Personal Space

So, have you tuned into the whole Barack Obama MySpace debate? Or is it floating over your head in cyberspace somewhere? From the vantage point of new author who doesn’t want to tick off any potential readers (translation: book buyers), I thought that maybe I should sit back and be quiet. Just let the issue ride.

Ha.

Many of you know that I am a journalist by training – a former radio, television and newspaper reporter who once had a weekly column in the Michigan Chronicle, Detroit’s premier African-American targeted weekly paper. I’m also a bit of a chatterbox in real life, so being quiet is just plain hard for me to do.

Here’s the situation in a nutshell: An Obama supporter, Joe Anthony, had been manning a fan site on MySpace for Barack for just over two years. Apparently Anthony and Obama’s people shared rights and responsibilities regarding content and site maintenance. However, with the site’s growth in popularity due to Obama’s escalating presidential campaign, his camp saw a need for greater – or shall we say, sole – control of the MySpace page that bears his name. Anthony now wants to be paid for his work. The two camps have parted ways over the issue, with MySpace stepping in to grant Obama domain over the site. A call from Obama to Anthony may help smooth things over, though he’s still pretty disgruntled.

Why?

I guess I look at this from the perspective of personal space. In the early days of the internet boom (well, around ’94, ’95, I’ll say), rights to domain names were a hot topic. Once companies began to understand “this web thing” and started trying to figure out how to get on the Net, savvy entrepreneurs took to buying up celebrity and corporate brand names like wildfire. Individuals and companies were actually paying people to get their names for domain use. Then, of course, the law stepped in and people had to start finding other ways to make money on the internet besides usurping people’s cyber identities for re-sale.

Seems to me that’s where MySpace is at the moment. Booming from its own self-population, I guess backers and users feel that restrictions on naming sites on social networks like MySpace would inhibit the free-flow feel of the place.

I came across this controversy because I do have a MySpace page and I’d tagged Obama as a “Friend” there. I’ve also tagged the Toni Morrison fan site as a Friend. But that site makes it explicitly clear that Toni doesn’t run that page. It’s maintained by a fan. I appreciate the distinction. If Toni decides to host her own MySpace page, I see no problem with her having the rights to name her page after herself and gather her own cadre of Friends. And I’d certainly hope her biggest fans would understand that.

I can tell you that I assumed Stefanie Worth would be available as a site name when I registered at MySpace. (I mean goodness, I haven’t even made it to Oprah’s couch yet. Who’d want my name, right?) But you can bet I would have been a tad pit peeved to discover that someone – fan or otherwise – was running a page under my name and wouldn’t let me have it back! I mean, come on, can’t you call yours People Who Love Stefanie Worth? The Society of those Smitten With Stefanie Worth's Books? Fans of the Great and Powerful Stefanie Worth? Okay, I’m kidding about the names, but, really, must we argue over this?

You wouldn’t go to the store with someone else’s ID and make purchases under their name and good credit. You wouldn’t open a business under a well-known alias and perpetrate your way through sale after sale, would you? So why do we think that’s okay to do in cyberspace? If Anthony’s site had been named Obama ’08 or We Back Barack, would this controversy even have erupted? Would he still expect to be paid?

While the laws and regulations regarding some internet dealings are still pretty loosey-goosey, things are beginning to change in terms of copyright, etc. Look at the Napster case. And there are colleagues on my writers loops fighting sites that make free book downloads available. (Gulp. Please stop. We really don’t make that much off our books as it is. Please pay the $6.99 paperback price.)

To me, a lot of this haggling can be alleviated through common sense. You wouldn’t stand on my foot in an elevator, please don’t step on my name – via domain, social network sites, etc., – on the web. Give me MySpace and I’ll give you yours.

Peace.
Stefanie
www.StefanieWorth.com


For more commentary on the Obama MySpace debate, visit:
The Battle to Control Obama’s MySpace at http://www.techpresident.com/node/301
Obama’s MySpace Conundrum at http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/05/02/obamas-myspace-conundrum/
Our MySpace Experiment on Obama’s official site at http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/blog/rospars

The King's English

(Originally posted on my other blog, February 9, 2007)

I was skimming through The New York Times’ online version recently and ran across their Feb. 4 article titled, “The Racial Politics of Speaking Well.” Beside the headline is a pair of hands with two fingers each bent to mimic quotation marks.

I knew what the story was about before I even read it. Still, I scrolled down into the depths of the debate on black people who can talk; that whole “articulate” conversation.

Now, I don’t read the NY Times often (a former Mizzou colleague recently joined their staff, so I peeked in) and not many topics raise my ire. However, this perfunctory surf opened up the gates to a whole herd of memories and opinions that sparked this column.

Let’s see:

• “You talk like a white girl.” – Classmate taunts. (elementary school)
• “I thought you were white!” – An in-store customer who’d chatted with me on the phone a few minutes before. (high school)
• “Where are you from? What do your parents do?” – My on-air audition for Mizzou. The answers, BTW are St. Louis, nurse and works for the Department of the Army. The instructors’ amazement? I sounded so “Midwestern.” Duh. (college)
• “If you don’t mind my asking, are you white?” – A phone exchange with someone who knew of me, but had never seen me. (fully grown woman, as Cedric the Entertainer might say)

This is the part where I vacillate between sighs and GRRRRs. By the time I was 12, I was sick of people commenting on my voice like it was some rare, extraordinary attribute. Imagine how those backhanded compliments come across now.

I sound the way I do because that’s how I was taught to talk. My father always stressed being able to “speak the King’s English,” which he and my mother did very well. Neither of them claim overly impressive backgrounds. They hail from ordinary southernish upbringings with hardworking parents who earned far less than middle class money.

