United Airlines feels the power of social media, driver liability and the Takata airbag recall, how the drought and heavy rains affect wildlife.
The United Airlines incident could teach a valuable lesson about social media strategy
A man was forcibly removed from a United Airlines plane at Chicago's O'Hare Airport on Monday, and the troubling footage taken by several passengers has since gone viral.
The company says the flight was overbooked. The man was told he'd have to get off the aircraft. When he refused, the airline called the police. A struggle ensued.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uz3EDgJu8Zk
Reaction online was swift and overwhelmingly negative. On Tuesday morning, the markets responded to waning consumer sentiment.
Outrage has become a staple of our online, social media-connected world. Pure, digital ire is changing a lot: including the way companies do business.
Juntae Delane is the founder of DigitalBrandingInstitute.com.
He talked about it with KPCC's Take Two.
Highlights
Yesterday's incident is under investigation, and I want to be sensitive to those involved. But online this morning the hashtag "New United Airlines Mottos" is trending. If you click it, there's a deluge of tweets, memes, and videos. People are mad, and it's public. It's almost as if social media is rebranding United Airlines.
Yeah, absolutely. It's not surprising that people are taking to social media, in particular for this industry. Anytime you have any negative occurrence with an airline; consumers are used to taking it out on social media and expecting some response.
This new "motto" hashtag that's been trending on Twitter is something that's not surprising. It's bringing in other people's voices and expressing their discomfort with what they saw.
It's changing the way we express outrage. Before we'd maybe send a letter to some department head at United Airlines, but now we can just put it out there and everyone shares our disgust.
Consumers are really trying to expose the injustices of these major organizations and I really attribute that to the Occupy Wall Street movement, about 10 years ago after the housing crisis. If you were a corporation, the word "corporation" had a negative connotation because people began to distrust corporations.
As social media started to become more prevalent, people started to take their voices to that platform. It goes back to what we saw in the political landscape, police brutality, all these hashtags about boycotting organizations. Now it's really impacting their bottom lines. It's time to take a serious look at how they're operating.
People will remember this video. They'll remember the memes. The mottos. How do companies even grasp something that's gotten this big this fast?
I think the most important thing is to address it immediately. If you do not address it in a timely fashion, then social media could start a firestorm.
For organizations who are silent during times like this, then people make up their own assumptions and they're able to build more content on those assumptions which can really be detrimental to your brand.
If United called and said, 'Mr. Delane, we need help,' what would you recommend right now?
Wow. That's a good question. First thing's first ... I would reissue a statement on behalf of the CEO recognizing the re-accommodation word being used out of context. I'm sure he didn't mean to associate re-accommodation with what was seen on the video.
And I would also work at really explaining the story behind the ins and outs ... what happens behind the scenes for United so that people can get a closer glimpse at why these policies were developed.
At the end of the day, what they saw didn't look right. But if they understand the policies behind it and everyone on behalf of United apologizes for any negative impact this had on consumers, then ultimately it will be a step in the right direction.
Press the blue play button above to hear the full interview.
(Answers have been edited for clarity and brevity.)
Democrats rush to grab voters amid Orange County's changing political tide
The Democratic Party is vying for congressional seats currently held by Republicans in Orange County in the hope that it will help tip the majority of the U.S. House of Representatives back in its favor.
The party sees vulnerability in historically red districts that flipped for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. Also, some Republican representatives won their last elections by narrow margins, and many of them are catching heat from anti-Trump constituents.
Democrats are already moving senior staff to Irvine in anticipation of the November 2018 election.
So, what is it about Orange County that makes it ripe for a Democratic power grab?
Take Two's A Martinez spoke with Fred Smoller, professor of political science at Chapman University in the city of Orange. They discussed the demographic changes in Orange County and what compels voters in the area to show up at the polls.
Interview Highlight
In 1990, the Republicans had a 22 percent advantage in Orange County. That advantage fell to 9 percent in 2015, and it's only 3 percent today. So there's a long-term trend in which Hispanics are replacing aging Whites.
Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by 5 percent in the previous primary in June. Democrats out-voted Republicans by a huge majority. And we're seeing young people and Latinos favoring Democrats over Republicans.
*Quotes edited for clarity
To hear the full interview with Fred Smoller, click on the blue Media Player above.
Drought and deluge: How SoCal's native and non-native species are faring
What do French cuisine and invasive species in Southern California have in common?
A lot, apparently.
