I was very glad to see that Jamie Foxx won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Ray Charles. I haven’t seen the movie itself yet but I have seen a few of his other movies and judging from the clips of Ray that I’ve seen, it is apparent that Jamie is a very talented actors. But even more important, I am also very impressed with him as a human being.

Specifically, many have called his acceptance speech last night the highlight of the entire Oscar show. The people included and the subjects that framed his success were very heartfelt and poignant. First he thanked Ray Charles for his brilliant artistry and equally significant life story. Then he thanked Sidney Poitier for blazing the trail in which he and other prominent Black actors are now following and enjoying success. He also thanked his daughter who told him, “If you don’t win, Dad, don’t worry. You’re still good.”

But most significantly and most emotionally, he thanked his grandmother who raised as a boy, taught him how to be “a southern gentleman,” as he put it, and how to be a human being. He was in tears as he thanked her for everything she did for him, and his message was loud, clear, and deeply touching.

Jamie Foxx clearly has his priorities set straight and his reverance for those who helped him get to where he is and who are his biggest supporters is truly heartfelt and genuine. Include me as a new fan of Jamie Foxx.

The U.S. Committee for Human Rights North Korea has just released a report entitled “The Hidden Gulag: Exposing North Korea’s Prison Camps” that summarizes human rights abuses in the various prison camps in North Korea. As the executive summary states,

The report outlines two distinct systems of repression: first, a North Korean gulag of forced-labor colonies, camps, and prisons where scores of thousands of prisoners -- some political, some convicted felons -- are worked, many to their deaths, in mining, logging, farming, and industrial enterprises . . . and second, a system of smaller, shorter-term detention facilities along the North Korea-China border used to brutally punish North Koreans who flee to China -- usually in search of food during the North Korean famine crisis of the middle to late 1990s -- but are arrested by Chinese police and forcibly repatriated to [North Korea]. . .

A major phenomenon of repression associated with the [prison camps] is the shockingly large number of deaths in detention from slave labor under dangerous circumstances and from starvation-level food rations. . . States, of course, have the right to deprive duly convicted criminals of liberty and remove them from society. States do not have the right to deprive prisoners of their right to food, or to work them, literally, to death.

It’s certainly not a pleasant subject but one that deserves more attention from Asian Americans and for that matter, all Americans in general.

Last night, I watched the latest PBS Frontline episode, entitled “A Company of Men,” which documented the activities of one company of Army soldiers during one month of their duties inside Baghdad. You may have heard that PBS gave its local stations the option of airing two different versions -- one that included strong language on the part of the soldiers in the documentary and one that had such language edited out, in case stations were afraid the inclusion of the strong language would result in indecency fines from the FCC.

At any rate, as with all Frontline episodes, this documentary was very well done and very fair in its reporting. It neither glamorized nor condemned what this particular company of soldiers was doing. It succeeded in illustrating the day-to-day realities that many soldiers face in Iraq. At the end of the episode, the narrator summed it up nicely when he said (I’m mostly paraphrasing), “We couldn’t help but admire the courage and bravery of the soldiers in Dog Company. At the same time, we also saw the blunt nature of the U.S. as an occupying force and the tensions that their presence produced.”

My personal reaction? I was a little surprised myself -- I couldn’t help but think that considering the almost constant guerilla attacks that were being waged against American soldiers and Iraqis suspected of helping the U.S. that unless the U.S. stays there until peace and security is restored, then this whole operation would be even more of a colassal failure than anyone could have imagined. In other words, I believe that given that the U.S. iinvaded and is there, they should be allowed to finish the job. If not, if the U.S. leaves without restoring order, Iraq is likely to descend into utter chaos and most likely, a bloody civil war in which all Iraqis will suffer even more as a result.

I still think that the U.S. was morally and legally wrong and unjustified in invading Iraq in the first place. But like I said, now that we’re in there, it makes sense to me that we should make sure we leave things in better shape than when we found it.

