More On Jay-z And Beyoncé- Criticism of Beyoncé’s Morality In Lip Syncing . . . A Distraction From Real National Issues

The issues involved (do you know which ones?) were of national concern so I posted an article I've written to address the kerfuffle concerning Beyoncé’s lip syncing of the National Anthem after Obama's second inaugural speech as a National Notice article.

You can get to it here: Tuesday, January 29, 2013, Tsk, Tsk: Criticism of Beyoncé’s Lip Syncing . . A Distraction From More Serious Issues And Moral Choices.

Another “Times Effect”: The Times As Gatekeeper Of Populace’s Populous Debate. . Unpublished Noticing New York Comment On Beyonce’s Moral Choices

What’s most important in this world?  What the New York Times pays attention to or what our multitudinous citizenry invests its time and energy in scrutinizing?  Sometimes a Venn diagram would show those two things as substantially overlapping with the New York Times exercising a gatekeeper role to ensure it remains so as much as possible.

In a New York Times Sunday Review article last weekend Mark Bittman, food journalist and author and columnist for the Times, picked up reminiscently on what has been a repeated theme in past Noticing New York articles: Whether Beyoncé Knowles is behaving morally when she questionably associates with and puts her image and influence behind questionable things.  In this case Mr. Bittman's focus was $50 million that went into a Beyoncé Super Bowl Pepsi promotion, half of which was going directly to Beyoncé and her “creative projects.” Mr. Bittman's concern is that the consumption of sugary soda is a significant public health problem.  See: Why Do Stars Think It’s O.K. To Sell Soda?, January 5, 2013.

On Tuesday I covered and commented on Mr. Bittman’s Beyoncé article here in Noticing New York: January 8, 2013, Tsk, Tsk: More Criticism of Beyoncé’s Moral Choices In a New York Times Op-Ed Piece.

However newsworthy Beyoncé’s connection to sugary soda really is, the public who have participated in making Jay-Z and Beyoncé the world's richest celebrity couple definitely seem to care.  In my Noticing New York article I noted that Mr. Brittman’s column had generated voluminous reader comments (410 reader comments with still another hundred comments awaiting moderation before they show up) and wondered if the comment I submitted to his article would show up.  At the time of this writing, the comments to the Bittman article published by the Times site moderators are up to 425 with comments having now been published.  In answer to my wondering: My comment has not been published.

Although in one case it is close, to date, the number of published comments on the Bittman Beyoncé column exceed, in some cases substantially, the number of comments on any of the other articles in the Sunday Review set up to take comments.  Here are the number of comments published on other pieces appearing in the January 5th Sunday Review (commenting for most of them are now closed).  Collectively, they do evidence that the Times comment sections provide an active and important forum for public comment.

    •    Can Social Media Sell Soap?, (appearing on the front page of the Sunday Review) by Stephen Baker: . . . 90 Comments

    •    The Surreal World: Capitol Hill (appearing on the front page of the Sunday Review) by Maureen Dowd:. . . . 287 Comments

    •    The Myth of Universal Love, by Stephen T. Asthma. . . . 325 Comments

    •    How to Choose a College, by Frank Bruni. . .183 Comments

    •    The Blessings of Atheism, by Susan Jacoby. . . 297 Comments

    •    Diary of a Creep, by Rend Smith. . . 423 Comments

    •    Dying for Freedom (about Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation), by Jim Downs. . . 323 comments

    •    Rapturous Research (about the exhilaration of authors when exhaustively researching an historical topic), by Sean Pidgeon . . . 153 Comments

    •    More Risk-Taking, Less Poll-Taking, by Thomas L. Friedman. .   264 comments

    •    Boehner, American Hero, by Ross Douthat. . .315 Comments

    •    The Public Editor: When Reporters Get Personal, by Margaret Sullivan. . .47 Comments

The New York Times published comments to Mr. Brittman’s Beyoncé morality story in three categories: “All,” “Reader Picks” and “NYT Picks.”  The additional fifteen comments published by the Times since I wrote on Tuesday appear as “Reader Picks” or “NYT Picks.”

For an idea of the additional comments the Times published while not publishing my comment here are the lead-in sentences of the last fifteen comments (they are largely reiterative of the 410 comments that went before):

    1.    Soda and diet soda are great items for celebrities to endorse, especially at the superbowl, where many ads (and parties) are focused on alcohol.. . .

    2.    Yes, if you isolate seeds from 200 apples and crush them (not swallow them) and eat them you will die of cyanide poisoning. But a few seeds will do nothing, . . .

    3.    Well Soda is American; an American thing to do: drink soda. . .

    4.    Once again Mark Bittman found food Jesus and now like a true fanatic he thinks we all have to convert.. .

    5.    Why don't they advertise the sugar free diet versions of these drinks? . .

    6.    How much money does Beyonce need? Seems like she and other celebrities take anything that comes their way without any thought to. . .

    7.    Doesn't anyone have any responsibility for their own actions anymore? One soda is fine. . .

    8.    Great article. Fit Fathers has been saying the same thing. Stars are hypocritical by. .

    9.    Get real. Soda, bacon, candy, beef, etc has been with us long before obesity. . .

    10.    Thanks Mr. Bittman for being willing to ask why popular entertainment figures are willing to endorse this particular seemingly innocuous product that actually causes . . .

    11.    In light of last week's CDC report on the lack of correlation between longevity and body mass (at least for "moderate obesity,") . . .

    12.    Give me a break. Comparing soda to cigarettes is a stretch, the vast majority of consumers consume soda with no ill effects . . .

    13.    It is a little laughable to think that Beyonce could be ashamed to endorse junk food. Almost everyone eats a little junk food now and then . . .

    14.    Can't wait until these celebs start endorsing 5 Hour Energy and Red Bull.. . .

    15.    Somehow it's fitting that Beyonce works to fill bodies with empty soda calories...after all she fills . . . 

Here is my comment that the New York Times editors moderating comments declined to publish:

Am I going to be the first reader to mention in my comment black actor and activist Harry Belafonte’s observation that Jay-Z and Beyoncé, now privileged with wealth and influence, have “turned their back on social responsibility”?  Mr. Belafonte wasn’t talking about the scourge of sugary soda, albeit a legitimate health problem, he was talking about broader societal issues.

Also, will my comment be published here and will it be selected as a New York Times “pick” if I mention that Jay-Z and Beyoncé have also both shilled for the so-called “Barclays” arena (part of the eminent domain and subsidy abusing Atlantic Yards project) which: 1.) The Times itself, with a conflict of interest, has shilled for even in its news pages, and 2.) partners to promote Coca-Cola, Pepsi’s almost equally sugary rival?

See the following Noticing New York article: [I then included the link to Tuesday's Noticing New York: Tsk, Tsk: More Criticism of Beyoncé’s Moral Choices In a New York Times Op-Ed Piece]

My inclusion of a link in my comment was not the reason for its exclusion.  Other comments published include links.

As I have pointed out before, the documentary “Page One: Inside The New York Times” described what it identified as the “New York Times Effect,” mostly using the Times’ own staffers to describe it, which refers to the way the Times leads the way in establishing what is, or is not, news.  It may be that the Times not only has an effect in leading the way to establish what is on the agenda for consideration as news but also has an effect on after-flow of the ensuing public discussion of those issues.

The morality of promoting sugary soda will be discussed; it happens to be a concern that New York Mayor Bloomberg has personally championed.  The morality of bringing the Atlantic Yards mega-monopoly into existence, including the so-called “Barclays” arena, will not be part of the public discussion.  As it so happens the same mayor has indicated that he wants the issues surrounding Atlantic Yards and the arena forgotten: “No one will remember how long it took.” (And by implication the associated issues and problems with the mega-project), says the mayor.  Says his mega-project-supporting ally, the Brooklyn borough president: “no one will ever remember what the fight was about.”

Not by happenstance, the top ranks of the city’s power elite are thoroughly permeated by individuals quite happy to see the mega-project issues similarly vanish from the public consciousness.  And the Times, which has relationships with all of these individuals, including the subsidy collector/developer Forest City Ratner itself, accommodates, scrubbing its news stories, even retroactively, of any mention of the issues, see: Saturday, September 29, 2012, Report: How The Times Expunged Its Own First Draft Of History On “Barclays” Center Opening To Replace It With The Pro-Ratner Narrative It Favors and Monday, October 1, 2012, New York Times Ghost Article: The Searchable Remnants On The Web Of Banished (Anti-Ratner/Anti-Jay-Z?) “Barclays” Center Opening Article.

