Vogue has caused a bit of a stir with the August issue of Vogue India.

The issue contains a fashion spread with pictures of destitute Indians posed with exorbitantly priced luxury goods, like this child in a $100 bib from Fendi… probably about three months salary for the woman holding him. (Yep… three months salary just for the kid to spit-up on it.)

The views of Vogue’s critics are best summed up by Pavan K. Varma, a former diplomat and author of ‘The Great Indian Middle Class,’ who told the UK Independent:

“People [in India] who have money or who aspire to have money become totally immune to the deprivation around them. The problem is that the wealthy in our country have become blind to the poverty. To use people like this shows a complete callousness to genuine suffering. These people have been used as commodities to sell fashion.”

The editor of Vogue India, Priya Tanna, responded with two points, telling The New York Times:

“Lighten up,” she said in a telephone interview. Vogue is about realizing the “power of fashion” she said, and the shoot was saying that “fashion is no longer a rich man’s privilege. Anyone can carry it off and make it look beautiful,” she said. “You have to remember with fashion, you can’t take it that seriously,” Ms. Tanna said. “We weren’t trying to make a political statement or save the world,” she said.

And she told the Independent:

“For our India issue we wanted to showcase beautiful objects of fashion in an interesting and engaging context. We saw immense beauty, innocence, and freshness in the faces of the people we captured. This was a creative pursuit that we consider one of our most beautiful editorial executions. Why would people see it any other way?”

GIVE THAT MAN A BURBERRY UMBRELLA

Well actually Priya, fashion is a rich man’s privilege — especially the fashion that Vogue is selling. That’s the whole friggin point of luxury goods isn’t it???

And when you put a $200 umbrella in the hands of a pauper who can’t afford teeth… the image is a political statement in and of itself. Duh.

As for extreme poverty being an “interesting and engaging context” with “immense beauty, freshness, and innocence”… I was under the mistaken impression that “primitivism” went out with the 1930s. Civilized, educated people no longer idealize and romanticize the lost innocence of the natives.

In fact, let’s do a test. Can a NYC bum “carry it off” with a Burberry umbrella?

How about a “Ladies of Appalachia” photo spread for Hermes or Coach?

No? Not interesting or engaging enough? Not innocent enough? Don’t look happy enough about being poor? The poverty not charmingly “foreign” enough?

What if I could find you some smiling American bag-people with striking silhouettes who wouldn’t prick your conscience by frowning? Would they be fashionable enough for Vogue?

MASSAGING THE MESSAGE: HUMILITY IS A WESTERN LUXURY

In the NY Times piece, Nick Debnam, chairman of KPMG’s consumer markets practice in the Asia-Pacific region is credited with the following enlightened views:

The idea of being able to afford something but not buying it because you do not want to flaunt your money reflects a “very Western attitude,” he said. In China and other emerging markets, “if you’ve made it, you want everyone to know that you’ve made it,” and luxury brands are the easiest way to do that, he said.

Oh personal restraint is just soooo… Yankee.

Like the Washington lobbyist who wraps her gifts in money? (Yes folks, real dollar bills that she buys in sheets from the U.S. mint and cuts up like wrapping paper.)

The Western world… from ancient Rome, to the kings and queens of old Europe, to the titans of American capitalism (and lobbyists too)… is just the epitome of restraint. No opulence. Nary a hint of indulgence. Because Las Vegas would NEVER want to flaunt anything, least of all its money.

Vogue’s critics are just guilty of western cultural chauvinism by trying to deprive the natives of their natural custom to flaunt their wealth by buying shiny objects… fueled by aspirations of mimicking a western luxe lifestyle that hates showy expressions of wealth?

Do I have that right Nick?

Because I really can’t figure out what the fuck you’re saying with that bullshit contradictory quote of your’n!

DISCLOSURE: I LIKE MONEY TOO

I live in NYC, how could I not? You gotta make a boat load just to pay rent and still be able to splurge on a peanut butter sandwich once in a while.

I also kinda like fashion; I’d have a whole closet full of Paul Smith suits if I could afford it. And I get up early twice a year, just to get to the head to the line for the Barney’s warehouse sale. (Hey, I was raised a New England Yankee with a penchant for good-stuff-cheap.)

