Born Burnt

Of course, this should not be confused with Derpitude.

I think we have a good case of proving it. Turpitude is the French form of the word Terpitude. "Terp" is an abbreviation of the Algonquian word Terrapin, which means turtle. The suffix "-itude" is used fo form abstract nouns. Hence, Turpitude means the act of behaving like a turtle.

Sorry, meant anyone of us who are straight with functioning penises would hit that without reservation.

True. Yet anyone of us would hit that without reservation.

Yep, we're up to our elbows in it.

This thread has reached a point where it just might lure NowThis out of hiding.

It was in response to a request in response to a meme a few days ago.

Rural Deprivation vs. Urban Planning

Bullshit. If you're going to bring information, you have to bring enough for all of us.

Does he know about our fat stack of Best Buy coupons?

I don't trust any tweet that has "sooner" in it.

Bust a nut.

For those who thinks it's reasonable to wonder if this person should be representing the university, here is a new article that presents more information about his company: https://www.businessinsider.com/old-school-advertising-agency-richards-group-faces-claims-racism-sexism-2020-10 Inside the biggest independent ad agency, The Richards Group, where some say an old-school culture that included all-male retreats fueled racism and sexism In late 2019, executives from PF Chang's China Bistro came by The Richards Group's office after the ad agency won their business. The Dallas-based agency was known to regularly host games to entertain clients and visitors, and agency founder Stan Richards described this one to the PF Chang's execs as "I'm not eating that," a variation on "two truths and a lie," where agency employees would read descriptions of four Asian dishes, one of which was fake. If the client guessed wrong, one of the employees explained, they would "send all 752 of us on a trip to Asia for free." The real foods, the script went, included turtle jelly, "now available at your local Chinese supermarket," which "might not make for the best complement to peanut butter." Duong Dua, or Vietnamese coconut worms dipped in fish sauce, was described as "Creepy. Crawly. Nope." The fake entry was for a dish called "Firecracker Cricket Legs." "Plant-based food doesn't have to mimic meat to sound appetizing. In the Philippines, sometimes it can mimic bugs. Like the Labassin Waterfall restaurant's snacky dish Firecracker Cricket Legs," the script read. Agency leaders asked everyone to chant "I'm not eating that!" at the end of each description. The blowback in the building was immediate. Two employees said they declined to participate in the exercise, which some described as "tone-deaf," xenophobic "schoolyard humor," and "racist." Richards told Business Insider he didn't see the script beforehand and didn't realize it would be a problem until he learned that some employees had been offended, at which point he apologized. A PF Chang's a spokeswoman said the chain "would never knowingly participate in anything that demeans or negatively characterizes" Asian food and culture, adding, "We are guided by those foundational values and seek partners who are similarly aligned." The chain ended its relationship with The Richards Group in April due to pandemic-related budget cuts. The Richards Group now faces steep losses after racist comments by the founder Richards built a steady business over 44 years by creating classic campaigns like Motel 6's "We'll leave the light on." Today, it's the largest independent agency in the US, with some 600 employees and around $200 million in revenue last year. But now its founder is out and the agency faces steep losses in the wake of racist comments Richards made earlier this month. The 87-year-old had called a proposed ad campaign for Motel 6 "too Black" and said it might alienate the chain's "white supremacist constituents," AdAge first reported. Major clients including Motel 6, The Home Depot and Keurig Dr Pepper fired the agency. The Richards Agency has lost an estimated 40% of its business and may have to lay off around 40% of staff, Richards told The Wall Street Journal. A Motel 6 representative said the company was "outraged" by the statements, calling them inaccurate and "in direct opposition of our values and beliefs as an organization." Richards, for his part, said he "didn't really do anything wrong." He said he rejected the ad because it wasn't broad enough in its appeal. He also pointed fingers at the ensuing media coverage. "I used three words to say why I was rejecting it, and those are the three words that caused such a tremendous uproar and cost us a lot of business," he said. "What's sad about that is that somebody who was on our payroll, that we were paying, decided that he or she was going to do something that would destroy the agency, so somebody went to the media with it, and it had a profound effect." According to more than 10 current and former employees who spoke to Business Insider, the agency is mostly staffed by forward-thinking people. But they said episodes like the Motel 6 and PF Chang's ones stemmed from a rigid, old-school workplace where people were required to abide by strict clock-in times, the founder hosted all-male retreats, and no parental leave was available until 2019. Some insiders said that the agency has fallen behind as the industry has begun reckoning with its lack of gender and racial equality and that its future remains uncertain under new leadership. The agency spokeswoman issued a statement saying, "The 600 people who call The Richards Group home deserve respect, and the chance to focus on positive contributions and apply their talents to work they can feel proud of. "The outpouring of support from messages and on social channels from current and former employees, clients, and industry partners is astounding. Their words and experiences are being shared proudly — not anonymously — and are powerful reminders that, while not perfect, this is a special place where a whole lot of good people have built careers, done great work, and built lifelong relationships that they value." "Our goal is to evolve, address needed improvements, and embrace a new future for our agency," she said. Some said they experienced racism while working at the agency The Richards Group has confronted accusations of cultural insensitivity before. In 2011, Summer's Eve pulled a campaign made by the agency that was criticized for playing on racial stereotypes. In 2018, the agency produced a Christmas card titled "Make the North Pole Great Again" that referenced President Trump and the idea of making "reparations" for misfit toys. A former employee said it led to contentious meetings where others had to explain to Richards why the card was inappropriate. The spokeswoman said the card was meant to be a commentary on national discourse and not a political statement. Like most ad agencies, The Richards Group's leadership remains overwhelmingly white and male. According to the Association of National Advertisers, 75% of ad industry employees were white, 9% Asian, 8% Hispanic, and 6% Black as of 2019. Some people of color said they experienced racist behavior, overt or otherwise, while working at the agency. Brandi Rand, a senior social strategist at The Richards Group from 2014 to 2016, was one of just a few Black employees during her tenure. She said her desk was placed outside Richards' glass-walled office, where guests would be sure to see her when they toured the office. "I felt tokenized. I felt like I was there to say, 'We have diversity!'" said Rand. The agency said race, gender, and sexual orientation had no influence on seating arrangements. Another Black woman who worked at the agency until 2019 said the first week she was there, the man who had recruited her saw her speaking with a colleague and asked, jokingly, if they were having a "secret Black meeting." The Richards Group has a sister agency, Lerma, a Hispanic marketing firm, housed in another building, and some people who worked there said they felt like they were second-class. They said Lerma employees weren't allowed to use the gym or eat the free food on offer in the agency's main building. One said he had never heard of an Hispanic employee going on one of Richards' all-male trips; another said that if she ever saw more than two Hispanic people in the main building, it was "a lot." Richards said he never met many of Lerma's employees but that he "can't imagine that anybody in either organization would feel like a second-class citizen when we do everything we can possibly do to make them feel important and appreciated." The agency has recently paid more attention to staff diversity. In February, it started an employee group called We@TRG devoted to diversity and inclusion. After Richards stepped down, the agency said it planned to conduct an internal audit, schedule bias training, review all client work, commit to increasing minority representation, and hire an executive focused on diversity. Some saw earlier efforts as half-hearted, though. Rand said the agency once called her to sit on a panel with The Marcus Graham Project, a Dallas-based nonprofit that exposes nonwhite college students to the ad industry. She later learned that none of the college student participants ended up getting job offers at the agency while she worked there, though. Before leaving the agency in 2016, Rand said she also reviewed four classes of interns and saw nearly everyone was white. "What is the purpose of this if, ultimately, none of them are hired?" Rand asked. "We've got to do better." Richards told Business Insider he has long promoted diversity by trying to get local Black teens interested in the ad industry by sponsoring scholarships and working with groups like The Marcus Graham Project. "It's a difficult thing to do, because our industry is not particularly diverse, and it's hard to find Black and Hispanic individuals who we can bring into the firm," he said. "[It] has not been a successful effort, but it has been going on for 30 years." Stan Richards led his company with an old-school style that included all-male trips and strict attendance rules Most employees who spoke to Business Insider said they saw Richards as a traditionalist who spoke from a place of ignorance, not malice, and that this was reflected in the agency culture. Counter to the freewheeling culture of the typical ad agency, The Richards Group was rule-bound. There were only three levels of employees: entry-level; group leads; and Richards himself, which enabled him to consolidate control. Richards considered human resources wasteful, and there is no formal HR department. The criteria for bonuses is murky to many, though the spokeswoman said they're based on performance. Two people said sharing any information about one's salary with colleagues has long been a fireable offense. The spokeswoman declined to comment. Asked about his leadership style, Richards pointed to a profit-sharing plan that puts aside 15% of each employee's salary to encourage people to stay. Richards was known for showing up at the office at 7 each morning to use the in-house gym. The agency had a strict 8:30 AM check-in time, and employees were known to ask colleagues to enter their four-digit codes for them if they were running late or take selfies in front of a clock in the elevator when they made it in on time. According to a 2011 Inc. profile, Richards wanted employees to be at their desks early before clients arrived and "dressed to impress, in case that client walked in the door." If staffers were late more than three times in one month, the company took money from their annual bonus and gave it to those with fewer latenesses. At all-staff meetings at the end of each year, Richards named those who'd been late most often as a joke. The company also took $8.63 from people's bonuses for each day they didn't bill for their time down to the quarter hour — an amount the spokeswoman said had to do with how much time it took accounting to track down delayed timesheets. She also said the lateness policy has been suspended during the pandemic. Richards regularly took select groups of employees on his private jet to go deep-sea fishing in the Gulf of Mexico or skiing near his cabin in Deer Valley, Utah. For years, these excursions were only open to men, who were often picked by Richards himself. Even when women began being included, mingling of the genders was still prohibited. Richards paid for these trips himself and limited his interactions with women outside the workplace out of respect for his since-deceased wife, Betty. (He also wouldn't ride in a car alone with a woman.) After she died, he said, he scheduled an equal number of trips for both genders. Richards said work matters were discussed on these trips and acknowledged that "there was a little bit of favoritism" shown to agency veterans. But he insisted that attendance didn't influence employees' careers, and that the only requirement for going on the trips was that they knew how to ski or fish. Some insiders said Richards had a right to use his private time and property as he wished. But one former employee said that because these were staff trips, they doubled as work functions. One employee described the trips as "Stan time, because he signs your raises." The agency presented a challenging environment for parents Some teams, like new business development, are led primarily or exclusively by women; Richards estimated that around 70% of staff are female. But employees said the agency was a tough place for working mothers. The Richards Group did not offer paid parental leave until mid-2019, and a former employee said the common line would-be parents heard was that they should leave for a job with better benefits and return when their children were older. Brandi Rand said she saved up sick and vacation days during her pregnancy to use after the birth. She said despite being promised that she would continue to lead her clients upon returning, she never regained her previous responsibilities. Soon afterward, she quit. The agency spokeswoman declined to comment. Parental leave was added after a group of women pushed for the change and leadership saw it cost more to replace the parents who were on leave, insiders said. The spokeswoman said leadership made the "long overdue" change last year because it was "the right thing to do." Some employees say The Richards Group now has an opportunity to redefine itself Richards was succeeded by creative director Glenn Dady, a 40-year vet of the agency and well regarded as a creative leader. But some current and former employees voiced disappointment that he hesitated in calling for Richards' departure. One person said he also initially defended the founder's Motel 6 comments. "People were surprised to see Glenn's empathy for Stan versus the agency and the people he had hurt — he decided to forgive Stan on behalf of 700 people," said another employee. "It's just poor instincts." According to the spokeswoman, Dady told employees the day Richards' Motel 6 comments were reported: "We need to move forward and we need to get back to the reason we are all here: to do great work." Still, some have expressed hope that the agency can remake itself by abandoning the uncompromising culture built by Richards over more than 40 years. "This is a pivotal time for accountability, transparency, and impactful change," said Brandi Rand, the former social strategist. "I am optimistic Dallas, and the industry in general, can evolve. It has to." "For a long time, [there's been] an internal surge to become a better agency — I've always viewed it as building it up from the ground up as the original fleet starts to retire," the second employee said. "We were hoping it would be a new dawn, and now here we are."

This fact stood out to me as well. Why did his own people leak the information and seem to immediately turn on him? It seems a couple of you have direct experience or knowledge of the man. What do people at the company generally think about him? Is this just a couple of rogue employees?

I'm not saying this guy should have been made to resign or even lost all those clients. I"m not concerned with that. My only reason for bringing this up is wondering whether we have the right person representing the University of Texas. And since it seems every name on a building on campus is under scrutiny these days, his should be as well. Since originally posting and reading people's responses I've done some more research and talked further with people in the industry. A couple of interesting points have come up: The original story that broke in the trade publication Ad Age says the meeting was "to review an idea for an ad campaign that celebrated Black artists." Perhaps that is what upset people in the meeting? It doesn't appear to have been an advertisement just aimed at white people. Also, a couple of people have told me that the company has a decades-long reputation of being misogynistic. They said many in the industry will tell you this.

Did you buy a Camero?

Someone should tell Mr. Richards.