Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

You and me: the PR representatives of a red-faced nation

04.04.2012 by David Murray // 2 Comments

And in 1971, Muhammad Ali went on a British talk show and argued against interracial marriage because "You're a hater of your people if you don't want to stay who you are. You're ashamed of what God made you. God didn't make no mistake when he made us all like we were."

And in 1972, we saw Archie Bunker's face register alarm when Sammy Davis, Jr. confused his son-in-law with a black man, and disgust when Davis kissed him.

I'm not the first person who looks back at those days and marvels: Not at the racism being shown, because in many machine shops and furnished suburban basements, racism is every bit as strong as it ever was. No, I marvel at the appetite of the media organizations, back then, to put these topics up for freewheeling discussion.

Early in the 1990s, everyone started bellyaching about "political correctness," a bogeyman that everyone attacked as if it was a problem in itself. But it was only a symptom of the problem.

And the problem was—as the problem still is—we are embarrassed. By "we," I mean the more and less powerful people who see ourselves as part of a polite and constructive "national dialogue," on every subject from pink slime to white-on-black crime.

And why are we embarrassed? During the '60s and '70s, we could talk about race in a confrontational way—remember Richard Pryor?—because civil rights had just been passed and we thought race relations were on the come. But then suddenly it became 20 years later and Eddie Murphy could get laughs by dressing up as a white guy and discovering a whole different world, even on a city bus.

Racial progress, for all the government's policies and all of Phil Donohue's fancy dialogue, had seriously bogged down. So instead of dealing with that, we put the Cosby family on TV, and stopped talking about race except when we were absolutely forced to, by Clarence Thomas, Rodney King, the Million Man March and the O.J. Simpson trial. And now 20 years after all that—we're still dealing with utterly segregated neighborhoods and schools, ironclad links between race and poverty and bitter idealogical stalemates like this sad case of Trayvon Martin.

I do occasionally leave my professional commuinicator's cocoon and drink beer with people black and white who don't think of themselves as part of the "national dialogue on race," but rather as people who are being talked about while they're standing in the room.

And you know what I hear? I hear Muhammad Ali and Archie Bunker, trying to call it like they see it—and only more determined to do so for all the prissiness and dishonesty and, perhaps most irritating, pious humorlessness with which such issues are discussed publicly. By you and me: the public relations representatives of a red-faced nation.

When the British TV host, Michael Parkinson, told Ali that he wouldn't mind if his grandchildren were "kinky-head black people" (as Ali had put it), Ali got a huge laugh from the crowd when he said, "You're on the show, you've gotta say that."

Writing Boots readers, we're all on the show. And we all—writers, reporters speechwriters, communication excecutives—feel a responsibility to contribute to the a productive conversation. But you've been watching the Trayvon Martin Hoodie Affair.

How are we doing?

Categories // Uncategorized Tags // Archie Bunker, Bill Cosby, Clarence Thomas, Muhammad Ali, O.J. Simpson, Phil Donohue, Richard Pryor, Rodney King, the Million Man March, Trayvon Martin

A great communicator is dead

02.02.2012 by David Murray // Leave a Comment

Angelo Dundee knew how to talk tough with his clients. He told Sugar Ray Leonard late in a big fight, "You're blowin' it, kid, you're blowin' it!"

And he knew when to soft-pedal the advice, as with a young Cassius Clay:

“I never touched that natural stuff with him,” Dundee said in his memoir: "So every now and then I’d subtly suggest some move or other to him, couching it as if it were something he was already doing. I’d say something like: ‘You’re getting that jab down real good. You’re bending your knees now and you’re putting a lot of snap into it.’ Now, he had never thrown a jab, but it was a way of letting him think it was his idea, his innovation.”   Muhammad_Ali_Angelo_Dundee_NewYork_

What was the secret to being a trainer? Not needing to be the star, Dundee said—but knowing how to be everything to the star: “You’ve got to combine certain qualities belonging to a doctor, an engineer, a psychologist and sometimes an actor, in addition to knowing your specific art well. There are more sides to being a trainer than those found on a Rubik’s Cube.”

Sounds like the best communicators I've known.

Categories // Uncategorized Tags // Angelo Dundee, Cassius Clay, Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Leonard

You can have the Mad Men, I’ll take the sad men

10.28.2009 by David Murray // 15 Comments

So many people are secretly happy in the fall that if you're feeling sad this time of year, you feel compelled to keep it to yourself.

I just learned from Maureen Dowd's column that Mad Men is one of President Obama's favorite TV shows. Now, I've got a complicated relationship with that show. My late dad was an ad man during that same era, he hated it on grounds that, "You don't make great ads by drinking and screwing all day!"

But it's so much fun watching them try!

I hate the show—of which I've seen the first two seasons—on different grounds: It's mostly meaningless and far more cynical than the atmosphere my dad (and copywriter mom, who Peggy Olson looks creepily like) described. More nihilistic than all but the very worst people I've ever worked with. And the sexism might have been bad in the 1960s, but still, I know when a point is being shoved down my throat. An amusing cartoon, but not very much like real life—then, now, or ever.

Ultimately, I agree with what I think was my dad's core point: That the people who are writing these episodes are not wise adults but clever children.

Me, I prefer sad men to Mad Men, and in the last few weeks I've watched:

• Tell Them Anything You Want, an interview documentary on Maurice Sendak, author of Where the Wild Things Are. I haven't seen the Wild Things movie yet, but I'll eat my hat if it's better than this conversation with the funny children's book writer with the sad childhood.

• Finishing Heaven, a documentary about a movie a guy filmed in 1970 but has been trying and failing to finish ever since. Sad—and thus, funny!

Finishing_heaven_506x316_7

• And, for me, the saddest of them all, ESPN's documentary Muhammad and Larry, about the stupid, stupid lead-up to Muhammed Ali's disastrous last major fight.

I guess I'm glad President Obama's not watching all these sad films. A leader must light candles rather than curse darkness. But as for me, I sure find more to think about—and much more, as a matter of fact, to laugh about—in the sad stuff than in the mad stuff.
How about you?

Categories // Uncategorized Tags // Finishing Heaven, Mad Men, Maureen Dowd, Maurice Sendak, Muhammad Ali, Muhammad and Larry, President Obama, Robert Feinberg, sad men, Tell Them Anything You Want, Where the Wild Things Are

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