What I don’t have is patience for stupidity.

The fetishizing of money – and the callousness it engenders towards other people and the common good – is one of the chief sins of the West, yet it’s one of our chief exports to the developing world.

That’s what Vogue is selling with this photo spread, and it’s precisely what Vogue’s critics aren’t buying.

They see the crisis of consumption we face here at home — the ravages of financial irresponsibility, the sheer physical destructiveness of gluttony, the numbness of mind that comes with the overcommercialization of everything, our reactionary aggressiveness when our entitlement is threatened — and they are rightfully scared.

SPIN HAS CONSEQUENCES

It’s the theme of this site. And in this little dust up half a world away we are concerned with BIG-spin. Cultural spin.

Not a cover up of some diddling company misdeeds. Not a shoddy press release. Nor a bloated quote from some corporate gas bag.

The issue here is much bigger. Mr. Debnam (a gas bag to be sure) may have been a little more revealing than he intended when he said of the poor:

“Most of the luxury companies don’t consider these people,” when they’re thinking of selling products, he said, “and even the consumer product companies don’t look at them.”

Yes, he’s right.

And what happened in this Vogue incident is that they got called on it. Vogue used these un-named non-people… put them front and center to exoticize their products, forgetting that some people don’t take the poor for granted… that some people can’t look at them (the way Vogue does) and not really SEE THEM.

On the one hand:

For now, the Indian middle and upper class — and the companies that aim to cater to it — are just getting used to having new money, said V. Sunil, creative director for advertising agency Weiden & Kennedy in India, which opened its first office here last September. “No one thinks they need to do something deeper for the public,” like address India’s social ills, he said. (NYTimes, emphasis added)

Yet at the same time:

An Indian company like Aravind Eyecare, which is the largest ophthalmic hospital system in the world, does more than a quarter-million procedures a year… and does 60% of them for free.

And in a new book on globalization a senior executive of India’s Tata Group says, “The Tata Group’s fundamental belief is that you have to create wealth in the communities you serve.”

Say the book’s authors: “Many executives in [emerging market countries] deeply believe that they are working for the good of their countries and for their future.”

So, Messrs. Debnam and Sunil be damned. And Ms. Tanna to boot.

They are wrong. And not just in a small pr-spin kind of way. They are wrong in a big cultural-sense kind of way. (And isn’t it funny how it’s three spokespeople from a western fashion magazine, a western management consultancy, and a western ad agency all telling us we shouldn’t be concerned about how Indians feel about their poor?)

Says Pavan K. Varma: “Right now in India money is fashionable…”

The big question, and danger, for much of the “developing world” is whether they will buy into Ms. Tanna’s spin, and whether her brand of empty-headed, self-indulgent, callousness will become fashionable along with all the money.    

Willard is described by Huffington Post columnist Rachel Sklar as friendly, chatty, affable, jocular, and a good sport… all in the short space of three paragraphs.

Fox, it seems, has hit on a way to charm the knickers off the nuns of the left. But Willard, the affable jocular charmer, it seems is a bit of dense dunce — an uber-privileged white guy trying to feign hipness with a flash of street cred.

While you’re at it, why not pull your pants down and wear them around your ass Cody?

And while you’re posing, why not let’s ask Chris Wallace and Papa Bill O’Reilly what they think. I am sure that they will come to your defense, as fellow Foxes can be expected to do. It was all just in fun. Pretend. Make believe. We know he’s not black. He certainly doesn’t look scary.

But let’s get serious here for a minute. In reality, gangs are scary. And white guys co-opting black street culture is so… stupid. (They killed it with backwards baseball caps.)

Most of all, it’s insulting for a national “news” professional to be making light of the violence (nay, “terror”) that plagues so many urban neighborhoods where people of color have to live. Especially the same “news” network that uses “terror” as a club to beat the drum of war in Iraq. The same “news” network that pigpiles on the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright every day for being an angry black man.

Exploitation and hypocrisy are ugly when you see them up close.

Hey Cody… you know what… next time maybe you could just cover them up… with a bit of black face.    

All the while IRA bombs were wreaking havoc in London. But that was never spoken of. As a youngster, I hardly even knew to connect the two.

