THE GOOD NEWS about the hiring of gay sports executive Rick Welts by the National Basketball Association's Golden State Warriors? It isn't big news. "Whether he’s gay or straight is irrelevant,” Warriors co-owner Joe Lacob told the media Tuesday. "I want the best executive possible. All I care about is winning . . . . " Clever media spin, Lacob, diverting everyone's attention.
You're right, though. Long-suffering Warriors fans, among the most loyal in pro sports, just wanna know one thing: Can the new team owners turn around this sad band of brothers and make a strong playoff run? Or win an NBA crown? Just one championship, puh-leez. There's no time to waste. The cradle's rockin' above the abyss. Early management moves by Lacob, a partner at top venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and co-owner Peter Guber, CEO of Mandaley Entertainment, look real promising -- especially the hiring of Los Angeles Laker legend Jerry Westas an advisor.
TWENTY-ONE YEARS ago in Editor & Publisher magazine, I wrote one of the first big stories on the then-new National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association, a revolutionary media group that made some U.S. minority journalists uncomfortable. Gays at the time were not widely accepted by the mainstream or minority media. A powerful industry coalition of minority journalism groups called UNITY flat-out refused to let gays join the coalition, with critics believing that gays did not face the same media and workplace issues as racial minorities.
That stance always disturbed me. During UNITY's landmark 1994 convention in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A., I was part of a policy-making board and the main organizer of several diversity-related workshops that preached inclusion and community. Given the absence of gay journalists, I hoped that minority journalists saw the irony and double-standard in their treatment of the NLGJA. In a painful conversation with late NLGJA founder Leroy Aarons(Prayers for Bobby), an editor and mentor of mine when I was a young reporter, I apologized that UNITY did not officially welcome gay journalists. He thanked me and grimaced, saying he wished things were different.
CoolGlobalBiz is an independent, non-partisan blog that explores the nexus and cross-border fusion of business and culture. Links to CoolGlobalBiz can be found on Guy Kawasaki's online news directory Alltop (economics or small business) and other sites. Every few generations, we're rocked by economic and cultural upheaval, from the Industrial Age to the Information Age. Now we're at the cusp of another major epoch, an era of quickening change, innovation and global diversity. The seasons are turning, turning. This ain't your Daddy's economy. The world: curved or flat? No matter, the convergence of business and culture won't wane. For better and worse, the new world is here.
THE GREAT AMERICAN melding pot of acculturation is not slowing. The latest evidence: gay-friendly neighborhoods and enclaves have sprouted around California, possibly leading to redrawn political boundaries and districts, according to new research by Redistricting Partners, a consultant firm in Sacramento, California, U.S.A. Can't get more mainstream than tax-paying property owners in the suburbs and rural regions. And I have no doubt that researchers, building on U.S. Census and other data, will arrive at similar findings across the country. (Update: below, see New York Times story of August 25.) The research surely will compel straight-laced conservatives to recruit more gay voters and campaign donors, while window-dressing liberals try to integrate their mono-cultural gatherings. A vote is a vote. Money is money. And people are people. Wake up, America. We're competing against the world in business and politics. All hands on deck.
WE ARE THE WORLD / We are the children? A gazillion hits on YouTube, so someone likes that song. Folk singer Joan Baez yodels Kumbaya? Only 200,000 hits. I hear Kumbaya, I smell campfires and burnt marshmellows. One planet, one people, many iPads. Will we heed a certain call? Can't we all just get along?
STILL DON'T GET Lady Gaga? Like earlier generations didn't get Elvis or Dylan or Madonna? Relax, Business Guy. She's an icon of pop capitalism, circa 2011. A generation from now, gender-bending will be as mainstream as mom and apple pie. And Gaga will be playing Vegas like the Rat Pack and Wayne Newton.
WE ARE THE WORLD? A gazillion hits on YouTube, so someone likes that song. Joan Baez yodels Kumbaya, only 200,000 hits. My Proustian moment: I hear Kumbaya, I smell campfires and burnt marshmellows. One planet, one people, many iPads. Can't we all just get along?
In which we discuss politics: In the United States, first it was liberal women, minorities and gays running for school boards and city councils, then state office and Congress. Now, conservatives of many shades and persuasions are seeking office, according to a CNN story from the Republican Governors Associationmeet-up in San Diego, California. They cannot speak the forbidden word, but they're embracing d-d-diversity. No openly gay male candidates yet, or at least not until an all-star athleteor decorated soldier shatters stereotypes and decides to run. But you can bet your Chevy Suburban we'll see more fiscally-conservative lesbians like Annise Parker, the new mayor of Houston, Texas. She's a Republican who won last year in a mostly-Democrat city, and surely will run for governor one day. You can hear the consultants: "She can be theEllenof politics!" If wine-sipping, window-dressing liberals don't wake up, they'll lose millions of centrist voters to a Republican Party that is looking more like the new America. Ironic, if straight-laced conservatives seize the high ground on diversity, a pet issue of liberals for decades.
To be honest, I don't give a hoot which party claims moderate & non-traditional voters. I just wanna see our global multiculture and changing workforcereflected in all institutions and industries. Politics. Business. Education. Tech & science. We have to, big guy, or risk becoming the tool shop of the world. Our folks -- their blue-collar sweat and can-do spirit -- built industrial and post-World War II America. But sadly, their era is passing. It's a new century, and we need to deal. Ugh, even if we have to hold hands and sing around the campfire.
CNN, "New Face of GOP: Diversity" by national political correspondent Jessica Yellin and producer Rachel Streitfeld.
SECURITIES ENFORCERS usually file civil suits and bust heads on Wall Street. But here's a recent talk by Luis Aguilar, a commissioner at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, on the dire need for more culturally diverse corporate boards in the United States.("Diversity in the Boardroom is Important and, Unfortunately, Still Rare.") The global diversity genie long ago escaped the lamp, and our economy will never turn back to the earlier smokestack era, when the world was ruled by old-school executives and Big Auto, Big Steel and Big Oil in America. This has nothing to do with political correctness (the term sounds so archaic now), and everything to do with the relentless march of demographics, commerce and culture. To stay vibrant and relevant, our businesses and politics must reflect the world. Why, even Ann Coulteris calling for gay Republicans to come out, come out, wherever they are.
