, the Clinton campaign strategy relied on the concept that it would all be over by February 5th. In other words, their entire failed plan was based on the idea that none of the votes after February 5th would matter. That’s partially what put her in this fine mess. Because, clearly, she was wrong. For the entire remainder of February, in fact.

Senator Clinton may be comfortable making a sweeping generalization about what is on the minds and in the will of tens of millions of Obama supporters, but I can only speak for myself. This Obama supporter welcomes the votes to come in each of the ten primaries left. I think it’s great that some states that normally get no attention at all during the waning days of already decided campaigns get more “throw weight” this year.

This Obama supporter also welcomes the continued candidacy of Hillary Clinton, for multiple reasons. Primarily, because that’s a decision that only she can make. Also, because the recent public pressure on her to drop out is most certain to have the opposite effect. She’s not the type who will bow to such pressure, quite the opposite, she’ll dig in her heels against it. That’s exactly what we’ve seen over the past week.

Whenever the time comes, it will have to be of her choosing. I’ve come to think all the talk of taking it to a floor fight at the convention in late August is bluster. There will come a moment, perhaps even right after winning Pennsylvania by a smaller than hoped margin, when she’ll withdraw. That moment is likely already chosen in her mind, or at least, the alternatives. April 23rd? May 7th? Surely by mid-June when the remaining uncommitted superdelegates start falling into one line or the other.

That’s the positive side. On the negative, look what’s happened since the Rev. Wright scandal broke and the Clinton campaign had its first “She Lied” moment. Obama opened up a nine to ten point gap in the daily tracking poll by Gallup. So, please, Hillary, keep throwing the kitchen sink, keep diminishing your own stature with wild swings at your opponent, spin-filled denials of your campaign’s obvious state, and keep insisting you’ll be in the race until the last dog is hung, no matter what the delegate vote may be.

Each day that you do so, you ensure the outcome many have begun to speak publicly about, forcing you to spin even more furiously.

But take your time. I’ve come to realize you are hurting yourself more than anyone else. And after this campaign performance, you might as well use up whatever Clinton Capital you have left now, because at this rate it’s going to soon be a worthless currency within the Democratic Party.

2012? Give me a break. Were the masses pining for Al Gore in 2004 after losing in 2000, or for John Kerry this year after losing in 2004? Multiply that effect by ten, and you have Hillary in 2012, after this performance in 2008.

It’s now or never. She’s got to play it out until there’s nothing left to play, and may well end up with no “legacy capital” left to back a hardball ploy to swipe the nomination at the convention.

She’ll pick her time. But it won’t be when everyone is on her back to get out. That’s why I think she may drop out after a slim win in Pennsylvania. And if she doesn’t, every day she stays in, the picture gets clearer. And in this picture, she will not be the photogenic one.

But I’d really appreciate it if I wasn’t treated as if I was [1] stupid enough to believe some of the mammoth spin coming from her camp, or [2] part of some generic hive mind that wants the voting to end.

The only thing I want to end is the insulting treatment. But that’s a change for which I am not filled with hope. Based solely on experience.