Which brings me to the current t-shirt tumult, in which the principal of an Arabic-based New York City public school led a group that offered young girls t-shirts emblazoned with the word “Intifada NYC.” The principal resigned in the uproar, basically saying that she had only wanted to empower the young women to “shake off oppression,” but underestimated the “historical association” between the word “intifada”and violent uprising.

Now back to the Irish metaphor: a green white and gold “Free Ireland” t-shirt in Boston in 1973 would have earned smiles of approval. Wearing same t-shirt in downtown London in 1973 would have earned one an interrogation at the very least, and depending on the wearer’s personal circumstances, maybe even a quick and unceremonious deportation.

The point: context matters. The site of the current Intifada t-shirt furor can’t be but a few miles from the site of the World Trade Center attack. Of course people are sensitive.

Second point: naiveté has no place in the discussion. Hyperventilating bloggers like Alif Sikkin need to step back and approach the issue with a bit more humility. He lambastes Americans for misunderstanding Arabic words, as if Westerners deliberately twisted their meaning.

That argument is pedantic nonsense, and totally disingenuous.

The word “intifada” has been co-opted by Muslim militants: from the Palestinians in their two Intifadas (1987 and 2000) against Israel, to the Syrian group Fatah al-Intifada that is responsible for bombings in Lebanon, to the “Intifada En France.”

The global Intifada narrative is being written primarily by Muslims, not Westerners.

Their grievances may be legitimate. Some even see their methods as justified. But legitimacy and justification are totally beside the point in a responsible debate about language. That debate must investigate the source of the momentum behind the transformation of Arabic words in the world consciousness.

Same applies to the word “jihad.”

The group Hamas claims in the eighth article of its Charter: “Allah is its goal, the Prophet its model, the Koran its Constitution, Jihad its path and death for the case of Allah its most sublime belief.” And the twelve point program of the militant Muslim Brotherhood includes No. 9 “To support jihad wherever possible,” and No. 11 “To exploit the Palestinian ’cause’ as part of a global strategy, and to foment enmity towards the Jews and Israel as a rallying point for Muslims.”

A West Bank militarist group called “Islamic Jihad” sponsors armed resistance against Israel. The Pakistani-based MMA vows to wage jihad in Kashmir. The PBJ in Indonesia is a group of 200 self-scribed “jihad bombers.” The Bangladeshi “Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami” has expanded beyond its home turf and is now recruiting in Southern Thailand, fomenting an Islamic separatist movement there.

The site historyofjihad.org provides a complete overview of the militancy associated with “jihad” dating back to the year 620 C.E.

So Mr. Sikkin and those who want to lay the blame for linguistic misunderstanding and general thick-headedness at the feet of Westerners alone are just plain wrong. To be sure, Westerners are thick-headed about a lot of things Eastern, but this is not one of them. Militant Muslims bear more responsibility than Westerners for co-opting the meaning of “jihad” and “intifada.”

Look, a “faggot” will never again be just a bundle of sticks. The word “gay” will never simply mean happy. And “queer” will never just mean “different.” Never ever. To say nothing of “fairy.” (We are lucky, in fact, to still retain quotidian uses of “pansy” and “fruit.”)

I doubt that the term “niggardly” (def: cheap, stingy) will ever regain common usage as it is too close to an epithet. The Confederate flag symbolizes war in defense of slavery, and as such it will never be simply a banner of Southern “states rights,” nor should it be.

And finally, what of the poor swastika? This 3,000 year-old sun symbol carries a powerful and positive meaning in Hindu and Buddhist faiths. Even in a grand Catholic cathedral in Ireland – St. Coleman’s in Cork – there are swastikas in the mosaic floor tiles. But the swastika will be never be simply a symbol of power and good luck, and will probably never regain any positive colloquial associations or common usage in the West.

Barking about dictionary definitions and claiming that the linguistic mis-attribution is the fault of ignorant Westerners who can’t tell the difference between a clockwise swastika (Nazi) versus a counter-clockwise swastika (mostly everybody else) is… it’s worth repeating: pedantic and disingenuous. (Especially since the two were interchangeable in early uses.)

