My blog –including this and all posts — has moved here. Please update all links, RSS feeds, and bookmarks.
So, I’ve been doing some additional research into website advertising and online marketing. Since I started my career as a newspaper journalist and then went into Internet marketing, monetizing the blog might be a logical step.
Anyone have any advice or thoughts?
Posted in Administrative, Advertising, Blogosphere, Business, Journalism, Marketing, Media, Personal
Journalists frequently describe it as one of the most-dense places on the planet. Anti-Israel activists call it an open-air prison. But is this true?
(Hat tip: Michael J. Totten)
Posted in Civil Liberties, Islam, Israel, Journalism, Marketing, Media, Palestine, Politics, The Middle East, War on Terror
My blog –including this and all posts — has moved here. Please update all links, RSS feeds, and bookmarks.
Seventh in a series of essays
JERUSALEM — Details magazine looks at Jewish girls as the erotic fascination of the moment:
It seems that America can’t get enough smoking-hot Semitic tush lately.
In a recent poll on the porn blog Fleshbot, “Jewish girls” ranked second among kinks (the winner: “freckles”). Jewesses aren’t just the rage in the triple-X realm, either: They’re seducing goyim on Mad Men and Glee and giving movie geeks conniptions over reports of JILF-on-JILF action between Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis in Darren Aronofsky’s upcoming Black Swan.
That Jewish women have become the ethnic fetish du jour is all the more remarkable given that Jews represent a truly tiny minority (2.2 percent) of the U.S. population. In recent years, God’s chosen menfolk have been objects of affection, too, though they draw their appeal from cuddly schlubbiness, not sexual energy—consider Judd Apatow’s all-Jewish Frat Pack (Seth Rogen, Paul Rudd, Jonah Hill, Jason Segel, et al.). But unlike their funnyman brothers, Jewish girls have had to overcome the old stinging JAP stereotype of frigidity, whininess, and big hair.
Recently, however, the Fran Drescher rep has given way to a more smoldering image. Think cultural mutts like Rachel Weisz, Emmanuelle Chriqui, and Rachel Bilson—women who have little in common beyond sultriness and Star of David necklaces.
My first trip to Israel was with Taglit-Birthright Israel in 2006. I was twenty-six and on the waiting list, but a spot opened up at the last minute on a trip specifically geared towards college students. I went anyway since I was excited to have a chance to go.
In retrospect, it was quite interesting to see the interaction between the American and Israeli Jews on the trip. Taglit usually brings a dozen or so young, IDF soldiers on the trip as part of a cultural exchange — and the two groups, both just out of high school, are always excited to meet each other. And I mean “excited” in every sense of the word. (Here is an archived article I wrote on the trip while editor-in-chief of Spare Change News in Boston.)
The American girls were smitten with the muscular, tanned, 18-year-old soldiers carrying machine guns. The American guys were awestruck by the bawdy, lively girls in uniform (see a picture of mine below) who also carried the same weapons. The various hotel rooms in which we stayed over the ten-day trip were put to good use.
I was not the only one to notice the fascination that Americans — whether Jewish or not — have with Israeli women in uniform. The Israeli government decided a few years later to brand the country as being full of gorgeous women to attract more tourism and establish associations with something other than war and terrorism (see here and here). Most significantly, one result was a cover page and photo spread in Maxim magazine in July 2007 with current and former soldiers wearing little.
This video — which went viral — also brought the message of Israel’s unique, well, assets to the Western world (note: strong language):
Now, I do not mean to imply that there is some direct connection between the Israeli government’s marketing efforts and the recent interest in Jewish starlets in Hollywood. No matter what some conspiracy theorists might believe, the Jewish world is nowhere near organized enough to pull something like that off. A group of four Jews can argue for hours over what to eat for breakfast — and some really expect them to run the world?
Still, either there seems to be many Jewish stars gaining popularity among Americans or there are enough media outlets choosing to focus on Jewish actresses, thereby making them popular. (Chicken and egg.) But why?
One obvious answer is that mainstream, white America has always had a fetish for ethnic women of various types throughout the years. (See the Details article’s timeline of Jewish actresses throughout the decades — you might be surprised at who makes the list.) People always have an erotic fascination with that which is different. Moreover, humanity’s natural instincts tell people to produce children with those of other ethnicities because the combination of two immune systems consisting of different genes protects better against disease. (This is also the reason that insular breeding within the same, closed community tends to result in more birth defects and other ailments throughout life.)
So, Americans have always celebrated the, um, beauty of diversity — after all, nearly all Americans are descended from immigrants from various countries — but why Jewish girls? Why now?
As with many subjects, the answer lies in politics, current events, and subconscious mindsets. Many Americans feel, rightly or wrongly, that they are under siege by Islamic terrorists, and they subconsciously empathize with female, Israeli soldiers whom they believe are on the frontline of the War on Terror. (I am sorry to deflate their fantasies, but nearly all female, IDF soldiers work desk jobs — the term in Hebrew is “jobnik” — or do guard duty. The machine guns that the soldiers had on the Birthright Israel trip, for example, are sometimes for show to impress the American boys.)
