Occasionally I steal.

This I stole from a website called http://www.thisfuckingelection.com/
click on the image to make it larger.

Typos.

Years ago, oh maybe fifteen, before all the banks in America consolidated, subsumed or merged into three or four, there was a local institution called the Dime Savings Bank.

I thought of that this evening as I crossed over the Brooklyn Bridge from Brooklyn into the city.

The Dime Savings Bank building on the Manhattan side used to have a large red neon sign on top saying, as I suppose you’ve guessed, Dime Savings Bank. Only somewhere along the way the “e” had burned out. So it read “Dim Savings Bank.”

Martin Luther King. Barack Obama. Advertising Agencies.

In my last few jobs I've been hired in senior positions to teach old dogs new tricks. To help traditional agencies learn to leave the 1980s. Or to help an interactive agency become something more than a technology and infrastructure vendor. Or to help a non-traditional joint learn the intelligent discipline and creative bigness most often associated in traditional marketing.

This is a damn difficult and dispiriting job. Especially when the economy tumbles or someone's stock price goes down 47% or accounts are lost or new business isn't won. Because change, like principles, are easy to stick to until they cost you money.

Today Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times in writing about Mr. Obama recalled a speech made Dr. King. As Kristof says, "it’s an apt description of the idea of America today: 'Lord, we ain’t what we want to be; we ain’t what we ought to be; we ain’t what we gonna be, but, thank God, we ain’t what we was.'"

I guess that's what those of us in the change business have to remember: "we ain’t what we want to be; we ain’t what we ought to be; we ain’t what we gonna be, but, thank God, we ain’t what we was."

Walter Rathenau.

I don't mean to be a downer but I suppose it comes naturally to me--the result being raised Kaspar-Hauser-like by wolves in the wilds of 1960s Yonkers, NY.

For the past few years I have likened 21st Century America to Weimar Germany. A decadent, frivolous world, riven by extremes, prejudices and hate. A time of tumult, hope and despair. A time of upheaval in the world (the wake of WWI, the Bolshevik revolution in Russia) and a time of economic uncertainty and calamity.

Walter Rathenau, a Jew and the head of AEG (Germany's General Electric) was elected German Foreign Minister in February, 1922. He was a wise, conciliatory voice in an increasing factionalized and strident nation. In June, 1922 Rathenau was assassinated by members of the nascent Nazi party. And Germany began its fast and steep descent into hell.

Its economy collapsed. Germany was isolated on the world stage. And the politics of hate and intolerance prevailed.

I told you I was gloomy.

Two new words..

Given my previous post, I am herewith proposing two new words for the racial amalgamation represented within the President elect.

White + black = Whack.
Black + white = Blite.

Last night and disappointment.

The victory of Obama is being hailed in many quarters as a triumph over the racism that has riven this country since the first slaves were dragged to this continent in the 16th Century. This notion of Obama as a black or African-American or person-of-color President is, in and of itself, a sign of racism.

I say this because as a nation we are still subscribing to notions of blood or racial differences and we have decided that a person who looks a certain way is, according to their appearance, their self-definition or the definition imposed by those around them belongs to a certain racial or ethnic category. In Louisiana, until recently, a black person was defined as anyone who had a drop of "black blood" in them, no matter how infinitesimal the amount. The metaphor that was used was simple, a can of white paint is no longer white if a speck of black is mixed in.

Plain and simple as a society we are sticking to eugenic notions of racial purity.

What makes Obama black as opposed to white, after all, he is as "white" as he is "black"? What we should be celebrating is the triumph of heterogeneity over homogeneity.

I suppose my problem with all this is we are upholding dangerous racist notions of blood and race. What happened last night wasn't a black man defeating a white man. It was a triumph of inclusion against exclusion, of liberal versus illiberal.

Jumping on the band-wagon.

Vote and Starbucks will give you a free cup of coffee.
Vote and Ben & Jerry's will give you a free cone.
Vote and I will personally write you a free ad, TV or radio spot.

At 5:50 this morning.

My wife and I stood in a line of about 100, twenty-yards away from another line of about 100. By 6AM the lines were down the block and around the corner. Upper East-siders elbowing each other, squeezing past folded-up lunch tables in a public school gymnasium to get into the half-functioning voting machines that date, I guess, from Eisenhower's first term.

A neighbor was first to vote--he arrived at 4:45 and having voted hustled off to a Starbucks to grab his free coffee. Later to Ben & Jerry's for a free cone. And then to Pinky Nails for a free Brazilian.

The helicopters chopped overhead, who knows why? Traffic watch, intimidation, surveillance, news crews?

Absent the giant visage of Comrade Stalin looming above, it all reminded me of my young boyhood in Moskva. The out-dated machinery. The mechanism of propaganda. The crumbling infrastructure. The naive hope that we, the people, could effect change through the ballot. My father, Stanisliv Irvinovich, would grip my hand and impart his cryptic wisdom as we shuffled slowly ahead in the snaking line. "My son," he intoned, "a man's vote is like a donkey in the breeze. Up close you can ride it. But from a distance, it smells."

My younger daughter.

My 17-year-old, Hannah, is about 79% smarter than the smartest people you'll find in an advertising agency. That makes me glad because it means I'll never find her inside an agency.

This is a photo of a bar in our neighborhood. You can't really see the sign but underneath the name of the bar it says "DRINKING CONSULTANTS SINCE 1998." Every time Hannah sees their sign she asks why anyone would want to drink consultants. I couldn't agree more--for the most part, I don't even want to have lunch with them.

Yet another reason I am not a football fan.

I cannot even conceive of what a Nose Tackle is, what he does or why he does it.