Like it or not, reality intrudes on and changes language all the time, and we are left to deal with the aftermath as best we can. Sometimes the cost is that words and symbols fall out of common usage because they can no support productive dialogue.

Seen in this light, selling “Intifada” t-shirts to teenagers in an Arabic school in NYC is, at best, clumsy and insensitive. It calls to mind another recent symbolic dust-up: the “Brown is the New White” t-shirts that Macy’s recently withdrew from stores. Like the Brooklyn principal who sincerely wanted to empower her students, the maker of the “Brown is the New White” t-shirts had a celebratory vision:

“We are taking over the world so everybody better watch out!!!!!!! (Ha ha ha! just kidding!) NO! It’s hard to ignore the fact that Latinos are everywhere now… its [sic] hard to pick up the newspaper and not read about Latinos in politics, music, art, design, etc. It’s just shining a little light on that in a funny way. That’s it.”

Since the t-shirt deliberately plays on racial power dynamics, the result (one might say predictably) was a storm of outrage on all sides of the power equation: anger from the left, the right, immigrant’s rights groups, and some Latinos that it was racist and poorly thought out; anger by yet other Latinos at anyone who co-opted their right to be ironic. It turned into a sociological-racial Rorschach test.

In reality, however, the literal reason for the global dominance of white Western culture is that white Europeans, for several hundred years running, mercilessly slaughtered, conquered and pacified their social and spiritual “inferiors.” So in a purely literal sense, the t-shirt is saying that that’s the legacy “Browns” are taking over. The writer’s cheeky empowerment and attempt at being edgy is actually pretty uninformed, ham-fisted and dumb.

For language buffs, these two controversies provide yet more evidence that our modern mindset is in the full-on throes of Baudrillard-ian delusion. (Like we needed any more evidence?) Symbols have replaced reality. They now are reality.

The factual basis of the controversy (the word “Intifada” on a shirt offered to teenagers by a moderate, peace-loving public school principal with a record of fostering productive religious dialogue) is meaningless. A t-shirt is not a bomb, but people treat it like one because a symbolic detonation is as good as the real thing. It is the real thing.

Circumstances and facts are lost in the volley of symbolic rhetoric about deliberate provocation, endorsements of violence, Islamist propaganda, Western hostility to the East, political theater, clashes of civilizations, the struggle for Western values, a competition between secular and religious institutions, etc., etc.

The symbolism is what we see. The symbolism is what we react to. The symbolic content is what dominates our thinking and our reasoning.

In all honesty, my gut reaction is that it makes me nostalgic for the non-threatening conformity of school uniforms. (That sentiment, in turn, will be denounced as a symbol of my authoritarian urge to squash dissent and free expression. And so the ante is upped once more.)

Consider the following sentence: Don’t be niggardly with that gay swastika!

That earthquake you feel in your brain is symbolism grinding against literalism. Beyond the benign literal meaning of words ["Don't be stingy with that happy good luck symbol!"] lies a powerful psychological and symbolic realm ["nigger, faggot, Nazi!"]. Here, language is freighted with so much symbolic weight that it squashes all other possible meanings and interpretations. Symbols of power provoke the same response as power itself. Symbols of intolerance function in the same way and provoke the same reaction as intolerance itself.

Unfortunately, this is the psychological and linguistic default by which we now live. Symbolic power governs how we relate both to each other and the world around us, and it’s quite unhelpful and immature to deny it. The best thing we can do, under the circumstances, is to understand the dynamic, show some self-restraint and stop poking sticks at the beehive.

The Irish national airline (Aer Lingus) has removed the Wolftones’ music from all in-flight audio programs, ditto state-run RTE radio stations. The Aer Lingus move came after a Northern Irish Protestant hardliner compared it to playing an Osama Bin Ladin recording on an Arab airliner. Nationalists say it’s folk music, a part of Irish culture and heritage, and only advocates legitimate revolution against a criminal occupation. In the end, no matter how great or Irish the songs may be, or how much we may enjoy raising a pint and singing them, their time as a public rallying cry has passed. It only serves to exacerbate wounds that have barely started to heal. So in the interest of maintaining a fragile psychological peace, the Wolftones were taken out of circulation in these particular venues.