For those Americans who believe that the world is engaged in a clash of civilizations between Islam and the West, Israeli Jews and American Jews are also seen — directly and indirectly, respectively — as allies with the West who have a higher stake in the outcome because of their ethnicity and religion.
Many American men may also be taking a liking to Jewish girls because they are more traditionally oriented towards family and children — and they know how to cook amazing food as well. As the Western world is beginning to experience a backlash against feminism, such an attitude is not surprising.
Another reason is that many Mizhrahi Jews — those whose families come from Arab countries — are a little too close to Arabs. As the Boston Globe’s Brainiac blog observed some time ago on the fact that European fashion shows now feature some Islamic outfits:
I have a psychological, not biological, burqa theory of my own. In the mid-1940s, the psychologist Anna Freud described “identification with the aggressor” as a neurotic attempt to avoid punishment by internalizing the values of one’s oppressor. It seems to me that Americans are so worried about Islamofascist terrorists that we’re slowly turning ourselves into conservative Muslims.
If it is true that Americans can be described as having an increasing “identification with the aggressor,” then taking a liking to Mizrahi Jews — like actress Emmanuelle Chriqui below, who became famous after playing Adam Sandler’s Palestinian love interest in “You Don’t Mess with the Zohan” and whose family are Moroccan Jews — is as close as one could get to Arabs without liking, well, Arabs. (Ashkenazi Jews, in contrast, are those of European descent. A slim majority of Israelis are Mizrahi Jews.)
There is yet another uncomfortable reason why Jewish women are becoming so popular. As I noted in a prior essay, Western society is becoming increasingly superficial and more often viewing women as sex objects partly as a result of the unintended consequences of feminism. Jewish women, in general, tend to be more curvy naturally than many of European descent, so they might become more popular in a culture that focuses more and more on appearance. After all, one of the most popular porn stars today, according to the Details article, is Joanna Angel (below). (She comes from an Orthodox Jewish family, so that explains some of the perverted interest as well.) And, no, I am not going to search for a link to her website.
An often-asked question in Jewish circles is: “Is this good for the Jews?” I am conflicted. Obviously, any good PR for Israel is beneficial. But, as frequent readers of my blog know, I am very uncomfortable with women — Jewish or not — being viewed as sex objects. But as with all fads and fetishes, this, too, shall pass. For better and for worse.
Elsewhere: Jessica Pauline looks at the issue at Jewcy as well.
Prior essay: The Upcoming Generational War
I am now accepting various types of advertising on the blog. Have a partnership idea or something to pitch? Go here for more information.
Posted in Administrative, Advertising, Blogosphere, Business, Marketing, Media, Personal
This is old news to those who, like myself, have worked in Internet marketing, but tools like Facebook and Twitter can be valuable. Here are some of the tips I’ve learned in various positions.
1. Be Yourself. Many businesses believe that they should create a Facebook or Twitter profile with the name of your company: “Acme Boxes.” This is the complete opposite of what they should do.
First, having your presence consist only of a faceless corporation is boring. The Internet has a short attention span, so everything needs to be catchy. Your identity should not be “Acme Boxes” — it should be “Bob Smith (who happens to be CEO of Acme Boxes).” Use your real name and picture. The person Facebooking or Twittering should post about all sorts of things including funny anecdotes and personal interests, not only the newest sale his company is offering. Facebook and Twitter users want to befriend interesting people, not corporations. (Billionaire and Virgin founder Richard Branson has many Twitter followers, but I bet that very few of them care what his company does on a daily basis. Branson is just a cool guy.)
The brand awareness that your company gains — after all, it is listed in your profile and occasionally discussed in your posts — comes indirectly. Be informal and fun. Leave the formal, boring communications jargon to the marketing department that deals with traditional media outlets. People who use social media frequently are young, tech-savvy, and cynical when it comes to advertising. Be a real person online — everyone can tell when someone is just there to sell something.
2. Do Not Spam. The quickest way to lose potential customers and be ignored in the social-media sphere is to put a sales pitch in your status every hour. Fewer than half of your Facebook status updates and Tweets should be related to business. Again, people want to befriend you, not your company. The Internet is viral — for better and for worse. If one person does not like you, everyone will find out soon enough. (Although, if one person does like you, everyone will know as well.) Post on a wide variety of interesting subjects. If you post something with the word “baseball,” a Twitter search for that word will bring up your post. And you might get a few baseball fans to follow you and learn about your company.
3. Be Careful. There was a line in an episode of the 1990s, American sitcom “Newsradio” that went something like: “Taking something off the Internet is like trying to take the pee out of a swimming pool.” Even if you delete an e-mail, a Facebook post, or a Twitter entry, chances are that it still exists on some hard drive or server somewhere. Especially if someone saw it, did not like it, and saved it. Just because marketing is less controlled by executive suits in the rapid-fire Information Age does not mean that anything and everything is permissible. Don’t be like the teenage girl who posted scandalous pictures of herself on Facebook only to have everyone at school see them instead of just her boyfriend. Think before you post. Even if you are not the CEO or Vice President of Communications, you still represent your company in the subconscious minds of your Internet community.