Before I started writing Noticing New York I submitted prospective pieces to the Times that were not published.  If I ever were published in the Times I am sure that what appeared there would receive a greater readership than what I publish in Noticing New York.  That would have its advantages, but the advantage of a blog like Noticing New York is that when the Times does not publish what I write it can readily be published here instead, hopefully providing some balance.

If you have a reasonable comment on the Times Beyoncé article that the Times moderators won’t publish, I am happy to publish it here in Noticing New York.

Meanwhile, I have tried submitting the following new comment on the Bittman column to the Times:

I previously submitted a comment on this article that did not survive moderation to get published here.  It related Mr. Bittman's observations to the similar way that Jay-Z and Beyoncé have promoted the “Barclays” arena and the Atlantic Yards mega-project of which the arena is a part.  I notice that there is no mention in any of the comments published here to Beyoncé’s association with Atlantic Yards.  I am wondering whether any other of the comments that did not survive moderation to get published referred to Beyoncé’s and/or Jay-Z’s Atlantic Yards or “Barclays” activities.

Tsk, Tsk: More Criticism of Beyoncé’s Moral Choices In a New York Times Op-Ed Piece

Oh, my!  In an Op-Ed piece appearing in the last New York Times Sunday review Mark Bittman, food journalist and author and columnist for the Times has taken issue with Beyoncé Knowles’ morality for hawking sugary soda to her audience.  Mr. Bittman notes that Pepsi is putting $50 million into a Beyoncé Super Bowl promotion, part of which money will go to support Beyoncé’s “creative projects.” A correction to the article makes clear that about half of the $50 million that will be spent will go directly to Beyoncé and her “creative projects.” See: Why Do Stars Think It’s O.K. To Sell Soda? January 5, 2013.

Mr. Brittman’s leveling of this criticism at Beyoncé is reminiscent of the criticism I have leveled in Noticing New York articles at Beyoncé and her husband, Jay-Z, for shilling for the highly subsidized, eminent domain-abusing so-called "Barclays" arena and thereby being partly responsible for bringing it into existence at the expense of Brooklynites, the local community and the citizen taxpayers of New York.  See: Friday, April 8, 2011, “Reverse Morality” Clauses for Celebrity Endorsers: What Are They? Something Celebrities, Including Jay-Z, Should Try Enforcing.  Maybe it should be noted that the “Barclays” arena also partners to conspicuously sponsor the promotion of sugary soda: It sponsors Coke, the main competitor of Pepsi.

Beyoncé’s morality has also been previously called into question for her 2009 New Year’s Eve special performance for the Gaddafi clan (Gaddafi as in Lybia) in St. Barts in the Caribbean.  (See: Wednesday, March 9, 2011, An Insert Preview - Music Superstar Ethics: How Completely You Can Sell “You can say what you say, but you are what you are.” Jay-Zzzzus!)

Her husband, Jay-Z, also seems to have repetitive problems in terms of his choice of associates: Friday, March 11, 2011, Lightning Keeps Striking: It Couldn’t Happen To Some More Deserving People . . Over and Over, Again- Ratner, Illegal Bribes and Jay-Z and Beyoncé.

From Beyoncé’s looks and superbly healthy-sounding voice one might intuit (without it’s being guaranteed) that the 31-year-old Ms. Knowles is not a big consumer of sugary beverages herself;  She is merely selling a brand.

But is it fair for Mr. Bittman to be picking on poor Beyoncé?  After all Charlie Rose, who is such an unimpeachable PBS paragon of legitimatizing influence that New York’s Channel Thirteen itself uses him to sell trust in the station, also shills for sugary soda (once again Coca-Cola, Pepsi’s rival) and Rose has similarly shilled repeatedly for the “Barclays” Center arena and its subsidy collector/developer Bruce Ratner.   . .

. .  But wait: Are there no parallels to Beyoncé performing specially for the Gaddafi clan New Year’s Eve in St. Barts?  Maybe there are: On the second occasion when Rose had Bruce Ratner on his program to promote the “Barclays” arena he also hosted at the same time the arena’s co-owner, Mikhail Prokhorov, a Russian oligarch who, as is almost necessarily the case in Russia, is embroiled with his wealth and its procurement in Russian politics.  This entailed some very uncomfortable groveling by Rose as he joked with Prokhorov about Russian politics as he worked to keep the tone of that program light in keeping with the show's overall happy sales pitch theme.

Isn’t Beyoncé just doing what so many of us decide to do?: Taking a job, making a living where one can be found in a world where options for an honest living are fast being gobbled up by our own homegrown oligarchs and our often less than suitably reputable corporations?  But Mr. Bittman argues that Beyoncé and her husband ought now to be past the point of desperation for money and to the point of making moral decisions:

I suppose it would be one thing if she needed the money or the exposure but she and Jay-Z are worth around $775 million.

Mr. Bittman’s hyperlink takes the reader to the information that Beyoncé and Jay-Z are the richest celebrity couple in the world.  But they weren’t always.  Perhaps one can theorize that the original moral compromises were made somewhere along the way to this status . . . so why then should anyone begin to make fine moral distinctions at this point?

Why would we expect Beyoncé and Jay-Z to make finer moral distinctions than Charlie Rose?  Because they have more money?

There is perhaps a more valid moral criticism of Beyoncé and Jay-Z that has been made.  Mr. Bittman characterizes Beyoncé as “a politically aware woman” because:

she with her husband, Jay-Z, raised money for President Obama and supported Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign, meant to encourage children to exercise.

There is, however, disagreement about the political awareness and/or sincerity of the couple.    A reader comment selected by Times editors as amongst the best asks why Beyoncé  merits the label “politically aware” (several reader comments question this assessment) saying that she seems instead “much more ‘profitably aware’”.  Jay-Z himself says he doesn’t understand Occupy Wall Street’s concerns about the one percent and the ninety-nine percent (“what are you fighting for?. . . I don’t know what the fight is about. What do we want, do you know?. . . This is free enterprise. This is what America is built on.”)

The criticism of Beyoncé and Jay-Z that may be the most astute comes from black actor and activist Harry Belafonte when he concludes that the now-privileged couple have simply “turned their back on social responsibility”:

“I think one of the great abuses of this modern time is that we should have had such high-profile artists, powerful celebrities. But they have turned their back on social responsibility. . . . That goes for Jay-Z and Beyoncé, for example.”

See: Harry Belafonte: Jay-Z, Beyoncé ‘have turned their back on social responsibility’, by Alexis Garrett Stodghill, August 8, 2012.

There is no question though that Beyoncé has an influence on the culture.  Mr. Brittman’s column has so far generated 410 reader comments (with still another hundred comments awaiting moderation before they show up- We'll see if my comment shows up).  That’s a lot!  Most are primarily a defense of sugary soda as being something that’s not all that bad, not so much a defense of Beyoncé herself, but the top comment amongst the readers’ pick of the collection (which proceeds on to some other pithy observations) begins:

Did you imagine that celebrities are not just like ordinary people whose judgment can be distorted by the lure of money?

Traditional Christmas Eve Revisit of a Classic Seasonal Tale: Ratnerville, the Real Life Incarnation of the Abhorred Pottersville

It’s Christmas Eve, which means that it is time again to acknowledge and revisit the story of the creation of Brooklyn’s Ratnerville. It is, if you will, the real-life materialization of the bad alternative future the heavenly angel allowed the Jimmy Stewart character to see in the film “It’s a Wonderful Life.” That film proposed that it wasn’t going to be good for the townspeople of Bedford Falls if a one single man, Mr. Potter, with a self-interested eye only on profits, was allowed to own and control the entire town. Now in Brooklyn, because Mayor Bloomberg together with state officials at the Empire State Development agency, believe in the proposition that it is good for a single self-interested Bruce Ratner to own a 50+ acre mega-monopolistic swath of Brooklyn we are seeing materialize in reality a version of that alternative reality: Instead of the movie’s “Pottersville” we have “Ratnerville” that does, indeed, embody the sort of abhorrent conditions of life looked askance at in the film.

In real life, it is the reverse of the film: The alternative reality that can only be imagined with the aid of an interceding angel is the better life that could have been brought about if what the community asked for had been pursued. That better path would have involved implementing a variation of the UNITY Plan and awarding development of multiple parcels to different competing developers based on bids.

Returning to this story is now an annual tradition for us. Here are previous Noticing New York posts on the subject from Christmas Eves past:

• Thursday, December 24, 2009
A Christmas Eve Story of Alternative Realities: The Fight Not To Go To Pottersville (Or Ratnerville)

• Friday, December 24, 2010
Revisiting a Classic Seasonal Tale: Ratnerville

What shall we add to update the story this year? What hard lumps of coal wound up in people’s stockings as 2011 gifts from Mr. Ratner? Please indulge me if the list, compiled in haste (preferring that more holiday-compatible thoughts might preoccupy us), is less than complete. We all do know, however, of a certain omniscient Mr. Oder who keeps a thorough long list of the year’s not-nice naughties. Here though are a few events worth adding this year to additionally ornament this holiday story:

• Those who were promised constructions jobs by Mr. Ratner and BUILD (effectively Ratner's subsidiary) and never received them (although they actually labored without pay in a scam) felt it appropriate to sue both the developer and BUILD: Tuesday, November 15, 2011, Lawsuit Against Forest City Ratner And The Fallacy Of Relying On A White-owned Monopoly To Create Construction Work For The Minority Community
• It looked as if because Ratner’s arena was behind schedule and/or that the schedule for construction was never reasonable to begin with, Ratner made a decision that the surrounding neighbors should suffer 24/7 work, work throughout the night and on weekends. Wednesday, September 21, 2011, Construction of the Ratner/Prokhorov (“Barclays”) Arena Is Behind Schedule. Either That, OR a 24/7 Construction Schedule Was ALWAYS Intended. That's what it looked like and it turned out that this was probably true. What the neighbors have been subjected to includes bright land-of-the-midnight-sun lights and extreme noise situations at all hours. (Photo from Atlantic Yards Watch below.)

• When the Jimmy Stewart character staggers through the snowy streets of Pottersville in “It’s a Wonderful Life” he is assaulted by the unfriendly throb of neon lights advertising the thicket of bars that have usurped what was previously a hospitable domestic scene. Noisy real life sports bars are coming to brownstone Brooklyn: Thursday, May 19, 2011, Beyond Prime 6 and the sports bar/gastropub, a 35,000 square foot entertainment center planned for Pacific at Flatbush.

• Not content that his mega-monoply is already sufficiently sprawling Ratner was busy grabbing the last vestiges of sidewalk, leaving an almost impassibly narrow sidewalk beside his arena. Wednesday, October 5, 2011, Mayor Michael Bloomberg In the Regalia of Queen Elizabeth I? Noticing New York’s Testimony at the DOT Hearing on Atlantic Yards Bollard Plan

• The unions and public were subjected to a scary surprise even if it is only a not-nice bluff- The rest of the mega-project might be built using unattractive, untested modular units, cutting the union’s coveted payday down to . . . What?: Friday, March 18, 2011, A Ratner Bluff on the Not-So-Fab Prefab Modulars? A Second Opinion and Friday, March 18, 2011, The Real Question to Ask About the Ratner Bait-and-Switch Approach on Atlantic Yards.

• Jay-z’s image has been Ho Ho Ho Hyping around everywhere. (Is he personally Oh-noing in secret?) Wednesday, October 26, 2011, Longing For Correcting Images to Jay-Z’s Hip-Hop Hype and Ratner’s Atlantic Yards “Strategy of Distraction”

• Ratner was proving in as many respects as possible that he presides over an unregulated and unregulatable mega-project. Friday, September 30, 2011, Could the Atlantic Yards Monopoly Be Even Less Regulated Than It Is? Why A Mega-Monopoly Continuation Isn’t Workable. Ratnerville? some of those down in the dumps are calling it Ratner Heights.

• Ratner put the community at risk by not securing his construction site before an impending hurricane- And, for perspective, compare the hefty subsidies Ratner is getting with the cost of cleaning up after that storm: Thursday, September 1, 2011, Cuomo, Asking For Help From the Feds, Announces NYS’s Toll From Irene Will Be Less Than the Public Cost of Ratner’s Atlantic Yards Mega-Monopoly.
• Ratner was conniving to pull the Brooklyn Academy of Music into his web to produce circuses in the arena that nobody wanted to call "circuses": Friday, July 1, 2011, Cultural Circus? Mr. Ratner’s Attempt to Rechristen His Arena A “Cultural Center”.

• Another gift under the Christmas tree of government function that the Ratner-Grinch helped himself to was to have a private consultant reporting to him redesign the traffic pattern for nearly the entire Borough of Brooklyn: Thursday, June 16, 2011, Sovereign Immunity, Reconfiguration of Brooklyn’s Traffic And The Peculiar Verisimilitude of Government Functions When Forest City Ratner Takes Over.


• Mr. Ratner’s troops were still distracting the public with the misguided notion that, like the magical tents in Harry Potter, the innards of his tiny arena can hold an ice skating rink large enough to host a professional hockey team, the Islanders: Thursday, April 21, 2011, Question Revisited: How Craftily Close Did Forest City Ratner Skate On Thin Ice of Securities Law Violation With Non-Promise of a Hockey Arena?

• In dark city tunnels around the time of Halloween pictures of Mr. Ratner’s arena were saying boo at you from the walls: Sunday, November 6, 2011, Rogues Gallery: The AIANY (“American Institute of Architects New York”) Subway Corridor Posters Under the IFC Center Showing “Urbanized”.

• Things were kept interesting with investigations in Mr. Ratner's neighborhood as we heard about the new situation with Senator Kruger: Friday, March 11, 2011, Lightning Keeps Striking: It Couldn’t Happen To Some More Deserving People . . Over and Over, Again- Ratner, Illegal Bribes and Jay-Z and Beyoncé.

• This was the year that we heard about how Jay-Z’s Wife, Beyoncé was amongst a small set of top entertainers to be paid large sums of money to perform for the family of now-deposed Libyan Dictator Muammar Gaddafi (Qaddafi) on New Year’s Eve 2009 in St. Barts in the Caribbean: Wednesday, March 9, 2011, An Insert Preview - Music Superstar Ethics: How Completely You Can Sell “You can say what you say, but you are what you are.” Jay-Zzzzus!

All in all the Ratnerville story has been well ornamented by this year's events. What more can the new year bring? Almost anything. After all, who would have thought 2011 could have brought us all this?

Longing For Correcting Images to Jay-Z’s Hip-Hop Hype and Ratner’s Atlantic Yards “Strategy of Distraction”

(Jay-Z on right, above.)

Norman Oder has a couple of new articles out on the subject of Jay-Z and Atlantic Yards, one at his home base Atlantic Yards Report and the other at Salon.com.

See: Wednesday, October 26, 2011, Is Jay-Z just insulated from the Atlantic Yards reality? Or does he understand the hustle, but sometimes feels uncomfortable? , and Tuesday, Oct 25, 2011, Jay-Z’s hip-hop of distraction: The hip-hop superstar hypes a Brooklyn, N.Y., sports arena that failed to deliver on its jobs pledge.

The Salon article is about how Jay-Z is “fronting for two other world-class hustlers: Bruce Ratner, Brooklyn, N.Y’s most powerful developer, and New Jersey (to Brooklyn) Nets majority owner Mikhail Prokhorov, Russia’s second-richest man” becoming the face of the Bruce Ratner/Mikhail Prokhorov (“Barclays”) basketball arena “to distract attention from the hardball politics, sweetheart deals and private profits behind the arena and the rest of the 16-tower project” and as well as unfulfilled and ersatz `promises’ to the community about jobs, housing, design, etc.

Following up in the Atlantic Yards Report article Mr. Oder writes that “one reader suggested that maybe [Jay-Z] the ‘cultural icon’ just doesn't know the facts behind Atlantic Yards.”

Mr. Oder theorizes two possibilities: 1.) Maybe Jay-Z doesn’t understand, 2.) Maybe he does understand, but Mr. Oder then goes on to point out that while Jay-Z certainly knows how to go through the motions of being enthusiastic about the New Jersey Nets basketball team and the Ratner/Prokhorov arena he seems to be “a bit uncomfortable” with what he has gotten involved in if you look at his face in some official publicity photos where he is standing with his “partners.” In theory he should be exuding standard fare PR ebullience, which as a performer one would think he has down pat. Instead, what you see on his face is quite the reverse.

(Left to right in first above: Subsidy collector Bruce Ratner, Borough President Marty Markowitz and Jay-Z, additional figure in second photo is Nets CEO Brett Yormark.)