So here too, we can put away the t-shirt for now, as well as the blame please, and all get back to the issue of teaching our kids algebra so that Am-ur-ica doesn’t lose its competitive edge to the Chinese and Indians!

No, but seriously, given our woeful state of public discourse, we need to learn how to better use, interpret and respond to the power of symbols. Rhetorical brinksmanship and symbolic scorched-Earth policies are no-win situations for all involved. We need to fess up to that, and then find a way out of this linguistic corner into which we are painted, before we slaughter each other – or are all brain dead from inhaling the fumes.    

The former: The New York Times, July 22, 2007, by Michael Powell: “In a Volatile City, a Stern Line on Race and Politics.”

The latter: Harper’s Magazine, August 2007, by Kevin Baker: “A Fate Worse Than Bush: Rudolph Giuliani and the Politics of Personality.” (subscription required)

What’s clearly on display here is the damage to journalism done by conservatives’ “liberal media” hand grenades, hurled ceaselessly at the press for over two decades. Traditional journalism appears shell-shocked (especially mainstream political journalism), as reporters hide under the closest bushel-basket to avoid being attacked for bias. That bushel-basket, more often than not, is a “source” whose comments can be quote-marked, thus relieving the writer of any obligation to draw conclusions, either from plain facts or analysis thereof.

In practice, this new-journalism defaults to an “either-or” style that offers little more than a volley of competing viewpoints. It reads like a kind of King Solomon’s typewriter, where the sword is gladly handed to the reader. But any time a definite conclusion appears to be looming, the writer drops in a contrary quote, pushing the sword back toward the middle. Reporters, it seems, are terrified of giving the baby to one side or the other, so they act like slicing it down the middle is the only way to be fair.

In reality, sometimes a fair reading of the facts points to a definite conclusion, no matter how much the writer may want to avoid it. And in this case, the stakes are too high for such dithering nonsense. Rudy is running for PRESIDENT!

A thorough vetting of the facts around Rudy – his rhetoric and his reality – is essential to avoiding the kind of totally misguided puff like that of the Althouse blog, where Ann Althouse claims that “the NYT is keen on bringing race forward in… the 2008 campaign.”

She asks the rhetorical question: “How do the volatile racial politics of that time relate to the current presidential campaign?” Then she uses an absence of race questions to justify her notion that it’s not important. (Need I really quote Rumsfeld on the “absence of evidence?”)

Note to Ms. Althouse: Rudy’s record on race is one of his biggest legacies, and it’s one of the clearest indications of how he would govern as President. Of course it’s relevant to the campaign!

She also breathlessly parrots the “amazing statistic” about Rudy’s 60 percent drop in crime. Mr. Baker notes, as does one of Ms. Althouse’s readers, that similar drops in crime were seen in cities across the country, under both Republican and Democratic mayors; quality of life improvements had as much, if not more, to do with America’s national economic prosperity than Rudy’s authoritarian streak. Mr. Baker also points out that under Dinkins crime had dropped by double digits in key categories, and dropped in “all seven major FBI-felony categories for the first time in four decades.” He also points out that some statistics worsened under Giuliani (e.g., “the percentage of felony arrests leading to conviction dropped by almost one third.” [emphasis original])

More to the point, however, Mr. Baker (Harper’s) digs deep into the history: Which groups was Giuliani targeting? With what kinds of messages? Who were his surrogates and what were they saying? What kind of vote margins did it deliver? In which Boroughs?

And most important: Was the rhetoric warranted by the facts, or was it purely a cynical appeal to the racial fears of whites? Did minority groups get coddled by a minority administration, and was this the primary cause for the deterioration of “quality of life” in NYC?

That’s what Giuliani was arguing in his campaign; and those who see him as a viable Presidential candidate are obligated to defend their man… with facts and examples, not puff and spin.

Baker delivers concrete evidence, with convincing analysis, that Giuliani made a deliberate effort to run against Dinkins’ blackness rather than his record – that Giuliani’s campaign rhetoric was contradicted by the facts, but that white people voted for the rough-riding demagogue because it made them feel safer. He also puts Giuliani’s message platform into a larger context of both national and local political trends – making them even more resonant and meaningful. (And for the suspicious: Baker does not come across as any fan of the Clintonian cult of personality either.)