More thoughts to follow.
Posted in Advertising, Business, Culture, Marketing, Media, Personal, Technology
BELLEVILLE, Illinois — So I just saw this commercial for Yellowbook, which seems to be new name for the Yellow Pages here in the United States. [The one I watched on television seems to be a few seconds shorter than the YouTube version.]
My reaction: Yet another American commercial in which men are portrayed as idiots! The husband is incompetent. When the wife hears about his new job, she expresses no concern for his well-being. Instead, she takes out a policy to get some money in case something happens to him!
If this had been the only commercial to make men look silly, I would have laughed at the joke. But when I see such a trend over several years, it is impossible to ignore the subconscious message that women rule and men are buffoons.
Posted in Advertising, Business, Civil Liberties, Culture, Feminism, Humor, Marketing, Media, Personal, Politics
NEWARK, New Jersey — So I was changing planes on my way from Tel Aviv to St. Louis when I walked by a group of men outside the security gate. As I and a few other passengers walked by, they yelled, “Moneet!”
That’s the Hebrew word for taxi. I stopped, momentarily confused, and then realized that they were adapting their sales pitch to the airline that has just dropped off a group of passengers. (I had flown on El Al to the United States.) They probably knew the word for taxi in dozens of languages. Smart marketing.
RISHON LEZION, Israel — This is what life is like forty-five minutes south of where I live:
Imagine that you are 18 years old. You have just completed high school and in a few months you will enter the army. In the meantime, you spend your time going out with friends and working to save some money – like any other typical teenager in Israel.
One afternoon, you come home exhausted from work and collapse into bed for a nap. Suddenly, in the middle of your nap you find yourself waking up to the sound of glass shattering – all over your back.
It takes you a moment to realize that the window above your bed has exploded and that shards of glass lie everywhere. Your dad comes racing in, picks you up and carries you outside to safety.
The Sderot Media Center Community Treatment Theater performed Children of Qassam Avenue in Jerusalem this week, and I would have gone if I had known about the play. As the above YouTube clips shows, the performance is a group of teenage girls showing what life is like under a constant rain of rocket fire from Hamas in the Gaza Strip. As the new school year has begun, principals have been repairing and upgrading their bomb shelters and related buildings.
Even though the number of deaths and injuries have been low, a generation of children is growing up with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Posted in Anti-Semitism, Civil Liberties, Culture, Education, Islam, Israel, Judaism, Marketing, Media, Palestine, Personal, Politics, Religion, The Middle East, War, War on Terror
My blog –including this and all posts — has moved here. Please update all links, RSS feeds, and bookmarks.
RISHON LEZION, Israel — While discussing the new book “Start-Up Nation,” Rabbi Shmuley Boteach addresses why Israel is more economically viable in the long-term than oil-rich Arab countries:
Sidestepping the usual discussion of Israel as an embattled nation, [the book] focuses instead on the invincible ingenuity of the Israeli people, and their vast technological contribution to the global economy…
…as Start-Up Nation makes clear, Israel today is one of the most highly educated and technologically advanced nations on Earth, with one of the planet’s fastest-growing economies.
The time has come for world Jewry to see Israel as the place where the limitless potential of the Jewish people is finally being made manifest. All we needed was for people to get out of our way, and just look at how we thrive. And we prosper not as a self-absorbed nation but as a people who make vast contributions to all of mankind…
Many a Jew has wondered aloud why the Arabs got all the oil and Israel got none. What could God have been thinking in making despots and dictators like the Saudis and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi so insanely rich, while Israel has to struggle for every shekel it earns?
Only now to do we see the truth. Oil is the greatest curse ever to befall the Arabs.
By simply digging a hole and having money flow from the ground, the Arab states had little incentive to build universities or a hi-tech industry. And when the day comes – and it will – when the world finally finds an alternative energy source, these despotic regimes will collapse, returning to the sand from which they arose.
This isn’t rocket science. All of us know at least one rich friend whose kids don’t have to work, and who consequently became indolent. Israel has had to struggle for everything it has. No country has ever been more unjustly reviled or more continuously attacked.
Conversely, no country better inspires the world to ponder the infinite capacity of humans to rise from the ashes of despair and build a shining state on a hill.
While Rabbi Boteach is correct on a macroeconomic level, the high-tech industry on a societal level here is more complicated than he knows. There are indeed positive aspects, but there are also negative ones.
In the twentieth century, the American economy generally had stable, long-term growth because of the existence of large, national, and global companies whose purpose was to generate long-term profits and jobs by providing new products and services over time. But, as I have noticed in the several Israeli companies where I have worked, the nature of start-ups is inherently different.
When I was working as a marketing manager, I overheard a conversation between a new hire and the chairman of the board. The chairman told the coworker that the exit strategy was to sell the company’s innovation to Google as soon as possible. The coworker rightly asked, “So, what will happen to me? Will I be out of a job?” The board chairman laughed, gave a dismissive answer, and changed the subject. (By the way, our contracts specifically stated that employees would receive no money from any sale of the company.)
