Are Nestlé's Business Practices Racist? & NCAA Hoops Coach's Abusive Tactics
Republicans Trust Trump Most for Ukraine Info, Johnson & Trump Push for Bill That is Already Law, "Golden Bachelor" Was Good for Seniors, Phil Ochs Sings "Outside of a Small Circle of Friends"
What I’m Discussing Today:
Kareem’s Daily Quote: Sometimes you just have to accept that crap happens without any reasonable explanation.
Trump Shockingly Finishes First In New Poll — And It's Not About The Election: America’s most notorious liar is their most trusted news source.
Trump and Mike Johnson push for redundant ban on non-citizens voting: There’s already a law banning it, but that won’t stop them from trying to take credit.
Nestlé Adds Sugar to Baby Milk and Cereal in Poorer Nations, Report Finds: Is it really that hard to run a business ethically?
Kareem’s Video Break: I watched it three times to make sure what I was seeing was real. It is.
NCAA Hoops Coach Exits With Hefty Payout—and a Trail of Scarred Players: We need to do a lot more to protect our children from toxic coaches.
‘Golden Bachelor’ Couple to Divorce Three Months After Televised ABC Wedding: The show’s shocking popularity helped change public perception of seniors from old lumps to passionate, hopeful people. The crash-and-burn of the couple doesn’t change that.
Phil Ochs Sings “Outside of a Small Circle of Friends”: Ochs was the poet laureate of folk singers. No one was better.
Kareem’s Daily Quote
The shit that happens to you is Not to Be Understood.
Eddie in Cost of Living by Martyna Majok
When the downtrodden character of Eddie utters this outraged statement of resignation in Majok’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Cost of Living, I felt the shock of recognition stand the hairs on my arm straight up. Sometimes the world pummels us with fist-sized hail in the middle of July and all we can do is ask WTF! We search for logic, for cause-and-effect, for karmic retribution, but sometimes the randomness and injustice of some events leave us slack-jawed and shaking our heads. It is Not to Be Understood.
The quote is neither about giving up nor about the need to rise from the ashes to fight back. It’s just about acknowledging that sometimes the world is beyond our understanding, beyond our comfortable notions of morality or science. It diminishes us the way looking up at a billion stars diminishes us. That doesn’t mean we abandon our commitment to creating a just society in an indifferent universe. It doesn’t mean ignoring the scientific pursuit of answers. It just means accepting that we are all subject to the cruel whims of existence.
There is some comfort in just knowing that to be true.
This Week in Trump-Induced Insanity
Trump Shockingly Finishes First In New Poll — And It's Not About The Election (HuffPost)
SUMMARY: Most Republicans trust Donald Trump more than the Pentagon or the news media for information about the war in Ukraine, a surprising CBS News poll revealed Sunday.
Nearly 80% of Republicans take the criminally indicted former president at his word on the conflict.
Meanwhile, 60% of Republicans trust the Pentagon, putting the military source a little ahead of Fox News and other conservative media, which came in at 56%. A mere 33% trusted journalists reporting from the war zone, while 27% put faith in the State Department.
MY TAKE: This might seem like a throwaway article that’s worth a head shake and nothing more. But it’s far more dangerous than that and to dismiss it lightly is a mistake. Almost 80% of Republicans use Trump as their most reliable source for information about a war he’s repeatedly given misinformation about. He’s also proven himself to be a servant to Putin, despite Putin being a dictator, a murderer, and a braggart about interfering with U.S. elections. The fall of Ukraine has the potential to pull the U.S. into a ground war that will cost us lives as well as much more money, yet, the Republicans seem eager to do Putin’s bidding.
This is proof that the GOP’s constant berating of legitimate news outlets to create mistrust of facts has had a detrimental effect on the country. We should have taught our children how to seek out unbiased information to make rational decisions. Instead, we’ve ended up with self-serving “news” that makes it easier for people not to have to think but just react. Forming opinions isn’t supposed to be easy or instantaneous. It should require reading, researching, thinking, and arguing. But in a culture that rushes to embrace AI over putting in their own effort, the only intelligence we’ll have left is artificial.
Going to Trump for reliable information is like getting all your food from a toxic waste dump thinking the toxic chemicals made the food more nutritious.
