Wednesday, April 16, 2008

New York ad agencies progress in "diversity"?

The New York Times' vet ad columnist Stuart Elliott wrote today on how the big ad guys are doing in meeting their self-policed campaign to become more "diverse" - whatever that means.

They were forced to at least acknowledge their lack thereof a few years ago when the NYC Human Rights Commission threatened hearings on their almost exclusively"whites only" hiring policies in their professional and upper management ranks. Elliott's article today mentions a report the commission released yesterday on what progress has been made. According to Elliott, the agencies are making some progress, if not meeting some of their more ambitious goals.

The story is interesting to me because 16 years ago I instigated a similar examination of the business nationwide. Even more interesting is the fact that no other source, including the NYCHRC itself seems to think the issue is important enough to even mention. I googled "New York City Human Rights Commission - Diversity" and there was nothing about their report anywhere else, even on their own sight.

That fact and the fact that none of the successful hires are broken down into racial, ethnic, age, gender or sexual orientation tells me even their modest success is padded with diversifiers not of the...er...ah...let's just say "darker hues".

Call me paranoid but it looks like diversity perversity.

Business and BS as usual.

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Basquiat: The Spook who sat by Warhol's studio door?

Chicago-based art maven and creative critic, Nathaniel McLin, has an interesting piece on Jean Michel Basquiat, the graffiti artist some ignorant white bloviator once called "the only important Black artist in history". The title, "In the Shadow of Basquiat: The Spook That Opened the Door" is suspect, but McLin makes his case.
I like mine better, but maybe I'm just "dead playa hatin". Check it out at Paint magazine online. The link is here somewhere.

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Georg Olden lives on the internet

One of the most interesting but ultimately frustrating projects I ever worked on was when Print, a New York communications design magazine, asked me to write an article on Georg Olden.

Georg who? I know most of you are asking. (And, yes, I spelled his name right.)

I would guess that few people, even African Americans in advertising, graphic design or television today, have ever heard of Mr. Olden. But almost 20 years before the March on Washington, Georg Olden was one of, if not, the first television art directors. He was definitely the first art director for CBS Television. He was there at the very beginning, creating many of the first logos and graphics ever seen on the air, anywhere. And, just to make sure you're not missing my point - he was what was then known as "colored".

Print magazine's head editor, Martin Fox asked Julie Lasky, managing editor, to ask me if I would write an article whose theme would be, "Whatever happened to Georg Olden?"

Well, to make a long, long story very short, the article I wrote was rejected by the magazine. They said I had failed to find out what actually happened to him. And technically, I guess they were right. Even though I dug up lots of previously unpublished information about Mr. Olden's life, before and after he left CBS, I didn't find out that he had been shot in LA by an irate girlfriend. Julie Lasky found that out, and she then used my material as the basis for much of her article. She even quoted me a few times.

But remember I said "technically" I didn't find out what happened to Georg. On a larger scale, I think I did. Good ol' American racism happened to Olden, even though it took its own sweet time getting to him. Ironically, for most of his life, the tall, handsome, light-skinned Olden seemed to think himself exempt from the realities of race and racism.

I just stumbled across a video of Olden on the old "I've Got a Secret" show on May 20, 1963. Isn't the internet amazing? When I was writing the article in 1993, the www was still just a glint in a DARPA techie's eye. Click on "Olden on YouTube".