Mr. Powell (NYT), on the other hand, presents a few choice anecdotes, with competing viewpoints from his sources hung artfully around like Christmas ornaments. No real analysis of his own and no explicit conclusions.

Is Giuliani a racist? My guess is: probably not. He probably loves his handful of black friends just fine, and they probably love him too.

If anything, Giuliani is an “up by your own bootstraps” kind of guy. If your worn-out, second hand boots have no straps, well don’t come crying to him; it’s not a government problem. And if you have a complaint that the boot market is rigged, and has been for generations, well that kind mouthing-off will get you one government-issue sock stuffed in it, courtesy of law enforcement if necessary. This makes him appear, and in some cases deservedly so, profoundly unsympathetic to the long-standing issues affecting minority communities.

And Giuliani, like many politicians, gleefully uses rhetoric like a bludgeon – witness his recent attacks on single-payer health care as “socialist.” When it comes to race, he has a proven record of using such rhetoric to exploit racial divisions and appeal to the basest of white fears for political gain.

Near the end of his term, the proof was in the pudding: most New Yorkers (68 percent) rated him as doing a poor job on race relations. His approval rating with blacks was a dismal 13%. And his approval rating among Hispanics was only 40%.

Some other telling stats (covering all New Yorkers):

• Only 48% viewed him as honest and trustworthy
• Only 26% that he is sympathetic to the problems of the poor
• Only 32% that he works well with other political leaders
• Only 34% approve of his handling of education

(Quinnipiac poll)

These are not unimportant facts.

But all this history is left fallow in the NY Times piece. It’s reporting by quoted innuendo, extending even to the story title “A Stern Line on Race and Politics,” which suggests some kind of principled stand: defensible, justified, even refreshing. It’s implicit of a conclusion, where the writer refuses to state one explicitly.

Look, Dinkins was no saint. In a recent article, even the left-leaning NY Observer recently put it this way: Giuliani “crudely ripped the wiring out of the spent interest-group politic of the Dinkins era.”

But Dinkins is not running for President; Rudy is.

So from those who claim that Rudy is the cure for all ills, I want facts. I want meticulous proof, because I lived through it and can tell you first hand that the hagiography seen in political coverage of the Giuliani campaign is pretty well… um… divorced from the reality. (pun intended)

And this unreality, more than anything else, proves Baker’s main thesis. In fact, the NY Times could not have done a better job of proving Baker’s point if they had sat down with that very intention. From Baker:

In the new politics, the candidate is everything. The post-ideological party distinguishes itself from its rivals … by the character and charisma of its particular leader – its Sarkosky, Burlosconi or Clintons – and by its brand selling strategies.

The idea that statistics – that is verifiable facts – no longer mattered became a leitmotif of Giuliani’s campaign… A world in which the brand was more important than the facts was precisely the sort of world in which Giuliani could thrive.”

So here we have the NY Times focused on anecdotes and urban myths – on the character of the Mayor, rather than the specifics of his policies, or their direct consequences on the people of the city as evidenced by the facts on the ground. Many of the claims made by the Times’ quotable sources are, quite frankly, fraudulent. And these kinds of articles are, quite frankly, lazy. They make one pretty disheartened at the prospect of yet another personality-driven campaign where facts are rare, reporters are cowed, and sources are allowed to freely spin the story.

I want real reporting. I want real analysis. And I want clear assessments, based on the real record, about what this man (or any candidate) would be like as President.

What the NY Times delivered in this case was a journalistic failure. It wasn’t reporting; it was stenography with a flair for pull-quotes.    

I’ll start off by paraphrasing a sermon I heard at Watch Night service at the Abyssinian Baptist Church a few years back. The assistant pastor gave a biting sermon aimed straight for the hearts of black folks and the consciences of whites.

His point: black church music has its roots in the most sublime agony you can imagine. A pain that grips the soul, in fact, that is beyond imagination. A pain with such depth and intensity that the only escape is a deliberate, unfettered, and joyful act of divine creation. And from this dark night of the soul, the music breaks forth as redemption.

To the white folks, he said specifically and pointedly, this is NOT simply entertainment for your casual consumption. Have the decency to respect it, and try to understand what it really means, before you can truly claim to enjoy it.