Species that wreak havoc like the bullfrog and the European garden snail were introduced to Southern California so people could eat them.
And they ended up thriving — much to the detriment of the region's native species. But the five-year drought and recent wet weather seem to have given the natives an advantage.
Greg Pauly is the curator of reptiles and amphibians at the Natural History Museum and he's been watching all of this. He joined A Martinez to break down how native species have been faring.
How do you know if something is native or non-native?
"You would like to think that it's always black and white and it's not. There is a gray area. What we're thinking about is species that arrive to a region on their own without any assistance from people. So when we think about native species, we're thinking about those that have been on this landscape for a really long time. But of course, we have some species that may very well have been transported by people, intentionally or unintentionally thousands of years ago.
So, what do you call a species that may have been moved to a region 6,000 years ago? Or 13,000 years ago? Or 40,000 years ago? It's not always crystal clear whether it's native or non-native. But in many cases, we have a historical record that shows that a species wasn't here and often times those records come from museum records. We know it wasn't here and sometimes we can see when they first show up.
Is it always bad?
"The vast majority of times where non-native species show up, they find themselves in a completely unique place and what usually happens is they die off. In some cases, they may become established but they probably have very little negative effect.
There's a species of Gecko called the Mediterranean house Gecko that is showing up all across Southern California and we think it probably has a very neutral effect. It's taken out lots of insects around porch lights, but that's about.
But there are a few species that have really detrimental impacts. So the bullfrog, for example, we sort of term it "a mouth with legs." They can just eat pretty much everything smaller than them ... everything from ducklings to small turtles to fish ... so they can have a really dramatic impact on some of our native species."
To listen to the full segment, click the blue play button above.
The legal hurdles of driving with a faulty Takata airbag
In January, automotive manufacturer Takata Corp. was found guilty of wire fraud after the U.S. Department of Justice said the company deceived automakers about the safety of its products.
The company's airbags, found in almost two dozen brands of cars, can explode in the event of a crash, producing metal shrapnel that can kill or main occupants.
Forty-two million American cars contain the faulty bags. They're the subject of the largest automotive recall in history.
But here's the problem. Local dealers haven't been able to get new airbags to replace the bad ones.
That means tens of millions of people are driving with cars that could cause injuries, and it's possible their insurance companies might not cover the damage.
Take Two's A Martinez spoke to Greg Keating from USC Gould School of Law for more.
To hear the full conversation, click the blue player above
Tuesday Reviewsday: Eddie Palmieri, Juana Molina and more
Take Two contributor Steve Hochman stops by with his selections of new music to refresh anyone’s playlist.
Here are his picks:
Sylvan Esso
Album: “What Now”
We kick off this week with an ode to radio. An odd ode, but an endearing one. And that’s pretty much a concise description of the makers of this song, “Radio,” the Durham, North Carolina-based duo that calls itself Sylvan Esso. That was certainly a first impression of the act when it opened for Tune-Yards a few years ago — homemade electro-pop with tall gawky Nicholas Sanborn operating the machinery and Amelia Meath singing and, well, dancing of a sort. It was hard not to be charmed.
But then, at some point, if one was paying attention, there was a probing poetry to the songs, real artistry and depth inside the shabby geniality, which also marked the 2014 debut album, “Sylvan Esso.” (Even the name has a nice naiveté: Sylvan coming from a sprite in a video game they both played, Esso simply being a musical sound.)
“What Now,” the second album, builds on that with some added sophistication but without losing the shabbiness. Opener “Sound” starts with a crackling, like a scratchy record or electronic static, the glorious patina of analog audio. Soon that is joined by Meath’s muffled voice, gradually becoming more clear, more distinct, until at the end it’s just her voice, alone, singing, “All you feel is sound.” It’s a theme through the album, in addition to “Sound” and “Radio,” there’s a particularly bouncy song called, well, “Song.” There’s a gee-whiz sense of wonder to it all, as if sound and songs carry all the mysteries of life if you only listen. Heck, “Radio” is as much about sex, and somewhat explicit at that, as it is about the music on the airwaves.
And with life, of course, there’s death. Yet, the song “Die Young” also has a kind of innocence to it. “I was gonna die young,” Meath sings, then almost sadly examining reasons to live. Well, one reason in particular: “Had it all planned out before you met me, I had a plan you ruined it completely.”
She sounds kinda sad about having to “contend with the living blues,” but reassures us, “Oh, I don’t mind, I’ve got the fire.” Yup, even with that, oddly endearing.
