A Shift in Advertising

If you’re like me–an avid watcher of AMC’s Mad Men–after one episode you’ll think of yourself as quite the advertisement specialist. And really–what’s to know about advertising? Sex. Women. Materialism. The formula for successful advertisements is a simple one.

That’s why I have been so pleasantly surprised by new and innovative commercials. The first is for a Bounty Select-A-Size paper towel. Usually, Bounty commercials or any advertisement of a domestic product will show the housewife, or soccer mom cleaning up after their bratty, inconsiderate kids who make a ridiculous mess. But she always has a super happy face on because she knows with the cleaning product she bought that–all will be fine. (Off camera she takes 3 Xanax and downs  a fifth of Vodka). Cleaning products have always been geared to the female demographic until now: The commerical below shows a father–yes, that’s right!–cooking a breakfast, minding his children, and cleaning up when messes are made.  The message here: Men can do domestic work like cooking and cleaning. AND they can have fun doing it. Who woulda thunk?

The next commercial goes along with the same motif as Bounty: Men are empowered by doing housework! But the Tide with Downy commercial takes it a step further. This commercial shows a loving father as “Mr. Mom”. He has the cleaning skills to use phrases like, “I use Tide to get out the stains and Downy to get it soft” & “I let her play cowboy once a week so I can wash [her princess outfit]”. Men everywhere are breathing a sigh of relief as they exclaim in unison, “Thank you for giving us some freaking credit! Just because I’m a guy doesn’t mean I am helpless and sloppy.” The world in television and movies show us that men are hopeless and helpless when it comes to cleaning. (Ever see the “Man puts too much suds into the laundry” gag?). Bounty, Downy and Tide won’t stand for that idiocy any longer. 

 

Go advertising! Making the world a little less misogynistic, one paper towel use, laundry cycle and chip gorge at a time.

I Can’t Believe I’m Saying This…I’m On Miley’s Side.

It’s been a few weeks since the whole Miley Cyrus-VMA’s debacle and I wanted to voice somethings before I get totally bored with it. I think it was really interesting to see the backlash of the performance. There were a lot of different theory’s going around about it. Feminists backed her up. Conservatives slut shamed. Race was brought up questioning if it was an issue of commodification & accessorizing of black women. I read a lot of theories but I don’t feel that there was enough of what I am thinking: Miley Cyrus is a bad performer and should never sing again in a setting like that…ever.

Raise your hand if you want me to stop!

I watched the VMA performance, I wasn’t impressed. I’ve heard Cyrus sing before in a small, acoustic setting and she was alright. Not my cup of tea but she has a fair voice. The fact of it is–she just isn’t that strong of a performer. She was off key, out of breath, unable to keep tempo and instead worked the shock-and-awe factor of the performace. Compare Cyrus to Beyoncé, Gaga and Minaj–three women who are equally scantily clothed, who have gyrated during a concert and possibly stuck their tongues out for people to see–and Cyrus misses the mark. The difference is: The Holy Trinity are  good at entertaining, they can sing, dance, & perform! Cyrus on the other hand, can’t do any of that. She should stick to small venues where she can work on her voice.

I guess the big annoying thing about this whole thing is that we couldn’t look at the performance as an isolated incident. So she bombed-big deal! Instead, Cyrus’s failure became a negative reflection upon an entire gender. That is so annoying. Fo’ realz.

I’m walking a little slower today

Dusten Brown holding his daughter, Veronica.

Monday, the battle for Baby Veronica came to an end. With guns in tow, US Marshals took the screaming child from her biological father—from her Nation—and placed her with the adoptive couple in South Carolina. “The Court of the Great White Father” never allowed a “best interest” hearing, and by doing so, disregarded Native sovereignty and condoned intergenerational -cultural genocide.  Therefore, “The Court of the Great White Father” asserts that Baby Veronica’s best interest is to be placed in a world that is better for her—a world only an affluent, white family can give her. Native communities came together to fight for Veronica, to no avail. When the Great White Father wants something to happen—by God, no one can stop it.

This case is all sorts of racism, sexism, and classism being fueled by a Right-wing narrative that the Puritans themselves couldn’t have created. Change the variables of race, gender, and class and you can really see how messed up this case is: Would a mother have to fight this hard and long to have her biological daughter back? Would a white-military man have to fight like this at a chance to have his daughter? Would an affluent biological parent have these issues?  The answer is. Hell No!

The funny thing, if you could call it funny, was the lack of outcry from anyone other than Native folks. The Native activists discourse has been a good one, a strong one but–compared to the amount of crap mainstream media has produced—it hasn’t even made a dent. Obviously, this case has marginalization of the classes/races/genders written all over it. So where was the outrage from mainstream activists?

Where were the civil right allies, pissed that a Native man—a soldier even—was fighting for his daughter? Where were the Feminists, pissed that an unwed father had no rights to his biological daughter, pissed of the blatant patriarchy of the case and pissed of the dismissive media who saw the father as a lazy, no-good Indian? Where were our liberal-lefties who saw an Evangelical adoption agency circumvent all laws and ethical protocol in placing Baby Veronica up for adoption?

Where were they? Where are they? I’m not saying that Natives need white Saviors, I’m saying that allies are the greatest invention in history. The more voices, the louder we can be.

This case is the fulfilling of a systematic venture to kill the American Indians. We have been defeated. Without our children—we have nothing left. Laws, like the Indian Child Welfare Act, have been gutted before our very eyes. How does an Indian trust the government? The laws that were enacted to protect us were disregarded and trampled upon. Treaties continue to go unchecked.

Can you imagine how this case has made me feel? Everything I do, my school work, my hope for my people’s brighter future—is futile. I have to come to terms that things like this most likely will happen again. I’m terrified to have children of my own—what if they are taken from me? All I can do is to continue to walk the Red Road, being the best I can be and more importantly, making it possible for my people to reach their goals. I need to come to terms with what has transpired.

I will—hopefully.

I will—just give me  time.

I want to thank the countless lawyers, activists, tribal members, and allies for their support over the past 2 years. I also want to say a prayer for the Brown family during this difficult time. I pray for Veronica, that she will grow up healthy and strong. Our hearts go with you. Be safe.

Seamus Heaney 1939-2013

Amid the reports of war in Syria, I completely brushed over the news that Irish poet, Seamus Heaney passed away. Heaney was born in County Derry in 1939, on a farm called Mossbawn. In many ways, that place is still the center of his poetic world, its omphalos. Heaney used the word to describe the farm, turning the word itself into a kind of sonic vehicle. In that way Heaney brought a sense of irish renaissance, or more accurately, a rebirth of Northern Irish poetry. Seamus Heaney’s conceptions of powerful informed regionalistic poetry earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995.

Digging

Between my finger and my thumb
The Squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where we was digging.

The course boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my fingers and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.

 

From Squarings

xlviii

Strange how things in the offing, once they’re sensed,
Convert to things foreknown;
And how what’s come upon its manifest

Only in light of what has been gone through.
Seventh heaven may be
The whole truth of a sixth sense come to pass.

At any rate, when light breaks over me
The way it did on the road beyond Coleraine
Where wind got saltier, the sky more hurried

And silver lamé shivered on the Bann
Out in mid-channel between the painted poles,
That day I’ll be in step with what escaped me.