Black Men in America have an interview on their site with Jam Donaldson, the creator of Hot Ghetto Mess. I've included a portion of it below. You can find the full transcript
here. Here's the
FAQ page over at HGM.
Jam's educational background:
I’m a native
Washingtonian. I went to D.C. public schools. I graduated from
Georgetown University Law Center (J.D), Howard University (undergraduate) and earned my Masters Degree in
Film and Video from American University. One of my initial goals
was to get into television so I worked in the TV industry for a
while and then went to law school at Georgetown.
And the interview from Black Men in America...
Gary Johnson
sat down with Jam Donaldson, the Founder and Creator of the extremely popular (and
controversial) web site
Hot Ghetto Mess.com which is now a TV show scheduled to debut July
25, 2007, on
Black Entertainment
Television (BET).
If you haven’t been to the site, you need to thoroughly check it out
before you form your opinion. A tour of
Hot Ghetto Mess reaffirms that "mess" comes in all
shapes, sizes and colors. The web site is a shocking and
honest look at an aspect of our community. This web site has
generated a lot of discussion and the owner has been slammed hard
for "airing our laundry" before the world. The site is as sad as it is funny to
some. Should the owner of the web site be blamed? Read
our interview with Jam Donaldson and draw your own conclusions.
Hat tip to the sisters over at What About Our Daughters! Big ups!!
Sign the Petition Here
To: What About Our Daughters.org
From: Edward C. Gold, Advertising Director, State Farm Insurance Companies
Subject: Hot Ghetto Mess on BET
It has come to our attention that your What About Our Daughters blog has noted that State Farm is a sponsor of the new Hot Ghetto Mess program on BET, which does not premiere until July 25, 2007.
As a company, State Farm takes great care to be sensitive to the TV programming for placement of our advertising messages. We continually review all of the media where our advertising airs to ensure it meets our company’s objectives and guidelines. We have reviewed the content of this program, which we just heard about, and we will NOT be airing any State Farm advertising during this program on BET. We have also directed our agency to have BET.com remove any State Farm advertising to appear on the web page on BET.com describing this program.
As
you may be aware, State Farm is proud to be a member of the Family
Friendly Programming Forum. This is an association of national
advertisers encouraging the entertainment community to provide more
family friendly programming options. More information about this
association is available online at www.familyprogramawards.com.
We
would appreciate it if What About Our Daughters could remove the name
of our Chairman and President, Ed Rust Jr., and his address from your
blog site, so that we do not receive any additional calls or emails
regarding this program.Please feel free to forward any further concerns to my attention.
Best regards,
Ed Thanks
The Home Depot and State Farm, but y'all can't trust BET to take care
of your brand. This WILL happen to your companies again because BET
executive have no internal moral compass as demonstrated by a show
called "Hot Ghetto Mess." Clearly BET Executives are contemptuous of
their own audience and you should reconsider doing business with a
company with no moral compass. Let me assure you that I don't know many
people over the age of 25 that still watch BET so you are probably
incurring a significant risk of being associated with offensive
television with far less reward than you think. I can give you plenty
of alternative websites where you could reach large numbers of African
Americans without incurring the risk that they will put your brand next
to some foolishness.
