The Collision of Populations, Tequila, and Other Poisons

We labor remarkably to hone our poisons.

I am watching Lou Dobbs on CNN and he is talking about immigrants and the crumbling status of the United States and the internal rot the American empire is enduring. A bloated border manager from a dusty Texas outcropping is featured in a discussion about the failure of various fences and fencing technologies. The federal government is abandoning the virtual fence application altogether – and this is troubling. Demographic profiles of Texas and California are put on screen and demonstrate an unsurprising composition of Latino populations in those states, and there is footage of people dropping over a tin-sheeted border demarcation and scampering off.

Mexico is expanding northward.

I think about the many reasons for one population growing into another adjacent one. The lead reason likely is found in a more macro view – a natural need to fill vacuums. This plays out on the kind of large scale that is reasonably overlooked by sociologists and politicians. These vacuums might be found in undesirable jobs or in excess food or in the general continuance of more basic responsibilities and less desirable habitats. And the expansion is unwelcomed – an odor among the cleaner and more regal indigenous people – as it is unwelcomed in other locales where the spores of other cultures are sprouting, as seen in Europe and in Africa and in Asia.

It must be better to cleave the grind of any two populations with some kind of formidable wall. Construction of anything is a stimulus. The side effects of division are concepts for mathematics.

I have consumed the Mexican sun – browned where I have been, humbled in the searing where the country bowed before me, opened in the crawl of the eastern white sand beaches and in the slow slap of the bluer water. I have negotiated nothing in markets where I am happily misunderstood, holding trinkets and bearing no fruit. In these loose and vagrant regards I am a nihilistic embodiment of Mexico’s long-toothed and sharp-edged agave.

There are four types of tequila. Blanco – commonly referred to as silver or white in the English tongue – is blue agave in its purest form. Blanco is clear and without the touch or delay of aging. In contrast, gold tequila is adulterated with colorants and flavorings. These gold tequilas are the cheaper tequilas used in many restaurants and found undulating in mixed drinks. Additionally, there are two aged varieties: reposada, an early barrel-aged product that gives off a golden hue – and anejo, highlighted by a minimum aging period of one year and identified in an amber color and in flavors that are dependent on the barreling.

The effort to produce these varieties demonstrates a broader equation: the energetic pursuit in tethering the poison is greater than the ties.

The process of producing tequila begins when the blue agave plant is ripe – usually eight to twelve years after it is planted. On average, a decade passes from germination to cultivation. The rough leaves are chopped away from the core, and the core – which weighs between forty and seventy pounds on average – is assessed for ripeness. Ripe cores are brought to the distillery where they are chopped up and set to roast. The roasting converts starches into sugars and the roasted cores are shredded and the resulting juices are pressed into fermenting tanks where select yeast recipes are added to convert the sugars into alcohol.

It takes roughly 15 pounds of agave core to make one quart of tequila.

I traded voicemails with Bill Ligas, public relations director for Barton’s Capitan tequila brand, and explained my intention as a writer for Ground Report to better understand what one tequila brand may have over another. He did not have anything for me, but Bacardi’s Corzo tequila staff pointed me to their PR agency, Harrison and Shriftman. According to a press release sent to me by Danielle Abraham at Harrison and Shriftman, Corzo was “created for stylish, urban trendsetters with a passion for sharing fun and innovation…” They go on to explain about the design of the bottle and of the overall experience.

I am uncertain if bottles and the experience of the trendsetting consumer are important.

It is the people with their rudimentary shears, toiling and cutting as they are – out there under the closer Mexican sun. They stay with me. The poison yield continues and the patient crop holders compile their chum and glasscutters are called to make bottles and on it goes. Where is the transcendent importance in this?

And so fences are embellished and rhetoric is refined – because the more concrete and the more immediate is more important. And some of us write about it and post it and look for fellowship. This is random and anonymous activity that is without reward.

We are rated by peers and ignored by the inebriated.

Can the New York Times Company Remain Viable and Relevant?

These are curiously masochistic days for the New York Times Company. Stumbling now into what will likely be a distracting proxy fight with an investor group that happens also to be their largest shareholder, there does not seem to be a correct decision coming from either their commercial or editorial divisions.

Last week, the New York Times Company announced an agreement with Tribune, Gannet, and Hearst to form Quadrant One – an online sales conglomerate designed to sell advertising inventory across the many local newspaper sites owned by the four media companies. The new entity has been described to the advertising community as an attempt to make it easier for advertisers to purchase online media across a broad swath of local markets, but in truth it is an arrangement that effectively wipes out the brand equity of the participating local newspaper sites. These local newspapers were clearly properties that the New York Times Company felt necessary to acquire way back when. To now put the local web components – and the individual futures of the local newspapers’ declining print businesses – into an anonymous commercial bucket with three other media companies that frankly the New York Times Company does not need is nothing less than admitting that the local properties have little value.

Dana Hayes, the interim CEO of Quadrant One – and full-time SVP of advertising sales for Tribune Interactive – spoke with Advertising Age. “Specific inventory will go into Quadrant One. Premium positions and units above the fold will go in,” he said. The most desirable online advertising inventory across New York Times Company’s local newspaper sites will be represented by competitors of the New York media empire – under the umbrella of providing an ease-of-use consultative service to national advertisers. The advertisers are, in turn, able to buy this inventory at rates that will likely reflect the dismissive nature of the Quadrant One establishment – in other words, rates that reflect a commodity.

But while questionable commercial decisions can be quietly corrected at a later date, grand editorial mistakes at a newspaper that was once considered a champion of integrity have longer-term consequences. The decision to run with the McCain story during this most important presidential election year may prove to be the New York Times’ biggest blunder.

Earlier today, MarketWatch labeled the New York Times an “embarrassment” and went on to say that the paper “lowered itself to the rank of shrill tabloid.” MarketWatch is a notable Wall Street voice – something the New York Times Company does not need under the backdrop of proxy fights and stock price declines. The stock was down more than 3% today alone.

While one could argue that MarketWatch sits at an opposite speculative pole to that of New York Times, the reliance on anonymous sources has brought universal media scrutiny to the editorial team at the paper. Bill Keller, the paper’s editor, is now publicly stating that he is surprised at the magnitude of the negative reaction.

In this era of consumer-generated editorial, rising blogger and independent writer influences, professional journalism is under siege – and the McCain piece did not help the profession. The New York Times Company exists on the foundation of its content; it has no other diversity in the company’s portfolio of offerings. The company’s future viability rests on the respect of its readership, and the McCain fiasco is putting a bad taste in the collective mouths of that declining readership.

And while it is true that the paper does brandish its leftist slant with a somewhat unsettling frequency, it is also true that the current presidential contest is unearthing a growing population of people who do not readily embody a particular party’s philosophy. It is not a large leap to assume that this population does not have the stomach for the creep of editorial perspective in what is otherwise deemed to be a reliable news source. For these reasons, independent and more neutral sources are continuing to take mindshare – and the share of advertising dollars – from the New York Times Company.

In these unstable times for the newspaper business, the implosion at such an esteemed journalism brand is remarkable. With the proxy fight on the horizon, one does not know for whom to cheer. It seems that the folks at the company may need to be saved from themselves.