HOPE Tracts : In a City Near You

H.O.P.E. has begun distributing informative tracts in cities across the United States. Feel free to download and print your own to distribute.

Do Not Watch Mind of Mencia

From our member D.H. Miller

It's not that becuase Carlos Mencia is crude, offensive and annoying (he is) that I want his show ("Mind of Mencia" on Comedy Central) off of the air; it is instead because it is both not funny and completely false advertising.

I would have expected more from the network that brings us great shows such as Reno 911, The Daily Show, South Park and Chappelle's Show (R.I.P.), but I guess Viacom needed a new hit so badly that they decided to get a no-name like Menica to host a show eerily similar in format and structure to Dave Chappelle's masterpiece.

Carlos Mencia, as IMDB.com will tell you, is not, as he would lead you to believe, Mexican. Carlos Mencia is actually half-Honduran and half-German, therefore making him NOT a "beaner" and eliminating the five 5 minutes of his show's premiere. In fact, his real name is not even 'Carlos Mencia,' it's Ned Holness! It turns out (and I'm not making this up, although it sounds like something out of a Chappelle's Show sketch) that the owner of the Comedy Store (located in Los Angeles) decided that Ned's name needed to (and I quote) "sound more Mexican," so he came up with a new name for poor Ned, the fake-Mexican, half-German, horrible comedian.

It is one thing to be offensive, I have no problem with people being offensive. Daniel Tosh is one of my favorite comedians and I'm surprised how successfull he has been since his entire act alienates most of the audience at one point or another. Ned "Carlos Mencia" Holness is offensive for the sake of being offensive and never seems to back it up with any decent jokes or observations. His comparing the present racial tensions with Arabs in America to Blacks in America could have been insightful if he didn't constantly use the name "Achmed" and describe the situation with the analogy "it's like a game of tag!" No, racism is not a game of tag "Carlos" and no joke should last more than 1 minute, let alone 5!!! When Dave Chappelle commented on racism, he did it cleverly and inventively, when Ned "Carlos Mencia" Holness does it, he rocks around like a drunked frat boy and describes how much he dislikes "Achmed" with a disturbingly glazed look in his eye.

The jab at Chappelle's show in the opening scene would have been funny if it didn't come off as Viacom acting like a spoiled second grader who got angry because another kid wouldn't share his cool new PSP game. Everything about the premiere had an undercurrent of anger and malice that poisoned the show. "Carlos" isn't funny as much as is he belligerent. "Mind of Mencia" needs to be kicked of the air, because it exactly the sort of pedestrian entertainment that your group fights against. For being unneccesarily offensive without being funny, for pretending to be something that he is not, for even attempting to take the place of the genius, Dave Chappelle,
"Carlos Mencia" needs to be kicked off the air and return doing voiceovers for "The Proud Family" on the Disney Channel, where horrible entertainers belong.

Sincerely,
D.H. Miller (a proud supporter of the H.O.P.E. cause)

---------------->UPDATE<------------------------

The IMDB profile for Carlos Mencia has been changed to downplay the Nedness of his name. Half-German isn't even there anymore. This may have something to do with the following sites making reference to the embarassing profile:

aint it cool
rabon rant
amazon reviews
jambar

Want more? Just do a google search for Ned Holness.

H.O.P.E. PSAs

A Very Special H.O.P.E. message...

As a service to the public at large, H.O.P.E. is releasing a series of public service announcements to be played on Dickie Barrett's morning radio show on Indie 103.1 in Los Angeles. The series of spots will serve as warnings about upcoming movies, music, and television as well as to inform listeners of H.O.P.E.'s mission. The first spots target media consolidation, The Man, and the abysmal Mind of Mencia.

http://www.indie1031.fm/main.html

and the Winner Is. . . . .

You may remember our recent ( in the geological sense ) contest about defacing the Ryan Seacrest star that was embarassing the Hollywood walk of fame. We did not realize we would be so overwhelmed with responses, especially during the organizational campaign for 2005. So it took us a little longer than we expected to choose a winner.

There were many great poop pictures, and some very random shots that we're not sure exactly what they mean, and a few "E" for effort entries. In the end, however, there was one clear winner. Matt Curtin attempted to re-sell the Ryan Seacrest star to the next highest bidder. After receiving his images, we went out and got Matt to stage an impromptu auction at his "sidewalk sale"... footage of which will be seen in the H.O.P.E. documentary.

Big Bird : Soon Brought To You By Viacom Ltd.

There is one place where advertising dollars and media consolidation can not impede the progress of good ideas, and can not drag programming quality into the craphole. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting uses federal dollars to fund public broadcasters, who in turn give us Civil War documentaries and Nova. Seriously, however, the public broadcasters (including NPR) are widely seen as one of the few unbiased sources of news information.

This one place exists because the government decided that instead of selling all the broadcast real estate out there, that they would hold onto a tiny little bit and fill it with programming without a money trail. So what's the problem?

The Republican chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on labor, health, and human services says that there is a liberal bias in CPB's programming choices. Because of this, he wants to dramatically slash the CPB funding over the next two years.

While we at H.O.P.E. are non-partisan, we will simply say that to axe the CPB for any reason is a terrible idea. Further cuts place our news-watching options in the hands of a smaller group, and eliminates a trusted source of news (especially foriegn news.)

Here is a nice way to influence the upcoming votes.

Here is an excellent history/writeup of the debate so far.

Here is an easy way to call your senator and influence this upcoming vote

Paris Hilton : Pre-Retired-Ish

Paris Hilton is going to stop making terrible entertainment, which would be a major victory except that it won't happen for "two years".

Can you imagine if you got hit by a bus tomorrow, or six months from now, or (God Forbid) 23 months from now? You would be smashed with the last months of your life ruined, and with the end of the tunnel in sight.

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Gearing Back up . . .

H.O.P.E. is back on the air.

Sort of.

After spending the last few weeks speaking with organizers and pundits of like-minded causes, H.O.P.E. has managed to get our collective acts together. Posting is going to be down to one or two a week, tops.

This is not a sign of weakness, and H.O.P.E. has never been stronger. The website will be relaunched shortly with our own hosting and new features. Membership will be addressed in a more comprehensive manner and our enemies will be destroyed. We will drink their tears from a golden chalice, and become drunk off their sorrow.

In the meantime, remember how Paris Hilton is a celebrity? We know that not everyone on the television has to be penning The Great American Novel in their spare time, but is this lady for real?

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The Revenge of the Minister

The Minister of Information would like to extend to all regular readers here, both good and bad news:

The Good: Everything at H.O.P.E. is solid and there are several big campaigns and partnerships we're just about finished hammering out. There is a redesign of the website on the way, as well as serious membership content and privilages.

The Bad: These sort of things don't grow on trees. We need to scale down our blogging (even more than our current scaled-back state) in order to devote more time to pertinent H.O.P.E. missions and problems. So it sucks, but that's how it's going to be.

Fight On!

FOX : Casting New Idiots

What a suprise. Someone is trying to cash in on the success of American Idol...

The mediocre show that humilates poor singers and propels the good singers into terrible acting roles has a new imitation. The strange thing is that the new imitation is from the same network.

FOX is casting for dancers to be on a new dancing reality show that has people dance instead of sing. Dance dance dance! While making fun of people badly dancing in a nightclub is sometimes fun, this show promises to be nothing of the sort.

FOX, you got served!

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David Crosby : Right On!

The Minister isn't sure if he could pick David Crosby's music out of a lineup, but he is sure that David Crosby's interview fron Frontline is great. In it Crosby traces his path through the music industry, and specifically is called on to point out when it changed. His insight into the way musicians are treated by their labels is a unique one, and worth reading. An excerpt (with the interviewer in bold):

… I'd like to know the nature of a deal, a record deal. You don't have to be specific about the money if you don't want to be, but it would be interesting to know about recoupment, how it works, how much money you guys would get at the beginning, and how long would it would take you to get it back. …

A record [label] is essentially two things. It's essentially a vendor and a bank. What they do, in terms of working with artists, the old days -- and still to this day, to some degree -- is they give you the money to make the record, for which they charge you what amounts to a million percent interest. They give you the money to make the record, but when they get the record, then they own it and they do everything they can to cheat. Everything. Recoupment.

They'll try to cross-collateralize it to everything you ever made. So if they don't succeed with this record, they can hold up your royalties on everything else you've ever done, to recoup. They try to get some of your publishing if they possibly can. Of course, we don't give it to them. They try to be able to sell your stuff in packages. In other words, take pieces of your album, put them with other people's pieces, and make package albums. We try not to let them do that. They try to only pay you publishing on 10 end songs, which means, if you had 13 songs, you can't put the other three on because they won't pay you.

I think one of the most glaring examples of what they do wrong is they cheat as a matter of policy on paying, because they know that you'll have to, first, hire an accountant and audit them. Then, when you get the audit figure, and they owe you $486,000, they'll offer you 30 percent, 30 cents on the dollar in settlement, knowing full well that you'll ask for 100 percent and that you'll settle somewhere around 50. The other 50 percent is free money. They knew it going in. They intended to do it from the beginning, so that they could get the other 50 percent for free. Hence, just a little bonus thing, thank you very much, and it's from heaven. And they do it, and it's totally dishonest. And they all do it. And they do it as a matter of policy. They know they're going to cheat, going in. …

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