Now That I Think of It, Why WOULD A Racist Know How to Apologize?

I am so deeply disappointed in America's media, both traditional and online.

It's nothing new, really. Journalists should challenge authority at every turn, yet most outlets shirked that duty when they should have fought harder to get facts, not spin, about why the country was heading to war. Now, the media has an exceptionally distinctive opportunity to advance U.S. race relations: refuse to accept the non-apologies of racists.

The latest case in point is Larry Baker, CEO of the Tennessee Hospitality Association who sent an email last Thursday comparing First Lady Michelle Obama to a chimpanzee to a "select group of friends".

(Interestingly enough, the recipients included mayoral legislative aide Toby Compton and Nashville Convention and Visitors Bureau president Butch Spyridon. But I digress...)

Here's the offending message. I'm guessing you figured out that the photo that accompanied it is above.

“I was at the store yesterday, and I ran into Tarzan! I asked him how it was going and if he was into anymore movies.?? He told me that he could no longer make any more movies as he had severe arthritis in both shoulders and could no longer swing from vine to tree. ??I asked how Jane was doing, he told me she was in bad shape, in a nursing home, has Alzheimer’s and no longer recognizes anyone, how sad. I asked about Boy, and he told me that Boy had gone to the big city, got hooked up with bad women, drugs, alcohol, and the only time he heard from him was if he was in trouble or needed something.? I asked about Cheeta, he beamed and said she was doing good, had married a Lawyer and now lived in the White House!!!”

Mr. Baker's written "apology":

“Thursday night I spontaneously forwarded – to a small group of people – an email that had been sent to me as political humor,” Baker wrote. “As I forwarded it, I did not think or consider its implications, other than that it was political humor. I am saddened that anyone misinterpreted the sentiments behind the email. I deeply apologize to anyone who is offended by this action. I hope that those who know me realize that the message was not intended to be malicious or hurtful in any way and can find it in their hearts to forgive me.”

Political humor? Well, yeah, the First Lady is African American, so racist-themed humor using stereotypes from before the Civil War is obviously political. Uh-huh.

"Apology" #2 came on-camera after the Nashville Convention and Visitors Bureau cancelled its contract with Baker's firm. (Yes, that's the same Bureau where the CEO is a guy Mr. Baker thought would find the e-mail hilarious.)

I'm sure Mr. Baker feels that by facing TV cameras, he would come across as earnest, sincere and so very sorry. He said, "I regret my actions. I regret having done it. I wished I had not pushed that button."

So, if you'd only had it xeroxed and passed the cartoon discreetly person-to-person it would have been just fine?

Last June when I first blogged about non-apologies, one of the examples then was also from Tennessee: a state senator's legislative aide emailed a rendering of America's 44 Presidents with Obama represented as a pair of eyes in a black background. The guilty party apologized for sending it to the wrong group of people. She has yet to apologize for the fundamental offense of sending a racist email to anyone at all.

Here's the bottom line for Mr. Baker and everyone else:

An apology is when you admit that what you did was wrong. Period. It doesn't matter who was on the receiving end of your email. It doesn't matter whether a single soul is hurt by your action or complains. You cannot say "Gee, if you were outraged by my behavior, I'm so sorry." That's blaming the victim, not yourself.

And so I challenge our journalists to ask the hard question when confronted with a non-apology. A simple clarification is all that's needed: "Just to be clear [sir/madam], are you apologizing for sending a racist message, or for liking it so much that you wanted to share it with others?"

19% of Americans Find the Internet Irrelevant. Not the Digital Divide You Thought, Eh?

Consider this: For people without a credit card, Life today is full of obstacles beyond online shopping. Try making a hotel reservation without one. Or renting a car. You can live without a card, of course, but that little piece of plastic keeps things flowing nicely.

And that, in a nutshell, is why I fret about the so-called "digital divide," the chasm that separates people who are not computer literate from a world that is swiftly moving Life, not just information, to the Internet.

A new survey and report, "Broadband Adoption & Use in America" reveals that cost, digital illiteracy and relevance are the main reasons that almost a third of Americans still are without access to high-speed Internet at home. That's 93M adults and children over age 5.