Truer words I wish had never been spoken, but they are spoken all the time. Most recently at the conclusion of “Talk To Me,” when Petey Greene refuses to tell black jokes to a white audience for their casual consumption. He said, in sum, that they were not ready for him.

He was right. And Hot Ghetto Mess (the site and the show) is exactly the kind of voyeuristic self-prostitution in which he refused to indulge.

An anecdote: I have a 16 year old niece, who lives in Connecticut. She is a wonderful kid, whom I love very much. In all respects a great kid!: responsible, funny, hard-working, motivated, down-to-earth. But when she came into the city (NYC) recently to spend the day with me, she commented on the people who boarded/exited the train in Harlem; with a pop-culture chuckle, she said: “They’re so…. ghetto.”

There were so many things I wanted to set her right about, I didn’t know where to start except to say, “You know I live in Harlem, right?”

From there, I simply tried to impress upon her a real, person-to-person way of understanding the cliche that we hear all the time about people being different. People can be “different” in a lot of ways. Dress. Language. Attitude. Outlook. Economic status. Education. And when you discount anyone on such a superficial basis, it does just as much damage to you as it does to them, because you have just squandered any opportunity to see the world from a new vantage point and learn something new about the world you live in.

So when I think that she might be sitting in her comfortable home in the burbs, watching Hot Ghetto Mess (HGM) chuckling away at the antics of black people (casual consumption without the slightest hint of true understanding) I absolutely cringe, wondering what it might take to undo the damage. Jam Donaldson might not care how white people react to HGM, but I, for one, do. Very much.

Now, my niece is pretty damn smart — smart enough to know that HGM is not representative of all black folks. In reality, however, it could easily seed a teenager’s imagination with the old tired idea that some black people are “better than others.” And I doubly cringe at the thought that another generation of white suburban kids will grow up learning to think, and someday actually say, “But you’re not like those other black people.”

Another anecdote: I have had every race conversation under the sun with my friends, the majority of whom are black (for more than 10 years now, OK I slipped in one credential, sorry.) I’ve had these conversations in all kinds of environments: one-on-ones, big groups, mixed groups, groups where I was the only white person, with boyfriends, etc. (Yes, I date outside my race.)

What I hear most often, aside from anger, is exasperation. Sick of the anti-intellectual bias among the poorer brethren that smart black people are trying to be white. Sick of the sudden stomach ache when a news teaser announces a shooting, waiting for the photo of the black suspect to hit the screen. Sick of white people rolling their eyes and saying slavery ended a hundred years ago. Sick of obstacles in the way of talented young black professionals trying to get ahead. Sick of being followed around a store by a black security guard. Sick of having the community’s dysfunction on constant display not just in the media, but on every other street corner in the neighborhood. (A good friend is leaving Harlem for Brooklyn because he is just so sick of the sinking feeling he gets in his gut every day walking home from the subway.)

And while they can laugh and joke about such travails and idiosyncrasies, it hurts. It’s maddening. (Especially the community’s self-destructive streak.) Then, finally the anger gives way to exasperation. Resentment of those whom they feel it is their unique obligation to protect and defend. It’s palpable. It’s in their eyes and their body language. Eventually, when it gets too hot, the conversation needs changing because emotions are too high, too complex, and more venting just leads to greater discomfort and agitation.

And just a note to suspicious folks. A fellow writing student once wrote a question on of my stories, asking me, “You think your black friends are the same around you as they are around each other?” She, being black, thought not. But, YES, I do. In fact I know so, because they howled with laughter when I read them that comment, and then just shook their heads. People who love each other are truthful with each other.

Which brings me toward a conclusion. White people don’t care, really. Most don’t. None of this affects them. It entertains them, without the slightest hint of true understanding, or compassion, or love.

And I could create a similarly harsh website and TV show about poor trashy white folks. Actually, come to think of it, it’s on TV every day. It’s called Jerry Springer. Has the Jerry Springer show encouraged poor trashy white folks to behave better? Hell no. People who know better turn it off, or maybe roll their eyes and then turn it off. People who don’t know any better send letters asking for tickets to be in the audience. They indulge it, and wallow in it. And that’s exactly what will happen here.

