Like We Care Read Free

it,” he soldiered on. “The Ku Klux Klan barely even exists anymore, just a handful of hate-filled crackers getting together in a mobile home down South a couple times a year to suck up the moonshine and bitch about the big, bad black man.”
    Jeff Bradley stared a hole in his notepad.
    “But the power of their name hasn’t diminished one bit. It still works. It’s those three hard consonants— KKK —that drive it all home. Right?”
    Nobody knew quite how to respond. Jeff Bradley worried that this momentary pause in Hutch’s presentation was inviting everyone to recite the letters in unison, proving they had lost none of their luster.
    John Viceroy, the MediaTrust liaison who would be crucial to Hutch’s success, cleared his throat. “We cannot call a network KKK.”
    “That’s got to be trademarked,” added Jill Ebert, his beautiful, toadying Number Two. “Right?”
    Hutch laughed, everything playing out as he had scripted it. “I don’t want to call my network KKK.”
    “Good. Then I guess you can put me down for a box of T-shirts.” It was Jeff Bradley, chiming in with just the right mood-lightener at just the right spot. Hutch could’ve kissed him.
    “I’m just talking about the importance of the right selection of letters. It got me to thinking of the dynamic power of those three hard consonants— KKK—but, frankly, nothing else has the same impact. BBB? TTT? DDD? I mean, forget it, right?”
    The room stirred, getting caught up in the exercise.
    “How about XXX?” This was Roger Viner, always the one to go for the most obvious, insipid joke. The year before, he had cleared 500K as one of MediaTrust’s most promising bright young thinkers. He was 22 at the time.
    “You know what?” Hutch shot back. “Come back in eighteen months, and basic cable will be ripe for something that in-your-face down and dirty. The first network that can appropriate the illicit edge of hardcore pornography without the negatives is going to capture the entire market.
    “We’re just not there yet. Not yet .”
    Jill Ebert scrawled a note to her Number Two: “Poll and focus group ‘XXX’ as possible net and/or product name component.”
    John Viceroy, spying her note, scrawled his own note: “Great note!”
    “So I bagged the hard consonant construct,” Hutch continued, “but I wanted to maintain the triplicate, just for the cleanliness of the image.
    “I started thinking about what this network would be about, what its focus and its mandate would be, and it wasn’t hard at all to distill it down to three words. (He met the eyes of everyone at the table, ending with Viceroy.)
    “Rap.
    “Rock.
    “Revolution.”
    As scripted, Brad Stein pulled the trigger and the screen blossomed with the genius payoff of Hutch’s presentation, a stark, undeniably riveting graphic of three R’s, rendered in a distressed, raw-edged font.
    The first R was backwards, an inadvertent salute to the illiteracy of much of Hutch’s target audience. The third stood correctly, a jagged scar (Hutch originally wanted a bullet hole) portraying the hiply hardscrabble lives suburban teenagers fancied themselves living. The R in the middle jutted forward in an amazing 3-D rendering. The money Hutch had paid that uptown graphic artist had been well spent.
    It was a masterful icon. You could instantly envision it on the backwards hat of a skate punk, brazenly proclaiming his individuality by sporting the same mass-produced corporate wear that all the other skate punks were wearing.
    Hutch could feel the adoration in the room. He set for the kill.
    “Meet the—”
    “It sounds like a pirate.” It was Roger Viner, chuckling.
    Hutch kept his cool. “What?”
    “Ar-ar- arrrrrrr . It sounds like Long John Silver.”
    The room began to titter. Hutch felt a needle prick between his third and fourth vertebrae.
    “No, I don’t think—”
    “Yeah, it kinda does,” concurred John Viceroy.
    “Arrrrrrrrr! Avast ye scurvy dogs!” Mitch