Trump and Mike Johnson push for redundant ban on non-citizens voting (The Guardian)
SUMMARY: Donald Trump and the House speaker, Mike Johnson, plan to push for a bill to ban non-citizens from voting, the latest step by Republicans to falsely claim migrants are coming to the country and casting ballots.
Voting when a person is not eligible – for instance if they lack US citizenship – is already illegal under federal law. It is unclear what the bill Johnson and the former president will discuss in their Friday press conference at Mar-a-Lago will do to alter that. But it is one more way for the former president to focus on election security and to ding the Biden administration over the situation at the US-Mexico border, a key issue for likely Republican voters this November.
Like the other claims Trump makes about the 2020 election being stolen, the talking point about migrant voting does not have facts to back it up.
MY TAKE: What I look for most when reading the news are signs of politicians and businesses manipulating people to get their way. We have two major wars going on in the world, an election, an epidemic of laws restricting the rights of marginalized people, and so much more. And Trump and Johnson want to spend Congress’s time and efforts on passing a law that is already in effect, just so they can brag that they are defending the election process while their party enacts laws to make it harder for Blacks, students, the poor, and the elderly to vote. This sleight-of-hand politics in which their actions are the opposite of their words would be laughable if it weren’t so destructive.
I don’t understand why Republicans don’t feel insulted that their leaders have so little respect for them that they treat them as imbeciles.
Nestlé Adds Sugar to Baby Milk and Cereal in Poorer Nations, Report Finds (Time)
SUMMARY: Food and beverage giant Nestlé adds sugar and honey to its infant milk and cereal products in developing countries but not in European markets, according to a new report published Wednesday.
In a joint investigation, Zurich-based watchdog Public Eye and the International Baby Food Action Network (IBFAN) sent popular baby food samples in Asia, Latin America, and Africa from Nestlé—the world’s largest consumer goods corporation worth $265.57 Billion of April 2024—to a testing laboratory in Belgium. The study examined 150 products sold by the company in low and middle-income nations, including best-selling brands Cerelac and Nido.
“We targeted sugar because that's the number one enemy when it comes to nutritional health,” Laurent Gaberell, Public Eye’s agriculture and nutrition expert, tells TIME. “Exposure to sugar at an early age of babies and infants can be very problematic. It's one of the key factors behind the obesity crisis. If babies are exposed to sugar, they basically have a higher risk of being obese later, and suffering adverse health outcomes such as diabetes, hypertension, and other chronic diseases.”
The results of the testing found that “almost all” Cerelac wheat-based cereals by Nestlé in those regions, targeted at infants from six months of age, contained added sugar equivalent to an average of 4 grams per serving, or a sugar cube. The highest volume of sugar added to a product, at 7.3 grams per serving, was detected in the Philippines, followed by 6.8 grams in Nigeria and 5.9 grams in Senegal. Additionally, seven out of 15 countries did not declare on product labels that sugar was added.
…Public Eye and IBFAN found that sugar was not added to equivalent products in Nestlé’s home nation Switzerland, as well as other major European markets in Germany, the U.K. and France. The report calls this “double standard that is unjustifiable and problematic,” both from an ethnic and public health standpoint.
MY TAKE: Let’s see, they don’t add sugar to mostly White countries, but they do add sugar to mostly Black countries. Sure seems racist.
The reason they add sugar is because the children like the sweetness and will want more, just like adults. But with more than one billion obese people worldwide there is a tragic cost to their destructive policy.
A spokesperson for Nestlé explained their policy: “Baby food is a highly regulated category. Everywhere we operate, our portfolio complies with local regulations or international standards, including labeling requirements and thresholds on carbohydrate content that encompasses sugars.”
One of the problems I had watching Succession was that everyone in the family was so corrupted by their entitlement and selfish needs that everything they touched immediately became corrupted. A reverse Midas touch. Nestlé is operating on the same principle or lack thereof. Their explanation doesn’t address the issue, just their attempt to dodge ethical responsibility. Corporate double-speak that attempts to exonerate them from their evil deeds.
