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If that were all the information available to me, I'd go with the movie about the white men. I like the idea of three men whose race, though boring to a cultural diversity fanatic, is important enough to mention three times. This makes you think that the director might just have a sense of humor. It also makes you wonder why the baby's race and gender aren't mentioned. Maybe it's because the baby is just a prop and as long as it shits, throws up, and gets lost at all the wrong times, nobody gives a flying fuck whether it's a cross between an albino aborigine and the elephant man and whether those purplish booties look more blue or more pink. Personally, I might actually watch a movie about an albino, aborigine, elephant eunuch that escapes from its crib. That's family comedy I could enjoy.

If I were allowed more information before making my choice of movie, I would definitely ask how much screen time the black chick had. I'm sure she'd be fine with the Asian guy, but throw in a cell phone and I start having doubts. I've heard a black woman on a cell phone psychoanalyzing coworkers from a good half-dozen bus rows away, and she didn't even flinch about the possibility that maybe I might be trying focus on the more important task of slitting my own wrists. There she was, talking on the top of her lungs about how bitchy some two-faced bitch was being, and there I was, just trying to remember whether I should slice horizontally or vertically. The most annoying thing on the planet has to be when somebody annoys you to the point when their particular brand of annoyance becomes the object of your own annoyance self-defense mechanisms. It's like your consciousness works against itself, dwelling on the thing that annoys it on the assumption that some nth degree of awareness will blast the annoying asshole out of existence. It's like AIDS for your brain. Shit, I've been working under the assumption that cell phones only give you cancer.

But back to the movies. I posed the question at hand because I saw a commercial recently for a cell phone plan, starring an Asian guy as a boss and a black woman as a new employee. It was her big day, not because it was her first day at work, but because she had the honor of receiving her first Windows-enabled dick magnet. (Remember that like poles repel.)

It occurred to me, not because I'm racist (we non-racists have the tendency to over-promote our colorblindness), but because an Asian boss and a black employee has to be (a) somewhat unusual in American society, and (b) an ad executive's wet dream. This is just one example of two people in an ad, but I've seen subway ads for health insurance companies that looked like something you'd bury in a time capsule before a nuclear war just to document what the human race looked like. It's a great thought that one day, somebody in some future civilization will open up the Encyclopedia Galactica, look up "human being", and find a picture of a bunch of smiling assholes whose only driving force is that they're happy they didn't pay too much for their car insurance. Do me a favor, list me under "chimpanzee".

Advertising agencies must be researching this shit. There must be someone, somewhere, who can tell me about the statistical correlation between people's races and their tendency towards good salesmanship. I'm sure a dozen Japanese guys can sell a rice cooker better than I can (marketing skills not withstanding). And, ok, fine. Maybe one Samoan, one Jew, one Thai, and one rather large-chested blond could do more for an "International Society for the Appreciation of Cultural Diversity" than I ever could.

So, by no means am I denying the relevance of race in the art of selling. What I want to know is this: what would an ad agency do if they discovered that a group of white people sold a product, like cars, for example, better than any other combination of races? Would they exclude all the other races from the auditions? And before you professional media placement people out there start questioning my logic, let's also imagine that white people sell cars better to non-white audiences, too.

For the purposes of this thought experiment, what do you think the ad execs would do? Do you think they would take advantage of this knowledge? Do you think they would mention it at a client meeting with a bunch of black GM executives? Hey, if they pick and choose their black women and Asian guys, I say: why not?

Here's another question. Do you think ad agencies and corporate marketing departments balance the pros of appearing "minority friendly" and a presumed goal of increasing long-term sales, against the cons of appearing "whites only" and the potential of short-term sales? Of course they're thinking about this stuff. Granted, maybe not so explicitly. It tends to make white people's stomachs hurt when they start calculating the monetary value of somebody's race.

People of the "non-dominant" races don't have this problem. There are all kind of minority ad agencies that specialize in marketing to particular races. But shit, wouldn't you know it. The Executive VP of Kang & Lee Advertising is a white guy. I guess the key word here is vice president.

Speaking of which, I noticed their Polish TV commercial for the 2000 US Census in their portfolio. I guess it's not that far of a jump to go from Asian-American print advertising to Eastern European-American TV advertising. I'm just not sure I'd make that kind of a jump in one shot. I'd probably start with a few blimp promotions for Turks and gradually work my way up.

Not to digress, but check out this blimp advertising company.

Here's my favorite quote:

"Independent research has demonstrated that people are excited by seeing the blimp..."

No shit. You have to be kidding me. Most people I see walking around are pointing at the bottoms of buses and saying, "Hey, look! It's another Goodyear tire!"

I bet people look at the backs of cars before they drive into them, too. I bet if Hertz rented the back sides of their cars to law firms specializing in the writing of wills, they'd make a shitload of fucking money. Independent research has demonstrated that you don't remember a goddamn thing about the competition after your head hits a windshield. The only better ad space I can think of is on the surface of an airbag:

"Want a second chance at living? Come back to the Church. Call 1-800-NEXT-TIME-GOD-WILL-LET-YOU-DIE."

Did you have an opinion on this? Then post a comment.

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