Exile in the American Midwest

A few people know how i ended up in the midwest and why, but for public record i will let the rest of you in on the deal.

My best friend from the time we were two years old in New York, Josh, and i grew up together. My mother would go to the farmer's market and buy fresh veggies from Josh's mother Mary. Josh's parents owned an 800 acre gentleman's farm in upstate New York. Insanely academic and intellectual bunch, that family. Doctorates from every highbrow insitution of higher learning. But they weren't very profitable farmers. ANYWAY -
they had a stand at the farmer's market and that is how my mother made acquaintance with Josh's mother.
Through the years our families remained friends. I dated Josh's sister in high school and he dated my sister.
When we went to apply to colleges he was fourth generation lagacy at a college in tulip city (michigan) and had to go there and begged me to go to school with him there. he told me how much i would love it, how beautiful it was.
i told him that he was on crack if he thought i was going to live in the midwest. and i went off to school in boston and L.A. to be in tv news - an anchor man.
Why that? well, growing up from the time i was a young child i wanted to be an architect. i was always out and about on the property building forts, making stone dams on the creek on the property, making forts in the house.
then when i was ten years old my father made me start reading the newspaper every day and watching World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. Dave (my father) told me that i was old enough that i needed to be aware of what was going on the world. And so i read the papers and watched the news.
A couple of months later, there was a terrible hotel collapse in Kansas City while there was a ball room dancing competition happening and people died. and they showed some woman, dead, crushed under a steel i-beam.
it turns out that the collapse was the fault of the architects.
Huh. so i thought at the age of ten that i could not bear the consequences if i did something wrong and people died.
Ok. so time to think of a new career path.
well, i admired Peter Jennings and thought he was great.
But then the local news came on and the local news people were like mongruls by comparison. ugly, badly dressed, badly spoken. eeewww.
so somehow at the age of ten, i decided that i was better looking. better dressed and better spoken than the uggo local news people and hell, if they could do it, i would do it and be brilliant.
SO - that is what i decided and i went to school in boston to study broadcast journalism. i only applied to one school since i knew i would get in. i did. off i went to boston and then to L.A. to check out the entertainment side of things. I decided on real news and went back to boston.
Upon graduation, my advisors told me that i had to go somewhere in the mid west to get on some small mid west network affiliate.

F-U-C-K.

Gee, who did i know in the mid west? yup. lifetime best friend josh that knocked his college girlfriend up in a broom closet and stayed amidst the tulips.

SO, i arrived on the shores of lake michigan and began the search for a tv position. i applied in ohio, indiana, michigan and illinois.
in the meantime i took a job as a waiter at some schmancy joint. parlayed that into work as a gardener for one woman i waited on and a personal assistant gig to another woman i waited on.
the search continued. and i kept getting rejections from tv stations. i finally had a rejection from some station in Gary, Indiana
and after a year and a half i was pissed OFF and let the guy know this in no uncertain terms and asked him WTF was the problem?
He agreed to tell me off the record why he wouldn't hire me, or why other stations wouldn't hire me. FINE.

WHY? well....he proceeded to state the obvious as far as i was concerned. that i was a male, that i had blonde hair and blue eyes, an excellent education, an excellent camerea presence, good writer, good editor...blah, blah, blah.

Then he told me 'what a shame that was. i wasn't ethnic (people wanted ethnic), that i wasn't a woman, i wasn't gay, i didn't have speech impediment, that i was the anti-christ of tv news'.

Well FUCK ME RUNNING!!! having just blown a hundred grand on this great education and i wasn't a lisping, ethnic gay!!!

Well, i decided I would look ethnic. nothing a dark tan and dye job wouldn't remedy. Off to the salon i went to get dark dark hair.
Well, the dye job went horribly wrong and my blonde lockes ended up looking as though i had smeared black shoe polish on my head. but since i was going for the whole thing to be 'real' i had my eyebrows done to match. more black shoe polish.

as horrific as this was with my pale white skin, i thought a nice dark tan would make it all better. off to the tanning booth. well, that didn't go quite right either. it seems that i don't tan. i just get bright red and sunburned.

So GREAT! i look like some kind of stan worhsip freak with third degree burns on his face and piercing blue eyes. Ethnic? YEAH....
riiiiiiiiiiiight. OMG. I don't THINK so.

Then i looked back on the stations i applied to and there were four stations in four states that some guy from india, beaten with the ugly stick, badly dressed and speech impediment got hired instead of me!!!

i don't care who gets the job, but just be better than me somehow. but nope. not the case.

and so this began my exile in the American mid-west.

Comments

Damn! That sucks major ass! Maybe you should just pretend to be gay in the interview with a lysp and when you get the job drop the act? ;)
 
enjoy my exile? well, that's just about the meanest thing anyone has ever said to me. LOL.
i would think it might not be so shocking if one was from here.
 
I was turned down a scholarship in graduate school because I wasn't minority (a.k.a reverse discrimination). I was told that it was preferred that a woman or minority be the recipient. So, I ended up doing my Master's degree overseas and was better for it.

The "tolerant" and "all-encompassing" liberals aren't so color blind, are they?

Yeah, buddy, in some social circles in this country, it's not in style to be a white male, whether you're gay or not.

