"600 words by Esther J. Cepeda"

See me in the funny papers

"600 Words" by Esther J. Cepeda

She came around! I knew she would!

I'm talking about Janis Day, the middle-aged mom on the comic strip Arlo and Janis, a 23-year-old nationally-syndicated comic strip which appears in Chicago's Sun-Times. She'd been struggling, for the last two weeks, with conflicting feelings about her son Gene's co-workers at his new summer job.

In last week's strips, Gene, home from college, is working outdoors with a presumably-all-Mexican lawn care crew. When he casually mentions to mom, and his dad Arlo, that his co-workers call him "gringa" – the Spanish, female form of an arguably derogative term for "whitey" – she got all upset.

Gene assured both Arlo and Janis that his crew-mates were just busting his chops, shared how much he was learning about the Spanish language and their culture, and even wished he had taken Spanish classes is school.

Last Friday, though, Janice was having protective mom thoughts that flirted with the kind of protectionist, almost racist stereotyping that's making things hard on all Latinos these days. She fretted: "I wonder what trash those awful men are talking to Gene today!!" even as they were teaching Gene the value of honoring your mother.

  Woah! I kinda freaked because I've been loving A&J for well over a decade and wasn't sure where creator Jimmy Johnson was going: are those scary Mexicans actually going to corrupt young Gene? Will Janis be proven right to be concerned or will there be a painfully beautiful slice-of-life learning moment for everyone reading? Why even bring such a controversial topic to a fun, 30-second diversion to begin with?

And that's really what I was excited about: Arlo, Janis, and Gene – just as white as 99.9 percent of all other mainstream comic strip characters – interacting with real, live, Mexicans. Stereotypical yard hands, sure, but give Jimmy Johnson credit – this is a huge act of bravery.

Don't get me wrong, I love Lalo Alcaraz, the Hispanic LA Times cartoonist who pens La Cucaracha – also nationally syndicated and, coincidentally appears only a few panels above A&J on the third comics page of the Sun-Times – but his audience is limited.

Some people don't read it because they think "I'm not Latino, it's not for me." Some Hispanics think he's too this or that and also don't tune in for Lalo's brilliant and funny social commentary.

But A&J is read by millions of people of all stripes, colors, and walks of life. This is big!

After Friday, I was on the edge of my seat but the story line was dropped Saturday through Tuesday. My attempts to contact JJ were fruitless, and I wondered if he'd gotten barraged with hate mail for bringing the contentious immigration debate into what's usually a light family 'toon and decided to drop the whole thing.

Unlikely. "Most of them are written so far in advance it's really hard pull back in a day or two, though the newspaper could decide not to run it, I suppose," Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schmich, and Brenda Starr cartoonist, told me yesterday as I struggled with the lack of new developments in the scary Mexican plot. Mary – no stranger to making waves with the dialogue of her characters (don't get her started on the use of the term "threesome!") – told me she doubted any cartoonist would be influenced either by backlash, hate mail, or even partial censoring.

The chances the writer would change it are very, very small. For a long time, people couldn’t give feedback and that was one of the beauties – it’s not like being a columnist where they can kick you in public – there was anonymity. It’s not like now where feedback is everything to everybody," Mary said. "And there is this notion, that I think is wrong-headed, that comic strips aren’t supposed to offend, this idea that comic strips are for kids – I don’t buy that. There was a time for kids but that’s not who reads the papers. I think readers could be well served with some edginess."

Edginess is good and it turns out I needn’t have fretted so. Today Janis – still crabby in the first panel where she "worries" about the heat Gene’s working in – takes lemonade to his job site and learns a little something about how Mexican lawn care workers respond to kindness.

I like to think Arlo and Janis’ readers will learn a little something, too.

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also a Director at the Chicago-based United Neighborhood Organization. Her reporting and opinions do not necessarily reflect those of UNO. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact

eejaycee@600words.com

How 9/11 killed the newspaper

"Pregunta del Dia" by Esther J. Cepeda

"Pregunta del Dia" translates from Spanish into "Question of the Day" and today’s come from an anonymous woman in the audience at the Chicago Headline Club's June 11 panel discussion "Deadline: will newspapers survive?" where the tops of the Chicago news shops came together for what was more a wake than a vibrant discussion of the bright future of old-school journalism on a new digital stage.

