Liveblogging the Oscars!

Let's get a few things out of the way:

1. We all know the Awards are under pressure for the lack of nominees of color, so I anticipate completely inappropriate insertions of black people presenting.

2. Let us all pray that Gwyneth Paltrow does use yet another award show as yet another opportunity to sing. #overexposure

3. I've realized it's much more satisfying to watch awards season unfold as a marketer vs as an artist.  Everything makes much more sense, highly recommend.

Actually, if I'm going to muse in short, perfunctory sentences, that's more fitting for the Tweeting, don't you think?

#takingthischattertoTwitter

Liveblogging the Oscars: Red Carpet

(hit refresh to get the latest...)

It's time for everyone's favorite industry-wide public masturbation session, The Academy Awards!  Let's get some foreplay going with some fashion & celeb snark, shall we?  (We shall, and we shall be referring to the E! Red Carpet for you viewers at home.)

HBHM: The Undercover Black Person

I was overjoyed to find my favorite essay on mixed-ness published in its entirety online - Danzy Senna's The Mulatto Millennium brilliantly captures what it's like, especially for those of us who "look white" and are therefore privy (though I use that term loosely) to all sorts of shades of grey in the chasm between black and white.

White folks were the most uncomfortable with the dissonance between the face they saw and the race they didn't. Upon learning who I was, they grew paralyzed with fear that they might have "slipped up" in my presence, that is, said something racist, not knowing there was a Negro in their midst. Often, they had.

Full article.

On a related note, being the only black and white (and red) person in most of my groups and a big avoider of conflict, I never know what to do when a friend says something I deem racist, whether about one of my races or someone else's.  This happens every so often. Yes, I am probably more sensitive than others due to my racial makeup.  And yes, classification of racism is hugely subjective.  Still, I feel complicit if I don't call it out.  So where's the line?

In Which the Mayoress is on the (kind of) News!

You GUYS!  Last week my friend Sarena called and asked if I might like to go on a Washington DC TV show called Let's Talk Live and give some marketing tips.  Oh, sigh, I don't know, I'm pretty busy... uh, obvs I hopped the first Bolt south, and yesterday I got to go to a real live news studio in our nation's capital (well, kind of - across the river, but greater metropolitan area, right?).

Hold onto your morning joe, stay-at-home parents and unemployed college grads, and get ready for some marketing tips from The Mayoress!



Obviously this has major implications: I am now kind of a pundit, and kind of an expert, and kind of have the kind of TV experience one would need to run for NYC Mayoress in 18 years.  Take that and run with it, exploratory committee*!

Excuse me while I go viral this.

*Or whenever you're done with that cocktail, Babs.

HBHM: President's Day Edition!

On this fine bank holiday, Meet the Pressler honors multicultural American leadership by listing all of our multiracial or biracial or multicultural or otherwise racially diverse presidents!

Barack Obama

Wasn't that fun?  Happy President's Day everyone!

HBHM: On Half-Blackness and Halle Berry

Half-Black History Month Continues...

I was over the (half) moon to see a well-rounded feature in the Times recently about the decision by many young bi- and multi-racial Americans to define themselves as such.

Many young adults of mixed backgrounds are rejecting the color lines that have defined Americans for generations in favor of a much more fluid sense of identity... “It depends on the day, and it depends on the options.” They are also using the strength in their growing numbers to affirm roots that were once portrayed as tragic or pitiable. “I think it’s really important to acknowledge who you are and everything that makes you that. If someone tries to call me black I say, ‘yes — and white.’ People have the right not to acknowledge everything, but don’t do it because society tells you that you can’t.”

I feel incredibly strongly about this -- unlike Halle Berry (I know, you thought we were exactly the same, but it's really just exterior), I do not buy into the one-drop rule that one black ancestor means I must define myself and my experience as African-American.  That's about as genuine as Michelle Obama identifying as white since she has white ancestors; her life experience has probably been lived as a black woman regardless of her genetic history.

One of my clients right now is a transman who has written a rock memoir (yes, that's my term, go marketing!) about his life and transition from female to male.  It's been a huge eye-opener for me.  I can't imagine being born into the wrong body, an identity that I couldn't embrace... and yet, I identify heavily with his story, as throughout my life I have been, and always will be, confronted by people and situations that want to tell me how I "should" identify, which box I should check.  Identity, ideally, should be something that is self-determined, and the rest of the world should accept it and carry on.  It feels insincere for me to say I'm black because that ignores a huge part of what has shaped me, but on the other side of the oreo, saying I'm white certainly doesn't tell the whole story either. So it is fine with me if Halle identifies as black, but I hope as time goes on, she lets her (quarter-black) daughter define herself.

The Mayoress Decrees: Half-Black History Month!

It's February, you know what that means?  Tacky Valentine's Day gifts, daydreaming about Spring Break, and feeling guilty you don't know more about black people!

Well, the guilt end now because the Mayoress is decreeing the second half (get it?) of February...

Half-Black History Month!!!

Yesiree racial voyeurs, for the next two weeks I will focus my meandering rants on the issues of multi-race.  Because mixed is the new black!

Look forward to contributions from such mixed luminaries as Mariah Carey, Halle Berry, Tiger Woods, and the POTUS himself!*

Questions & suggestions welcome... more to come.

*Subject to change without notice.

You Can't Explain a Revolution in 140 Characters

I'm just as guilty as every American described in this editorial by Frank Rich -- I have little knowledge of the background and context of what's going on in the Middle East, and I too have lazily made my revolution talking point about the use of social media to organize.  But:

“Let’s get a reality check here,” said Jim Clancy, a CNN International anchor, who broke through the bloviation on Jan. 29 by noting that the biggest demonstrations to date occurred on a day when the Internet was down. “There wasn’t any Twitter. There wasn’t any Facebook,” he said. No less exasperated was another knowledgeable on-the-scene journalist, Richard Engel, who set the record straight on MSNBC in a satellite hook-up with Rachel Maddow. “This didn’t have anything to do with Twitter and Facebook,” he said. “This had to do with people’s dignity, people’s pride. People are not able to feed their families.”


And further, on our collective lack of attention to or tolerance of Middle East issues, lately exemplified by what Rich identifies as the American corporate-level blackout of Al Jazeera English:


The consequence of a decade’s worth of indiscriminate demonization of Arabs in America — and of the low quotient of comprehensive adult news coverage that might have helped counter it — is the steady rise in Islamophobia.

OMG Are U Going to the Rally!?!

Egypt rally today in Times Square at 3:30pm!!  What you guys wearing???

But for serious, I think it's fantastic that the people are standing up (and shouting, and marching, and even kicking    a few asses*) for their freedom and what they want.  How many of us would be willing to put our lives at risk for what we believed to be our country's greater good?

The photos are just amazing.  Imagine if this was your city, your street... the thing I've found most striking about the protests in Tunis, Jordan, Egypt, is that it's all men, mostly young men.  What would it all look like, how would it all progress, if the women were out there too?

*Except for Anderson Cooper's, that's not cool.  But I'm pretty sure the Mubarak side was behind that, so, see?  They totes need to be ousted.

Bloomberg on Bloomberg