Yet, both my parents possess incredible tenacity. They each set their sights on a goal, figured out what they needed to do to achieve it, and went about making it happen. Subtly for my mother and overtly for my father, Lesson One translated into making sure their kids knew how to “talk right.” And I have to say that more than anything else, surprising people with a pleasant tone, and well-pronounced “ings” and “ers” has probably gotten me further than talent alone.

I find that both amusing and maddening.

That anyone would assume how I’m going to sound when I open my mouth is, first of all, a little insulting. Come on. Nothing made me crazier in Journalism School than watching my fellow black students get booted out of the broadcasting sequence because they “sounded ethnic.” Especially considering that white students with southern or Bostonian accents got to stay, along with a bevy of international students.

Until then, I’d never seen the reality of non-standard speaking make its point so succinctly. Just being able to move my tongue deftly between teeth and gums made the difference in my college career; allowing me to anchor early morning TV news and long format evening radio.

Now, some people associate "articulate" with "intelligent" as if those who aren't swift of tongue must be stupid. So, was I the smartest student in the J-School? Not hardly. (No slacker, but never valedictorian.) The guy I dated throughout most of college ran circles around me academically. And, of course, he was extremely well-spoken. By choice, he was in the print sequence back then, better known as newspaper, and is now an exec at one. So, while his voice may not have caused him grief, others -- whose speech betrayed their backgrounds -- suffered for it.

That’s where the whole drawl vs. diction debate got hot: Well-spoken-but-sounds-black did not play, while well-spoken-Alabama-dialect did. I happen to have an incredibly middle-of-the-road tone that has nothing to do with my race. It is fairly indistinguishable in a crowd and, obviously, very inoffensive to those who need a well-spoken woman of color to conduct an interview, address a staff meeting, or facilitate a workshop.

(SPOILER ALERT) There’s a line in Dreamgirls where Jamie Foxx’s character tells Beyonce’s that he chose her vocals because they’re…what was his phrase? Innocuous? No personality? Something along those lines. That’s my voice: The Innocuous Blessing + Parents’ Demand of King’s English = The Ability to Get Folks’ Attention and Then Put Your Talent on the Table.

Please note today's takeaway: I am hardly an endangered species in the black community.

I guess that’s why I’m a writer. Now author. (Big grin there.) Voice comes through via air and on a page. Mine, though nondescript to the ear, has been known to pack a punch in a paragraph.

Whether in a column, feature story, ghost-written speech or manuscript, I’m known to be a good writer. And that’s all I want. Here, in the world of keyboard strokes and ink, no one has ever called me articulate.

For that, I simply say “thank you.”

Raising Readers

When “How to Eat Fried Worms” opened at the movies a few months ago, the trailer inspired yuck-filled disgust from my kids, but evoked a giggle from me. See, when I was in grade school, I read the gross aforementioned book. I liked it so much that I checked it out from the library three times in a row. (Since no one was waiting for it, Mrs. Riley said I could). Then I lost it.

I recall every painful day of that experience because books were treasured in my home. Of course I scoured the school, searched every room in the house, all to no avail. There was no way I could tell my parents. They’d kill me. (I thought.) Mrs. Riley, being my buddy, fully understood. But, she explained, the book had to be replaced.

(This is where the post-traumatic-stress-disorder kicks in and I forget how much it cost.)

Coming from a family that didn’t believe in allowance (you did what you were supposed to because…you were supposed to), any amount was too much. Again, the intuitive Mrs. Riley tapped into my distress and offered me a deal. Pay for the entire book, plus the overdue fee, and no one would ever know. Considering that my dad was president of the PTA and I thought he knew EVERYTHING that happened at the school, the idea of a secret like this was overwhelming. But I agreed to the impossible.

No penny went unpinched. No couch coin stayed covered. Every nickel treat meant for the Five & Dime went to Mrs. Riley instead. And, by the end of the school year, I’d paid off the entire debt. Whew.

Was I that afraid of my parents’ wrath? Sure. I had ultimate respect for them. But, more importantly, it was the high regard we held for books, reading and education that made me want to right this situation.

I don’t remember ever being read to as a child. (That’ll make mom and dad cringe.) What I recall is the total immersion in all things learning that our household embodied. Using common sense, building book knowledge and speaking “The King’s English” were my father’s only boundaries. Beyond that, the world was ours to discover.

Every room had a bookcase – some wall length and ceiling high. My father read the paper every day, all day, front to back, comics, too. My mother attended college my entire life (from earning an LPN, to her RN, an associates, bachelors and, eventually, masters degree) and her medical books were strewn from room to room.

While me and my brothers’ bedrooms were overrun with children’s books of all kinds, World Book Encyclopedias, a set of children’s dictionaries, a series of animal journals and Ebony magazine’s African American reference library supplied my upbringing with authoritative information.

I remember teaching my dolls – lining them up along my closet wall with pencils and paper – from the time I was barely bigger than they were. (Much to his chagrin, my brother closest in age, now a major in the Marines, often got tossed into this “classroom” mix.) And what were my instructional materials? Textbooks my parents purchased from the school whenever the district revamped its curriculum.

A few years ago, while back home for a visit, I gathered all those old encyclopedias, reference books, and cherished childhood stories still stored in the basement. I carted boxes and boxes of dusty, much-thumbed and well-preserved books to my own hallways, bookshelves and coffee tables. Like the house I grew up in, my own family’s home boasts something to read in every room.

The lesson learned from losing “How to Eat Fried Worms” is that literacy is crucial. I spent one school year paying off a book and its fines. The costs of not being able to read, having access to decent schools or being open to the mind-expanding experiences education offers are socially irreplaceable.