Hello! Thank you for putting your ear to the Listening Tube! I’m your host, Bob Woodley. If a crazy lady tells you I’m squatting on her property, that’s just my wife! On this episode, we’ll hear about a school for the deaf (well, not all of us will hear it) and insulin. Plus, I’ll have a chat with a psychotherapist who has a prescription for America. No, it isn’t more cowbell! But first (Not the Headlines!)
I’m just gonna come right out and say it. Racism is everywhere. When progressive left politicians go on television and tell us that racism is systemic in our society, they’re absolutely right. Racism has permeated our everyday lives in such a way that we probably think about it more than we should have to. Everyday we’re reminded that there are people with different skin colors and other physical traits that separate us. Not just in opinion pieces on various media. One of the ways racism enters our consciousness is through advertising. While the news may sometimes choose to tell you a story or not depending upon the skin color of the victim or perpetrator, advertisers looks for reasons to include such information. If you only advertise to the largest group of people, you’re going to miss a lot of sales. Marketers take great care in identifying subsets of people and speaking to them through advertising.
Black people were featured in what is called by face to face africa dot com the first non-racist TV commercial way back in 1948. Before that, commercials with Black people were caricatures. And that’s part of the problem. Because the 1948 commercial didn’t portray Black people as a caricature, it isn’t considered racist. But it is. I’m not saying that’s wrong, I’m not saying that’s right. All I’m saying is that the actors were chosen because of their race, which makes it racist. I’m okay with that. I understand why it was done. It’s still racist. And there was nothing wrong with that in 1948, and there’s nothing wrong with that today. As long as you tolerate racism. And we do.
I recently saw a diaper commercial on television that feature three babies. A Black baby, an Asian baby and a White baby. Advertisers put a lot of thought into their commercials when they’re investing large sums of money into the production and distribution of the commercial. Somewhere along the line, the decision was made that the next commercial needs to have different races of babies in it, to represent a varied proportion of the population. It probably started when somebody said, “We need to appeal to minority groups, too, so they feel represented.”
Then somebody else said, “Let’s put babies of different ethnic groups in the commercial so it shows we’re inclusive.”
Then someone else at the conference table chimed in, “Yea, we don’t want our customers thinking we’re racist.”
So the casting director lines up a bunch of babies to fill the roles of a white baby and a black baby and a baby with the right shaped eyes. That’s not racist at all. I can hear the casting director now, saying, “Wow, that’s one of the most beautiful babies I’ve seen today. Too bad it has the wrong skin tone.” But when we see the commercial, it seems like it’s inclusive. We don’t realize we’re being exposed to blatant racism. I’m not saying every commercial that doesn’t have a cast of all white people is bad. What I’m saying is that advertisers rely heavily on information about different groups of people, and race is one of the factors taken into consideration. There are products and services tailored to specific types of people, and the businesses who provide them want to be able to reach those people. Racism is an important part of advertising. Being inclusive is almost becoming the caricature that existed prior to 1948. Almost every commercial that features a married couple has a mixed-race couple. That’s a decision that was made with race as a factor. To the average viewer of today’s television, one might think all couples are mixed-race. In reality, it’s a very small, but growing percentage.
So, while some will accuse others of being racist, as if it’s a bad thing, many decisions about what you see on television has its roots in the very definition of racism. The images you see are crafted to influence you to buy a product. Racism plays an important part in how those messages are crafted. But we accept the messages as being inclusive instead of recognizing them as one of the ways racism infects our thoughts.
Here’s the funny part: If you point it out, you become the racist. I’m alright with that. Because I know I’m not a bigot. Bigotry is what needs to be held in check, not racism. If it wasn’t for racism, we would never have enjoyed the personality of George Jefferson, or Archie Bunker or Fred Sanford.
Until we have enough sex with each other to eliminate the different races, we will continue to separate ourselves by race. That’s racism. If you’re ever called a racist, simply reply with, “Arent’t we all?” Because we are. Our television commercials prove it.
Unfinished Business liner
You may recall a previous episode of the Listening Tube that talked about a Kansas newspaper that was raided by an overzealous police force back in August of last year
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1940478/13438928-season-6-episode-4-august-20-2023.mp3?download=true . The police didn’t do it all by themselves, of course. They needed cooperation from a local judge to approve the search warrant, and a reason to conduct a search. They thought they found one when the newspaper dug up some dirt on a local business owner who may have had a blemish on her driving record. The newspaper was accused of identity theft, the offices and homes of the paper’s leadership were raided, and materials confiscated. As a result, the newspaper’s 98-year-old owner died the next day.