Mr. Oder comments: “These are official photos, not like the unposed candid shot that Tracy Collins captured.” (below)

(For the Noticing New York take on this: Wednesday, October 19, 2011, Reminder: Saturday, October 22, 2011, Performing at First Acoustics, Gathering Time, plus Kim & Reggie Harris.)

Noticing New York can propose a third theory, one that could be considered a hybrid of the other two and one that can go a long way to explain Jay-Z’s sour puss. Noticing New York sallied forth with this theory once before.

The theory?: Jay-Z signed on to an agreement to promote Atlantic Yards once upon a time when he didn’t understand the facts of the megadevelopment but forgot at that time to include in the agreement he signed what is known in the entertainment industry as a “reverse morality” or “reverse morals” clause, a clause that had it been included in his contract, could by its design have given Jay-Z ample opportunity to walk out on the project given the shameful conduct of his partners to date.

The earlier Noticing New York article on the subject is here: Friday, April 8, 2011, “Reverse Morality” Clauses for Celebrity Endorsers: What Are They? Something Celebrities, Including Jay-Z, Should Try Enforcing.

Also of topical interest given the headlines this month, is an article preceding that one (linked to therein) about the morality of the music business in general that discusses Beyoncé (Jay-Z’s wife) taking home a very large check in exchange for her performance for the Qaddafi Family New Year’s Eve 2009 . (See: Wednesday, March 9, 2011, An Insert Preview - Music Superstar Ethics: How Completely You Can Sell “You can say what you say, but you are what you are.” Jay-Zzzzus!)

The Oder Salon article, as specified in its title, informs us how Jay-Z’s posing as a front man for developer (subsidy collector) Bruce Ratner has been important in helping Ratner’s “strategy of distraction” to work out well. Earlier this week I was writing about such strategies of distraction with respect to which Mr. Oder has also supplied the shorthand “department of diverted attention” to note that sites like Mr. Oder’s Atlantic Yards Report can “repeatedly point out” the “inanities of a fawning press” flowing from the barrage of “paid-for corporate speech” and the “pervasive behind-the-scenes flow of press releases” in which corporations invest.

The NNY article about Occupy Wall Street referenced above, was discussing the big picture of how the skewing of wealth in this country together with increasing privatization of the traditional elements of public speech (including but not limited to public spaces and streets in which to speak) was contributing to severe imbalances in our public dialogue. (See: Saturday, October 22, 2011, Occupy Wall Street and the Banks- Messages From Bonnie & Clyde, “They’ve Got Too Much Money”: Ownership of the Public Forum by the Wealthy?)

In regard to those severe imbalances (and pertinent to Atlantic Yards), I provided the image of Jay-Z used in the subway to promote the New York Times, a newspaper that failed the New York City public by essentially, like Jay-Z, promoting an uncritical image of Atlantic Yards, the mega-project of Ratner, the Times own partner in the building of the New York Times headquarters.

Here is another picture of a dismaying billboard next to the arena that uses Jay-Z to promote the arena to the neighborhood.

In line with what I said in my article about the imbalance of speech in our country, there isn’t a plenitude of Noticing New York cash available to rent that billboard in order to correct the misimpressions being advertised there and vociferously elsewhere in the city. Oh that we had the same mega-bucks to get out and tell the story the way it should be told! It would be such fun to go all out.

But not having the money to rent billboards hasn’t left Noticing New York bereft of ideas. The image below reflects how Noticing New York took things into its own hands in a prior post. Background about the calculations of the loss the arena will bring to the public is available in that post.
(See: Monday, May 2, 2011, “Welcome To Brooklyn” Where the Game Is Frivolous Spending On Boondoggle Basketball Arenas- Getting the Image Right.)

So heck, having had to suffer these other Jay-Z promotional images recently here are some corrective ones. Enjoy. (Click to enlarge.)

“Reverse Morality” Clauses for Celebrity Endorsers: What Are They? Something Celebrities, Including Jay-Z, Should Try Enforcing

I just listened to a CLE (Continuing Legal Education) course on the subject of morals clauses in celebrity endorsement contracts. What attracted me to learn more about that topic?

I am interested in the way that Jay-Z (in tandem with his wife, Beyoncé), financially enlisted by Forest City Ratner, have gotten themselves involved in: Promoting Bruce Ratner’s (and Mikhail Prokhorov’s) disreputable Atlantic Yards mega-monopoly. I’ve already provided Noticing New York ruminations on the subject, see: An Insert Preview - Music Superstar Ethics: How Completely You Can Sell “You can say what you say, but you are what you are.” Jay-Zzzzus! (Wednesday, March 9, 2011). A short preview of that longer article is available here.

Representing Celebrity: “Must Watch” Legal Education

The CLE course provided more food for thought on the subject. The course, “A Detailed Look at Morals Clauses in Celebrity Endorsement Deals,” available through Lawline.com, was put together and presented by Rutgers-educated Andrew Bondarowicz, Esq. “the Founder and President of Aregatta Group, a management consulting firm providing strategic planning and management services for clients in the fields of sports and entertainment, finance, and the non-profit sector.” Mr. Bondarowicz’s Lawline-provided bio goes on to tell us that: “In the past, Mr. Bondarowicz has served as Chair of the Entertainment, Arts and Sports Law Section of the New Jersey State Bar Association and as a panelist at the Seton Hall Sports & Entertainment Law Symposium.”

Lawline’s promo for the course bills it as:

a must-watch course for both attorneys representing celebrities as well as those seeking guidance on how to guard their clients from the risks involved in associating themselves with celebrity endorsers.

Scandalously Fun

The course was definitely worth the time I spent with it. And spending some time reviewing celebrity scandals can be fun. In Bondarowicz’s list: Kobe Bryant, (basketball player for the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers team- accused of sexual assault), Kate Moss (high-profile English model photographed when it looked like she was snorting cocaine), Michael Phelps (Olympic swimmer holding the records for the most golds medals won in a single Olympics- eight in 2008- surpassing Mark Spitz’s seven in 1972, caught smoking what appeared to be marijuana from a glass bong) Ben Roethlisberger (football quarterback for the NFL’s Pittsburgh Steelers twice accused of sexual assault- in July of 2009 and March of 2010- without charges being brought), Michael Vick (football quarterback for the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons who served time for being involved in an illegal dog fighting ring.) and Tiger Woods (master golf player who got involved in multiple extramarital affairs).

Impetus to Stay 99 and 44/100% Pure

Impetus for morals clauses also came from Marilyn (Briggs) Chambers, the 1970s porn star actress who appeared tenderly holding a baby on the cover of the Ivory Snow box under the Proctor and Gamble "99 and 44/100% Pure" product slogan. If it is true that Proctor and Gamble had acquired an old stock photo of Chambers for the box, a morals clause wouldn’t have helped in that situation.

Tiger’s Out of the Woods

According to Bondarowicz, the scandal listed with the biggest financial fallout was the Tiger Woods marital infidelity scandal, “estimated to be somewhere between 5 and 12 billion dollars.” That this is the biggest amount reflects the fact that Woods, who after his scandal-related hiatus has resumed playing again, is (still) the most highly paid professional athlete in the world.

Bondarowicz says that the use of morals clauses has been growing substantially, initially having been used to deal with the risky living of Hollywood stars and then as a way to establish distance from and disapproval of “Communism.” According to Bondarowicz morals clauses are standard today in all endorsement contracts, whereas the likelihood of encountering them in 1997 was only 50%.

A Set of Concerns From Those That Are "Hard" to “Softer Categories”

Bondarowicz gives a list of proscribed behaviors, transitioning into “softer categories” that can be included as the trigger points for taking action under morals clauses that attorneys draft:

• Conviction for felony or misdemeanor

• Criminal indictment

• Moral turpitude violations

• Offensive or objectionable behavior

• Violations of public decency

• Actions that can bring public disrepute, contempt, scandal or ridicule

Do Unto Others

If you are imagining that the endorsing celebrity is the one that winds up proscribed from all of the above then you have not jumped ahead to what was of particular interest to me when I was considering Mr. Bondarowicz’s presentation: The extent to which the expectation of moral behavior should be a two-way street and that these standards might be reciprocally applied to the corporations dolling out the money for the endorsements.

I was, for instance, thinking about the possible contractual rights of Natalie Portman the Oscar-winning actress and celebrity figurehead for the House of Dior, who announced her decision to refuse to be associated with Dior designer John Galliano after his anti-Semitic rant in Paris. Galliano was promptly fired afterward, but where would Ms. Portman have stood if he hadn’t been?

Imagine the possibilities if celebrities, like Ms. Portman, by demanding principled action from corporations, could shift the standard of conduct on the part of those corporations.