So the big question is not “Is it right or wrong?” The real question is, “What can Hot Ghetto Mess do for black folks?”

From the perspective of an outsider: very little.

Just what is it that it’s trying to achieve? To get some black folks to stop dressing in loud colors and tight clothes? (That’s half the Latin girl and gay male populations of NYC!) To stop being crude? Or tasteless? Or behaving badly? (That’s half of America, including The Wall Street Journal editorial page)

The PR around the program and the site suggests that the aim goes deeper, seeking to address cultural shortcomings that undermine the community itself.

How? By making church ladies give up their hats? By making all black people conform to some ultimate racial profile: the prototypical modern-informed-urbane-cosmopolitan Brooklyn chick?

It’s hard to know exactly what the true goal is. Because all the site really does is make fun of some goofy people who are crass, but not terribly threatening. And by hooking up with one of the most corrupt outlets of commercially motivated self-destruction (BET), the program undermines its own message (in a very big way).

Final Example: The “not ghetto” section of the website features Alicia Keys’ fight against AIDS. How do the site’s editors know that one of their “hot messes” hasn’t lost a family member to AIDS, or might be POZ, or might be a volunteer in an AIDS clinic? They don’t seem to care about who these people ARE, really. Just like my niece, they fixate on the outside. “They’re so… ghetto.”

I have no standing to impugn the creator’s motives, especially as she writes so compellingly about her vision, about self-respect and personal responsibility. She truly seems to be coming from a place of love, albeit “tough love.” And the self-destructive streak she sees in the community is definitely real. She believes that holding up a mirror to it is her right and obligation. She is right.

But as much as gold teeth, pink wigs, and halter tops may provide clues to someone’s character, or lack thereof, it’s pretty small time stuff, really. OK, so they’re not your first choice for yoga buddies. So what? I don’t find much affinity for most of what constitutes low-brow, “white culture.” So what?

What I would say to black folks: If anything is ever going to change, the real targets have got to be all those high-paid impresarios of “culture” within your own community that are selling you, “Bid ‘Em In” style, to corporate interests that don’t give a shit about you or your problems. In fact, selling black America’s dysfunction globally is a product with unbeatable profit margins. And many of the people making the most money from it are black people who ought to be spanked good and hard for it. BET included.

So, ultimately, here is what it looks like from an informed and concerned outsider: Simply shaming a person for being ignorant is not going to help him or her be better. Shaming someone you don’t know for something pretty superficial is cruel. Shaming someone with no sense of shame is pointless. And doing this on a weekly basis on TV is not going to make informed, educated black folks feel any less heartsick.

So, what’s the point? Looks to me like “Hot Ghetto Mess” is a scream of exasperated rage. It makes me heartsick to watch it. And if Ms. Donaldson is so enamored of Oscar Brown Jr., she might want to read a bit more of his poetry. He takes the community to task in poems like “Children of Children,” defends it in poems like “Chant of the Welfare Mothers,” but ultimately loves it passionately and tenderly in poems like “PEOPLE OF SOUL” (From the musical play “GREAT NITTY GRITTY”)…..

To see clear through despair
The way we’ve always done
To be burdened with care
And still find some fun
And to make a way where
There truly was none
That’s been the role
That ’s been the role
That’s been the role
Of the people of soul

To be troubled in mind
By the trials life can bring
But to reach and to find
Sweet reason to sing
And to come from behind
Just by doing our thing
That’s been the role
That’s been the role
That’s been the role
Of the people of soul

It’s a spark of the spirit
That shines like a bright and morning star
We can feel it and hear it
And know it has brought us as far as we are
Through the darkness to grope
With deep faith in the dawn
And to manage to cope
Until the night time is gone
And then summon up hope
And keep on keepin’ on
That’s been the role
That’s been the role
That’s been the role
Of the people of soul

It’s a characteristic
Of people who have what it takes to endure
It is magic, its mystic, it’s African Rhythmic
A cure that’s for sure
From the powerful drum
To the songs and the chants

From the sorrowful hum
To the jubilant dance
Taking life as it comes
With the grace that God grants
That’s been the role
That’s been the role
That’s been the role
Of the people of soul