ESPN, "Linsanity," and Acceptable Racism in America

Recently, ESPN made headlines in a new sort of way - by firing an employee who made a headline with a racist double entendre. By now we mostly know the story.

Anthony Federico, 28, made the far more stupid gaffe of the two on Saturday night when he posted the following headline on ESPN’s mobile website: "Chink in the Armor: Jeremy Lin's 9 Turnovers Cost Knicks in Streak-Snapping Loss to Hornets." The headline was posted at 2:30 in the morning, and then removed slightly more than a half an hour later when someone (finally) realized that it may be construed as an offensive remark. (link)

One interesting take says that,

By acknowledging this gaffe to such a degree, ESPN increased the social damage exponentially. ...

From a public relations standpoint, the response from ESPN was a no-brainer. Yet, we ought to care more about the public's continuing recognition of fake words created by hate-mongers. By ignoring pre-existing definitions and acknowledging ridiculous slurs in an effort to not be considered racist, the media does the exact opposite.(link)

That got me thinking about the collateral damage done by ESPN versus just quietly taking down the headline, and the phrase "the response from ESPN was a no-brainer." Everyone agrees that if "chink" is used in a racist manner, this is a horrible gaff and disciplinary action must be taken. But can we say it was meant that way? "Chink in the armor" is a common phrase used to describe a weakness in a previously perfect person.

Do media outlets have to fire people who make mistakes with ambiguous intent because they could be deemed racist?

What if the employee was African American? Asian? Does that change things?

Recently, the African American community in Dallas, TX protested a gas station owned by a Korean man.

The customer, complaining that the price of gas at the station was much higher than at other stations, demanded he be able to buy gas by smaller amounts than what the owner set as the minimum sales unit. The owner refused and told him to go to another station, to which the customer responded by telling the owner to go back to his country. The owner responded by telling the customer to go back to Africa.

That triggered a boycott of the gas station by the black community in the region, followed by them speaking out against Korean and other Asian immigrant communities....

The gas station owner publicly apologized on a Dallas radio program, attended by African American civic leaders like city councilman Eric Johnson. The Korea Society of Dallas also donated 500 winter coats to NAACP as a gesture of goodwill.(link)

It's ok for the Black customer to tell the Korean man to go back to his country, but it's not ok for the Korean to tell him to go back to Africa?

You can say it if you're black, but not if you're Asian?

I am incredulous that the Korean and the Korean community had to apologize, but the African American community did nothing in kind. I don't think you should get a free pass if you're African American or Asian. Both people were in the wrong here. But clearly society doesn't feel the same way. A person seems to be given more latitude to say hurtful or racist statements if they are a minority - whether by race, gender, or sexual orientation - and perhaps certain minority groups get more latitude than others.

So why does society do this?

I don't know the answers. Racism is hurtful for everyone involved, and should not arise from anyone's mouth. But it does seem like - at least on a cursory read - when dealing with racist sayings, in American culture not all speakers are created equal.

FBI Confiscates Websites

A few short weeks ago, the internet came to a stop - at least in some corners - and the very foundations of internet freedom shook because a small group of very greedy Hollywood men and women sought to keep yet another copper for themselves. SOPA became a rally cry, unleashing a firestorm of frustration by the masses who see the MPAA and other media moguls in Hollywood as out of touch, lecherous, avaricious elitists who prey on old women because their grandchildren downloaded a song or two from Pirate Bay.

Luckily, this sortie was repelled.

Prior to this, however, the FBI started a practice that has gone relatively unnoticed but is - in my opinion - just as unnerving ... it shuts down websites for illegal activity with warrants and without waiting for a verdict. A few years back, right before the super bowl, the FBI shut down ten websites that streamed live sporting events illegally. This year, it shut down 16 more.

*Now, I could go on about the morality or immorality of both the act of streaming illegally and the act of shutting them down, or the market forces and the need to evolve, but I will save that for another post...

But now, the FBI has moved to shut down file sharing websites such as megaupload.com. While the FBI used the pretense that the owners are part of “the Mega Conspiracy, a worldwide criminal organization whose members engaged in criminal copyright infringement and money laundering on a massive scale," other file-sharing sites have severely restricted their services - offering only file-hosting - showing, therefore, that they see it instead as an attack on file-sharing.

Which is truly a shame, because if the internet can be a place where the virtual storage unit is liable for what you or I place in our units, that jump to make sites liable for what we say (a la SOPA) is not too far off. And if they can regulate online before a case has even seen court, then how long before they move into the offline world? And all for what? So filmmakers can keep a few extra dollars?

Home Run by the CDC

Let me join the blogosphere in congratulating the CDC on a job well done. The recently published "Social Media: Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse" is an excellent example of the use of social media to convey a message and awareness of target culture to make the message meaningful.*

The CDC webpage starts with this:

We’ve all seen at least one movie about flesh-eating zombies taking over (my personal favorite is Resident Evil (External Web Site Icon. [rate:6.4] 78,991 votes), but where do zombies come from and why do they love eating brains so much?