You’ve probably heard about the torrential rain and resultant floods and mudslides that have hit southern California the last week or so. I’m not trying to make fun of people’s misery, but this merely confirms what many current and ex-southern Californians have known all along -- there are only two seasons in SoCal: fire season and flood season.

In contrast, those of us in the northeast are still in the middle of winter and just today, we received six inches of new snow. A lot of times, after I meet people for the first time and mention to them that I grew up in SoCal, they usually ask me if I miss living there. I usually tell them that I certainly do not miss the traffic, congestion, pollution, high cost of living, and the generally higher levels of consumerism and materialism.

Then they ask, “But you probably miss the weather, right?” Then I usually reply, when the weather is sunny and warm, yes. But not when it’s raining and flooding all the time. In other words, if I had to choose between six inches of snow and six inches of rain, at this point, I’d stick with the snow.

As reported by The Car Connection, a new survey has documented the political leanings of new car buyers by brand. As the results show,

Generally, Republicans favor domestic brands and Democrats like the imports but this reflects the Red Republican (center and south) geographical division versus the West Coast and New England Blue Democratic states, and the fact imports have always been more popular on the coasts. . .

Among volume cars, the one having the largest proportion of Republican buyers is Lincoln (39.3%), closely followed by Buick (39.0%), Mercury (38.4%), Cadillac (37.7%), and Chrysler (36.8%). More Democrats (42.1%) favor Subaru than any other make, followed by VW (39.5%), Honda (37.3%) and, surprise, Buick (36.9%).

Least popular among Republicans are Suzuki, Scion, Saturn, Kia, and Hyundai, probably reflecting youth and entry-level economics. Least favored by Dems are Mercury, Dodge, and, ahem, HUMMER.

I’m nost sure if there’s much sociological meaning in this, but it is interesting.

The Providence Journal has a recent article entitled “Study: Market Forces Luring Colleges Away From Mission, which basically describes a recent report written by researchers at Brown University, which laments how so many colleges and universities around the country have strayed away from their core mission -- to provide high quality education to students at a reasonable price:

Somewhere along the way, colleges began paying more attention to style than to substance. Flashy projects such as athletic stadiums and apartment-style dorms top the agenda while the core mission -- educating students at a reasonable price -- has been relegated to the back burner. Heightened competition -- for better students, star professors, federal grant dollars and higher rankings in the influential U.S. News & World Report -- is the driving force behind this shift in focus.

But at what price, asks a study released today by the Futures Project at Brown University. “These trends are converging to threaten the public mission of higher education,” said Lara Couturier, coauthor of the study “Correcting Course: How We Can Restore the Ideals of Public Higher Education in a Market-Driven Era.” . . . Such bells and whistles may attract students and enhance an institution’s reputation. . . But the pricey projects also boost college costs, which are already beyond the reach of many working and middle-class families, the report finds.

The study examines another troubling trend: more colleges are using financial aid not as the way to help needy students, but as a tool to lure top students who are headed to college anyway. “It’s called tuition discounting, and it’s a real departure from the access mission public universities have,” Couturier said. If this continues, she warns, “the only people who will have access to higher education are the ones who can pay for it.”

On the one hand, it’s certainly true that potential students around the country have lots of choices and if a particular school doesn’t offer the same amenities as another school (all other things being equal), it’s likely that the school with the nicer dorms, cafeterias, and athletic facilities will be more attractive. On that level, colleges certainly feel pressured to meet those “consumer” demands.

On the other hand, academia absolutely cannot lose track of its basic fundamental mission -- to provide students with a high quality, reasonably priced education. This is especially true for poor and working class students who are increasingly being shut out of a higher education simply because they cannot afford it. And as the article explains, this situation is made even worse when schools divert financial assistance funds away from the neediest students and instead use them to lure students who can already afford to attend.

In other words, there needs to be a line drawn between meeting ever-increasing “market” demands and keeping education affordable for the neediest students.