I'm back in rural PA and I hate it, but sometimes I just love it, too.:biggrin1:
 
Hey Bud! This was a really good blog post and I can (professionally) totally concur....with a couple points of disagreement. I too was totally WHITE, BRIGHT, and POLITE and ready for American Television as the new anchor for the ages...
Sadly - caucasian white males went to the BOTTOM of the list for local TV hires in the late 90's - minorities and especially minority WOMEN were all the rage then! (too bad for us, eh?)
NOW - TV stations are laying off/cutting postiions LEFT AND RIGHT! I was hired to a position 15 years ago and have held on since but have seen countless friends layed off and it PISSES me off even though I still have a job and I'm grateful but I can tell you 'Wood - TV is NOT where you want to try to get a job right now...it's brutal bud... PM me if you want to talk more...peace..

G33
 
Perhaps the difficulty lies in the fact that you expect to recieve everything in life handed to you. ITs not uncommom to pound the pavement looking for work, in fact that is usually the case.
As attractive and WELL educated as you are, its seems that it is your expectation of privialege, is what is holding you back. This could also explain your racist attitude in asumming that people of nonwhite colour are employed NOT baised on THEIR capacity, but to fullfill a quota. The more realistic reason for the rise in mutiracial employment, is that of our societies growth in understanding diversity.With that furthered understanding we are asking for a greater resource of people of all backgrounds.
Perhaps with further LIFE education you will be able to to address what is important in the news apart from simply being a handsome face and good speech training .
Is this one demensional self serving blog something you feel news worthy. If so I believe they have decided wisely in not hiring you.
 
thank you turnstall for your time to read what i wrote and thank you for taking the time to respond.
if you saw vid. of the people that were hired instead of me and deem them more competent and better on camera with a greater depth of the ability to be good at their job, then fine.
what ever it is you do for a living, if i showed up being way worse than you are and got the job, don't tell me you would not be distressed by this fact.
 
You should have stuck with one of the coasts. The west coast in particular is more partial to blondes. I as an incredibly attractive and well spoken black woman have enough rejection letters and thank you for coming in for 4 interview letters but we've opted to go with someone more qualified i.e. a white male that I could wallpaper the White House!

You know I like you Goodwood but I am having a helluva time feeling sympathy for you over this. Why not use one of your families friends to get a junior executive position somewhere?

I asked one woman at an interview some 20 years ago if she would be honest as to why I had not been chosen to be a receptionist. She said because I was too imposing. That I shouldn't wear a suit on my next interview but a dress in a nice small floral print with a jacket or sweater. :wtf2: I tried that for a while much to my parents chagrin. Then a Jamaican neighbor set me wise. She said no one wants a black as a receptionist because you are the first thing people see. You represent the company. :yikes: Damn! Crush my little 20 year old heart why don't you. Here I thought the reason I wasn't getting hired was because I'm dyslexic and on a good day type 30 wpm at best. :biggrin1:
 
Goodwood,

I can imagine your being frustrated when thwarted from getting the job you so dreamed of having. It is horrible when you can just taste something. Let's take the race and ethnicity element out of this. Even if this society were totally homogeneous, there is always going to be someone left out . Yes, it is terribly frustrating that stations use ethnicity to garner favor with the changing ethnic demographics of this country. This is the real villain here. The bottom line. Yes you may very well have been quite qualified as were in many cases all the blacks, Asians, gays, and other groups who applied. They for years have been told they were too ethnic by modelling agencies, treated as less intelligent because of their accents, and my personal catch all that they just didnt fit in because they didnt fit someone else's idea of what an American should look or sound like. Well, the wheel has turned. the playing field is filled with many more people competing for the same spaces. Perhaps your time came too late. But when you look at the overwhelming discrepency that still exists in the ratio of anchors and those presented on screen, there are many who fit you description in key spots. I guess you are just learning or experiencing what many others have since hitting these shores either from steerage or in chains. Opportunities are not a given. But we need to be ready when that opportunity calls our name.
I hope this was helpful.
 
Garwood....and Garth33....I know what you mean. Been there!

A number of years ago, just out of university, I applied and was hired at a local TV station, holding many hats over the time I was there. I started off as a Camera operator, floor director, and then as an announcer, and progressed up the ladder to directing, and finally was appointed the Graphics & Staging Director.

After a year, in addition to my position as G&S director, I was asked to fill in for a guy who was let go and go "ON-Air" doing a
5am "Farm Facts, Futures & Weather" program. I did very well on-air, obtained a following and was later offered an half-hour
"Interview" segment after the evening news which led to producing and directing an 1 hour daytime "Today's Veternary" program
with the local university, and a 3 times a week, live "Anthology" program, all I really enjoyed preparing for and doing.

Two and 1/2 years later, I was doing well, getting excellent work reports, good raises, and then the shit hit the fan!!! I came in
one day and was introduced to my replacement. A woman (younger than I) of a certain ethnic group, and asked to "train"
her. When I asked what was going on, I was told not to feel bad, for 12 of us were being replaced (all by younger, ethnics) and offered other positions at the station. All due to "the changes in demographics" andthe "hardships of the time." We were told
that upper management had to "change with the times" and to "reduce the bottom line." Yeah!!! In other words, we made too much money and they could get someone else a lot cheaper!

We were all offered lesser positions at lower salaries with the words..."we know you will cooperate and understand our position."

Needless to say, NONE of us "cooperated" or "understood", and NONE of us stayed! After that, I had my fill of TV, except for watching it!!! And evern that was no longer a pleasure! Working in the field had ruined my ability to just watch and enjoy TV
.....since I always knew and was thinking about what was going on behind it all......:frown1:

Good luck in your search.....
 

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