...The Zombie Survival Guide identifies the cause of zombies as a virus called solanum.

While I agree that Resident Evil (the first one) might be my favorite movie as well, we need to thank the spread of the Zombie Survival Guide to image boards like 4chan.org. Many meme's start from its sundry (and not all safe-for-work) pages, including the infamous "you got Rick Rolled" meme.

KnowYourMeme.com explains the origins of a now ubiquitous Zombie Survival Sheet on 4chan.

According to the Lurkmore wiki the meme originated from the 4chan’s /k/ board, a board about weaponry, around the late October 2008.
The board began to be invaded by what they called “zombie threads” in which they were asked to give pieces of advice about the best weaponry choice and plan when facing a zombie outbreak. It was usually resulting in a division between those who wrote the most accurate response they could find and those who didn’t believe in zombies, leading to fiery arguments between the two.

...The 29th of October 2008, the meme went to /b/ where another zombie thread popped up. There, the picture began to be reused to fulfill the requests.
It then came back to the /k/ board, having more and more threads created.

Instantly, the meme expanded to other boards and other chans, mainly those that got a zombie board.
That kind of zombie threads, since then, are always present on a regular basis on 4chan as well as other boards.

It's now almost 24 hours since the CDC tweeted about zombie preparedness, and it's still trending worldwide. In the 30 seconds it took to snap the picture, over 100 new tweets mentioning the CDC zombie preparedness guide rolled in.



Two opinions on this PR coup by the CDC:

1. Whomever had the idea for this should get a raise and promotion. Good fresh thinking needed in the government.
2. This provides a great avenue to remind the public that the CDC isn't wholly comprised of staid, stogy professors sitting in laboratories doing esoteric research. It very much is comprised of smart and lively men and women who often live and do very interesting things. They are much more than the sparse natural disaster warnings that we read about.

For example, the CDC Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) is a 2-year postgraduate fellowship for applied epidemiology. Eyes glaze over? Let me tell you again. The EIS is a small group of people who leave at the drop of a hat to investigate outbreaks like SARS and Ebolla. They fly INTO the eye of the storm while everyone else wants to get away from the diseases. Pretty cool, eh?

Congratulations, CDC, on a job well done. Now, back to polishing my AA-12.



*I'll also add a shout out to President Obama, who, for reasons he's responsible for or not, has presided over a government that has made progress by leaps and bounds in the "use of social media" and "awareness of target culture" departments.

Osama Bin Laden Dead!

The death of Osama Bin Laden was announced hours ago by President Obama, and of course Americans have been rejoicing since.

The story developing about a small assault team of Navy SEALs storming a mansion in the suburbs of Islamabad, Pakistan would make a great Hollywood movie. And the remembering of 9/11 and its victims is well deserved.

However, the president said some truly amazing things in his short speech tonight. First, this tip came to his desk in August 2010 - 9 months ago. Over the last year (basically) that intelligence has been checked, rechecked, and corroborated. Plans have been developed, scrapped, redrawn and practiced repeatedly. Most importantly, people didn't know about it. In a city notorious for leaks, this information didn't.

In the day of 24hr news, Twitter, and Facebook, we want real-time status updates from all our politicians, including our president, about the fate and direction of our country. When things don't happen perfectly, or we take small set backs on the road to large gains, the people (incited by CNN or not) rise up inflamed. This is what happened in the Vietnam war, before the modern US political machine had a decent idea how to deal with 24hr news. President Nixon swore we were winning the war. The North Vietnamese launch the Tet Offensive and lose almost 80% of their effective army. Our military victory is a huge political loss because all people see is massive fighting and casualties in a country halfway around the world that their president just told them was won and on the road to resolution.

This reality cost Nixon the white house, plagued President Bush during his terms in office, and forces our leaders to always caution every success story with words like "it's gonna be a long fight" or "this is one small step in a larger effort." As the election cycle heats up, and people start asking "what have you done for me lately?" we need to remember this - that sometimes (maybe most times) the president has done a lot for us lately. We just aren't allowed to know it.

Secondly, President Obama mentioned he called the president of Pakistan and apprised him of the situation. This means Pakistan had no knowledge of the assault beforehand. Reports of Pakistani presence during the assault are currently elaborated as one intelligence official. This very easily is a euphemism for "CIA contact who is Pakistani."

This confirms how inept the Pakistani government is at investigating, and how strained our relationship is with the lynch pin of South Asia. We need a Pakistan that effectively helps us find and kill terrorists, and puts pressure on China. Without that, United States presence is woefully weak in the Middle East.

The rub going forward will be to see how President Obama works and strengthens the US relationship with Pakistan, and how much leeway voters give him for military and security issues he cannot discuss.