The survey of 5,005 adults last fall included 2,334 who said they don't use broadband at home. A third of respondents said it cost too much. Too much to get broadband. Too much to get a computer. Too much. I get that one.

About 22% said they didn't know enough about going online or they had security concerns. OK.

Here's the kicker for me: About 19% of those surveyed don't have broadband because {gasp} they think the Net is a waste of time, or has nothing of interest for them.

Nothing of interest?! Sounds like the bravado swagger of people intimidated and scared of something they don't understand. You know the type: "I don't care if you're on Facebook. Makes no difference to me at all. I didn't want to go online anyway! So there!"

Of course we're free to place whatever judgment on the Net we choose. My argument is that this isn't like when people drew a line in the sand refusing to replace audio cassette tapes with CDs. Life as you know it is moving online. Swim upstream and ignore this change at your peril.

Meanwhile, the survey and its findings are critical to the FCC's plan to connect the nation to affordable broadband. The plan is to be released March 17th.

Considering that there are Americans who think health care reform isn't that important right now, I'm sure there's more than 19% of us who just can't fathom why the Obama Admin is paying so much attention to some crazy thing called 'broadband.' These were the folks who didn't understand why we needed to launch satellites to improve communications, either.

Oddity vs. Substance: ChatRoulette & Oprah's No Phone Zone Campaign

Last weekend, the NY Times introduced me to ChatRoulette, the peek-a-boo webcam phenom. (Credit for these pix of actual online chatters goes to NYT.)

In a nutshell, the site randomly connects you to another person's live webcam every few seconds. That person can be anywhere in the world. Each of you has the choice to text or talk to each other, or not.

Within days of the Times story, I saw ChatRoulette profiled on Good Morning America, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, Time and USA Today. I reached my tipping point pretty quickly.

No doubt, the site is definitely newsworthy on many levels. For adults, ChatRoulette is weird and lewd and once in a while, genuinely interesting. For parents, it's the latest terrifying thing on the Internet.

While appealing to voyeuristic desires and simple curiosity about other people, ChatRoulette seems well suited for human traffickers, pedophiles and a bunch of other mold-dwelling slime. (Exactly how long does it takes a male to figure out just the right position for a laptop so that his penis is perfectly centered on camera?)

My complaint is that I've seen more coverage of ChatRoulette than of Oprah's campaign to stop people from using their mobile phone while driving. That ain't right.

As of today, almost 141,000 people have taken some version of Lady O's online pledge which works on the honor system. There are 3 options:

• I will not text while I am driving

• I will not text while driving and will use only handsfree calling if I need to speak on the phone while I am driving

• I will not text or use my phone while I am driving. If I need to use my phone, I will pull over to the side of the road.

Granted, I haven't hired a media monitoring service or anything, but I've seen only one news story on Oprah's campaign, and that was on The Oprah Show.

Googling "Oprah No Phone Zone" turned up fewer than 40 hits, and angry Harpo employees who felt pressured to take the pledge generated most of those headlines.

Oprah wants to make texting while driving as socially unacceptable as drinking while driving. Am I the only one surprised at the lack of rah-rah support on this one?

I'm sure that both print and broadcast editors are tired of stories that begin with Oprah in the lead, but a decision to focus on ChatRoulette (bizarre entertainment) over the No Phone Zone campaign (saving lives) reinforces hoary stereotypes. You know the ones -- something about how the media lets stories with blood or sex trump everything else.

Tim Burton, Websites and You

In all the fuss and bother about social media, plain ol' websites have lost some of their appeal. I mean, really, when's the last time you heard someone just go bonkers over a site? Not an application or program or network, just a site.

The more critical question, when's the last time you looked at yours?

I'm guilty of being a bad site-parent myself, so I understand how shiny, sparkly new stuff can pull attention away from the foundation of one's entire online marketing strategy. But, today's the day we agree to do better. As for me, I'm learning that keeping the information on a site current, or even swapping out videos now and then just isn't enough. To keep the omnipresent Olympics theme going, it's the silver medal at best.

Go for the gold with a site that exudes its subject in every way possible. If you work with animals, don't show me pix of your building. Duh. I'm talking going much deeper than that.