Buying a Moral Image (and What Else?)

Right now things pretty much only work in reverse. Corporations don’t worry about their own behavior. (Bear in mind the earlier mention of Bruce Ratner/Forest City Ratner as an illustrative example.) They just worry about the behavior of their endorsers and thereby hope to acquire through purchase an image that they themselves may not necessarily deserve.

According to Mr. Bondarowicz (the quoted material below is from the written materials for his course):

* Most companies are trying to achieve a similar set of goals
and objectives through endorsement deals:

* Increase brand awareness or visibility;
* Appeal to a particular demographic;
* Implement certain public relations opportunities; and
* Increase product sales.

By applying these insights you can test to see what you think Bruce Ratner was thinking when he brought Jay-Z (with wife Beyoncé tucked into the bargain) into the his Atlantic Yards promotions. Likely much of the same was intended or hoped for with the invitation that got Jay-Z similarly involved in the Aqueduct Raceway scandal.

And if the star-endorser doesn’t deliver the goods? With the right morals clause the corporation gets to just dump the endorser and hire a new one who will.

Sauce for the Gander?

95% of Mr. Bondarowicz’s all-too-brief course deals with things from the perspective of corporations hiring endorsers (or at least the same thing from the perspective of celebrities who don’t want to get too badly screwed by their endorsement contracts if they are the ones to step out of line- like having to write big checks back to return their money), but there is something that Bondarowicz finally deals with at the end of his presentation that cuts the other way. It is called a “reverse morality” clause. That, counter-intuitively, while having the ring of a bad thing, but it is potentially a good one.

A “reverse morality” clause is where the celebrity, like the example given of Ms. Portman, gets to tell the corporation to shape up. What a phenomenally better world we might live in if there were people who could regularly dictate such corporate rectitude!

Growing Prevalence Escapes Enforcement

Unfortunately, while reverse morality clauses are actually becoming more prevalent (Mr. Bondarowicz’s says they were almost unheard of 20-30 years ago but are becoming popular in the post-ENRON environment) they are rarely enforced. Why not?

Mr. Bondarowicz puts it this way:

While the considerations may be very similar, it is very unlikely that morals clauses will be enforced in reverse situations mainly because the brand is the one typically that’s paying the endorser and unless you’re willing to forgo the financial implications of that deal you tend to find a way to work within the relationship. Secondly, the brand sought out the endorser to serve as spokesman for the company and in times of crisis it becomes even more advantageous to utilize the services of that endorsement to regain credibility and trust with the public.

That rather delicado lawyer-speak can be translated thus: If the endorser enforces the reverse morals clause they will lose a paycheck, but if they work something out with "the brand" to avoid the clause being triggered they just might get paid even more as they bail the corporation out in its days of crisis.

Selling Out At An Even Higher Price

This brings to mind the lyrics of Tom Lehrer’s “Selling Out” in which he sings about, what else (“Selling Out is easy to do/It's not so hard to find a buyer for you . . . sometimes you have to close your eyes”):

I've always found ideals, don't take the place of meals,
That's how it is and how it will always be!

It's so nice to have integrity, I'll tell you why,
If you really have integrity, it means your price is very high.

The Arrival of Crisis Tests and the Integrity of a Moral Philosopher

These lyrics, together with Bondarowicz’s admonitions about times of corporate crisis creating an opportunity for the endorser to earn much more, lead to some speculation about Jay-Z (and Beyoncé). Forest City Ratner is now in a time of crisis. In fact, if you apply the triggers above in the list of standards that usually apply to paid endorsers, Forest City Ratner has by the judgment of many of us crossed quite a few of those lines, at least in the “softer categories.” As for the “harder” categories, there hasn’t yet been a conviction for felony or misdemeanor or a criminal indictment, but many would convincingly argue that Forest City Ratner is dancing uncomfortably close to those triggers as well. - - Does all this mean that Jay-Z’s paycheck is going up?

And here is another thought: It has been Noticing New York's previous observation that with his “You can say what you say, but you are what you are,” aphorism Jay-Z has apparently held himself up to the rest of us as a moral philosopher. Does that, in Tom Lehrer vernacular, mean Jay-Z achieved the “integrity” of having a very high price to begin with? Might Jay-Z even have been lucky enough to have included a reverse morals clause in contracts with Ratner whereby he is now upping his ante?

Steal This Blog Post: Ethics of Pop Star Moguls Seen Through the Lens of Atlantic Yards, Jay-Z and Beyoncé

The offer I am making in this blog post, echoing, the title of Abbie Hoffman’s 1970s book, may be particularly appropriate since I am working on a piece that, in one respect, examines the relationship of copyright and aspirations for publicity (i.e. that often one simply doesn’t care if people infringe your copyright without compensation so long as one gets sufficient publicity as a result).

I wrote a Noticing New York post (linked to below) that, in my opinion, has so far gotten far too little attention. To remedy that situation I offer my own coverage of that post which anyone is free to lift and print, in toto, without complaint by me about any copyright infringement.

Please feel free to print everything appearing below in your own blog/publication, whatever.

Noticing New York Looks at the Ethics of Pop Star Moguls Through the Lens of Atlantic Yards, Jay-Z and Beyoncé

Atlantic Yards takes its place front and center together with Jay-Z and his wife, Beyoncé as blogger Michael D. D. White examines the ethics of the music pop star business in this Noticing New York post from last week deserving of some extra attention.

It may get off to a slow start with cautions concerning the pitfalls of Jay-Z’s music industry-style “360 degree contract”. That’s probably because, as White confesses, this is actually part of a longer work White has in progress, but there is some dandy stuff here.

Atlantic Yards investor and pop-supporter figurehead Jay-Z is ripe for the comeuppance of this critical review given that his enigmatic "You can say what you say, but you are what you are" (whence comes the title to White’s post) whereby Jay-Z apparently is holding himself up to the rest of us as a moral philosopher.

Moral exemplar or simple sell-out? White comes up with some answers via some lamentable Libyan dictator related exploits on the part of Jay-Z’s wife, Beyoncé (and a choice Soundcheck episode that deserves coverage):

When it comes to living up to the standards of “You can say what you say, but you are what you are,” does it matter for whom you perform and who pays the piper?

Well, if you go by what (former) New York Times ethicist Randy Cohen says, it looks like we have an answer, and Mr. Cohen was willing to provide it for Jay-Z’s super-celebrity wife, Beyoncé Knowles on a recent broadcast of WNYC’s “Soundcheck.” (See: Soundcheck, Qaddafi's Entertainers, Thursday, March 03, 2011 and Qaddafi and Pop, Thursday, March 03, 2011.)

* * * *

Beyoncé performed for, and was paid by, members of the Gaddafi clan New Year’s Eve 2009 in St. Barts in the Caribbean. The exact amount Beyoncé received hasn’t been confirmed but, by extrapolation from what other performers received, it is believed that Beyoncé received an amount equal to, or exceeding, the $1 million that Mariah Carey received for similar services.

White enumerates 8 principles supplied by ethicist Cohen that apply similarly to Beyoncé performing for the Libyan dictator's clan or Jay-Z (assisted by Beyoncé) shilling for Bruce Rartner, among them:

1. The imprimatur given by our own governments' dealing with objectionable individuals does not cleanse the unethical act because governments, especially when you look, cannot be assumed to be behaving ethnically. “You have to make these decisions for yourself.”

2. “You as a million-dollar-commanding pop star have a great deal to say about who you give your services to. You have the luxury. You have the option. . . . not to give aid and comfort to a man who has done terrible things. . . You had every reason to know that this was a horrible, horrible regime. Is that what you want to use your talent for?”

* * * *

5. “There are two misdeeds here. One is being a court jester for Nero. The other thing is profiting from it. . . . .

6. . . . . . “There are certain people you just do not offer your talents to.”

7. “This ignorance defense is insulting to pop stars: `You are not evil; You’re stupid’ Some defense!”. . . “When someone is writing you a check for $1 million for one performance: Ask! That’s not demanding too much from any pop star. It’s not like Gaddafi [or Ratner] is obscure. He’s as big in the ruthless tyrant game as Mariah Carey is in the bland pop music game.” “It is possible to be fooled and there are certainly grey areas” but naiveté can just be a convenient and self-serving excuse to take the money and often things are pretty clear-cut evils. You might not have known but you realize when you get to the party.