People who measure their self-worth and intelligence by how much money they can amass at any cost to others miss the point that in doing so they have already revealed both their lack of self-worth and intelligence. They have chosen the most simple-minded, most shallow measure of success. Worse, they are rightfully reviled for damaging the health of children just so they can shove a few more bucks into their pockets.
Kareem’s Video Break
At first, I thought this can’t be real. But I did a little research and found a bunch of videos of young Gavriil Scherbenko playing piano at various ages through two years old. All you can do is stare in wonderment—and watch it again.
Spread the word, leave a comment. Rinse. Repeat.
NCAA Hoops Coach Exits With Hefty Payout—and a Trail of Scarred Players (Daily Beast)
SUMMARY: An NCAA Division I women’s basketball coach finally resigned this week after years of abuse allegations, including racism and homophobia. But former players are outraged by her “amicable” departure and hefty six-figure severance payout, telling The Daily Beast that her alleged misconduct goes way beyond the recent allegations that led to her exit.
Northern Kentucky University announced on Friday that it had cut Camryn Volz’s contract short following an investigation into alleged abusive behavior. An anonymous report filed to school officials on March 5 alleged that Volz frequently engaged in “racial remarks,” “homophobia,” and “constant degradation of mental health,” according to a redacted human-resources document reviewed by The Daily Beast. A week later, another anonymous report further claimed the coach had “created an environment where fear and manipulation [were] used to” make members of the team “compliant.”
Through a lawyer, Volz denied all of the allegations made against her.
During its investigation, university officials met with all the players on the women’s basketball team, assistant coaches, and other athletic personnel. According to the human resources report, student-athletes accused Volz of racist behavior: regularly mocking Black players’ hair and comparing it to “a horse’s mane,” asking if they were going to get their hair done before the next game, and telling one player that she was looking “rough and tough like they were going to beat someone up because of their hairstyle.” The school’s probe also found that the head coach allegedly made racially insensitive comments about certain cities being dangerous and that she had to “get on” a player who was from one of those places.
Student-athletes claimed that Volz was flippant and inappropriate about her players’ sexuality, especially when they behaved in gender-nonconforming ways, according to the report. She allegedly outed one player on the team, joked about gender stereotypes and made fun of players for so-called masculine behaviors, and had an “overstepping interest” in players’ sexuality. The team further alleged that Volz mistreated players experiencing mental health-related issues by ignoring them, claiming they were “weak,” or badgering them if they cried.
MY TAKE: Over the years, I’ve written consistently about the bad behavior of school coaches. That’s because they have so much power over the vulnerable and impressionable kids we put in charge and very little oversight. School administrations seem to care more about winning games to bring prestige and/or money to their schools than the well-being of the students.
Sports are still a part of the learning environment, not a separate kingdom ruled by all-powerful and unquestioned royalty. First, treat each student with respect. Second, keep your political and religious views to yourself. You have not been hired to teach those subjects and are unqualified to do so. We have to remember that student-athletes spend a lot of time together, which fosters a special bond with their coaches. Also, coaches get to choose who will play the most, thereby showcasing the students for college scholarships or professional drafts. That kind of power over youth can create a cult of dependence.
Most of the players and staff members who were interviewed by the school reported that Volz created “a toxic environment, was aggressively angry and paranoid, and consumed alcohol during team-related activities.” HR documents say that “Volz defended her coaching style and described it wholly appropriate in a Division I basketball program.” Volz dismissed the complaints as the result of the team not winning more games. Her excuses indicate that she is not capable of admitting her mistakes and would undoubtedly repeat them.
What really bothers me here is that the school was apparently clueless about her abuse. They shouldn’t have been. It’s their job to make sure teachers and coaches maintain certain standards in their treatment of students. Too often, administrators don’t want to know how a coach wins, as long as they do. Mandatory anonymous evaluations of faculty by students should be instituted. Yes, there will be the occasional malcontent, but overall, this might weed out the abusive coaches.
Coaches should be teaching students the skills and strategies of the game, but also the lessons that come with sports: teamwork, fair play, and mutual respect. Without those, winning is meaningless.
‘Golden Bachelor’ Couple to Divorce Three Months After Televised ABC Wedding (The Hollywood Reporter)
SUMMARY: Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist were the first Golden Bachelor couple, and less than two months after their engagement was revealed on television on Nov. 30, 2023, they tied the knot in the ABC franchise’s first-ever Golden Wedding.