As Shlomo Maital, a business columnist for The Jerusalem Report, asks in a recent interview with several Israeli business analysts (the article is not available online):
Israel’s business model was based on selling its brains, as start-ups, at inflated prices. These baby companies were “adopted” and their knowhow shipped overseas, before they could mature and create well-paying jobs and incomes for middle-class Israelis. Why has Israel failed to grow global companies in the past 10-15 years?
The interviewees responded by saying that the government needs to invest more in areas including alternative energy. But the major problem is that Israelis are a people with no patience for anything — including work life. The idea behind start-ups is not to build companies that will exist for the long-term but for the owners to get rich as quickly as possible. A classmate from my M.B.A. program once told me a story: A start-up CEO was told by a venture capitalist that the company could get $100 million if it offered an IPO the following month but that the firm could get $500 million if it waited for one year. The CEO, of course, chose the first option.
Another company for whom I worked would routinely fire employees just before three months or one year had elapsed to avoid salary increases or severance pay as mandated by our contracts and Israeli law. The stated reason for each firing, of course, was something false related to work performance. Start-ups frequently have little cash, and their existence depends on receiving future investment. So, in response, they must watch every single cost.
Smaller companies have many advantages over large ones including the ability to be quick and nimble rather than slow and bureaucratic, but they are generally more chaotic. Positions, job descriptions, and even the number of employees can change on a day-to-day basis. A long-term, stable career does not exist in this environment, especially when the owners and upper management have no patience and constantly worry about costs.
Israel has the fourth-highest level of income disparity — also known as the gap between the rich and the poor — in the world. It is not hard to understand the cause. Israel’s high-tech culture creates a few multi-millionaires whose only resulting contribution to the local economy is their increased consumer spending. Their companies and technologies are sold to Western countries, who then receive the later economic benefits. Lower-level employees move from start-up to start-up when one is either sold or bankrupt, rarely moving into upper management and receiving high salaries because the owners typically hold those positions on a day-to-day basis as well. Most other Israelis — those who are less educated or members of minority communities like Israeli Arabs — work in low-paying jobs in the blue-collar, service, or tourism industries.
Rabbi Boteach correctly notes that Israeli start-ups do benefit the world and provide the country with good branding, but Israeli society in general does not always see the benefits.
Elsewhere: The Freakonomics blog interviews the authors of “Start-Up Nation.”
Nearly every image of women that people see in advertisements, movies, and photography — and sometimes even television shows and broadcast news — is distorted. This short video shows how.
Posted in Advertising, Business, Culture, Entertainment, Feminism, Journalism, Marketing, Media, Technology
RISHON LEZION, Israel — On my first trip to Israel three years ago, I was leaving the Holocaust Memorial when a passerby in the parking lot yelled out, “Go Yankees!”
I was wearing my Red Sox hat at the time. It seems that the Greatest Rivalry in All of Sports follows you anywhere, even ten thousand miles away from the East Coast and outside the somber remembrance of the greatest massacre in human history.
[Conversely, the opposite happened when I was traveling in Egypt. Near the Sphinx, I saw a guy wearing a Yankees hat, and I yelled, “Go Red Sox!” He gave me a puzzled look. “Not American?” I asked. “Uh, no,” he replied in a German accent. “Never mind,” I replied. Evidently, he was one of those foreigners who wears a Yankees hat only because the team is supposedly synonymous with the United States. Talk about good branding.]
The baseball playoffs are occuring this month, and the Red Sox and Yankees have clinched the AL Wild Card and AL East respectively. But the games will be difficult to watch — night ones start between 1 a.m. and 4 a.m. here. Still, I will be excited to see the Red Sox beat the Angels (as they always do in the playoffs) and then face the Evil Empire. But I will need a lot of קפה.
Perhaps bloggers can help print media. This is heartening — I still prefer to hold newspapers and magazines in my hands.
Posted in Advertising, Blogosphere, Business, Conservative Pundits, Journalism, Marketing, Media
My blog –including this and all posts — has moved here. Please update all links, RSS feeds, and bookmarks.
Sixth in a series of essays
Ruben Navarrette recently criticized young Americans who are lobbying the government for financial assistance in these tough times:
Young people usually don’t have mortgages to pay off, or spouses and children to support. That gives them an enormous amount of freedom whether they realize it or not. They also have an advantage in the job market because they can travel the country and go where the jobs are. Or they can simply follow their passions and build careers of their own designs. Instead of seeing obstacles, they should see opportunities.
And yet, when young people ask government to throw them a life preserver and save them from the choppy waters of a rough economy, they’ve all but given up. Even if they get the short-term economic aid they’re seeking, they’ll lose their self-sufficiency in the process and become dependent on an unresponsive bureaucracy. That’s not good. In fact, it’s dangerous.
So you have to wonder where young people picked up this distasteful and destructive behavior. It’s obvious. It was from watching their elders with outstretched palms, a sense of entitlement, and a tendency to see government as the solution to all sorts of problems. And to think there are people who actually believe that.