The paper has filed a federal lawsuit seeking compensation for the death, as well as the alleged violation of the paper’s Constitutional Rights.
Since the raids, the town’s police chief resigned. But he’s still named in the lawsuit, as well as the current chief, former Mayor, the County Sheriff and a deputy who helped draft the search warrants, according to an Associated Press story. The Marion County Record is seeking 10-million dollars in the lawsuit. The County’s annual budget is 35-million. The publisher, Eric Meyer, who’s mother died the day after the raid of her home, was quoted as saying, “The last thing we want to do is bankrupt the city or county, but we have a duty to democracy and to countless news organizations and citizens nationwide to challenge such malicious and wanton violations.”
Let’s Go Back liner
1817
Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc founded the American School for the Deaf, the first American school for deaf students, in Hartford, Connecticut. Unfortunately, many deaf people never heard about it. I’m completely deaf in one ear, so statistically, I would have heard about half of it.
1900’s liner
1923
Insulin becomes generally available for use by people with diabetes. It’s been more than a hundred years since then. My late wife, Camille, was diabetic. She required two insulin shots a day; one in the morning, and one in the early evening, after which she had to eat some food, whether or not she was hungry. She passed away almost 20 years ago. At that time, it cost about 15 dollars for a bottle of insulin. As I recall, she needed about two a month, maybe part of a third. We also had to buy the needles. One time use. Couldn’t reuse them. She would bend the needle of each one before she disposed of it, rendering it useless.
The thing about diabetes is how many times you had to poke holes in your skin. Not jut for the insulin injections, but also to check your blood sugar. Each time you checked, and you might check several times a day, you had to prick you finger or some part of your body that would produce a drop of blood sufficient enough to yield a result. You might have to poke yourself 20 times a week. Finding a new spot to poke yourself can be a challenge. My wife preferred I inject her insulin for her. She would measure it out in the syringe, and then hand it to me. She would then turn her back, and pull down her pants to expose her buttocks so that I could do the honor of injecting the insulin in a spot that hadn’t been poked as often. It was easier on her, and I often got to grab my wife’s ass twice a day.
Since she passed away in 2005, insulin prices have skyrocketed. What cost 15 dollars then costs about a a hundred fifty now. I know the Biden administration has been able to put a cap on it for many people, but there’s still no excuse for the cost of something that was discovered a hundred years ago to be so much more expensive than it was 20 years ago. Maybe the problem for pharmaceutical companies is that they can’t come up with anything helpful that doesn’t have side effects that include death. They say their money goes to research and development, but I have a different theory. Take a closer look at pharmaceutical commercials. It’s obvious they have the largest budgets in the advertising world. Every commercial for a new drug (or popular drug), has a commercial that includes at least two or three different cast of characters, and two or three different scenario’s. Every actor in every scene gets paid. Then take a look at the sets. Those aren’t cheap, either. Somewhere in a conference room, somebody asked, “What’s the most expensive thing we would have to rent to make this commercial?” and somebody replied, “Airplanes!” So they rented not one, but two airplanes and a hangar to film a few guys pretending to maintain them.
You wanna know why drug prices are so high? It’s because in America, we live in the land of pharmaceutical commercials as well as in the land of pharmaceutical innovation.
Phone and email liner
If you’re a regular listener to the Listening Tube program, or even if you’re an irregular listener...I don’t care if you normally listen or abnormally listen, you probably know I keep your best interest in mind. I end every program with “for thou ad infinitum.” That’s for those of you who have never listened all the way to the end. Anyway, with that in mind, I had a conversation with a woman who feels our pain and has a way for us, as a nation, to feel better about ourselves and by extension, help others feel better, too. Psychotherapist and author Phyllis Leavitt has written a book about how American can heal itself and overcome division and maybe even make war a thing of the past. It’s called America in Therapy: A New Approach to Hope and Healing for a Nation in Crisis. We talk about all of that, but first, I wanted to ask her about the premise that America is in crisis. Is it one big crisis, or several smaller crises?
Interview...
Phyllis has written other books, too. You can find them at phyllis leavitt dot com.
The Listening Tube is written and produced by yours truly. Copyright 2024. Thank you for putting your ear to The Listening Tube. Subscribe today. I’m your host, Bob Woodley for thou ad infinitum. Told ya.