Living in Boise. Idaho, one of the things I really look forward to is my daily New York Times. Yes, I can get it online, but I’m enough of an old fart that I like to relax with a hard copy over my morning coffee. The problem is, it has to be flown in from Seattle and doesn’t get here until almost midday, sometimes not even then as it is delivered by a notorious local family of drug addicts! So when I do finally get it the coffee is long gone and I am forced to end up relaxing with it over a beer, or two. Still, it’s worth it, particularly on a Sunday when it takes me most of the day and several more beers to get through all the sections.
One of my favorites is the Sunday “Business” section, as this is usually blowing the financial communities unceasingly optimistic trumpet that green shoots are sprouting and the recession is over before it even had a chance to do any harm… That’s if you choose to ignore the 16.7% unemployed (the real figure, rather than the one we keep reading about.) But wait, before you switch off, this is not a political rant; it’s about the state of most business writing.
Ignoring the plethora of ghost written business books by such titans of industry as Jack Welsh, Donny Deutsch and Donald Trump, or the ever proliferating ones with weirdly esoteric titles like “The Twenty Immutable Marketing Secrets of the Kalahari Nomads,” or “How would Jesus Twitter his way to Boardroom Immortality?” I’m talking about the majority of business articles and columns that appear in the mainstream media.
In the Sunday New York Times Business Section, my favorite is the regular page two feature, “Corner Office.” This is were the CEO’s of big, well known companies give advice to the great unwashed masses on how they could one day aspire to sit in that humungous space on the fiftieth floor, kowtowed to by armies of executive assistants as they steer their mighty company through the stormy waters of today’s economy… While enjoying a paycheck significantly bigger than the GNP of a reasonably sized African nation.
A series of really fucking stupid questions are asked of the head honcho, who invariably answers with a series of really fucking stupid answers.
Q: Who inspired you most when you were growing up?
A: My Dad… Or, the guy at the corner grocery store/Soda fountain/Brothel
I worked for during school vacations. He taught me the value of thinking for myself, stealing from the cash register without getting caught, and getting a freebie from Saucy Sadie on a slack night.
Q: Tell me about your goals as a manager and leader.
A: I have two goals, firstly to inspire every single member of my management team to work their nuts of so I can take all the credit. Secondly, to make a shit load of money and quickly get it hidden offshore while I run this stupid company into the ground.
OK, so I made the answers up. But, they make better reading than the crap that’s written for real. I assume there must be a market for all this drivel. Probably the same people that buy Seth Godin’s books. I mean he’s written the same fucking book twenty times, and they get shorter and cost more with each new iteration.
Shit, I’m jealous!
George Parker is the perpetrator of adscam.typepad.com, without doubt, one of the most foul and annoying, piss & vinegar ad blogs on the planet. His new book, The Ubiquitous Persuaders, has just been published by Amazon and is currently setting the ether ablaze. He will continue to relentlessly promote the crap out of it until you are forced to stab yourself in the eyes with knitting needles.
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