Navarrette misses the point. As he himself notes earlier in his column, young Americans are more disproportionately unemployed than other demographics. But the problem is much deeper than jobs.
Just like Generation X two decades ago, Generation Y is increasingly bitter and frustrated to the point of losing all hope that they will one day have a life at least as secure — and not even as prosperous — as the Baby Boomers did in their middle-aged lives. (For the record, my birth year — 1980 — is stuck between Generation X and Generation Y, so I can empathize with both.) It is hard to quantify the pessimism and anger that pervades the younger generation, but a writer named Squashed comes close:
The word “entitlement” has picked up a negative connotation it shouldn’t have. If you go to the bank and deposit $20, you are entitled to get your $20 from the bank. If you fulfill your half of a contract, you are entitled to the other party’s performance. Sure, its a problem when you feel you deserve something you don’t deserve—but there is nothing wrong with acknowledging a legitimate debt. So let’s ask why some people in their 20s might feel the older generation hasn’t kept its end of the bargain…
For those who just graduated, there was no job. That’s not technically true. There was a job—but somebody older has it and isn’t letting go. It turns out the whole system is rigged. Education and intelligence and everything we were told was important turn out to be worth nothing next to seniority and experience…
Take health insurance. Decades of pressure to lower wages for new hires and cut benefits means that the employer-provided system means that even if you can find a job, it probably won’t offer health insurance. Paying for insurance out of pocket is prohibitively expensive if you’re healthy and coverage is entirely unavailable if you’re not. And if you have a minimum-wage job serving coffee, you’re still getting a chunk taken out of your paycheck to finance a program that won’t be solvent by the time you’re old enough to use it. But any effort to change this system is met with seniors screaming about communists taking away their medicare. And if 20-somethings back a legislative initiative that would help them obtain coverage, they’re slackers living in their parents basements. And let’s not even get into the individual mandate in the health-reform bill that will require the healthy and young to subsidize the health-care of their older and generally wealthier parents.
Should twenty-somethings who have done everything asked of them their entire lives feel like somebody pulled one over on them? Probably—but bad things happen. And hopefully all those years of education taught us enough empathy not to be vindictive. Call us gullible—but don’t call us lazy or selfish. If some of us push for a few reforms that could help us succeed even when our parents have dropped the ball—back them, and be thankful that we’re not talking outright revolution.
In an earlier essay, I also described the reasons that people my age are — to put it bluntly — pissed off. Please take a minute to read the post and its comments. Now, for the specific data from the Pew Research Center:
Now, what facts can be determined from this data?
In a nutshell, it is the Baby Boomers’ own fault that their children are working at McDonald’s or sleeping in their basements. For the most part, the older generation is refusing to retire simply because they want to work. Those who may need to delay retirement because their portfolios have declined either had idiots for financial advisers, or they made bad investments themselves. (By the age of 60, almost all of your investments should be in stable bonds rather than volatile stocks. And don’t get me started if you flipped houses or bought property during the height of the housing bubble.)
Critics like Navarrette usually say that every generation has had tough times and that younger people should pick themselves up by their bootstraps. Well, here is a secret: My generation has no bootstraps! The most extreme members of my generation feel that there is nothing we can do until the Baby Boomers literally die off.
But even that might pose a problem. Read this insightful — and scary — article in the Atlantic Monthly on how the “longevity boom” will wreak havoc on American society:
In the scientists’ projections, the ongoing increase in average lifespan is about to be joined by something never before seen in human history: a rise in the maximum possible age at death.
Stem-cell banks, telomerase amplifiers, somatic gene therapy—the list of potential longevity treatments incubating in laboratories is startling. Three years ago a multi-institutional scientific team led by Aubrey de Grey, a theoretical geneticist at Cambridge University, argued in a widely noted paper that the first steps toward “engineered negligible senescence”—a rough-and-ready version of immortality—would have “a good chance of success in mice within ten years.” The same techniques, De Grey says, should be ready for human beings a decade or so later. “In ten years we’ll have a pill that will give you twenty years,” says Leonard Guarente, a professor of biology at MIT. “And then there’ll be another pill after that. The first hundred-and-fifty-year-old may have already been born…”
From religion to real estate, from pensions to parent-child dynamics, almost every aspect of society is based on the orderly succession of generations. Every quarter century or so children take over from their parents—a transition as fundamental to human existence as the rotation of the planet about its axis. In tomorrow’s world, if the optimists are correct, grandparents will have living grandparents; children born decades from now will ignore advice from people who watched the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. Intergenerational warfare—the Anna Nicole Smith syndrome—will be but one consequence. Trying to envision such a world, sober social scientists find themselves discussing pregnant seventy-year-olds, offshore organ farms, protracted adolescence, and lifestyles policed by insurance companies. Indeed, if the biologists are right, the coming army of centenarians will be marching into a future so unutterably different that they may well feel nostalgia for the long-ago days of three score and ten.
