Advertisements and Parenting: A Little Bit of Help From an Unlikely Source

I am not a big fan of blaming television or video games for kids gone wild. Nor do I expect sports stars to be role models for my children. I don't believe that schools are solely responsible for making sure our children are well-educated. I don't blame advertisers or broadcast companies for airing enticing ads for sugary junk in the middle of what are touted to be educational programs.

What I believe is that parents have a big role to play in the lives of their children. Parents do have the responsibility, and, if they choose to use them, the resources and ability to guide their children in a way that does not let all those extraneous factors have more influence than the parents themselves do.

But I will be the first to say that it sure does not hurt to have some help from the inside. A couple of months ago, Businessweek carried an article about Alex Bogusky, an adversiting mogul whose biggest client was Burger King and who had a change of heart:

By June it was clear Bogusky wasn't just leaving the industry, he was turning on it. While most of his peers were at the annual Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, he was advocating on his blog for a ban on advertising to kids. He named names, citing McDonald's (MCD) and Burger King, still a CP+B client. Then he sent the post by e-mail to Porter in Cannes. Porter has spoken about Bogusky and the piece just once, to Advertising Age: "I told him it was well written and made some great points, but I also said he needs to make a choice because [it's not compatible with the business we're in]. And the next morning he sent me a note saying, 'I resigned like you recommended.' "

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In mid-July he interviewed Robyn O'Brien, author of The Unhealthy Truth: How Our Food Is Making Us Sick—and What We Can Do About It, and focused on genetically modified soybeans. "God created all these seeds but never got around to monetizing that s—t. God's a bad capitalist. So we said, let us show you how it's done," he said, to the bemusement of his guest. "We have a right to critique a food system created by a corporation....What if things don't turn out well and your kids come to you and ask: 'What did you do to try to stop this?' "

Mumbai Terrorist Attacks: Anatomy of a Siege

Nearly a year ago now, we went on a road trip to Asheville, North Carolina, for the Thanksgiving holiday. We had about an hour left on the nine-hour drive when a friend called us from Chicago with the news that Mumbai was under attack. "Are you close to a TV?" he asked. Two hours later we turned on the TV in our apartment and saw the horror unfolding right in front of television cameras.

The rampage, the deaths, the agony, the chaos and the destruction - they were all there, the images constantly and relentlessly flitting across our screens, the cameras documenting the mayhem minute by painful minute. We had questions. Why did it take so long for the military forces to reach the hotels and the hospitals? Why were reporters not cautioned about broadcasting the tactics of security forces? Could the attacks have been avoided in the first place? Could the damage have been minimized?

In an article titled Anatomy of a Siege, Marie Brenner weaves in the numerous strands of the events that transpired that day in a gripping essay for the November '09 issue of Vanity Fair:

The city’s rage had narrowed down to one issue: long into the night a squad of police and a contingent from the army had stood outside the Taj while terrorists roamed the floors above, taking hostages. The police were waiting for orders from a commissioner of noble lineage who stayed put in his car at the nearby Oberoi hotel and for the arrival of commandos and anti-terror forces from New Delhi. From his station a few blocks away, A. N. Roy, the head of the state police, screamed at his men, “Why can’t they go in? Why are they standing there?” But powerful as he was, Roy could not directly command the local police. India is a top-down society of entrenched bureaucrats, with appallingly inadequate communication among agencies.

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One of those trapped was Dr. Mangeshikar, who had started her evening declaring that she would stay at the wedding one hour tops. The hotel staff passed trays of sandwiches and drinks at Chambers. “Leave this kitchen right now—the terrorists are on the way,” Kang ordered. “They refused to leave,” Kang told me. “They said, 'We are preparing food and drinks for the guests.’” Kang ordered them again, “Leave! Your lives are in danger.” Dattatrey Chaskar, a waiter, begged Kang, “Save my son!” No one could find the young man. Later he would be discovered huddled among stacks of lamb chops in a cold-storage cabinet.

Parts of the story leave you shaken, you look at some of the survivors and wonder what you'd have done in their situation. Would it have occurred to me to conjure up a make-shift toilet out of sheets in a corner of the room for hotel guests holed up in a room - as it did to Mallika Jagad, who happened to be in charge of a banquet that day?

The entire story is available by clicking here: Anatomy of a Siege.

Related posts: Volunteerism vs. Terrorism

Two Fascinating Portraits - The Dosa Man and the Fall Guy

First, this heartwarming, uplifting portrait of Thiru, the "Dosa Man," (Dosa is a South Indian crepe made of rice and lentil batter) in The Huffington Post.

Thiru arrived in New York City in 1995 via the green card lottery -- the U.S. offers 50,000 visas annually to individuals from underrepresented countries. "I applied on a whim," he says, in Tamil. "The future wasn't great in Sri Lanka for me."

He had many jobs in Sri Lanka, including being a diving instructor and working at a travel agency in Colombo. In New York City, Thiru worked a series of jobs, in construction, at a gas station, an iron factory, and then finally, a restaurant. After a lengthy wait for a city vendor license, he set up his dosa cart in 2001.

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Every morning, Thiru starts work at 5 a.m., preparing food for the day at a kitchen in Queens. He hitches his cart to his roomy 1986 black Chevy, drives across the Queensboro Bridge to Manhattan and sets up by 11 a.m. at Washington Square. "I completely rebuilt it myself," he says, pointing to his truck (Thiru used to race and rebuild motorcycles). The sign, "NY Vegan Dosas - Price Range Inexpensive", is painted on the Chevy's rear, along with subway directions to his location.

The entire article is here: The Magic of Immigrant Charm.

Then there is the story of Andrew Young, the former aide to John Edwards. When it was revealed that Young was not really the father of Edwards' mistress' child, that he was allegedly taking the fall for his boss (Edwards has not admitted he is the father), you could not help but wonder just what in this world would persuade someone - a man with a wife and children - to own up to fathering a baby when he had not. What manner of loyalty was this? What level of commitment to a cause was this?

Politico's profile of Andrew Young provides some insights:

Young has fleetingly emerged from the wreckage of Edwards’s political career as a character from central casting. First he was the fall guy, and now he’s the sellout, peddling his story in a tell-all book. But the real story of Young is about the passions of politics and the classic political triangle of the candidate, his wife and the sometimes sycophantic aide. The consuming devotion that politicians command from a small handful of loyalists is familiar — and not just in presidential campaigns.

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Young threw himself into Edwards’s Senate race with a passion, becoming Edwards’s driver and gofer. After Edwards defeated Republican incumbent Lauch Faircloth, however, he was bitterly disappointed to be denied a job in Washington, friends said. Instead he accepted a job on Edwards’s North Carolina staff, securing his role with the family by always being the one to meet Edwards at the airport and taking care of the family home when everyone was away. And when an animal or trespasser triggered the home alarm system, another former aide said, it rang on Young’s cell phone.

The entire article is here: Sex, Scorn and Videotape.


Two stories - one, the story of a man who hitches his bandwagon to his own star and rises by the dint of his own hard work; the other, the story of a man who hitches his bandwagon to someone else's star hoping to catch a ride on the way up, but ends up crashing right along.