As for that `realizing when you get to the party' admonition, White zeroes in:

. . . . Jay-Z and Beyoncé were both doing pop star duty by being on display at Forest City Ratner’s March 9, 2010 ground breaking for the Atlantic Yards basketball arena. I think, that’s the party at which they should have realized (if not before). The groundbreaking ceremonies were partially drowned out by the neighborhood demonstrators (I was among them) although the police were doing everything they could to keep those demonstrators back and to keep them as quiet as they legally could.

Jay-Z and Beyoncé can hardly still claim ignorance of the issues. They went to the party. They must have realized what was going on.

But White has also prepped us for these insights via another NPR report on Beyoncé’s Libyan performance that asserts how off-kilter the ethical structure of the music industry is:

Moral qualms and “pangs of conscience” are assertedly factored into the equation. The stars’ scruples are bought and paid for, signed, sealed and delivered as part of the deal and part of its price:

. . . "It's inherent in these situations that the act doesn't want to do it," industry analyst Bob Lefsetz says. "So the person who has the gig always overpays. The question is, how much do I have to pay you so you will overlook your inhibitions and say yes."

* * * *

According to the NPR story, a crucial 10 to 20% of stars’ revenue comes from gigs like these and that the agencies representing the stars usually have entire departments set up to handle them. To wit:

3) It's a storied part of the business.

The agencies who represent these stars usually have an entire department devoted to booking gigs like these. It's part of the business model. You don't do that business, your agency won't make money. This is the commodity that department is selling: access. They provide access to the stars that only the ridiculously wealthy can afford.

There’s more . . . To read click here: Wednesday, March 9, 2011, An Insert Preview - Music Superstar Ethics: How Completely You Can Sell “You can say what you say, but you are what you are.” Jay-Zzzzus!

More recent related coverage:

Friday, March 11, 2011, Lightning Keeps Striking: It Couldn’t Happen To Some More Deserving People . . Over and Over, Again- Ratner, Illegal Bribes and Jay-Z and Beyoncé

Lightning Keeps Striking: It Couldn’t Happen To Some More Deserving People . . Over and Over, Again- Ratner, Illegal Bribes and Jay-Z and Beyoncé

We wouldn’t want to indulge in speculation because sometimes you just don’t know . . . or do you?

Sometimes stories just have a way of coming together. . . and then you think about them. And when you think about them they come together even more.

Right now Norman Oder of Atlantic Yards Reports is pulling together two parallel stories where the (speculative?) non-coincidence of repeated patterns is so clear that even the New York Times has begun to cover the community complaints that (Times real estate business partner) Forest City Ratner may have a pattern of getting a repeated pass in more than one scenario for making (and benefitting from) illegal bribes to government officials.

Attracting Lightning

It’s that OMG-lightning keeps striking in the same place phenomenon. It may startle you, but if you know your science then you know that not only can lightning keep striking the same place, if the conditions are there it is quite likely to.

Suspense and . .

It may also be described as the couldn’t happen to a better person phenomenon. That is to say that sometimes when you have watched the operations of a firm like Forest City Ratner closely for a long time you have found yourself wondering for just how long they are going to escape the consequence of a certain style of heinously cynical conduct. Looks like the answer may be not much longer. . . or, at least, not forever.

Background and Links to Research the Details

Here, quickly, are pertinent links to the two stories respecting Forest City payments going to bribe government officials for development benefits:

• Ridge Hill In Yonkers (involves buying approval for the $630 million,1000-apartment, 81-acre Ridge Hill Forest City Ratner Project in Yonkers). Thursday, January 7, 2010, Got “Bilked?” The New York Times Biased Report on Federal Investigation Involving Forest City Ratner, Thursday, March 11, 2010, The mystery of Ridge Hill: however FCR avoided indictment, does the developer remain (as per ESDC) "a good corporate citizen"?, Wednesday, January 06, 2010, Forest City Ratner, unnamed/unindicted, cited as giving indicted man consulting job after he got Yonkers Council Member to change vote on Ridge Hill, Saturday, April 10, 2010, Overstated allegation that Yonkers pol was indicted for "accepting a bribe from Ratner" subject of heated exchange among lawyers in remaining AY case, Friday, March 19, 2010, Legal payoffs, dubious payments, FCR's corporate ethics, and the continuing mystery of Ridge Hill

• Senator Carl Kruger Indictments (involves an effort to get Forest City Ratner excused from a $9 million obligation to fund its building of the Carlton Avenue Bridge for its Atlantic Yards mega-development.) Friday, March 11, 2011, Two unanswered questions in the Kruger case: Does the ESDC still trust FCR? Why did FCR try to get the state to pay for its bridge obligation?, Thursday, March 10, 2011, Yes, Kruger corruption charges involve Atlantic Yards; unnamed "Developer #1" is FCR; Bender: "I don't mind fucking the Carlton Avenue Bridge" March 10, 2011, Yes, Kruger corruption charges involve Atlantic Yards; unnamed "Developer #1" is FCR; Bender: "I don't mind fucking the Carlton Avenue Bridge" March 10, 2011, $leaze rap for top pol, March 10, 2011 Krugerpalooza!

As some of the links above will allow you to find out, Forest City Ratner has not yet been indicted with respect to the illegal bribes to government officials from which it benefitted substantially. We await the day. In that regard Mr. Oder observes about the Kruger indictments:

If Forest City Ratner, which is not named, is not a target, this might be a repeat of Ridge Hill, in which the developer benefits from apparent corruption but is not penalized.

Lightning Attracted Here- Lightning Attracted There- Let’s Link It Up

In terms of pulling things together on the lightning-keeps-striking front we’d like to do our Noticing New York bit to link the two now conjoining scenarios of Forest City Ratner bribing government officials with another set of lightning-keeps-striking scenarios that were the subject of our last Noticing New York post: An Insert Preview - Music Superstar Ethics: How Completely You Can Sell “You can say what you say, but you are what you are.” Jay-Zzzzus! (Wednesday, March 9, 2011).

In that last post we linked:

• the is-this-really-a-coincidence involvement of Jay-Z with both the Atlantic Yards and Aqueduct Race political scandals (and you might also throw in his problematic Yankee fandom represented by his signature Yankee hat), with

• the appearance that Jay-Z’s wife, Beyoncé, made performing for the delectation of Libyan Dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s family, for which she was paid an estimated $1 million or more.

With the help of ethicist Randy Cohen and a handy supplemental NPR report we went into an appreciable amount detail evaluating the ethics of these situations and describing why there is a lightning-strikes-here effect for this kind of conduct in the pop superstar music business together with what Jay-Z and Beyoncé really ought to be doing with respect to Muammar Gaddafi, and, more important for Brooklyn, what this husband and wife team should be doing with respect to Mr. Ratner, a man both of them have made pop-star appearances to support.

Our Noticing New York question for these superstars continues to be: When, for ethical reasons, are they going to stop supporting Mr. Ratner . . . and perhaps pay reparations to the community by donating moneys involved to an organization like Develop Don’t Destroy.

Come on, guys- - Come on, Jay-Z. How many incidents like these indictments involving Forest City bribes to government officials have to mount up before your ethics kick in and you and Beyoncé walk away from Mr. Ratner? As Norman Oder points out, these wiretapped “f**k the bridge” bribe conversations are evidence that Forest City Ratner is really “scrounging.” Small picture, they are scrounging in ways that show a lack of commitment to the bridge but that is just filling in the details because, big picture, Forest City Ratner, with all its shenanigans has always shown a lack of commitment for the community.

An Insert Preview - Music Superstar Ethics: How Completely You Can Sell “You can say what you say, but you are what you are.” Jay-Zzzzus!

This post provides a partial preview of a much longer piece that is in the works, but I think you will find that the preview stands well on its own. And it’s topical.

As I indicated in my last post (See: Monday, February 28, 2011, Private Sector Croynism Seeks to Replace Government in Wisconsin: Might New York Be Leading the Way?) I am involved in writing something time-consuming right now. What I am working on involves the admittedly idiosyncratic and ongoing augmentations I am making to an earlier post: Adding A few More Off Topic Notes (Or Are They Really?).