“[A]lmost every aspect of society is based on the orderly succession of generations.” This is the most important line in the Atlantic article. When an older generation dies off, its wealth, jobs, and responsibilities are transferred, through inheritance and other means, to the younger generation. The next generation uses this capital to obtain jobs, get married, buy homes, raise families, and create more wealth. Then they will die off, and the circle continues. This is how society must function.
Now, however, the circle is broken. Instead of the Baby Boomers transferring their wealth to Generations X and Y, they are getting more money by staying at their jobs and spending their existing wealth on vacations as well as life-extending medicines and procedures (see here and here) rather than passing it onto their children and grandchildren. (I would have added the adverb “selfishly spending,” but I am not sure the natural, inherent desire to prolong one’s life can fairly be described as “selfish.”)
Generations X and Y have yet to have the collective wealth, rights, and responsibilities transferred and assigned to them from the Baby Boomers. As a result, young people are stuck in their often-criticized state of perpetual adolescence because we cannot afford the trappings of so-called maturity: marriage, home, and family. (See here, here, and here.) What else can we do but wait?
Still, Navarrette is correct on one point: My generation has more mobility because most of us do not yet have good jobs, spouses, mortgages, and families even though many of are pushing the age of thirty or beyond. As a result, we may need to start looking elsewhere than the United States.
For example, I moved to Israel and found a wonderful job since international marketing experience and native English are in great demand. I am not paying part of my salary into Social Security, a program whose benefits I will likely never see. The government provides universal health-care. My job provides both an employer-matched pension and a retirement fund along with disability and life insurance. (My standard of living is much higher relative to other Israelis than it was in Boston relative to other Americans.) I write this not to brag but to ask: How many young people in the United States have this today?
It is no wonder than Generations X and Y are so upset.
Related: Cancel Student Loan Debt (to Save the Economy). Hat tip: Anya Kamenetz. Next essay: On the Jewish-Girl Fetish.
Elsewhere: Columnist Dennis Prager apologizes on behalf of the Baby Boomers, though mainly for reasons other than economic ones.
Posted in Boston, Business, Civil Liberties, Conservative Pundits, Culture, Dating, Economics, Education, Essays, Immigration, Israel, Marketing, Personal, Politics, Science, Technology, The Middle East
I recently started working as Marketing and Communications Manager for Speech Modules, a company that is a pioneer in the speech-recognition industry. Check it out.
Getting sick of the social-networking website? You’re not alone.
Posted in Business, Civil Liberties, Culture, Marketing, Media, Privacy, Technology
The Pentagon has been profiling reporters based on their coverage of the war in Afghanistan and manipulating the resulting news stories accordingly. Is anyone really that shocked?
I’m also pleasantly surprised to see that Stars and Stripes is an independent newspaper. I thought the U.S. military controls what stories were published.
Posted in Afghanistan, Civil Liberties, Journalism, Marketing, Media, Personal, Politics, War on Terror
RISHON LEZION, Israel — As I have noted in several posts in my Letters from Israel series, people here are frequently brash, politically incorrect, tactless, and traditional in regards to gender roles and stereotypes. This is especially true in advertising.
Cellcom, the country’s leading mobile-phone company, is running a new advertisement (shown above) that is generating some controversy. An army patrol is driving near the separation barrier when something hits their jeep. At first, the soldiers think they are being attacked, but it turns out that it was only an errant soccer ball that Palestinians on the other side of the barrier were using. The soldiers and the unseen Palestinians end up playing with each other. The ad’s voiceover at the end says, “What do we all want? Some fun, that’s all.”
Noam Sheizaf, a journalist for the Ma’ariv newspaper, is disgusted:
The fact that the Palestinians are invisible in this commercial, that the wall the soldiers are playing around was built on their lands – and that Palestinians are killed while protesting against it – the fact that in reality, if a Palestinian comes close to the fence to return a football or to wave a flag he is likely to get shot; the whole reality of the occupation, is something Israelis are refusing to see. Like the voice over at the end of the commercial says (“What do we all want? Some fun, that’s all”), we see ourselves as your usual happy-and-fun-loving-Mediterranean-nation, only in uniform.
Over at Jewlicious, a writer named C.K. says that others view the advertisement as a “harmless and humorous riff on an otherwise difficult issue – something Israelis are particularly well known for.” I lean towards this view. Sheizaf is taking a lighthearted attempt to breathe some levity into a messy situation much too seriously.
Still, from a marketing standpoint, Israeli commercials are very provocative to Western viewers, who tend to become outraged and offended by any insult to their sensibilities. Israelis, on the other hand, will usually just shrug their shoulders and laugh. To them, people should not be so serious all the time.
Here is a collection of famous — or infamous, depending on your point of view — commercials from Israel featuring the Vietnam War; the Titanic; a young boy with two blond, teenage girls; and feminine products that, for some reason, incorporate “69” and “doggy-style” into the sales pitch.
Update: Here is a video reaction to the Cellcom advertisement. I cannot hear what the people are saying, so I would appreciate if any Hebrew-speakers could let me and my readers know.