Have you heard about ideas and proposals to tax drivers for every mile that they drive? The notion behind it is since cars are generally getting more fuel efficient, people are generally filling up their gas tanks less often. As a result, states are beginning to see their tax revenue from gas taxes decline. Therefore, in order to make up for this, states are thinking about adding a tax to each car based on how many miles it’s drive:

[Researchers] at Oregon State University equipped a test car with a global positioning device to keep track of its mileage. Eventually, every car would need one. . . The new tax would be charged each time you fill up. A computer inside the gas pump would communicate with your car’s odometer to calculate how much you owe. The system could also track how often you drive during rush hour and charge higher fees to discourage peak use. . . Privacy advocates say it’s more like big brother riding on your bumper, not to mention a disincentive to buy fuel-efficient cars.

I have to admit it’s an interesting idea. I can imagine that it might discourage long distance suburb-to-city commutes and may encourage more public transportation or carpooling. At the same time, it’s true that for many people, long distances commutes are less of a lifestyle choice but more of a necessity due to job circumstances and that a tax on miles rather than fuel may remove incentives to drive a fuel efficient car.

I guess we’ll just have to stay tuned.

Salon.com has an article that describes the growing popularity of using multicultural situations and multiracial actors in commercials and advertisements. However, as is generally the case in the advertising world, the reality of the everyday world does not always match up perfectly with stylized advertisement images:

In the idyllic world of TV commercials, Americans increasingly are living together side by side, regardless of race. The diverse images reflect a trend that has been quietly growing in the advertising industry for years: Racially mixed scenarios -- families, friendships, neighborhoods and party scenes -- are often used as a hip backdrop to sell products. The ads suggest America’s ethnic communities are meshing seamlessly, bonded by a love of yogurt, lipstick and athletic gear. . .

But critics say such ads gloss over persistent and complicated racial realities. Though the proportion of ethnic minorities in America is growing, experts say, more than superficial interaction between groups is still relatively unusual. Most Americans overwhelmingly live and mingle with people from their own racial background. Advertising, meanwhile, is creating a “carefully manufactured racial utopia, a narrative of colorblindness” says Charles Gallagher, a sociologist at Georgia State University in Atlanta. . .

[P]articularly since data from Census 2000 underscored the nation’s increasing ethnic complexity, ads that meld racial groups in less controversial ways have slowly become the norm. Interracial settings now are used as a matter-of-fact backdrop to sell wine and bath soap. . . “For so long, speaking to consumers of color has been absent from the landscape,” said Dana Wade, president of Spike DDB, a New York-based ad agency that uses multiracial images in most of its advertising. “It’s important to correct that.”

This subject has the potential to become quite a thorny issue. On the one hand, it is certainly true that people of color and multiracial individuals have traditionally been systematically left out of the vast majority of commercials and advertisements as companies have implicitly assumed that there entire audience of consumers was almost exclusively White. Therefore, the emergence of more multicultural images is indeed a step in the right direction.

On the other hand, as critics point out, advertisers need to recognize and understand that life is more complicated than a mixed-race group of friends having a party at the beach. This issue reminds me of how many colleges and universities, in their attempts to promote their campus as racially and culturally diverse, recruit students of color to appear in carefully staged pictures for their promotional materials when in reality, their campus and almost all their high profile campus activities (i.e., sporting events, etc.) remain virtually all-White.

So is there a middle ground here? I think it has to be a two-way process. First, hopefully consumers will understand that advertisement by design are supposed to be superficial idealized images, rather than an accurate reflection of reality. Therefore, I hope that consumers will recognize that even though they may be seeing more images of people of color in commercials and other ads, that does not necessarily mean that race relations in the U.S. are completely hunky-dory.

On the other hand, advertisers also need to understand that all with using images of people of color to promote their products, they should follow up on this effort to reflect a more accurate image of America by also promoting more people of color behind the scenes, as managers, supervisors, and executives. It’s one thing to portray a multicultural image to the public -- it’s another to really mean it by institutionalizing multiculturalism behind the scenes, where it really counts.