Now, about three months after the televised event on Jan. 4, the Bachelor‘s history-making couple have announced they are getting a divorce.
They sat down with Good Morning America to reveal their decision but offered little to an audience that will want to know what happened after witnessing their inspiring later-in-life love story unfold. ABC News interviewer Juju Chang’s takeaway after the sit-down was, “It’s a head-scratcher.”
MY TAKE: I know, I know. You’re getting ready to dismiss this article as pop culture fluff unworthy of your attention. Not so fast. Understanding why certain things are popular in our culture is like looking at a chest x-ray: You see signs of health to rejoice and signs of sickness to address before it worsens. You don’t have to indulge in every aspect of culture to understand its significance.
In this case, The Golden Bachelor spin-off of The Bachelor franchise that aired last fall featured a bachelor in his seventies and single women in their sixties and early seventies. The show was a stripped-down version of The Bachelor. No pool parties with everyone in skimpy bathing suits. No trips to Europe. No Fantasy Suite overnights with cameras lingering on them waking up in the same bed. America isn’t ready for sex after sixty.
The shocker was in the ratings. The premiere was the highest-rated debut for an unscripted ABC series in two years. The finale was the most-watched episode of the franchise since March 2021. To everyone’s surprise, there was a large audience interested in watching old people treated as real humans, not just cute or crusty stereotypes. Part of its appeal was the stakes were much higher than in the shows featuring cast members in their twenties. The young will have many opportunities to find love again. These women were veterans of a lifetime of struggles and were looking to share their remaining years with someone. They didn’t have a lot of time to waste.
To have their marriage end after three months is a blow. Most of the relationships in this franchise don’t work out. But the young people usually wait much longer to break off their engagement to make it look good. But again, these are people in their seventies and they’re not going to waste more time than they have to.
The good that came from the show was respect for creating shows featuring older people. A Golden Bachelorette show was announced as soon as they realized they had a ratings winner. Now there’s been some backlash because some fans are disappointed in the way things ended with our first couple. Get over it. They don’t owe you a romantic fantasy. The fact that it didn’t work out doesn’t mean the next one won’t. Let’s celebrate that older people like myself can step out of the stereotype shadows and be shown as passionate, accomplished people never too old to fall in love, never too battered by life to not be hopeful about the next chapter.
Kareem’s Jukebox Playlist
Phil Ochs: “Outside of a Small Circle of Friends” (1967)
Singer-songwriter Phil Ochs was one of the most important voices of the sixties and seventies. He appeared at numerous antiwar and civil rights protests until his death in 1976 by suicide. The brilliance of Ochs wasn’t just in his messages of disillusionment, outrage, hope, and patriotism, it was the poetry, wit, and wisdom of his words.
“Outside of a Small Circle of Friends” is one of his best-known songs, inspired by the infamous rape and stabbing death of Kitty Genovese on the street outside her home in Queens, New York. The case became notorious after The New York Times published an article claiming that 38 neighbors watched the incident without calling the police. National outrage ensued, even though the article was later proven to be inaccurate. In reality, people had called the police and some came to help her. Ochs’s song, however, covers more instances of public apathy and our agility in justifying our inaction when injustice demands action.
Ochs deliberately gave the song a jaunty sound to contrast the horrors of people ignoring others in need, almost as if they are celebrating their own cowardly behavior. It’s easy to be good and kind to people we know or are related to—our small circle of beloved. It’s more challenging to show that same kindness to strangers. But this song reminds me how important it is to do that.
I wonder how many other companies are doing this. It really doesn't surprise me since companies like Nestle, Hershey, and others have bought their cocoa beans from West African farmers that use enslaved people.
Nestle's sugar delivery program is racist and criminal in my view. There are countries in Africa dealing with famine and malnourished children depend on the nations of the world to come to their aid. That is one of the tragedies of the Ukraine war as the delivery of wholesome grain has been affected, which further places Nestle's program as an alternative. To me, genocide takes many forms, and African children developing life-threatening conditions due to an addiction to sugary substances is an intentional atrocity. Perhaps the United Nations will take note of this potential tragedy and address the issue.