Those of you who are following the ongoing additions to A few More Off Topic Notes have doubtless figured out that the post meditates about the performance of music and how it interrelates the shape of the city. (Also, if you are keeping track you’ll be aware of some upcoming live performance’s that come with a Noticing New York recommendation:

Shepley Metcalf’s Fran Landesman show at the Metropolitan Room (two more performances this March):

Something Irresistible: New Songs by Fran Landesman
Music Director Ron Roy on piano
Chris Rathbun on bass, Gene Roma on drums
Sat March 19 at 7:00 pm
Sun March 20 at 4 pm

And Red Molly (with Pat Wictor) at the next First Acoustics event:

Red Molly
with Pat Wictor
March 19, 2011
All seats $30.00)

The preview that follows is only part of a much longer insert (I do mean much longer) I am working on. The insert will be placed just after the discussion of the Christina Milian copyright infringement lawsuit. That will lead into a discussion about copyright, music licensing rights, performer relationships with the community and then readers will find themselves reading this section about Jay-Z and the ethics of music superstar megadeals. . . .

Happy reading. . . .

* * * *

360 Degree Contracts

These days methods of making money in the music industry are in a state of flux and there are more ways to make money from music and its performance than from just the sale of the music alone. For instance, touring, appearance and merchandising fees are becoming much more important sources of income for artists. That’s probably a good jumping off place to start talking about what in the industry are known as “360 Deals.”

What are 360 Deals? Here’s an article to refer to: You Ask, We Answer: What Exactly Is A 360 Deal? November 24, 2010, by Tom Cole.

Also the image below makes things pretty clear:


(From: Tuesday, July 27, 2010, Music Publishers And The 360 Deal, Posted by Bobby Owsinski.)

Ergo, writes Mr. Cole, a 360 degree deal is:

. . . usually a deal with a record company in which the record company also participates in the income of all of the other aspects of the artist's work, such as songwriting and merchandise, in addition to making money off the records."

But Cole points out that deals are often individually tailored to include most rights while excluding some others so that, according to Glenn Peoples, Senior Editorial Analyst for Billboard magazine, “most deals are about 270, maximum.”

Corporations Picking Up on Shifting Revenues in the Industry

360 degree deals are picking up money from where it is shifting to in the industry. Cole notes that plummeting record sales are “half what they were a decade ago” while a recent earnings statements for Warner Music Group reported that non-traditional income accounted for “13% of revenue in its most recent quarter and 10% for the full year” when a few years ago it was “nothing.”

What Kind Of Grab?

Cole’s article reviews whether the deals are good for artists. With other sources of income becoming more important and “a bigger part of a record label's pie,” Peoples says these deals reapportion things so that the record companies are “taking revenue from artists. So, it's been called a land grab” (this is ironic phrasing considering what we will be discussing in a moment).

Quoting alternative industry experts, Cole’s article informs us of two things that seem almost contradictory: Danny Goldberg of Gold Village Entertainment representing 15 artists tells us that these “multi-rights deals” are rarely to the performer’s advantage (except perhaps in country music and overseas) but Peoples says that “in the U.S., multi-rights deals are standard now.”

Getting to the Grassroots of the Question

Whether these deals are good for artists depends on what kind of artist you are and how you are getting your publicity. Goldberg informs us that “the power of alternative media, touring and the Internet work to a smaller rock band's advantage.” According to Goldberg, such deals don’t make any sense for “most of the people I represent . . . .because they already make enough money live.” (Hmm, we are back to live music again.)

The question essentially comes to whether an artist wants to build a fan base from the top down or from the ground up. In other words, if you have a band that is being built up grassroots style via its relationship with the community it doesn’t make sense. Such a multi-rights deal might make sense, however, if you are what is described as a “baby band” where the hope is to have all the band’s popularity spring full blown by virtue of the record company’s promotion. (Does that sound reminiscent of the earlier discussion concerning the shortcomings of industry-created bands like the Monkees?)

Superstars Like Madonna and Jay-Z

Multi-rights deals are also being entered into- and this is very different- not only by people who want to be transformed overnight into stars by the publicity machines of record companies (or concert promoters) but by those performers who are already superstars, like Madonna and Jay-Z:

The first 360 or multi-rights deals that gained wide attention were not between artists and record labels but between performers and the giant concert promoter Live Nation. Madonna signed a 360 deal with Live Nation in 2007 that landed the performer a reported $120 million over 10 years and gave Live Nation a share of her touring revenue — but no money from recorded music. The following year, Jay-Z signed a deal with the concert promoter worth roughly $150 million over ten years.

(There’s been earlier Noticing New York coverage of Jay-Z, including how his signature Yankee baseball cap associates with a crime wave. In a just a moment we’ll be dealing with Jay-Z again in more detail.)

Trapped By What You Sign

But whether you are a baby band aspirationally seeking shortcuts to the top or already a superstar, you better be careful what you sign. Peoples describes the difference between what he calls “active” and “passive” deals. If you are going to sign away all your rights you want an “active” deal “where the music company owns a promoter or a merchandise company and is actually actively working the rights for those artists and taking a cut.” A passive multi-rights deal is essentially a trap, the “label could just take the money even though they're not providing any value” by providing publicity.

Active deals can still have their own set of traps to avoid, and here we are going beyond what the Cole article had to say. Why do you have to be careful what you sign? All those active obligations can run a lot of ways and cover a lot of things. For instance, when the corporations promote you that means you might have to appear somewhere. Just where that might be we’ll talk about in a minute. When all is said and done, if you sell too much, will you still own your soul?

Superstar in a Constellation of Lies

This Noticing New York discussion of the city-shaping aspects of music and the structure of the music industry could not be complete without discussing the city-shaping-size political scandals in which Jay-Z has been involved, Atlantic Yards and Aqueduct Raceway. Perhaps in these scandals we see the effect that 360 degree multi-rights deals can have in shaping our cities. It is easiest to see what this means in the case of Atlantic Yards. Through his appearances at strategic events Jay-Z has been giving cover to a ruthless developer’s abusive land-grabbing* seizures of private property in brownstone Brooklyn, whereby that developer is seeking to quash competition and alternative community development with 50 acres of high-density mega-monopoly. Thirty of those acres are contiguous acreage found at the Atlantic Yards site, the rest of them closely linked and sitting over the same ganglia of converging key Brooklyn subway lines. With Jay-Z’s help, the developer has been selling this project based on an outrageous constellation of falsehoods.

(* probably not exactly what Peoples meant when he referred to 360 degree contracts `land grabbing’ above.)

What Is Jay-Z?

“You can say what you say, but you are what you are.” This philosophical remark about how you conduct yourself in life is regularly attributed to Jay-Z by Tavis Smiley and a list of others.

OK, if that’s Jay’Z’s own quote then we clearly know what he `can say,’ but what actually IS Jay-Z if he’s involved with such scandals? Well, maybe with a 360 degree multi-rights contract you don’t know until you read all the fine print in the contract. Might we presume Jay-Z didn’t get himself involved in these scandals? What if, instead, it was his promoters that got him involved.? What if Jay-Z’s contract said for him to show up so Jay-Z just did? Who knows whether the particular contracts he signed allow him to still say what he wants to say but the real question is whether he still gets to be who he would otherwise choose to be.

Let’s slow down a minute. It is probably too fanciful to speculate that Jay-Z’s original multi-rights contracts got him into these messes. Nevertheless, Jay-Z, by this point, may, indeed, be constrained on matters like Atlantic Yards by other contracts he has entered. In style, content, even business approach and philosophy, those contracts’ clauses and obligations may actually have a lot in common with the kind of thing he was signing onto with a 360 degree deal. (Some other perspectives are available here.)

If Jay-Z is already under contractual constraint does that mean, game over?; that questions about `doing the right thing’ are now out of bounds? We’ll consider a conclusive answer on this involving Natalie Portman before we leave this subject. First let’s review some of the ethical basics.

Who Cares Who Pays the Piper? Jay-Z’s Wife, Beyoncé?

When it comes to living up to the standards of “You can say what you say, but you are what you are,” does it matter for whom you perform and who pays the piper?

Well, if you go by what (former) New York Times ethicist Randy Cohen says, it looks like we have an answer, and Mr. Cohen was willing to provide it for Jay-Z’s super-celebrity wife, Beyoncé Knowles on a recent broadcast of WNYC’s “Soundcheck.” (See: Soundcheck, Qaddafi's Entertainers, Thursday, March 03, 2011 and Qaddafi and Pop, Thursday, March 03, 2011.)

Beginning with Beyoncé rapping about wanting to be “shown the money,” the Soundcheck episode addresses a recently-in-the-news Wikileaks disclosure that Beyoncé is privileged to be amongst a small elite of top entertainers to be paid large sums of money to perform for the family of Libyan Dictator Muammar Gaddafi (alternate spelling used by the Times: Qaddafi).

