The exchange of messages of the past couple of days created an emotional rollercoaster for me. It prompted me to think of two stories years apart. Around 1961 Len Tarcher, a fellow executive at the Sackel-Jackson company in Boston told me an interesting story about the late Leo Burnett of Chicago who built one of the world’s top ad agencies, which he started in the middle of America’s great depression in the 1930s. The agency created some of America’s most memorable images, the Pillsburry Dough Boy, The Malboro Man, etc., etc.
Leo had been advertising manager for a big oil company and when he announced that he would leave to launch a new ad agency, they told him that he would end up selling apples on the street, which is what many middle class people were doing since they were too embarrassed to just beg.
For years, perhaps even today, even though Leo has been dead since 1971, every Leo Burnett office had in its lobby a bowl of apples, free to all visitors cooling their heels in the lobby. This, doubtlessly, was a gesture that must have given Leo great gratification.
Tarcher told me of a friend of his who had once worked for Burnett as an account executive in the 1950s. The man approached Burnett one day and said, “Mr. Burnett, this may be none of my business, I’m not here to tell you how to run your company, but I know you are Jewish and I am Jewish and it bothers me that you have not a single Jewish account executive on staff.”
Burnett smiled and said, “You are right, it is none of your business. You are also wrong because I do have a Jewish account executive – you!”
He then went on to explain the philosophy behind his policy. “Relationships between our account executives and our clients are very important. Occasionally a client will have a beef with the account man or will take a dislike to him and will come to me demanding that we get a substitute. If my account man happens to be Jewish I might suspect anti-Semitism and that would get my hackles up and I’d be tempted to resist the request which would lead to a decline in my relationship with the client and potential loss of business.” Leo, of course, had no restrictions on staffing in the creative or media or art departments but he avoided hiring Jews as account executives.
>From a moral standpoint, of course, one would have to be critical of this but from a realistic standpoint in a highly competitive business, (which on occasions has been compared to prostitution), one must give the man credit for being a realistic business man.
The other story the recent messages dealing with the existence or absence of anti-Semitism in contemporary Chernivtsi takes me back to 2006 when I spent three weeks in India pursuing co-production possibilities. A contact arranged to have me picked up by the head of the camera department at Ramoji Film City just outside of Hyderabad and toured through this incredible studio and backlot combined with a veritable theme park that is far bigger and more impressive than anything found in Hollywood.
Chatting in the car on the way home while driving through areas of incredible poverty I told my host that I didn’t think I could ever live in India because of the vast amount of incredible poverty which tears at the heart.
His English was limited but he indicated that psychic survival calls for focusing only on that which is pleasing and ignoring that which is upsetting. In other words wearing blinders which I know I couldn’t do. But then I asked myself what I would do if I had been born and brought up in India? Would I become a different person and accept and ignore the depressing aspects of that country? Would I emigrate? I don’t know.
Reading of Mimi’s experiences in Cz and those of others who were met with similar warmth and cordiality gives me a lift but reading the account of Yefim Rabinowitch reminds me of why I curb my interest in visiting Cz.
If I visited the house in which I was born which my grandmother built and in which I spent my first wonderful eleven years and was met by present occupants who were hostile and perhaps anti-Semitic, I would feel compelled to bash them in their heads, to kick them in the groin, to smash them into walls - and that is an inappropriate way for an 83 year old to behave.
It would land me in a Ukrainian jail and there is no profit in that. So, like Leo Burnett, I avoid the possibility of a negative experience and stay away from Cz.
Best wishes,
Andy
-snip-
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Received on 2010-10-08 07:38:52
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