Rant Archives — Page 8 of 38 — As in guillotine...

Monday Mash-up, 2/18/08

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:February 18, 2008
Post category:Personal
Post comments:0 Comments

1) Spindle had a great week last week with a strong February update that generated our highest single-day traffic spike yet, and the announcement of our first contest, “Play Ball” — which offers a $50 honorarium for the best baseball / stickball / cricket-related poetry, fiction and non-fiction from a New York City perspective — has been well-received. The winner will be published in April as part of the “Play Ball” issue which I’m really looking forward to. Sports + writing = more fun than work.

2) Speaking of work, issue closings at the day job usually make for a rough week or two but the May/June issue closed last Tuesday without too much ado, partly because I’ve already locked up about 85% of our advertisers for the year. That last 15% is the difference between a solid issue and a great issue, though, so it wasn’t exactly a cake walk, especially since this issue was over-budgeted based on inflated numbers from last year, partly due to the change from a monthly schedule to bi-monthly the summer before. Overall, though, it’s shaping up to be a really good year and career-wise, the decisions I made over the past 18 months have really paid off.

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Spindle: February ’08

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:February 12, 2008
Post category:Personal
Post comments:0 Comments

In the midst of all the political blogging I’ve been doing lately, I had a Spindle update looming on the calendar for today and stole time here and there over the past two weeks to sift through the surprisingly steady stream of submissions that have come in since last month.

I was worried in mid-January that the aggressive “official launch” schedule I’d set up for January, posting 15 new pieces over three weeks, would deplete my inventory and leave me scraping through some marginal work to get something up this month but it all worked out nicely in the end as we have new work from Alan King, Eric Payne, Rachel L. Olivares and Julian Taub, plus new columns from Stephanie R. Myers (Myers Music Experience) and Brooke Wacha (On the 1).

Log on now and get into a New York state of mind @ http://www.spindlezine.com

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Latino politics follow-up

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:February 11, 2008
Post category:Personal
Post comments:0 Comments

There’s been some interesting comments so far in Friday’s “When politics gets personal for Latinos” post, including the one point the media often overlooks, that Latinos are not some monolothic entity that can be stereotyped in one particular way. Today, I came across a couple more interesting nuggets, one that digs a little deeper into Clinton and Obama’s support within the Latino community to-date, and another that breaks down Texas’ upcoming complicated not-really-a-primary contest on March 4th that Clinton’s effectively betting the house on.

NOTE: Check out the original post, too, as I added a couple of new references, including one that looks at the potential scenario of the Democratic nomination coming down to the final contest in Puerto Rico on June 7th!

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When politics gets personal for Latinos

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:February 8, 2008
Post category:Personal
Post comments:8 Comments

In reality, politics are without question a very personal matter but, partly due to the media’s focus on the horserace aspect of elections and partly due to the candidates often allowing themselves to be defined by labels (or at the least, trying to marginalize their opponents with them), most political debate occurs from a safe, impersonal distance. It’s what I think made John Edwards such an intriguing but ultimately flawed candidate this time around as he was undeniably the most passionate of the bunch but was significantly hampered by the combination of his problematic track record as a Senator and the inherent discordance of a filthy rich trial lawyer attempting to present himself as a champion of the downtrodden, no matter how sincere he seemed to be about his chosen cause.

As Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama continue to battle it out for the Democratic nomination that was not-too-long ago assumed to be going to be handed to her on February 5th, the admittedly minimal daylight between them on the actual issues are (hopefully) going to get a bit more scrutiny from voters and the media alike, and it’s going to be the most personal issues that will sway voters one way or the other.

Two issues of particular interest to Latinos are immigration reform and U.S. relations with Cuba and Latin America, the latter of which is greatly affected by a combination of the first two. Like Health Care, there’s not a huge disparity between them on the surface, but there are distinct differences in both their approach and tone that stand out for me.

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Monday Mash-up, 2/4/08

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:February 4, 2008
Post category:Personal Pop Culture Reviews
Post comments:2 Comments

1) While a couple of good things happened in January (most notably an unexpected promotion at work to Online Ad Sales Director for all of our properties!), overall it was as bad a start to 2008 as I could have imagined. Nothing major, but a lot of bumps in the road that tested my constitution and nearly shook my resolve. I’m very glad that it’s February.

2) I’m not a big shopper but I’m a complete sucker for a handful of things, including bags and electronic gadgets. While picking up a new wallet from Macy’s on Saturday (one of those slim, front pocket types that I’m still getting used to, frantically patting my back pocket every couple of hours) I saw this great Fossil messenger bag that kept screaming my name, no matter how many times I said it was too expensive. I make fun of Salomé all the time about the many, many, many bags she owns (rivaled only, perhaps, by her shoes) but I can appreciate a good bag and this is a nice step up from the cheaper, smaller bag I’ve had for the past year or so. It fits all of my gadgets comfortably plus has plenty of room for all of the books and papers I’m invariably carrying around, whether I need them or not. We also came close to buying an HD TV as Best Buy had a great deal on a 32″ Westinghouse but I still couldn’t quite bring myself to pull the trigger. Soon, though. Probably when we get the Wii.

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Hope vs. Cynicism

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:February 2, 2008
Post category:Personal
Post comments:3 Comments

I’m a pretty cynical person most days, but I have a couple of good friends who make me look like the love-child of Mother Theresa and Gandhi. One of them emailed me today asking me to convince him about Obama: “C’mon Guy, if anyone can sell me, it’s you….do your worse…..convince me why I’m not just settling for the candidate I dislike the least!”

What started out as a brief reply became a much longer one and I decided to post it here because I suspect there might be others who know my cynical side and are curious about how I fell for the “hope” candidate.

Short answer: Because cynicism enables the status quo.

Slightly longer answer with a dash of cynicism: To paraphrase John McCain’s take on global warming, “If we’re wrong, worst case scenario is we end the Clinton/Bush dynasty and still get a Democrat in the White House.”

Long answer, personal/persuasive essay style: For me, it’s not simply about how progressive Obama is or isn’t, because if it were about that, I’d still be in Kucinich’s corner, the only real progressive to run for President in the past 2-3 elections. Obama is a moderately progressive Democrat, but he doesn’t play the cynical us vs. them game which simply guarantees another 4-8 years of partisan gridlock, no matter which side wins.

What I like most about him is that he’s a realist — putting forth policy proposals that actually have a realistic chance of being passed instead of the pie in the sky shit everyone wants to hear but knows they’ll never see in their lifetime, ie: a Department of Peace — but he has the heart of an idealist. Bill Clinton was right about the “roll of the dice” thing, but the gambler isn’t those voting for Obama it’s Obama himself, appealing to the idealist in all of us, daring people to not just hope for better but to get off their asses and help make things better; trusting that they are smart enough to look beyond the sound bites they hear on the evening news and look deeper themselves.

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Hollywood Democratic Debate

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:January 31, 2008
Post category:Media
Post comments:0 Comments

It was a surprisingly substantial, mature discussion of actual issues between two very Presidential candidates with minimal interference from the moderator, who turned out to be Wolf Blitzer, not Anderson Cooper as I’d thought it would be.

Highlights:

Health Care: The difference between them seems subtle on the face of it but I think it ultimately comes down to a question of Clinton’s approach seems to assume significant compromise will be required so she padded her proposal a bit (the way I used to approach the first round of my marketing annual budget), while Obama wants to cut to the chase and put forward a plan that is palatable to all from the beginning and puts us on the quickest path to a health care plan that can eventually lead to true universal health care.
Immigration: Obama took the high road, saying it’s wrong to scapegoat immigrants as the reason unemployment is so high amongst African-Americans, while Clinton, shockingly, implied it was okay to blame immigrants. It’ll be interesting to see if the California media picks up on that in tomorrow’s coverage and if it gets any play in the Latino or African-American community.
Iraq: Obama’s “Ready on Day One vs. Right on Day One” was the closest thing to a clean shot to the chin either candidate landed tonight. Blitzer pushed a little too hard on questioning Clinton’s naivete over trusting Bush’s word by voting for the war resolution, to the point where the audience booed him, but it was a valid point.

Both candidates avoided any major gaffes or faux pas, going out of their way to be as cordial and respectful as possible, to the point where I can almost see myself shifting back towards being relatively comfortable voting for Clinton in November if she ends up being the nominee. I still don’t see an Obama/Clinton or Clinton/Obama ticket happening, though.

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