Step Down

By David Hass

In a May 2005 speech at a Conference on Media Reform, Mark Lloyd, the current Chief Diversity Officer at the Federal Communications Commission, said:

"Because we have really, truly good white people in important positions. And the fact of the matter is that there are a limited number of those positions. And unless we are conscious of the need to have more people of color, gays, other people in those positions we will not change the problem.

"We're in a position where you have to say who is going to step down so someone else can have power."

Yesterday, the New York Times revealed in a chilling, Orwellian story that the Treasury Department is going to order (yes, order) companies that took bailout funds to reduce the compensation for their top 25 executives by up to 90 percent.

The two stories may be related.

Publicly, the government is saying that this will not cause a mass exodus of these executives. I don't know about you, but a 90 percent pay cut would certainly cause me to dust off my resume.

I know that these are not media companies, however, I wonder if the government is intentionally forcing these people to step down so "someone else can have power"?

I think I just saw Karl Marx smiling in his grave.