The Facts:

Beyoncé performed for, and was paid by, members of the Gaddafi clan New Year’s Eve 2009 in St. Barts in the Caribbean. The exact amount Beyoncé received hasn’t been confirmed but, by extrapolation from what other performers received, it is believed that Beyoncé received an amount equal to, or exceeding, the $1 million that Mariah Carey received for similar services. (See: WikiLeaks Cables Detail Qaddafi Family’s Exploits, by Scott Shane, February 22, 2011, Mariah Carey, Nelly Furtado ‘embarrassed’ over Gaddafi performances, March 3, 2011, and Mariah, Beyoncé, Usher Face Calls to Donate Qaddafi Money to Charity, by Steve Knopper, February 28, 2011) Beyoncé (not giving details of pertinent amounts) recently publicized that she donated “all” of the money she received to earthquake relief efforts in Haiti in after she learned the promoter had links to Gaddafi. If you parse things to try to determine the matter from Beyoncé’s own admissions it is difficult to determine whether Beyoncé knew who she was going to be performing for when she was contractually committing herself, but it is quite unlikely that she actually went to her performance without being conscious of who she was performing for. In the Soundcheck episode Rolling Stone journalist Steve Knopper provided the facts.

The Ethical Analysis:

Ethicist Randy Cohen started by disparaging the ethical standards of the music industry in general. Mr. Cohen cleared up the applicable ethical issues with a number of definitive pronouncements:

1. The imprimatur given by our own governments' dealing with objectionable individuals does not cleanse the unethical act because governments, especially when you look, cannot be assumed to be behaving ethnically. “You have to make these decisions for yourself.”

2. “You as a million-dollar-commanding pop star have a great deal to say about who you give your services to. You have the luxury. You have the option. . . . not to give aid and comfort to a man who has done terrible things. . . You had every reason to know that this was a horrible, horrible regime. Is that what you want to use your talent for?”

3. “Donating the proceeds to charity does not cleanse you. An act that is wrong in itself remains wrong even if you do something virtuous later in the day. . . You still did wrong for taking it.”

4. While it may not cleanse a bad act, penance is possible for which you may get “partial credit” if you give away the money and acknowledge that you did something wrong, especially if you give the money to the victims of the bad person from whom you took the money. The closer you can come to giving the money to an organization that is determined to do work in this respect the better.

5. “There are two misdeeds here. One is being a court jester for Nero. The other thing is profiting from it. So giving away the money clears you of one of those wrongs but not the other.”

6. Even if Beyoncé had done it for free she still should not have done it. “There are certain people you just do not offer your talents to.”

7. “This ignorance defense is insulting to pop stars: `You are not evil; You’re stupid’ Some defense!”. . . “When someone is writing you a check for $1 million for one performance: Ask! That’s not demanding too much from any pop star. It’s not like Gaddafi [or Ratner] is obscure. He’s as big in the ruthless tyrant game as Mariah Carey is in the bland pop music game.” “It is possible to be fooled and there are certainly grey areas” but naiveté can just be a convenient and self-serving excuse to take the money and often things are pretty clear-cut evils. You might not have known but you realize when you get to the party.

8. Once there is an “organized boycott” the “stakes go way up” “to go against that is reprehensible.” [No organized boycott had been put in place with respect to Gaddafi.]

Radio listeners phoned in to the show and also provided comments on the Soundcheck website that you can read if you go there. You can even still add your own. But before you do, read on to consider how inextricably ingrained this kind of alleged misconduct purportedly is when you are in the high-paid pop star business.

Ingrained Against the Grain Conduct?

A more recent NPR report on Beyoncé’s problems makes it sound as if big pop stars routinely structure their business operations so as to be virtually deprived of the economic option to do the right thing, notwithstanding Randy Cohen’s carefully parsed qualms about ethical conduct. (See: Pop Stars, Private Shows And Political Consequences, March 8, 2011, by Zoe Chace and Jacob Ganz.)

This NPR report looks like it is the result of an effort at damage control by people in the music industry, people perhaps connected to the stars now being exposed. It doesn’t look like successful damage control; it seems to sort of backfire. (Note: if you listen, the on-air story- which begins, “This is a place you will probably never be. . . Beyoncé is on stage in a black leotard performing her chart-topping songs with the kind of production you expect at Madison Square Garden. . .”- is edited differently from the text found on the website quoted below.)

According to the NPR story, a crucial 10 to 20% of stars’ revenue comes from gigs like these and that the agencies representing the stars usually have entire departments set up to handle them. To wit:

3) It's a storied part of the business.

The agencies who represent these stars usually have an entire department devoted to booking gigs like these. It's part of the business model. You don't do that business, your agency won't make money. This is the commodity that department is selling: access. They provide access to the stars that only the ridiculously wealthy can afford. Ray Waddell, who covers live entertainment for Billboard magazine, says, of the stars who perform at gigs like these: "They come to count on it. It can be 10 to 20% of their touring revenue." . . . . As we've explored on this blog before, pop artists are increasingly reliant on big, highly produced shows to make money. Those shows are very expensive. They need gigs like this to supplement the fireworks their fans expect.

Moral qualms and “pangs of conscience” are assertedly factored into the equation. The stars’ scruples are bought and paid for, signed, sealed and delivered as part of the deal and part of its price:

. . . "It's inherent in these situations that the act doesn't want to do it," industry analyst Bob Lefsetz says. "So the person who has the gig always overpays. The question is, how much do I have to pay you so you will overlook your inhibitions and say yes."

But what may mitigate whether you can sleep at night with a disquieted conscience is the fact that it is all over so quickly and painlessly, almost as if you weren’t there for the secret performances at all:

"Usually they send a private plane, you perform for an hour, you get paid a million dollars, you can be back in your bed that evening," Lefsetz says.

What is this story’s take on whether Beyoncé knew what she was doing?

Did Beyonce and Mariah Carey and everyone else know Gadhafi’s son was footing the bill? It's hard to imagine that they didn't. The venue is small, and the Gadhafis have a notorious history of throwing ridiculous parties like the one Beyonce headlined.

Buried in all the bad news of this NPR story article is one smidgen of hope. Not all stars are indiscriminate in their moral choices:

. . . musicians are essentially forced to set their own standards. Some bands won't do shows for beer companies or tobacco.

Now, keeping things in perspective, Bruce Ratner is probably as bad or worse than a tobacco company and not as bad as Gaddafi or his sons.

Truly Giving Back to The Community?

Here’s something to wonder: Given what is depicted above about how these shows subsidize the stars’ overall operations and are a part of the economic model that keeps the supporting agencies in business, do you imagine that Beyoncé returned the entire $1 million (or plus) fee, or would you like to join in the suspicion that what she sent to charity was net after what was required to support her operations? No figures have been given so we don’t know.

Necessarily Becoming A Party to a Realization

When it comes to Jay-Z and Beyoncé, can they claim ignorance with respect to the Atlantic Yards scandals? I keep thinking about Randy Cohen’s statement that you can be fooled, naive, confused, or just plain stupid (and therefore have been excusably ignorant for a time) but, as he says, you realize when you get to the party. Jay-Z and Beyoncé were both doing pop star duty by being on display at Forest City Ratner’s March 9, 2010 ground breaking for the Atlantic Yards basketball arena. I think, that’s the party at which they should have realized (if not before). The groundbreaking ceremonies were partially drowned out by the neighborhood demonstrators (I was among them) although the police were doing everything they could to keep those demonstrators back and to keep them as quiet as they legally could.

Jay-Z and Beyoncé can hardly still claim ignorance of the issues. They went to the party. They must have realized what was going on.

Portman Important

And are you morally cleansed if you are already locked in by your pre-existing contracts? No. If the offense is great enough pre-existing contracts don’t have to matter. Case in point: Natalie Portman, who just won the Oscar for Best Actress, likely helped precipitate the firing of star designer John Galliano from the House of Dior when she stated she was refusing to be associated with him due to his antisemitic rant in Paris notwithstanding that she had already signed a deal to represent Dior’s perfume:

Natalie Portman, who recently signed a deal to represent Miss Dior Cherie perfume, said Monday: ““I am deeply shocked and disgusted by the video of John Galliano’s comments that surfaced today. In light of this video, and as an individual who is proud to be Jewish, I will not be associated with Mr. Galliano in any way.”

(See: John Galliano Fired From Dior, March 8, 2011, by Rebecca Leffler.)

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From this point on the Noticing New York article still being written continues with a further discussion of the effects of copyright laws on the structure of urban environments. (To be continued in future posts.)