A few years ago, I was reading the Sunday Times when I saw it: the full page ad in the Arts and Leisure section announcing that Sean Combs (you know, the man who’s variously gone by the monikers Puff, Puff Daddy, Puffy, P-Diddy, and Diddy) was now starring in “Chicago” on Broadway.

Huh?

Photo: nycarthur

Daddy Diddy started his career in music, enjoyed admirable success, and then launched himself as an all-purpose brand, following in the footsteps of other celebrities who have achieved success in one field and crossed over (dubiously) to another. A clothing line, a few colognes (including the latest, “I Am King,” not, allegedly, a reference to himself, but to Dr. Martin Luther King, Muhammad Ali, and President Obama), a Ciroc Vodka deal, a reality show, a couple of restaurants, and a few acting credits later, the artist now known simply as Diddy is reported to be one of the richest men in hip-hop.

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I’ve always been puzzled by and more than a bit suspicious about this phenomenon–this tendency of big business to pick up a person who’s successful in one genre and appropriate their cachet by importing it wholesale into another genre for which that person hasn’t expressed any particular inclination or talent. I mean, I get it on a purely entrepreneurial level–the idea is to ride the wave of someone’s image and success as hard and far as possible before it crashes and ebbs. But from a philosophical standpoint, I don’t get it at all–there are plenty of people more talented than Diddy waiting tables, paying Equity dues, and auditioning for Broadway, but the more people like Diddy (and Sarah Jessica Parker, and Jennifer Lopez, and on and on) genre-cross for the sake of making a buck, the tighter the market becomes and the less likely the talented but struggling actor, perfumier, or restauranteur to be has a chance to make it.
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So who is Yoani Sanchez and what does she have to do with Diddy?
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Photo: blogpocket

I first learned about Yoani Sanchez, a Cuban blogger, over a year ago. I’d read an article about her in The Miami Herald, where she was praised as a bold, courageous woman using the Internet to question the Revolution and to do so in front of the world. The Cuban government had blocked her blog, only adding tinder to the quickening flame. Shortly after the Herald article, Yoani’s name was everywhere: the New York Times, Newsweek, NPR. She was named one of 100 of the world’s most influential people in TIME Magazine in 2008, she won an Ortega y Gasset prize for digital “journalism,” and was sent messages of solidarity from as far away as Myanmar.

I’ll admit that I even contacted Yoani in February 2008 with the idea of writing a story about her. She responded positively. But uncharacteristically of me, I never responded to her and decided I wasn’t really interested in interviewing her at all. As I thought more and more about Yoani Sanchez, what I couldn’t help but think was “What about the other Cuban bloggers?” Yoani had become an international media phenomenon, and despite her own efforts and beliefs, had effectively drawn attention away from any other blogger in Cuba.

What bothered me–and what bothers me still–isn’t what Yoani believes or what she writes about. Rather–and this is important–it is the fact that the international media have treated Yoani–and continue to treat her–as if she is the sole blogging voice of Cuba. It’s the fact that the media pick up Yoani’s words as if they’re the only opinion of her Cuban peers. And most of all, the fact that they don’t really learn anything more about Cuba, about how complex and contradictory it is, or even really about Yoani herself. She’s become Cuba’s token blogger.

This became evident recently when TIME and CNN named Yoani’s blog one of the 25 best blogs of 2009, but referred to Yoani as a “he.” (The error has since been corrected.) Her blog is, it seems, the only non-U.S. blog on the list. TIME and CNN call her writing “fascinating” and “brave” because she’s writing from “one of the few places where it’s still dangerous to be a blogger.”
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Recently, Yoani was offered–and accepted–a position blogging for the wildly popular Huffington Post. She published an article in my favorite Mexican magazine, Gatopardo.

She’s not a cross-over in the Diddy sense, but you get my drift, right? The media, like big business (hell, the media are big business), will ride the wave–and pull us along with them, if we don’t stop and question them–as long and hard as possible.

And that’s all well and good. What Yoani has to say is important. But hers is not the only voice. When we practice tokenism, when we ride that wave of the brand we’ve helped someone become, we run the risk of not being able to hear voices that are just as powerful, just as talented, and just as important.