Never Having to Say You’re Sorry

Tags

bill clinton, commentary, congress, lewinsky, lying, mark sanford, politics, shame, south carolina, stephen colbert, values

Mark Sanford won back his old congressional seat on Tuesday. Remember him? He was the South Carolina governor who, in 2009, went AWOL for several days after telling his aides he was going for a hike on the Appalachian Trail. Turns out, he was actually in Argentina with his mistress. Unfortunately for Sanford, a reporter with Columbia’s The State newspaper was waiting for him in Atlanta as he stepped off his return flight from Buenos Aires.

A lot of people wanted Sanford to resign after the Appalachian Trail story hit. After all, he had disappeared for nearly a week, lied to everyone about his whereabouts and cheated on his wife, all while on the payroll as chief executive of the state. Sanford, however, stubbornly hung on his job and managed to finish out his term. Politics, it seams, means never having to say you’re sorry.

A lot of people expected Sanford to retire into private life, cash in on his public service with a cushy corporate title, and perhaps write a mostly ignored memoir. Those people, however, know nothing about American politics in the 21st Century. After leaving the governor’s mansion, Sanford immediately began planning his political comeback, which culminated Tuesday with a win in South Carolina’s First District over Stephen Colbert’s sister.

Sanford may never go on to become president (he was considered a strong contender for the 2012 Republican ticket before The Hike That Never Happened), but his return to Congress is another reminder that there is no shame in American politics. Also, there isn’t much talent. How could both parties fail to come up with more viable candidates for a national seat that a disgraced former governor and a comedian’s sister?

The values of our elected officials, while probably never sterling, seem to have nosedived in the past several years. Looking back, Bill Clinton set a bad precedent by not resigning after the Monica Lewinsky scandal erupted and held the government hostage for more than a year. Instead of stepping down, he lied about the affair to Independent Counsel Ken Starr and to the media, then refused to leave even after he was impeached. Was the Lewinksy affair exploited by Republicans determined to destroy the Clintons at any cost? In my opinion, yes. But ol’ Bill didn’t do himself any favors by trying to cover things up. So he should have resigned. The Presidency should have been held a higher standard.

That, of course, was 15 years ago. In today’s world, accepting responsibility for your actions and mistakes is seen as a weakness among powerful people in the public and private sectors. Expressing regret or shame for something you did is considered political suicide. And, more often than not, the public does not hold these scoundrels accountable. That’s how we end up re-electing people like Mark Sanford who lack the common decency to just go away.

Business People are Murdering the English Language

Tags

business, commentary, english, grammar, ideation, impact, jargon, language, marketing, the ask

Let me begin by stating that I like business people. Most of the ones I know are smart, hard-working, analytical and decisive. They show up on time and get things done. They are not nearly as moody, sensitive or cynical as creative types like me. And to watch a business person manipulate an Excel spreadsheet is to witness an artist at the easel: hiding and un-hiding columns, sorting sales figures and rearranging rows in the same amount of time it takes me to type in a single stock number. They are good with the data.

With that said, I believe that business people – and by “business people” I mean marketers, accountants, product managers, lawyers and anyone else who can explain to you what something like “EBITDA” stands for – pose the biggest threat to the English language since the nonsensical lyrics of Oasis. They just don’t do words well. Not that there’s anything sinister going on. It’s just that business people keep trying to “manage” language the same way they move things around on those digital spreadsheets, using certain words in ways they never were meant to be used.

Take the word, “impact,” for example. It is NOT a verb. It is incorrect to say something like, “We expect the one-time costs of AMCE Corp. buyout to impact net earnings for the third quarter.” Business people started using impact in this fashion many years ago, even though there is a perfectly decent verb – “affect” – that means exactly what they so badly wanted impact to mean.

Sadly, you don’t have to attend an earnings conference to hear liberal and incorrect usage of impact. Everyone makes it a verb nowadays: educators, government leaders, journalists, social workers, sports announcers… Everyone. And those ambitious business people, always trying to stay ahead of the culture, have now made an adjective out of impact. It’s “impactful.” If you haven’t heard that one, stick around. It’s coming to a television near you.

“At the end of the day, we need to maximize synergies that will be impactful to the bottom line. M’kay? Great.”

There are, of course, other examples of words that corporate types have taken hostage, or ones they have simply invented. Take “ideation.” Please. It sprung up a few years ago and is basically a fancy way of saying, “brainstorm,” or, put more plainly, “thinking.” But no middle manager worth his or her six-figure salary would ever say, “let’s schedule a half-day thinking session.” And “brainstorm” would sound almost as quaint. So instead they say, “let’s ideate!” And their business casual-attired colleagues around the conference room table smile and nod knowingly, secure in the sense that their boss is up on the latest business jargon.