Posted in Advertising, Business, Civil Liberties, Culture, Entertainment, Feminism, Humor, Israel, Liberal Pundits, Marketing, Media, Palestine, Politics, Sex, The Middle East, War
NewsBusters points out that the more government changes, the more it remains the same:
At a press conference today, Helen Thomas and CBS’s Chip Reid got into it with Robert Gibbs over how the administration has been prepackaging media events.
First Reid asked why the questions for Wednesday’s town hall on healthcare were being preselected. After Gibbs tried to dodge that question a few times, Thomas became involved, saying, “We have never had that in the White House. I’m amazed that you people … call for openness and transparency.”
Thomas said that the administration was trying to control the media, and she pointed out how they coordinated questions with the Huffington Post at a press conference…
Wednesday’s press conference was also not the only media event that was in some way coordinated. Previous town halls have featured Obama campaign supporters and Democratic politicians lobbing softballs at Obama.
One of the many things I disliked about the Bush administration was the fact that the president would tour the company to tout his health-care proposal and turn the event into an infomercial.
Like many Americans, I hoped that a President Obama encourage healthy debates and not resemble his predecessor. I guess I was wrong (see above). So much for Obama’s platform of change.
Jack Welch offers some cutting thoughts on HR departments:
In the wide-ranging Q-and-A with Claire Shipman, Welch took HR professionals to task for playing the victim a little too often. “I’ve seen too many organizations where HR whines about their role,” Welch said.
If you want senior management to take you seriously, he said, “get out of the picnic, birthday card, and insurance forms business.”
Instead, he told the crowd, their focus should be on building trust throughout the company and developing recruitment and retention strategies that attract the best workers in good times and bad. “Your job is to raise the quality of the team.”
I have frequently been very underwhelmed by the personnel human-resources departments at many companies — large and small — for whom I have worked in the United States and Israel. Too many of them have been essentially useless, if not downright harmful.
It starts, perhaps logically, with the hiring function. One Massachusetts hospital fired me from my marketing management position on my second day because I had the audacity to ask a few pointed questions during the orientation rather than be a nice, little sponge like everyone else and absorb the cliche speeches and videos. (They hired a former journalist, for crying out loud.) “The hospital” had “determined” that my personality was not good match for the corporate culture. And don’t get me started on the farcical sexual-harassment video.
At one high-tech company in Tel Aviv, a person in HR took me and another new hire out to lunch. Officially, it was a getting-to-know-you thing, but I was sure the manager went back with a full report on our personalities and capabilities. The hiring interviews were enough pressure — HR should leave the schmooze-based analysis for my boss. They did not even know what I did on a day-to-day basis. HR managers usually cannot do what the employee of a given department does on a day-to-day basis, especially in fields like high-tech and finance.
But it goes beyond my personal experiences. I recently read an article (which I cannot find now) reporting that people were dumbing-down their resumes because many large corporations have changed their resume-filtering software to exclude former C-level employees because are overqualified. (In this economy, even erstwhile CEOs need a job!)
HR usually makes the first cull of potential job applicants, whether through computers or eyeballs. But they always stick ruthlessly to pointless checklists — no one, for example, without a college degree is worthy of an entry-level position — that may rob a department of someone who could be tailored into a great asset and resource. When a person looks at dozens of resumes every day, it is too easy to see the person and instead reduce every CV to a collection of yes-he-has or no-he-does-not-have checkmarks.
When I was the director of a sales department here in Israel, I went through every CV myself. I made the time to do it. The manager of a department knows exactly what he needs; HR does not.
But if HR should not play a significant role in hiring, what is left for them to do? Every HR person I have ever known has told me that they went into the field because they like working with people. But, in reality, their jobs seem to involve looking at pieces of paper, keeping abreast of labor law, and acting as enforcers of company codes. What fun.
I have always envisioned HR departments as being something similar to the ombudsmen that most major newspapers have. In journalism, the ombudsman represents the readers. He is appointed by the editor or publisher to a specific term of office, investigates complaints about stories (or whatever), and writes an impartial critique of the situations. Most importantly, he criticizes the newspaper — and even individual writers and editors — whenever he thinks it is justified.
Since labor unions are increasingly irrelevant, HR departments could transition to being the ones who represent the employees. If a manager treats an employee badly, HR could investigate in a neutral manner and make a ruling. Most importantly, HR could have the power to decide that the company or manager acted wrongly — even if making such a decision would go against the best interests of the company as a whole. The CEO or chairman of the board could appoint the vice president of HR to a specific term of office during which he could not be fired (except in special cases, like doing something illegal). Now that would inspire workplace morale! And HR managers would finally fulfill their dreams of working with people rather than pieces of paper.
I hate seeing HR managers as the police as much as anyone, but employees frequently have nowhere to turn when the boss slams any given door in their face. Perhaps a revolution in human-resources is needed.
Posted in Boston, Business, Journalism, Law, Marketing, Massachusetts, Personal
What can companies who use social-networking tools learn from the role Twitter is playing in Iran? See here.
What is your personal brand? And why should managers in human resources care? See here for more.
