Diatribes by Joah

I don't get paid to BS you

People get mad at me for some of the things I write. I'd speculate that it either has to do with people thinking I'm full of myself (which happens a lot because you're not allowed to be confident these days without getting a lecture about how [Famous/Successful Black Guy Here] is so humble) or people being too insecure to handle the truth in my words. Basically it's the same kind of stuff that got Kanye in trouble over the years with award shows and whatnot. And, yes, I know I'm no Kanye, but I'm using him as an example of someone who says what's on his mind without worrying about what the hell the media or critics or nonbelievers say. When it comes to me, it's almost never because they think I'm lying. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they disagree with me. But I'm not lying. So when I write some of the things I write, people can come up with all kinds of reasons - I have an ego, I'm completely off-base, I'm an idiot, I can't write worth shit - but lying won't be one of them. So when I say that some people get mad at me for something I write because of their own insecurities please believe that I'm telling the truth. That's the best explanation there is. Think about it, if getting you to like me was the sole intent or even one of the aims of this blog, then I wouldn't write anything except stuff about how cool/smart/attractive/awesome/brilliant you are. Until "you", whoever that is, likes me. Then I'd move on to convince another "you" to like me. But wouldn't that be incredibly boring? Yeah, I thought so too. So I'm going to keep pissing people off and hope the rest of my readers can handle the truth. Because it's so silly to write anything other than what's on my mind. It's not like I'm getting paid to BS you.

Buy Kanye's new album '808s & Heartbreaks' today

 

Kanye is a genius. And he can turn almost any situation - mom dies, engagement ends - into a hit. LIke this track, my favorite so far, called "Paranoid".

Download 06 Paranoid

And the lifetime achievement award goes to...

Now that I've submitted the manuscript for Real Role Models and I'm looking ahead to my next project, I realized my next project may be my first, Notes From the Class You Missed. It's about half-done, but I may spend the early part of '09 completing it. Why?

Because there are a lot of really smart people in America. Sure our public schools are lagging behind those in other developed nations, but our university system is still the envy of the world. Top scholars from Europe, Africa, Latin America and Asia all come to the U.S. to go to Harvard, MIT, Stanford, UT-Austin, and UC-Berkeley for degrees in nuclear physics, public policy, and computer science.

The only problem is, US universities don't do a good job of preparing its students for careers. We may be good at getting people employed, but that doesn't necessarily translate into successful, fulfilling careers. And top students spend so much time thinking and theorizing that they never learn how to do anything besides take thorough lecture notes, write eloquent research papers and talk extemporaneously about what happened to the economy 20 or 50 years ago or what will happen to the environment 20 or 50 years from now. Then both these graduates and their future employers expect them to pick up where their parents left off. Expectations of the next Greatest Generation.

But colleges and universities do such a poor job of helping students understand simple things like how to apply for jobs, write resumes, present themselves in certain settings, demonstrate savvy and network that they waste several years struggling to hit their stride professionally.

I know this because I've spent a considerable amount of my time offering professional advice and career planning lessons to friends and colleagues who paid tens of thousands of dollars to go to top-tier schools and who had parents with lucrative, respectable careers and advanced degrees to speak of. Yet somehow I'm the go-to guy...first-gen college grad with just a B.S. in Public Relations. I've become sort of like a personal job-placement specialist since I started college. And I've been doing this for free while parents pay thousands of dollars to help their kids get jobs that I could get them for 10 times less.

Every week, without fail, I get an email or phone call from someone asking me to look at their resume, help them find a new job or tell them about that thing called "networking". If I was really impassioned about making a career out of this, I probably could.

I bring this up because yesterday I went to the Harvard JFK School internship fair on behalf of my company and realized that it's not just 20-year-old college juniors who don't get it or 24-year-old post-grads who meandered their way into desk jobs who need help...it's 28-year-old lifetime overachievers too! These "experienced" students are just as unlearned about professional how-tos as their less-educated peers.

The unfortunate part of this situation is that while places like Harvard's JFK School offer a dynamic and unique learning experience for international students and American students alike, those higher education institutions may simultaneously be handicapping those American students in their careers by placing them in a lot with foreign-born students who will return home to places like Guana and Serbia and China with jobs in hand.

While international students go home to run governments and lead national business and organizations, many of their American counterparts are still stuck wondering what to do - make money and be another corporate shill or try to change the world like everyone else with a Master's in Education Policy.

