“Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with His arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that He separated the races shows that He did not intend for the races to mix.”

In 1958, Caroline County (Virginia) Judge Leon M. Bazile said these words as he sentenced Richard and Mildred Loving, a white man and black woman, to a year in prison for violating the state’s law against blacks and whites marrying. The judge suspended their sentence in exchange for them agreeing to leave the state for 25 years.

In 1967 the U.S. Supreme Court heard their case, ruling that such miscegenation laws are against the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment, that they are “measures designed to maintain White Supremacy…[and] there can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the Equal Protection Clause.”

Mildred Loving died on Monday. (Her husband had died in a car crash many years before.)

I’m old enough to understand that 1967 was not that long ago. That’s the thing about getting older — the span of time reveals itself as a continuum. What seemed a lifetime ago, you realize, is just part of a lifetime.
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Mildred Loving’s lifetime ended Monday. Tuesday evening, my wife and I — a couple of the same colors as Mildred and Richard Loving — watched one of our offspring, our 14-year-old daughter, win the county 800 meter championship (going away, if I might brag). I’d like to pretend I told her the story of the Lovings and she ran inspired. No. She just ran, faster (much!) than all of the other qualifiers. Just part of a lifetime.

An old friend of mine consulted a medium. During the conversation the medium asked, “Who is Jeff?”

My friend told the medium about me, just briefly.

The medium responded, “I find him annoying.”

I am, therefore, annoying. I mean, it’s one thing if a regular old person says I’m annoying — that’s debatable opinion. But a medium is supposed to know, feel, and understand true spiritual energy. If she finds me annoying, I cannot argue. I am, at the essence of my spiritual energy, annoying.

It’s somewhat liberating, to tell the truth. If I’m annoying at the spiritual level, well I might as well just go ahead and annoy the heck out of you and everybody else. Because, to quote the Highwaymen, “I is what I is ’cause I ain’t what I ain’t.” And I is annoying.

(For the record, Blogenberg may be skeptical but is in no way dismissive of mediums as Blogenberg is not arrogant enough to think the world can be fully understood.)

A few items the Blogenberg team recommends for your reading pleasure this week…

• Student uses Twitter to contact friends and get out of jail in Egypt.
• Interview with entrepreneurial guru Guy Kawasaki on pitching your product for venture capital.
• In this edition of BNET’s Useful Commute podcast Dan Roam explains how to use simple pictures to explain concepts that typically require complex presentations (at great expense of time and energy). Also discussed at Fast Company.
• Poet Taylor Mali on speaking with authority. (hint: learn to articulately express what you’re “like” actually thinking).
• A recurring theme in this feature is dealing with the rush of content (e-mail, blogs, facebook, etc). Steve Rubel offers tips for dealing with Attention Crash.
• Eight reasons small businesses are good for America.
• The Pentagon Experts story offers an excellent view at how the media (in this case the television) media shy away from certain stories the public cares about - so they go online and to print sources to find the info.
• BNET discusses how to build, run, and duplicate effective teams in the workplace.

Among the large amount of academic study of brand management, some of the most interesting is what might be called brand stretching. It’s what John McCain is wisely doing when he’s not sitting in front of the TV watching Clinton and Obama beat each other up.

Profitability of many products is driven both by market share and what category the product occupies. So, for example, whether premium brands or value brands dominate a category impacts how market share relates to profitability. And moving to or stretching into a new category requires careful planning and execution. Some brands have done it very well. Some brands have not. Mercedes did it flawlessly in introducing the C-Class. Jaguar stumbled when it introduced its “lower-class” model.

I’ve been intrigued to see John McCain stand on that famous bridge in Selma, or walk the streets of New Orleans stating the obvious-but-important observation that the current administration failed that city’s citizens (especially, and painfully, minority citizens) following Katrina.

John McCain, obviously, has very strong market share in his principal product category: Republicans. He also enjoys rather strong market share among independents. So, during this time of waiting for the conventions and an opponent, he decides to present perhaps a new picture of himself to categories where he’s not so strong: Democrats, African Americans, etc.

I’m not being cynical. Not at all. John McCain does not strike me as a man who says the President should have been on the ground in New Orleans, not up in a plane flying over looking down, if he doesn’t mean it. He doesn’t strike me as a man who pays tribute to painful memories on that bridge in Selma, if he doesn’t mean it.

And it strikes me that he and his team are doing some very smart brand stretching.

My teenage daughter is living in a completely separate universe. I know because of a conversation I had with her last week. She had just won the 800 meters in the county regional track meet by 30 meters (now she’s on to the county championship):

Me: I wish you’d consider running track in high school.