In two of my recent posts, I discussed the significance of Twitter in light of the ongoing political crisis in Iran. Now, the social-networking tool has announced that scheduled maintenance is being postponed to help the protesters:
A critical network upgrade must be performed to ensure continued operation of Twitter. In coordination with Twitter, our network host had planned this upgrade for tonight. However, our network partners at NTT America recognize the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran. Tonight’s planned maintenance has been rescheduled to tomorrow between 2-3p PST (1:30a in Iran).
Our partners are taking a huge risk not just for Twitter but also the other services they support worldwide—we commend them for being flexible in what is essentially an inflexible situation. We chose NTT America Enterprise Hosting Services early last year specifically because of their impeccable history of reliability and global perspective. Today’s decision and actions continue to prove why NTT America is such a powerful partner for Twitter.
Some bloggers, like BoingBoing, have been commenting as well on the fact that Twitter rescheduled the time so it will not impede the Iranian protesters who are using the tool to communicate with each other — and the world as well. This is also a significant change in the nature of modern media.
Mainstream, journalistic outlets would never make such a direct announcement over fear that they would become — or be viewed as — biased and no longer neutral. But in today’s world in which the masses can communicate to each other without the need of a middle man (except for the media platform of choice), the medium is becoming the message. It is now impossible for social-media outlets to remain impartial. Facebook must decide whether to ban groups that deny the Holocaust. Twitter must decide whether to postpone maintenance and harm the efforts of Iranian protesters. (Of course, Twitter did not say outright that they want to help them, but the subtext is obvious.) The New York Times does not have to make choices like these.
Traditional media outlets have always been gatekeepers. Well, there is no longer a gate. Social-media platforms are the sum-total of the people who use them, so the masses are now dictating to the gatekeeper.
Update: The U.S. State Department had asked Twitter to delay the work on its website.
Posted in Blogosphere, Business, Civil Liberties, Culture, Iran, Journalism, Marketing, Media, Politics, Technology, War
I was going to write a lengthy post on how Twitter can help business (as long as the Web 2.0 technology is used smartly). But then the disputed Iranian election, along with the resulting violence and unrest, occurred. This is much more significant.
The Iranian people and the outside world have little access to each other since their Iranian government is blocking the BBC satellite, attacking an Italian news crew, closing the offices of Al Arabiya, and preventing access to Facebook. So, where have Iranians and their supporters turned? To Twitter and blogs.
Most of the news I have seen online has come from the #iranelection Twitter feed that can also be read here through the Huffington Post. There are hundreds of new tweets every few minutes. People are sharing links to YouTube videos and photo blogs from the the streets of Iran itself. Here are a few, select ones:
The DailyKos purports to have received the actual vote tally from a link inside the Iranian government. I am skeptical of its authenticity, but here it is.
The U.S. Civil War was the first conflict to be covered extensively by newspapers there. Edward R. Murrow bought stories from a beseiged London to Americans through the radio during World War II. The United States saw the Vietnam War through their living rooms on television. The war in Kosovo was the first one to erupt after the Internet became popular, and with it came reporting and photos that spread online quickly. During the war between Israel and Hizbollah in southern Lebanon in 2006, civilians on both sides blogged and used webcams to produce videos on living under constant barrages of rockets and bombs.
Now, in 2009, the Iranian people and those who support democracy are communicating, organizing, and reporting through Twitter. Skeptics and ayatollahs, beware: The power of 140 characters is indeed stronger than you know, and even CNN is feeling the heat:
As the Iranian election aftermath unfolded in Tehran–thousands of demonstrators took to the streets to express their anger at perceived electoral irregularities–an unexpected hashtag began to explode through the Twitterverse: “CNNFail.”
Even as Twitter became the best source for rapid-fire news developments from the front lines of the riots in Tehran, a growing number of users of the microblogging service were incredulous at the near total lack of coverage of the story on CNN, a network that cut its teeth with on-the-spot reporting from the Middle East.
For most of Saturday, CNN.com had no stories about the massive protests on behalf of Mir Hossein Mousavi, who was reported by the Iranian government to have lost to the sitting president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The widespread street clashes–nearly unheard of in the tightly controlled Iran–reflected popular belief that the election had been rigged, a sentiment that was even echoed, to some extent, by the U.S. government Saturday.
If, God willing, the rioters are able to overthrow the regime and establish a free democracy, Twitter — more than any other media outlet — will be largely responsible. And that means so much more than how the application can help a company’s stock price.
More later.
Posted in Blogosphere, Business, Civil Liberties, Education, Iran, Islam, Journalism, Law, Marketing, Media, Personal, Politics, Religion, Technology, The Middle East, War
Many people, like me, go into fields like journalism and marketing partly because we were never very good at math. Sadly, however, we may soon need the ability to analyze complex data.
Posted in Business, Education, Journalism, Marketing, Personal
I will be moderating the following free, forex webinars at my company’s website on June 16 and 17:
Forex for Professionals
Expert: Tony Beckwith of MTPredictor
Developing a Trading Plan
Expert: Dan Cook of IG Markets
Come visit!
Samuel J. Scott 