Q. "Why are newspapers giving [reported content] away for free? No one's going to pay for it now that they're used to getting it for free!"

A. The stunned silence of the panel members gave way to the obvious "train has already left the station" explanation of why that's no longer an option.

But here's what none of the experts ever say: That train left the station on 9/11/2001.

I've said this in roundtable discussions time and time again, though not this one, and I always get to see the light bulb blink on. Before 9/11 newspapers were merely toying with the idea of putting content on-line. That was, at best, an afterthought.

Then 9/11 hit and in a nearly unprecedented move, after the second tower fell, managing editors across the country started the presses rolling on a special afternoon edition. "America Attacked" – Tallahassee Democrat, "Terror" – Tampa Tribune, "Horror" the Washington Times. People were glued to the TV. Radios thrummed all night.

Then came the next day, and – let's face it print runs are horribly expensive – that afternoon edition just was not happening. But people wanted constant updates on what was happening everywhere.

Meanwhile frantic family members across the country started pleading their on-line case for any, any information about their loved-ones whether it be flight information, last-spotted posts, pictures, information on what to do if another attack occurred – and newspapers noticed, though super late.

A study published in 2003 by the Newspaper Research Journal found these today-unimaginable statistics: "[An] analysis of 89 U.S. daily newspaper Web sites on Sept. 11, 2001, shows that 65 percent of the home pages in the late morning and 38 percent in the late afternoon said nothing about the World Trade Center bombings. By late afternoon only 43 percent of the home pages had at least one photo or video of the 9/11 attacks."

Crashed web sites and high demand made the lightbulb come on: free "afternoon editions" on the web.

And who could have conceived of charging people for information critical to the safety of a nation under attack? Who was thinking about "monetizing page views?" No one. No one with a soul, anyway.

The "American tragedy" that those with genuine love for the printed newspaper call the tidal wave of internet "user-generated content," and "up to the minute news" that's "killing" newspapers is one born of an actual tragedy.

A tragedy that journalists – like the police, fire fighters, nurses and doctors who streamed to New York, Washington, DC and Pennsylvania to help in any way possible – selflessly, and with little regard to personal safety, flocked to in order to deliver the stories of the dead, hurt, and missing to eager news consumers.

And that's how it came to be that news became ubiquitous, never-ending, and free on the internet; the result of one horrible "freedom of information act."

Esther J. Cepeda writes the “600 Words” & “Pregunta del Dia” columns, and is also a Director at the Chicago-based United Neighborhood Organization. Her reporting and opinions do not necessarily reflect those of UNO. “600 words” is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

Hatless "Drunkard" doesn't give up his ship

"600 Words" by Esther J. Cepeda

For those who followed columnist Neil Steinberg's public meltdown in September 2005, when he was arrested on charges of domestic battery, the money shot of his new book "Drunkard: A Hard Drinking Life" comes early:

"We are arguing just outside [Kent's] door. I'm yelling, she has the phone… she's dialing…she has the phone up against her head and I suddenly swing, an arcing, open-handed slap, knocking the phone hard against the side of her head."

There, on page 22, Steinberg pulls back the curtain on an episode that made headlines from the pages of his own paper, the Chicago Sun-Times, to the front page of rival Chicago Tribune and even his old haunt the New York Daily News, making a spectacle of the sometimes wicked, sometimes sweet curmudgeon from Berea, Ohio who climbed the ivory tower of journalism into a four-times-a-week column at a major American newspaper.

The slap that changed everything.

The slap that changed readers' image of Steinberg, 48, from doting dad to two young boys and devoted – if oft-times bumbling – husband to a beautiful lawyer, into a stereotypical sauced newspaper man and, worse, wife-beater.

That slap confined him not only to jail – if only for a night – but many nights to a cold guest bedroom, and sometimes even to chillingly welcoming bars where fellow journalists revel in the tradition of downing drinks once deadline is met.

And the slap wasn't even the worst part! There was the indignity, sure, but there was also the parade of disappointed friends and family, clueless counselors, way-too-Jesus-y AA devotees and, of course, glorious, ever-beckoning alcohol which, if you don't drink much, you might not notice is almost literally everywhere.

So why – why?! – would anyone who'd gone through that miserable trial relive it nearly three years later, again so publicly, as he steels himself to embark on press engagements in support of his sixth book "Drunkard: A Hard Drinking Life", published by Dutton.

"People ask me if I'm embarrassed about it," Steinberg told a crowd of family, friends and award-winning journalists at an intimate book party in downtown Chicago Wednesday night, "but I tell them: 'I wasn't embarrassed to down every drink in sight, why would I be embarrassed to talk about how I got myself out of it?'"

A few days before, he'd answered my first question – why!?! – in his inimitable Steinbergian tone: "If you don’t write about something, then it's lost and I thought it was valuable to remember this," he said as Sun-Times news men and women flitted in and out of his office. "I really did it because I really wanted to redeem this experience. As Dante said, if you've got to go to hell you've got to take notes."

Some notes!

Harrowing, painfully lonely notes. Notes no one wants to fess up to when the hangover hits. Notes you wouldn't wish on an enemy. And yet, notes that at the most unexpected moments ring brightly, reverberating with hopeful – and really funny – timbres.

"I was writing it as it was happening, so I like to think they're fresh," he said. "The editing was excruciating – that was as difficult, if not more difficult, than the writing. At the time [of recovery] the book was the one thing I could control. I couldn’t control the drinking, the law, or the case but I could control the book. During the editing I had to really battle to keep control if it."

And was it worth it?

"If I wrote ‘Ulysses’ it was," he says, reasonably tired of pondering it. "Given the pain, ‘The Sun Also Rises’ would not have been worth it to me, I would have much rather avoided the whole thing."

"That said, I feel I did the best I could with a bad situation. I at least rose to the occasion and didn’t move to a Red Roof Inn and continue drinking. At least not yet."

Esther J. Cepeda writes the “600 Words” & “Pregunta del Dia” columns, and is also a Director at the Chicago-based United Neighborhood Organization. Her reporting and opinions do not necessarily reflect those of UNO. “600 words” is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

Men are from Mars, Women are from Shoe-piter

"600 Words" by Esther J. Cepeda

The most recent pop-culture phenomenon uninteresting to anyone possessing what Shakespeare referred to as a "bauble" in Romeo and Juliet (read between the loins!) is the chick flick Sex and the City – aka an extended advertisement for shoes.

Frankly, I can't conceive of any shoe that would make S&tC worth sitting through, but it does bring up the question: "what is it with women and shoes?!"

It seems inexplicable – I don’t know any men who give a rat’s ass about what a woman has on her feet. The way I hear it, the male glance usually doesn’t get that far in the few moments he has to adequately check a woman out.

Sit and learn, grasshoppas, I shall clue you in to the truth behind the shoe fetish: women don’t wear nice shoes to impress men, or convey their sexuality or personality to men- they do it to convey all those things to other women. "I’m sexy, I have it all together, I’m professional, I have impeccable taste, I may be older but I’m still flirty," or as the Abercrombie and Fitch t-shirts used to say: "Hotter Than Your Girlfriend."

It's the wrath of the garden-variety amateur fashionista that instills fear into women dressing for the office, a club, and even grocery shopping. As little girls this same lot might have gone for the jugular with: "You look funny. I don’t like your clothes. You’re ugly!" The grown-up equivalent of these daggers to the heart is quietly whispered to a female co-conspirator, intoned perfectly so that the comment will be sure to be heard by its intended victim: "Oh my God, will you look at her shoes?!"

On the flip side, the ultimate compliment women give each other is comprised of four little words: "I love your shoes."

But there's more! The varying degree of admiration is all in the delivery. Train your ears for these:

"I love your shoes" conveys a conspiratorial, rushing-to-the-defense-of-a-sister benevolence.

"I love your shoes" is a breathless testament to the coolness of the wearer, or could be more a statement that the wearer has met certain standards of taste where others usually fail.

"I love your shoes" is the natural reciprocation of female adulation and in some circles is considered a requirement before any conversation is allowed to continue. Lack of reciprocation in such situations could be grounds for at least a minor blow up.

‘I love your shoes" puts the focus on the shoes themselves and suggests that they, and not the wearer, deserve the credit for delivering themselves to said wearer thereby elevating her appearance for the day to a higher level. This is not the warmest incarnation.

Let us not forget the show stopper: delivered at ear-busting decibels, designed to shock your target and turn every head within a 12 foot radius. This visceral, primal scream of adoration for both wearer and shoes is articulated very slowly "I-LOVE-YOUR-SHOES!"

There’s your money shot, that’s the one you deliver at the second job interview, the one that goes out to your future mother-in-law, the one you give a cranky manager when every other attempt to cut ahead in line has failed and your crying baby won’t shut up.

Sometimes the show stopper can be truly honest and come as a complete surprise to both wearer and witnesser. Even I'll admit to spotting shoes so sumptuous, so beautiful, and so desirable that I've exploded with the simultaneous emotions of pure aesthetic delight, deep longing for a pair just like it, and stinging green envy that the wearer has them, you don’t and now it’ll be really lame to go out and buy the same exact pair. Drat!

The "great knowledge/great responsibility" part: Ladies, use this wisdom for good, not evil.

And gentlemen: observe and take note. But unless you want the female in question to suspect strongly you are gay – by the way, this will be the de facto assumption if you're at a screening of S&tC without having been dragged kicking and screaming by your girlfriend – limit the sharing of these secrets to your buddies.

Esther J. Cepeda writes the “600 Words” & “Pregunta del Dia” columns, and is also a Director at the Chicago-based United Neighborhood Organization. Her reporting and opinions do not necessarily reflect those of UNO. “600 words” is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

I'm not a terrorist

“Pregunta del Dia” by Esther J. Cepeda

“Pregunta del Dia” translates from Spanish into Question of the Day and today’s was delivered at 12:15 am this morning at the McDonald’s inside Chicago Union Station by a seemingly stone-cold-sober Cubs fan catching a snack before boarding a Metra train out to the ‘burbs.

After the blond-haired, blue-eyed young man let loose a string of vile expletives to his eating companions, then caught my icy glare for polluting our communal space with his negativity, he retaliated against my silent protest of his rude behavior by asking me the following:

Q. Do you have fun blowing up buildings, you ------- terrorist? Huh? You heard me, you ------- ---- terrorist!

A. How to reply?

My mouth dropped open and I smiled, 100% sure he was kidding. His mocking face followed by another string of even worse garbage set me straight.

I tried to lighten the mood with the platitude: “Would you talk like that in front of your mother?” Things devolved from there and after he reiterated today’s “pregunta,” with various vivid details added, my loud indignation had attracted one of Chicago’s finest who directed him and his posse to leave the station.

Let me back up. Twenty-four hours prior to the incident, I had decided to write for Friday about the ridiculous accusations made about Food Network star Rachel Ray’s Dunkin’ Donuts commercial being taken off the air. Conservative Filipina columnist Michelle Malkin, and other bloggers, said Rachel’s scarf looked like a keffiyeh reminiscent of those that some Middle Easterners wear. Malkin has dropped bombs like this on America’s dark-haired sweetheart over the last week: “many readers have e-mailed about, Dunkin Donuts’ spokeswoman Rachel Ray’s clueless sporting of a jihadi chic keffiyeh in a recent DD ad campaign. I’m hoping her hate couture choice was spurred more by ignorance than ideology.” Apparently Rachel would be a lot sweeter if her costume designer was less flamboyant.

Early Thursday I’d started my day at the Chicago Google offices munching on bagels with some of the smartest innovators in the world and brightest young business people in town at the Executives Club of Chicago’s New Leaders general meeting.

A few hours later I lunched at a fancy downtown restaurant with the leader of a multi-million dollar business. Later I hopped into a cab – the driver had greeted me warmly in a language I didn’t understand because he mistook me for a fellow Indian – on my way to a lecture at the Arts and Business Council of Chicago’s “Rise of the Cultural Consumer” program at the Alliance Française where I learned about the bright future of our society. I topped the night off with not one, but two, fancy parties with some of Chicago’s most influential young professionals. Shortly after midnight I was attacked because I quietly resisted someone’s foul language with a disapproving look.

For the first time in my Cinderella-story-book life, I was simply one of so many others who are looked at with suspicion because of the color of their hair, eyes, and skin. I was shamed in front of an instantly-alarmed crowd at a major Midwestern transportation hub by a dangerous federally-defined insult.

Informing my fellow midnight-snacker that I was born in the United States as I gathered my things – and as the policewoman started getting heavy on him – probably went unheard. Besides, I was too busy scurrying away to cry out of sight to enunciate properly.

Here’s my answer again: On behalf of myself, of good-lookin’-and-good-cookin’ multi-millionairess Rachel Ray, and on behalf of every other person in this country with dark hair, dark eyes, but no dark intentions: I am not a terrorist.

Esther J. Cepeda writes the “600 Words” & “Pregunta del Dia” columns, and is also a Director at the Chicago-based United Neighborhood Organization. Her reporting and opinions do not necessarily reflect those of UNO. “600 words” is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Scary South Americans!

Pregunta del Dia by Esther J. Cepeda

Bum bah dum-dum, bum ba-dee! Bum bah dum-dum, bum ba-dee-Dee-DEE!!

"Pregunta del Dia" translates to Question of the Day and today’s comes from a loyal, albeit bitter, Westchester, IL reader who preferred to remain nameless:

Q. Did you see that Indiana Jones movie, just about a buncha white men looting our culture?

A. Whoa, Nelly! (No, not really "Nelly," though that is a popular name in Latin America.) Take a chill pill, will ya – not everything is about "da man" trying to keep us down.

Monday morning I sat in an audience of predominantly white movie-goers practically vibrating with glee that the long-awaited summer blockbuster chose to highlight my beautiful ancestral South America.

There were jungles, maps of Peru (darned close to Ecuador), mentions of Quechua – a native tongue my own father has referenced many times in passing conversation about his youth in Quito – and gorgeous pyramids, waterfalls, and indigenous women in their traditional multi-colored ponchos and felt bowler hats.

Ok, so the only people of color in the movie where those baddish, scary-exotic loin-clothed Indians oddly reminiscent of Jack Black’s toothy sidekick "Esqueleto" in Nacho Libre. But aside from a drop-dead-gorgeous Cate Blanchett the real star of the movie is its location.

Ok, ok, so the Peruvian town was actually a backlot in California and the jungle was in reality in Hawaii, details – mere quibbles! I felt the director’s and producer’s love, and in this time where anyone brown is either looked at with suspicion because they might throw an election or scam someone out of their social security debt – ahem, I mean, benefits – we need all the Latin American lovin’ we can get.

As for the tall tale of the crystal skull, the official Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull web site has a nice, long explanation of its’ origins and whether there might be any truth to it. Better still, read Benjamin Radford’s column on livescience.com, there he describes the real-life quartz Skull of Doom "supposedly found in the 1920s at a lost Mayan ruin in Central America by an explorer named F. A. Mitchell-Hedges…rumored to have the power to kill." His florid description ends with a less-than-mystical forgery theory, but hey, where’s your benefit of the doubt?

I won’t take any mind-altering substances and peer into the misty corridors of "my people’s" collective knowledge for the truth – you can do that yourself – but I don’t need to. Not only do "I want to believe," but what I know for a fact is that South America truly is lush, gorgeous, and full of nice monkeys. There really are glittering water falls, ancient mysteries, and is to this day home to women who wear the colorful ponchos and bowlers everyday. And I’m eternally grateful to Doctor Jones for pointing it out.

Esther J. Cepeda writes the “600 Words” & “Pregunta del Dia” columns, and is also a Director at the Chicago-based United Neighborhood Organization. Her reporting and opinions do not necessarily reflect those of UNO. “600 words” is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

Cynic’s guide to pink ribbons

"600 Words" by Esther J. Cepeda

I like breasts as much as the next guy – even more, maybe – they feed babies, provide shock absorption, and are pleasing to look at. No downside, right? Well, not unless they get cancer. Many have.

The race to their cure has become a global, multi-billion dollar philanthropic and cultural phenomenon – and that’s how I came to be annoyed by pink ribbons.

Don’t worry, I didn’t stay annoyed, but who could have blamed me when last week on one day alone I ran across “breast cancer awareness” batteries at the 7-Eleven, a “Think Pink” accessory pack for a kids’ portable video game at Circuit City, and a pink ribbon Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation street-sweeper!

“Come ON!” I thought, “How many ways can marketers make money off women’s breasts?!” That was followed immediately by my standard, “It’s not even the number one killer of women in the U.S.!” That would be heart disease, followed by cancers (lung!), strokes, lung disease in general, and Alzheimer’s disease, just FYI.

And it’s not even October yet, but aahhh, close to Mother’s Day.

But rather than remain peeved at the preponderance of pink in my life, I instead bowed to the temple of what will go down as one of the strongest consumer brands in history –one that actually saves real women’s lives – the Susan G. Komen For the Cure breast cancer awareness foundation, and its pink ribbons.

Google ‘em if you want, you know the story: 25 years, a promise between two sisters, the Y-Me Race for the cure, etc. I blew in a call to ask them if they felt their message was becoming diluted because of the marketing blitz, if people are getting tired of it all.

“We have tested, informally, in various ways and found that both men and women are still very open to the messages,” Caroline Wall, Manager for Cause Marketing Operations told me yesterday. “We’re trying to engage all different types of niches and consumer groups…whether it be Kitchen Aid mixers, or Major League Baseball, or Garth Brooks.”

I became interested in the success of the brand not realizing the power of the pink to pervade different cultures and languages. And not realizing how desperately that’s needed.

I was thinking along the lines of targets to sell products to, after all, the pink ribbon peddled 58 million green dollars – 20% of Komen’s revenue – in 2006, according to one Los Angeles Times article. And yes, there have been some unscrupulous logo users, which Komen actively roots out, and certainly no shortage of critics of the success of the campaign. But back to those “targets.”

“We don’t want to pigeon-hole anyone but there are opportunities to have an ‘in’ with a particular population, for instance, the African American and Latino communities through product placement,” she said, noting that black and Hispanic women get diagnosed way later than Caucasians.

The numbers: breast is the most common cancer in African American women and the second leading cause of cancer death among African American women. It’s the most commonly diagnosed and the leading cause of cancer death among Hispanic/Latina women.

Consider my cynical mouth shut.

Mother’s day breast-health support buyer beware, yes you can look on their web site to make sure the pink products you want to purchase will fulfill Komen’s mission of funding research for a cure. Shop smart and find a balance but don’t automatically buy into the backlash.

“There are still over 200,000 women diagnosed with breast cancer every day in this country,” Caroline said, “and they would say they’re not tired of hearing about it."

Esther J. Cepeda writes the “600 Words” & “Pregunta del Dia” columns, and is also a Director at the Chicago-based United Neighborhood Organization. Her reporting and opinions do not necessarily reflect those of UNO. “600 words” is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

Feeling the Pain

"600 Words" by Esther J Cepeda

If you live in Chicago, or any other world-class city like New York or LA, you have a unique civic pride, a knowing that wherever your travels may take you – the South Pole, New Guinea, or Beijing – anyone you bump into will know where you’re from.

Rarely do you encounter someone in Guam who will respond to “I’m from Chicago” with “Oh, isn’t that where the schoolchildren get killed on their way to school?”

That doesn’t make it any less true.

The harsh reality is that thirty-four Chicago Public School children died violently in 2007, at least that many are gone so far this year, and we haven’t even begun to imagine how many more will be claimed by New Year’s eve.

The million dollar question is what to do about it. Everything has been put on the table: SWAT teams have been deployed, gun laws proposed, anti-violence curriculum put in schools, even trained ex-gang members have trickled into the streets to help “mediate” turf battles. But no silver bullet, if you’ll pardon the pun, has put a dent in the tensions roiling neighborhoods all over Chicago.

The politicians and the church leaders have had their say about what it will take to end the carnage. Look at “Letters to the Editor” pages in Chicago you’ll see the general public weighing in, mostly heaping blame on “careless parents.” They’ve all got good points, we’ve heard them all before.

Since innovative solutions are in order, I thought I’d ask for one from a different kind of expert. I called up Marco Marsen, aka the “Billion Dollar Problem Solver,” a marketing wiz for the likes of myriad successful corporations, “one of America’s top Out-of-the-Box thinkers,” and author of “Why We Haven't Won the Wars on Poverty, Drugs or Terror" to get a different take on things.

Now don’t get too excited, he didn’t have “an answer,” but did throw out the beginning of one. It goes a little something like this: we need to start caring.

“We’re all in this together,” he told me recently, while on tour for his new book The Lion’s Way. “But the people who live in poverty, the people who don’t have health care and have to choose between getting a tooth treated and paying the rent – they’ve been forgotten.”

“Whether you like it or not, the people who are pulling the triggers are the victims of all the failings of us as a society,” he says, “The feeling of ‘I don’t have any choices so I’m going to take matters into my own hands’ is what’s driving this.”

Marco thinks we Americans – who claim to live in the greatest country in the world –

consider those who lash out in our inequitable society a problem we have no part or responsibility in.

And he’s right. How many of us have thought: “‘I’m’ never part of the problem, so ‘I’ can never be part of the solution.”

We’re all worried about our wallets and the economy, but not overly concerned about who dies in the “bad parts of the city.” Its human nature: the gas tank bill is in your face, while dead children on the 6 o’clock news is sad, but doesn’t affect your life past the sound-byte. Unless you live in those “bad parts” of the city, that is.

The actual impact of what happens in those “bad parts” affects us as members of our society in immeasurable ways – spiritual, emotional, economic – that message just hasn’t hit home yet.

“I don’t blame people – why would anyone want to feel the pain?” Marco says, “But at the end of the day, we’re all in this together.”

From the Billion Dollar Problem Solver: not an “answer,” just the beginning of one: we need to start feeling the pain.

Esther J. Cepeda writes the “600 Words” & “Pregunta del Dia” columns, and is also a Director at the Chicago-based United Neighborhood Organization. Her reporting and opinions do not necessarily reflect those of UNO. “600 words” is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

“We’re on a mission from God”

“Pregunta del Dia” translates into “Question of the Day,” and today’s question is from a young woman who preferred to remain nameless:

Q. Why are you doing this?

A. Like Jake and Elwood Blues, I’m on a mission.

Set aside Spanish-language media, Major League Baseball, Jennifer Lopez, Ugly Betty and George Lopez.

Do you watch news on TV? Ever looked on the op-ed pages of major American newspapers? Or watched political shows Sunday morning? Or checked out the covers of best-selling books at Borders? Take note: there’s a whole lot of white, and a good amount of black. But the brown barely exists.

When the whole “Will Barack Obama capture the Latino vote?” issue was hot, how many Latino op-ed contributors did you read in the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times? How many Hispanics did you see opining on “Meet the Press” or “Real Time?”

There are 45.5 million of us, according to the newest U.S. Census data – 15% of the population, projected to be 30% by 2050 – but we’re still largely invisible in the mainstream media. Do you think “The View” could get away with not having a black woman (or two?), how about any other major network entertainment or news show? Not happenin’, but there seems to be no problem with the stunning lack of brown.

Any idea how the “last in, first out” hiring/firing policies at major American newsrooms are affecting the historically low number of Hispanic journalists working in English-language media – most of whom are relegated to the status of “Hispanic/Immigration reporter,” few of whom ever decide what is considered “news?” Not pretty.

Is there any wonder that the overwhelming majority of news stories about Hispanics almost always paint us all out to be immigrants (possibly illegal at that), criminals, or – even worse – victims? The few “positive” news stories talk about our consumer buying power, and projected voting power (though that tide is turning).

I could go on, but I’d rather just spring into action. The internet and self-publishing are not the wave of the future, they are the reality of today. Rather than try to get a foothold on the traditional  media structures, I’m doing my own thing on the internet were all the cool kids hang, writing about everything and anything whether it’s “Hispanic” or not – just ‘cause I can.

Hope you’ll hang with me.

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Esther J. Cepeda writes the “600 Words” & “Pregunta del Dia” columns, and is also a Director at the Chicago-based United Neighborhood Organization but her reporting and opinions do not necessarily reflect those of UNO. "Pregunta del Dia” is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact questions@pregunta-del-dia.com.