Teen daughter: I don’t want to.

Me: But you have so much talent.

Teen daughter: I don’t want to.

Me: Well, maybe when you get to high school you’ll change your mind.

Teen daughter: Dad, if it didn’t mess up my hair I’d run track, but it does, so I won’t.

Me: [Speechlessly praying that she returns from this other universe]
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A local radio news reporter broadcast a 30-second story this morning. It included, “beyond his wildest dreams,” “apple of his eye,” and “hope against hope.” Wow. All in 30-seconds. But this only comes in second.

Denzel Washington wrote a letter of support for Wesley Snipes. “Wesley is like a tree — a mighty oak,” Washington wrote in his letter to the judge. “Many who know him have witnessed the fruit of his labors, have sat in his shade and even been protected by his presence.” Wow. That wins the first ever Blogenberg best writing I’ve ever, ever, ever read while using metaphor like an editorial stealth missile award.

Recommending reading for this week…

• Business Week ranks The World’s Most Innovative Companies.
• Wikileaks is a great site for finding leaked information and documents.
• Slippery versus sticky - Strategic Public Relations discusses the difference between websites that offer an experience versus just a visit.
• What is a blogger? The most recent (and interesting) demographics of bloggers.
• A few days old, but still a very good read on building a small business and sweating the small things.
• Blogenberg lives in this county. Blogenberg is disgusted, yet not surprised, by this example of racism by wealthy “enlightened” white people.
• At CNET, Charles Cooper explains how PR is changing in “Revenge of the Flacks“.
• How can a good video get millions of views, yet still leave unanswered the most important question: did we sell more shoes? MediaPost explains how with the new Kobe Bryant viral video.

I start this post by noting that Senator Obama’s ascension means something to my family and me. My three children are the children of an interracial marriage; none of them considers his or her self white. Seeing an African-American man becoming a party’s presidential candidate is important for our family. But Obama has a slight church problem.

It’s not his controversial former pastor, whom I’ve blogenberged about previously. It’s that, with his impressive oratorical skills, he sometimes forgets he’s not in an African-American church. That’s what happened with his recent “bitter gate.” He didn’t say anything so awful. He didn’t say anything that would make a reasonable person conclude he’s elitist. But he gave attacks an opening.

I’ve been the only white face in an African-American church, at an African-American wedding, and in an African-American club. My wife often listens to the Sunday sermons at Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel at Howard University, and I listen along. It doesn’t make me any darker than the average white guy, just a bit different in my insights.

Homilies at African-American churches often mix political with the spiritual. Not every line would pass a magazine’s fact checker (I’m not sure they would in my church, either) — or political opposition research, for that matter — but the meaning and the feeling are expertly communicated. Obama’s real good at that style of communicating. But, as he’s learning with “bitter gate,” it can be dangerous in politics.

I’ve just switched to Mac; I’m slowly growing out of my PC years. When a Mac is processing something, a colorful little beach ball appears on my screen and it spins and spins until the computer’s work is done. When a PC is processing something a little hourglass pops up on my screen; nothing moves, the sand doesn’t drip. It’s static.

My Mac makes me feel as if something is happening. The PC reminds me that I am waiting. The PC is doing a lousy marketing job.
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My son is a classical pianist. He is studying at a conservatory in a major city with a preeminent pianist. His preeminent pianist instructor told him it’s time for him to perform a full public recital. I’ve helped my son with some advertising and online marketing. Whether 200 or 20 people show up doesn’t matter. Together, we put his face and musical resume in front of the consumers that care about music in a major city. That’s good marketing, no matter how many people show up, because sometimes the marketing is the sale.
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On the rare occasions that the e-mail goes down in our offices I curse — a lot. That’s because, once our clients learn our e-mail is down, it’s bad marketing.

Because good — and bad — marketing is countless little things.

Recommended reading for this week…

• What is “news”? Mathew Ingram takes a look at the changing news cycle and process of news development.
• Tiger Woods on always improving: “The greatest thing about tomorrow is, I will be better than I am today.” Good advice for golf, life, and business.
• As always DoshDosh provides incomparable insight into how to navigate online communities for fun and profit.
• The move towards more environmentally-friendly living will accelerate the decline of print journalism. (Will the same reasoning apply to cars and SUVs?)
• Malcolm Gladwell, author of “Blink,” explains the effect of too much information.
• We all get stuck sometimes - whether it’s writer’s block or that difficult item on our To Do List. Here’s some advice on how to get unstuck.
• John Jantsch offers some useful tips for small businesses on finding high-quality images.
• It’s not all fun and games. An appearance on the Colbert Report can help a candidate gain more donations and media coverage.