Does the graphic design of the site support the message sent by words and pictures? Beyond color and font, does the design truly support what the website is all about?

A site by NYC's Museum of Modern Art for its new exhibit on artist and filmmaker Tim Burton got me thinking this way. It doesn't matter whether you like Burton's work or not, but you should be somewhat familiar with it to understand my next point.

(If you missed Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice, or Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, here's a clip from Burton's Alice in Wonderland to be released next month. And no, I ain't gettin' a dime for this.):

Now go to the MoMA site. Go on. I'll wait.

Just below where you've clicked on About Tim Burton, there's a thin, squiggly horizontal line. Watch it. It shows you that the page is loading. A standard service on a website, but this seemingly animated thread goes from right to left. Different.

Once the page loads, look just beneath the video interview that starts automatically. Where you are accustomed to monitoring the progress of a vid as it plays, there's the same squiggly line, larger this time. Is it the printout of an EKG? And if you go to pause the video, you're not clicking the standard double-line or sideways triangle. It's a spiral -- a significant part of Burton's art.

Imagine the behind-the-scenes planning meetings that led to the site we see now. Was any idea too bizarre not to be considered? Probably not. Forget how much it cost to feature the eerie music and animations. Focus on how those components, paired with the fog gray and dirt brown palette totally reflect the subject: weirdly inventive Tim Burton.

If you truly understand the personality of your business or non-profit, show it on the most multi-layered site you can afford, with thematic design and creativity woven throughout.

Get people talking about websites again, and let 'em start by ooh-ing over yours.

P.S. Check out the gallery site Tim produced to sell his art. Again, Product and Personality, meet Website.

Tiger Knows: There's Something Special About Doing It Live

Now that Tiger's apologized, a question remains (thanks CoachWrite!): why go live? Q&A was never an issue, so why not simply distribute a video of the apology if a written statement wasn't an option?

The Goddess believes that even in our millennial lovefest with new communications technologies, there's a tangible bated-breathiness that comes with LIVE.

Boomers ingested a subsconscious "you never know" mentality about live TV in elementary school. Two words: Jack Ruby.



Later generations may remember the Pennsylvania politician who put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger during a live press conference in 1987.

I don't think anyone expected anything that horrifically extreme from Tiger, but that's the power of live. YNK. Ya never know. Have we forgotten the 2004 Super Bowl already? Remember Janet Jackson's peek-a-boo boobie?

Probably it was tears, or some sort of emotional breakdown that America's schadenfreude was hoping might pop out while Tiger was at the podium. If not from him, then perhaps from his mom. Weaned on tabloids and reality TV, we're not picky.

Some critics are upset that Tiger came off as rehearsed, that his pauses and straight-on stares into the camera were calculated.

To quote Dick Cheney, so?

The man is a golfer, not Regis Philbin, AND he's telling the entire globe that he's sorry he had sex with at least a dozen women instead of his wife. Live.

Yes, his delivery was stiff. Maybe even the hand-over-heart was planned. None of that diminished the message he sought to convey.

Were I Tiger's PR Lady, or his rehab therapist, for that matter, I would have advocated for a live format, too. Because he knew that it was live, an eggs-in-one-basket kind of thing, his anxiety, earnestness and eagerness to be heard was searingly real.

And from a therapist's perspective, if at all possible, you don't apologize on tape, on the phone or by email. Live makes the difference.

Add Live Video to Your Marketing and Thank Tiger Woods for the Idea

Perhaps you were away -- in another galaxy, perhaps -- and missed the news that Tiger Woods is not having a press conference on Friday at 11:00 am.

Here's the way the event is described on the homepage of tigerwoods.com:

"Tiger Woods will be speaking to a small group of friends, colleagues and close associates at 11:00 a.m. EST on Friday in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., at the TPC Sawgrass Clubhouse."

Click through and you'll find this gem:

"His remarks will be open to a press pool for live coverage. It is NOT a news conference."

I could NOT make this up.

And yes, I understand that there will be no Q&A with media. What I wonder is whether Tiger understands that all this does is limit how many cameras are in his face. Because that live feed is going to be seen on laptops and iPhones around the world thanks to ustream and who knows where.