Now, let me join in with all the cheering and revelry:

TweetDeck 2.0 for iPhone

In the new age of microblogging, I spend more time tweeting than blogging. Twitter has become one of the most useful and influential companies in the world, although it has yet to turn a profit.

One of the reasons it has a hard time turning a profit is because it is often accessed by a multitude of 3rd part applications, and one of the most popular is TweetDeck.

TweetDeck smoothly integrates A user's twitter feed and facebook update feed. What it didn't have was a touch-screen friendly, iPhone-optimized interface. So, it was rebuilt from the ground up and now achieves both wonderfully.

I've been notoriously fickle about Twitter apps, preferring to sacrifice Facebook for less crashing, better access to links and pics, etc. with the native Twitter application. I've tried TweetDeck before, but crashes pushed me away.

TweetDeck 2.0 has solved most of these issues and made me an early, but not 100%, convert. However, I've already noticed some no-brainer wants for 2.1.

1. Position support - every other program changes when you turn your phone upright or on it's side. TweetDeck should too.
2. Timestamps - nothing I hate more than opening TweetDeck and not knowing if the "breaking news" tweet waiting for me was a minute or a hour ago.
3. Colors - you have themes on your desktop version. Bring them here!
4. Facebook comment fix - when commenting on Facebook, the screen doesn't scroll with you as your comment goes longer than the screen. Makes it really hard to write.
5. Hashtag bar - TweetDeck has a new wonderful follower bar for adding a twitter handle. Now duplicate it for hashtags.

Alright. Those are gimme additions. Add those and amaze me. For those looking to get onto twitter or get a new app, TweetDeck is on the recommended list.

Happy Anniversary

Thirty two years ago today my parents were married. As all of us married-folk know, marriage is a journey and an experience fraught with ups and downs, elation and depression, wonder, excitement, boredom, and contentment.

It is a testament to my parents' tenacity, strength, moral character, and love that they have made 32 years. The divorce rate in the USA is about half of the marriage rate (3.5 per 1000 people to 6.8 per 1000). And the probability of divorce is staggering.

"The probability of a first marriage ending in separation or divorce within 5 years is 20 percent, ... [and] After 10 years, the probability of a first marriage ending is 33 percent." (Cohabitation, Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage in the United States. Series Report 23, Number 22. 103pp.
(PHS) 98-1998.)

Most sources quote the average length of marriage to be 7-10 years. So my parents have tripled this, and AND beat the 33% divorce probability at 10 years.

Wikipedia gives us this wonderful graphic about marriage and divorce:



This shows us that my parents chose a great state to live in for their marriage. Texas and east of the Mississippi river have a high proportion of counties with married couples. Conversely, the West Coast is dark blue - divorce! On the other hand, Texas is not the Southeast USA, whose inhabitants clearly have breakup issues, because they are the ONLY part of the country with high separation rates (yet low divorce rates). AND Houston somehow misses the high widow rates of Texas and the Eastern USA (the reason why both my parents are still around!).

And so I say "Congratulations!!" May you enjoy another 32 great years. In honor of your example and accomplishments, I leave you this gift, from one of my wife and my favorite relationship movies:

Butler Wins. BYU Cold.

What a wonderful time to live in Baton Rouge! I got tickets to the Southeast Regional only one hour away to see my alma mater BYU play.

They played Florida on Thursday and lost, but it was close - went to overtime. BYU shot 35% for the game - couldn't hit the road side of a barn. And it wasn't due to Florida's defense. One thing I've learned this weekend is that Florida plays mediocre defense at best. Shots just weren't falling. And when you have a cold night, you better have more than one go-to guy. All BYU had was Jimmer, had he couldn't Jimmer his way out of it.

The second thing I learned is that Jimmer gets unfairly slighted for playing a rough and tumble brand of basketball. I bet Dwayne Wade feels similar since he has a similar style of play in the NBA. There were many calls today in the Butler v Florida game that never got called for Jimmer on Thursday. A hack per shot was let go, and only if egregious did something get called.

Third, all three games went down to the wire. What a great regional! No blowouts like Other regionals. Unfortunately, with all these close games, and close calls, the NCAA doesn't allow replays in the arena. Boo! What a horrible decision by the communist NCAA. They censor things so we can't see when refs do things wrong. They look the other way when a father sells his quarterback son to the highest bidder. They allow athletes that sell merchandise to play in bowl games. Corruption almost as bad as FIFA - and that's saying something.

Finally, although it's only the Elite 8, our TBE Play For A Cause pool is down to the final four: Roger with SOS Charities, Julie with Ovarian Cancer Alliance, Amanda with Ronald McDonald House, and Nate with Harvesters. Good luck to everyone. The fates of these four charities hangs on the results of Kansas v VCU and UNC v Kentucky tomorrow. By the time the Final Four is set, our winning charity might be set too.