Juana Molina
Album: “Halo”
As with much great music, much great art, there is something disorienting about the music of Argentina’s electro-pop shapeshifter Juana Molina.
It’s very thoughtful of her, in the English translations of the Spanish lyrics accompanying the album, to provide a compass reference for something that is literally disorienting to some of us, particularly those of us who speak a different language, come from a different culture and, to the point, a different half of the globe. With the translation of the lyrics to the song “Al Oueste (In the West)” she includes a footnote to a line referencing an expectation of sunshine through a north-facing window: “*in the southern hemisphere, the sun peaks out in the north.”
Of course, for those of us not proficient in Spanish, it might be a moot point as we wouldn’t have caught the reference in the first place. But it underscores the point that there’s plenty else to keep one off balance in this album. And as with the misplaced sun, it’s often things you might not realize are unsettling until you are in the middle of them.
One of Molina’s favored musical tools is repetition, with musical phrases and patterns on loops that often seem incomplete or fragmentary. It like something’s missing, and perhaps in going over it all again and again it will somehow continue on to completion — but never does. Even in the course of the full songs these elements remain in sketch state, understated in a way that can be slightly unsettling, but just enough so that it holds our attention, draws us in, as if we need to find lost pieces of the puzzle, but can’t. Over that she sings in a way also understated, reserved, a little breathy in a way that tilts between guarded and intimate, between conversation and confession, between curiosity and claustrophobia.
She also finds a nice balance of acoustic and electronic. “Los pies helados (Frozen Feet)” favors the former with its loop of a short guitar figure as its spine over which it takes on layers of voice and percussion. “A00 B01,” as the name might suggest, takes a digital approach in its hallucinatory tone.
It’s an approach that Molina — who came to fame as a popular, provocative Argentine TV sketch comedy star in the 1980s and ‘90s— has perfected over the course of now seven albums in the past 22 years. It’s a process of subtraction, of elimination, of bringing things to their bare bones. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that bones are central to the album artwork and the visuals in the video teaser that preceded the album release — bones with blinking eyes, bones in clothes. It’s both amusing and disturbing.
So, in that context, one of the most jarring, unsettling, disorienting moments comes from something that ought to be the opposite: “An unexpected clarity came over me,” she sings in “Sin Dones (No Attributes).” It’s something of a be-careful-what-you-wish-for moment. A what-do-I-do-with-this revelation. It’s also fleeting. Which may be the point. One gets the impression that maybe in her mid-50s, as she looks to her future, the last thing she wants is to have all the pieces in place, to have the answers, that not having questions to explore is the most fearful thing she could imagine.
Eddie Palmieri
Album: “Sabaduría”
We spent so much of 2016 mourning the many great music figures who passed away that we may have neglected to properly celebrate those still with us with landmark legacies. One of those is salsa and Latin jazz giant Eddie Palmieri, who marked his 80th birthday in December by inviting a bunch of friends to help make a new album. Among them were such notable proteges and acolytes as New Orleans saxophonist Donald Harrison Jr., bass innovator Marcus Miller, jazz guitarist David Spinozza and funk drummer Bernard Purdie, as well as past and present regulars of Palmieri’s standards-setting bands, including Havana-born violinist Alfredo de la Fe (who played with Palmieri in the early 1970s) and New York/Puerto Rico congero Little Johnny Rivero.
The album title, “Sabaduría,” means “Wisdom,” which while a well-earned accolade makes it sound like a somber affair. It’s anything but. Save for the mid-set “Life,” a reflective solo Palmieri piano interlude, this is a rollicking affair, encompassing the full range of the maestro’s more than 60 years in the business — everything from classic salsa to modern funk, New York sophistication to New Orleans strut, small-combo conversations to big-ensemble workouts.
Opener “Cuerdas y Tumbao” — cuerdas means “strings,” tumbao denotes a sexy rhythm or sway — kicks it off with roiling percussion (including timbales, of course, by Venezuela native Luisito Quintero) over which Palmieri’s piano and de la Fe’s violin (the strings) take fanciful flight. Miller, Purdie and Spinozza team as a fluid unit on the jazz-funk title song. Harrison brings in different sides of his hometown taking a lead role on the tropical jazz of “Augustine Parish” and the boisterous “The Uprising,” with its side-trip to a Mardi Gras parade. Eddie Palmieri turned 80? A parade seems the least we could do.
Here's Palmieri and band at Lincoln Center honoring his 80th birthday: