Ewart Brown, the former premier of Bermuda, emailed me recently to accuse me of being a racist simply because I questioned the way the Caribbean archipelago nation paid the ad agency handling its tourism account.
If this sounds weird, that's because it is.
"I do not know you, but my experience has taught me that people who write like you do are usually committed to a Racist agenda," Brown told me in an unprompted email. "I pray that you will stop practising Racism." (I've reproduced our email correspondence at length, below.)
The context is this: A few years ago, when I worked for CBSNews.com, I wrote a series of stories questioning the way that Bermuda awarded and paid for its tourism advertising, handled at the time by Globalhue in Detroit. Bermuda's auditor general found the government was overbilled by $1.8 million.
My stories caught the attention of the Bermuda press (even though they were developed largely from the local press), and the scandal surrounding the tourism ad contract repeatedly came back to haunt Brown until he retired in October 2010.
At least one civil servant was forced out of his job after he questioned the expenditures. At one point, a dissident group within Brown's own party moved against him, in part due to the tourism ad fiasco, and he suppressed it by requiring his cabinet to sign loyalty oaths.
Since then, I have not given the issue much thought.
Brown, apparently, has been dwelling on it.
The background is that Bermuda's $6 billion GDP economy is almost entirely dependent on tourism, largely from the U.S. Its tourism ad budget is one of the island's most closely watched government expenditures.
Thus, when Brown was Bermuda's premier (2006 - 2010), he also took the cabinet position of tourism minister. During that period, Bermuda spent $41 million on tourism advertising.
On Brown's watch, the government signed Globalhue to handle the account from 2006-2011. Brown and Globalhue CEO Don Coleman are longtime friends. Coleman has given Brown a ride on his private jet. The contract was renewed without a competitive bid in 2009, I noted at the time.
During that period, the number of tourists arriving in Bermuda declined 35%, according to the Royal Gazette, the island's newspaper. A lot of that was due to the recession, of course. But it was also due to Globalhue's counterintuitive media strategy, which involved spending $200,000 for ads on a gospel music TV channel that few watch, but only $45,000 in bridal magazines (where the honeymoon market is).
Throughout the period, Brown denounced his critics as racists. Brown is black, Globalhue CEO Coleman is black, and a majority of the island's voters are black. Brown's position seemed to be that anyone asking questions about whether the country's money was being spent appropriately was motivated by racial animosity.
I'm not a racist, hopefully. I was gratified when in 2012 Bermuda's Public Accounts Committee reviewed the Globalhue billing and confirmed that the agency's handling of invoices was inappropriate. The spending was looked at twice, by two successive Bermuda auditors general. Both concluded spending on the account was questionable. The first auditor happened to be white, the second black.
The last time I wrote anything substantive about Bermuda's tourism advertising was in 2011. Since then, Globalhue has moved on. It's best known today as Jeep's lead agency.
And then, this month, out of nowhere, Brown emailed me and we began this discussion:
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From: Ewart Brown
May 2
To: Jim Edwards
Re: GlobalHue
Hello Sir,
How are things?
I trust that you saw GolbalHue's [sic] Superbowl [sic] Jeep ad and loved it.
Since your inaccurate writings on GlobalHue, there are two facts that you should know.
1. There have been at least three investigations of the allegations about GlobalHue while the agency was doing a terrific job for Bermuda. Not one person has been charged with ANYTHING.
2. Bermuda Tourism arrivals have never been as high in this decade as they were in 2007, the second year of GH's contract.
I do not know you, but my experience has taught me that people who write like you do are usually committed to a Racist agenda.
I pray that you will stop practising Racism.
Also, if you ever wish to debate these issues in Bermuda, I will cover your expenses to do so.
Dr. The Hon. Ewart F. Brown
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From: Jim Edwards
May 3
To: Ewart Brown,
Hello,
Thanks for the note.
Globalhue's contract ran from 2006 through 2011. At the end of Globalhue's tenure, arrivals were down 35%:
http://www.royalgazette.com/article/20110311/NEWS04/703119985
The most recent information I'm aware of about Globalhue is this: The Public Accounts Committee found that Globalhue's CEO wrote an email to you in an attempt to destroy the career of a tourism official who did not want to pay the agency without receiving proper invoices:
http://www.royalgazette.com/article/20120723/NEWS01/707239935
Of course, Globalhue was replaced by a new agency in 2011:
http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/bermuda-tourism-selects-fuseideas-aor-139229
Surely, at this late stage, you're willing to look back and honestly admit this was a huge failure?
Jim Edwards / Business Insider
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From: Ewart Brown
May 3
To: Jim Edwards
Hello,
No, I am not willing to call the GlobalHue engagement with Bermuda a failure.
After the 2007 record numbers, the arrivals, especially from the US, began to decrease and we concluded that until the US economy improved there would be no significant recovery in the Bermuda numbers. That has proven to be the case.
Bermuda's challenge is product, not agency.
1. As long as you rely on the Royal Gazette as your source of facts, you will be inaccurate. Do you not know that the RG is in fact an organ of the anti-PLP sector? Please find a credible, non-racist source.
2. The email to which you refer was one in which GlobalHue wrote to me with an opinion that an individual in our NY office was incompetent and obstructionist. That was many months before the employee reported that GH's assessment of him was connected to invoices! He WAS incompetent and is no longer able to find a job in the hospitality industry.
You never said if you liked GH's Super Bowl ad.
Btw, do you think that a non-white agency can win a contract without crooked dealings?
Also, I noticed that you eventually corrected the lie about Don Coleman and I being longtime friends who went to Howard University.
Have you ever figured out why that mistaken report sounded so plausible to you?
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From: Jim Edwards
May 3
To: Ewart Brown
The Royal Gazette reported you and Coleman are friends:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505123_162-42743603/bermuda-politician-censored-for-criticizing-globalhue-the-islands-tourism-ad-agency/
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From: Ewart Brown
May 5
To: me
Sir: The RG is not a reliable source, especially when it comes to reporting on Black people.
Fyi, I was introduced to Don Coleman around 2005. He BECAME my friend after he did excellent work for Bermuda on the PR for the launch of the Miami-Bda flight.
Anyone who worked well on behalf of Bermuda became my friend....including some White people who didn't attend Howard either !
The implication was that GlobalHue won the contract because of our friendship. That is untrue but it is consistent with Racist thinking which says that Black folks always make forward progress via devious means while White people win contracts thru their intelligence and hard work. Remember when Blacks weren't smart enough to be quarterbacks in the NFL?
The link that you sent merely shows that a Bermudian politician was censored because he made unfounded allegations about GlobalHue. He was censored by the House, not by me.
You should also know that the Auditor General is not considered a "neutral" player in Bermuda. She has made numerous allegations and has raised frequent questions about "possible criminal conduct" but NOTHING ever came of her scaremongering.
In fact, even the new Government has not seen fit to follow-up on her wild allegations.
I challenge you to come to Bermuda and SEE ALL the documents pertaining to your conclusions. Then, I will sit down and look straight into your eyes and determine for myself why you appear to be so anti-GlobalHue.
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From: Jim Edwards
May 6
To: Ewart Brown
The black female auditor general (Heather Jacobs Matthews) AGREED with the white male auditor general (Larry Dennis) she replaced that GH's billing was highly dubious. She even recommended in 2012 that contracting regulations in Bermuda be tightened to prevent the situation happening again.
Is she also a racist?
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From: Ewart Brown
May 7
To: me
No sir, by definition, she cannot be a racist.
She can, however, cooperate with racists or obey the commands of racists. ( See Django Unchained...the Samuel Jackson character).
What GlobalHue did with the billing was simply a creative way to get us more bang for our relatively small budget.
Surely, you must believe that if there one iota of criminal conduct, charges would have been filed against GlobalHue and possibly me. There are many people who believe as you do and they pray every day for people like me (counter-racists) to be put UNDER the jail.
I support the tightening of all government regulations that lead to greater efficiency but I reject "tightening" of regulations because Black people learned how to do things that Whites did for years under the same regulations.
My teacher once told me to remember that Whites embezzle and Blacks steal!
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From: Jim Edwards
May 8
To: Ewart Brown
Please explain to me why criticizing a contract awarded without a bid is racist. Two Bermuda government auditors both separately had the same criticisms of the way the Globalhue contract was handled. I don't understand why pointing this out makes someone a racist.
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From: Ewart Brown
May 8
To: Jim Edwards
I haven't called you a racist...and I won't until I have observed further. I did say that you were supporting the positions of Racists.
The initial GlobalHue contract was won through a tendering process. Their contract was renewed by a Govt. Committee, based on their performance. Actually, the Tourism contract has been renewed many times (J. Walter Thompson) in the past without any review. But then the contractors were "normal" people!
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