What I'm saying is this: American universities care only about their graduates getting high-paying and/or high-profile jobs. That's why companies like McKinsey and Goldman Sachs get so many Ivy Leaguers. As do government agencies and government-related organizations like the U.S. Treasury and Brookings Institution.

However, those graduates don't necessarily become any more happy in their professional lives because they make six figures or have nice job titles like Senior Fellow for Advanced Theoretical Policy. If anything, there's a ton more pressure and stress because now when you consider moving cities or jobs, you have to consider how much money is on the table and how high up in the power structure you are. And you start telling yourself that your job "fits".

If you just plug away for a few years you'll be on the right track to that dream job. Keep telling yourself that. Meanwhile, you have no earthly idea when or how to get "there", but that you NEED to get there to justify it all. But no one gave you a roadmap. Just a cover letter, resume, advanced degree, letter of recommendation, happy hour handshake and a word of encouragement: "you're on your way".

To where, you don't exactly know. But you keep going.

I have some advice: stop for a moment and write it all down. Imagine yourself as a 65-year-old and someone is giving you a lifetime achievement award. First ask yourself who will be there clapping for you because people matter more than anything. LIfe is defined by relationships or the lack thereof. Then ask yourself what achievements earned you such an award. This is your roadmap. If it's not spot-on, it could at least serve as a compass. You don't have to go directly north or west, maybe you'll go north by north west. Take two steps, stop, check the compass. Take three steps, stop, check the compass. Eventually you may reach the treasure chest. Maybe even before you turn 65.

There are hundreds of university presidents, career counselors and professors. More of them know what it feels like to be 65 than I do. But few of them probably grew up professionally in the 21st Century as we are now. So don't buy everything you hear. Unless it's coming from someone like me.

And in that case, you can send me your resume and get free professional pointers. Hell, part of the reason I do it for free is because I don't know if I'll get to 65 and be any happier than those who have already. But it won't cost you anything to find out.

At least not until Notes From the Class You Missed hits stores.

Friday Jam: Kanye West

Don't forget...Kanye's album, 808 & Heartbreaks, hits stores next Tuesday, Nov. 25! Maybe this will be the one that gets him the best album Grammy he's deserved for years now. Or maybe there will be another Herbie Hancock disaster.

Joe Biden Was RIght: "That's Not Change. That's the Same!"

"That's not change. That's the same!" - Vice President-elect Joe Biden during the Democratic National Convention

It may be too early to judge the presidency of Barack Obama, but it's not too early to say a few things about what has happened early into his transition. And, quite frankly, there hasn't been a whole lot of change just yet...

Don't get me wrong, Obama is appointing experienced people the same way George W did, by picking Rumsfeld, Cheney, Powell, Condi Rice and every other staffer who stayed in the political mix after Bush 41 lost. But at least Bush didn't promise CHANGE in big blue letters. Not even red ones from what I can remember.

It started with the Joe Biden appointment. A guy who's been in the Senate 14 years longer than John McCain.

After winning, he appointed uber-Washington insider John Podesta to lead his transition team. Podesta was Clinton's second-term chief of staff, but we're told this is "change" because he now leads the Center for American Progress, the progressive think tank that is staffing about half of Obama's transition team.

Then he picks Josh Lyman, I mean Rahm Emanuel, to be his chief of staff.

Of course, Emanuel is best known for being a top fundraiser for the Democratic Congress (should be, after making something like $17 mil in three years earlier this decade) and fighting Hillary's folks for his job back in the 90s after some disagreements while serving as a chief advisor to her husband.

And in the last couple of weeks we've heard a litany of familiar names.

Hillary, John Kerry and another former Clintonite and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson are all vying for the Secretary of State gig.

Former Majority Leader Tom Dashschle is heading for the Dept. of Health and Human Services.

Eric Holder, who was an assistant attorney general under Clinton, will get a promotion.

Carter and Clinton financial experts like Larry Summers and Paul Volcker are rumored for the Secretary of Treasury spot.

Former Commerce Secretary Bill Daley, another Clintonite, is advising Obama on Commerce issues and former FCC management types like Blair Levin and Julius Genachowski are back in the mix for FCC posts.

Gore is expected to be named to some type of high-profile environment position like Climate Change Czar or something.

Any minute now, we'll probably hear about Chelsea Clinton being named Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce or Special Assistant to the President on White House Child Rearing.

It all makes me wonder one thing: now that Obama has brought change to the White House, is his definition of change changing too?

Or maybe Obama deputy chef is right?

"That's not change. That's the same."

Obama: A New Kind of Role Model

For the last forty years, since the untimely death of Dr. King, Black America has lacked a true national role model.

Sure, we have shared in the successes of athletes and musicians from Muhammad Ali and Michael Jordan to Michael Jackson and Jay-Z, not to mention TV and movie stars like Oprah and Will Smith. But those people, I hate to say, would best be described as celebrity figures then idols then role models.

Not since Dr. King has a Black man been charged with leading all of his kinfolk at once. Young and old, college-educated and non-degree holder, rural and urban, rich and poor. All of these segments of the Black community, and others, were once held within the reach of Dr. King's voice.

On November 4, 2008, a man who has so much (smart, educated) yet so little (politician, half-white) in common with Dr. King made his voice heard. And Black America, albeit a generation removed, stood up and watched Barack Obama pick up the baton that Dr. King had taken from W.E.B. Dubois, his sparring partner Booker T. Washington and their predecessors Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman.

Typically relays are run by four individuals, but - as we have learned for the last few centuries - Black America is often required to do more to achieve the same end.

So, running what amounts to the fifth leg, Chicago's favorite son Barack Obama has taken the baton and carried it further than any person of color ever has in this country.

Whether you agree with his policies or not, we can all agree that this moment will forever be remembered as having substantial significance for all Americans with Black Americans, not just African-Americans, at the fore front of that achievement.

With a Kenyan father, Barack Obama is not the traditional Black man in America. He did not live through the segregation that many of our parents and grandparents lived through for his entire life. He did not rise through the political ranks of Chicago and Illinois by being a loud proponent of affirmative action and a staunch opponent of police brutality.

If anything, Barack Obama represents the future of Black America more than most of us ever will. Namely because he represents all of America, which is exactly what Dr. King and those before him struggled so hard to accomplish.

Black America will always admire its athletes, entertainers and musicians, but we are a people best represented by those who seek to serve the public. The best of us are often those chosen to represent all Americans, not just Black Americans. The names Thurgood Marshall and Colin Powell should come to mind.

Like Marshall, Barack Obama used his knowledge of the law to leverage his way up America's ladder to success. And like Powell, he used his skill in Washington to lobby his way up the hearts and minds of Americans.

Now, a generation and some removed from Dr. King's death, we have a real role model who reminds Black Americans that everything feels so much better with a real role model in our lives. Even before we experience the benefits ourselves.

Because for the next 40 years, much like what we saw with Dr. King's emulators, Black boys and girls will strive to be more like Barack Obama. And we'll all be better off because of it.

Nike does it again

The only thing I hated about being in Vegas was missing last night's episode of Entourage, which I just caught up on, and the Cowboys take care of the Redskins and re-asserting themselves as a force to be reckoned with in the NFC East. Thinking about the 'Boys made me think about this great commercial by Nike with former MVP LaDanlian Tomlinson (TCU, Chargers) and Troy Polamalu (USC, Steelers)...I'd love to see this commercial turned into a full ad series - they could do one with T.O. and Romo where they're not playing against each other, but they're both running through their respective motions until they connect on a TD pass. Love it.

I lost, but at least my friend Vegas won

I'll be brief: flew to Vegas to celebrate my girlfriend's sister's 30th birthday, stayed in the Venetian (probably one of the sweetest rooms I've ever stayed in), won $175 then promptly lost $225 at Blackjack in Caesars and Venetian, went to Sapphire and realized strip clubs are about 100 times better with women in tow, played more Blackjack, ate brunch/buffet at Planet Hollywood (the absolute best), went up $75 then promptly down $125 at O'Shea's (my pick for best cheap casino on the strip), saw the Criss Angel/Cirque show at the Luxor, played a Texas Hold'em tourney and lost going all in with pocket 7s (she had pocket Aces), had brunch at the Mirage, lost some more at Blackjack then lost some more at poker bringing me to a $400 loss for the weekend, which isn't as bad as it could've been (my buddy was robbed of $2,000 on Sunday morning, dead serious), then we barely made our flight back and I couldn't sit next to Althea instead I had to sit next to a guy that reminded me of Borat's friend from Kazahkstan, yeah, the fugly, hairy one. Can't wait to go back.