I suppose we could track our leaps in technology by how we watch the coverage:

1994 -- The story of O.J. in the white Bronco, and the Trial of the Century, was television all the way. Did we know what a blog was then?

2009 -- M.J. was in a gold casket and I watched his funeral on my netbook by a pool in Florida.

There is a tangible lesson for marketers in Tiger's latest tale. It's that live video is within your grasp!

Why are you asking ME what to do with it? Don't you know?

• Teach a class (cooking, diabetes management...what ya got?) and broadcast it live. Nonprofits, restaurants, who doesn't have something to teach?
  

• Reach homebound patients, clients or students.

• A comedy or fashion show or other event for troops serving abroad.
  

• Create your own "puppycam" linked to an animal shelter or pet shop and build a fundraiser around it.

• Broadcast your conference's keynote speaker or the announcement of a contest winner.

This is my new personal parlor game: Find the marketing lesson in each day's headlines. Of course, that's after the news makes me angry, happy, hopeful or terrified.

But seriously...

We already know that video is the extra gravy that can perk up even the puniest website. So, what a cool halo effect might live video have on your brand?

Of course, your pre-event communications would need to be tight and multi-layered, spreading the word about the time of the livecast and how to access it. Think it through, and just know that it's an option in your marketing toolkit you might have ignored.

"Live" isn't for everyone, but for some businesses and organizations, it's perfect.

A New Role Model for Boomer Women: Barbie, Computer Engineer

When it comes to discussions of female Boomer celebs, let us never diss Barbie, Mattel's trillion-dollar girl who was born in 1959. The princess of Dolland was intimidated for a while by the Bratz pack of dolls that dress like guests on Maury, but baby, Barbie's back!

Actually, the Goddess has only a passing interest in the recent uptick in Barbie shipments, sales and market share. What floats my boat is that this fall, Barbie celebrates her 51st birthday with a new job: computer engineer!

I suppose if I were more familiar with Barbie.com, I would have known that for the first time ever, The Blonde One's next career path was being chosen by a public vote.

The "I Can Be" ballot included computer engineer, architect, environmentalist, news anchor and surgeon. A half- million people voted for the IT gig; News Anchor won the "all girl" vote.

Whatever you think of Computer Barbie's smartphone, Bluetooth headset, hot pink glasses and laptop, Mattel says the accessories were chosen with the help of the Society of Women Engineers and the National Academy of Engineering.

Meanwhile, Anchor Barbie's flouncy garb says either 1970s cutesy weather girl or cable entertainment reporter. (Even in today's totally messed up world of local news, News Anchors don't really look this bad, do they?)

Computer engineer is Career 125 for Babs; her entire resume runs from aerobics instructor to astronaut to pediatrician and American Idol winner. The web is humming with posts reminding us that in the real world, women are underrepresented in tech fields. My favorite critique by far is by CNET.com's Caroline McCarthy:

"If Mattel's "I Can Be" campaign is sincere, I want to see the company making an effort to show that being a woman in technology is about more than picking out a pair of cute pink glasses to match your iPhone case.

Is the writing on Computer Engineer Barbie's binary-code shirt actually a secret code that girls who own the doll can figure out? See, that'd be a start."

Girls LOVE that kind of secret-code, Harriet the Spy stuff. Especially geeky girls. Mattel has time to ramp up this program to raise the bar and prove their own understanding of how fired up a creative 9-year-old girl can be. Considering Barbie.com offers its own free virtual world for girls, I'm hopeful Mattel will do better.

(And I hope somebody gets the other doll to ABC News Anchor Diane Sawyer. I'd LOVE to know what she thinks of it.)

Meanwhile, if you click around the Web long enough you'll trip across arguments about the differences between computer engineers, computer developers, computer programmers and on and on and who has true claim to the new digital-lovin' doll. This is a geeky argument that I have neither the expertise nor the energy to join.

Here's what I know: Computer Barbie will sell well among adult women, and not just those who know their way around a motherboard. Website designers, bloggers, animators, social media trainers, they'll all see their reflection in her little plastic face. As for me, I see a 50+ woman loving her life online. Go Barbie.