The misuse of impact and the creation of ideation are clear impositions on the English language. And there are many others. But there is one taking root in Power Point presentations across the country that is far worse. I would almost dare say it may be the hydrogen bomb of business-ese (which is a word I just made up). I’m talking about the use of “ask” as a noun. As in, “will you be attending the Tuesday afternoon ask that we have scheduled with the Innovation Steering Committee?” Yes. The ask. Formerly know as, “a question.” I am not making this crap up.

It would all sound silly if these language trends didn’t have a way of seeping from the board rooms into the general population. Will people begin saying, “the ask” or “my ask” in regular conversation soon? It’s possible. And if we can’t use a word like that properly, what is the point in talking or communicating or having a common language at all?

The whole mess reminds me of an exchange I once had with my high school English teacher. We were on a trip for the National Forensics League (which is sort of like debate for theater geeks, only less cool). We had been sitting for hours in some school cafeteria, waiting our turn to perform, when I tossed a half-empty Coke at a trash barrel, missing the barrel entirely and splashing the English teacher, who was our luckless chaperone that weekend.

“My bad,” I said with a shrug as my forensics friends snickered.

“My bad? Is that what you just said?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“That,” he said (then he paused for dramatic effect), “is the stupidest, most ignorant thing I have ever heard. I know cocker spaniels who have a better grasp of English than you.”

My teacher was a bit of a pompous tool, but he was right on this count. It’s not okay to use words incorrectly. Most of the time, it makes you sound stupid. And a high school junior who is about to walk into a mostly empty classroom to recite the Clarence Darrow part of Inherit the Wind should really know better.

So should all those professionals with their MBAs, Juris Doctorates and other fancy degrees. Please use proper English, business people. That is all I ask.

The Dark Side of Springing Forward

Tags

children, commentary, daylight savings time, fatherhood, government

Okay, so the time change… is it really necessary? I have asked this question of various friends and Facebook contacts in recent days, and no one has been able to give me a compelling reason why our government-mandated time changes twice a year do our modern society any good. If it’s a case of saving electricity or promoting commerce, then why don’t we go to Daylight Savings Time all year long? If it’s about helping the farmers, then how does that work? Seems like they would want more daylight hours in the morning this time of year, not less.

I’m sure there’s a strong case out there for changing the clock twice a year, and I would really like to know what it is. Because “springing forward,” has created just a little bit of havoc in our household. Here is our three-year-old’s sleep schedule for the four days after the time change:

Sunday: took a two-hour afternoon nap; set a personal record by staying up until 11 p.m.

Monday: skipped his afternoon nap; found swaying and muttering like a drunken frat boy when picked up from day care at 5 p.m.; crashed 30 minutes later and slept until 6 a.m. the following morning.

Tuesday: took his afternoon nap; stayed up until 10 p.m.

Wednesday: took his afternoon nap; stayed up until 9 p.m.

So we are seeing some daily progress in the sleep routine, and I am sure we will be back on schedule by week’s end. And, of course, it will be great to have sunlight until 9 p.m. during the summer months. Still, in the near term, it is frustrating to endure this without a clear understanding why most of the country elects to abide by the Daylight Savings and Standard Time calendar.

(Also, it’s just weird to switch to summer hours in early March, when there’s still snow on the ground. A friend recently told me that that moving the DST switch to March was President George W. Bush’s greatest achievement, “because he put a little more sunshine into everyone’s lives.” And, yes, my friend was serious).

So, can anyone give me an explanation as to why we need to have Daylight Savings and Standard Time in this day and age? Anyone? Anyone?

School: Even Less Fun Than It Used to Be

Tags

children, commentary, education, fatherhood, guns, media, parenting, schools, standardized testing, testing, violence

There’s an article this morning about a seven-year-old boy who was suspended for two days from school for chewing his breakfast pastry into the form of a gun and saying, “Bang, bang!” I understand the nation is terrified about gun violence right now, but this punishment seems horrendously excessive. This kid is going to have a school rap sheet about a gun-related suspension on his record. And he’s in the second grade.

This is obviously an extreme example of administrative stupidity, but I worry about schools and what they might be like when my son enters kindergarten in a couple of years. In addition to the hysteria about guns and lock-downs, there’s also the matter of standardized testing. I hear parents of older kids complain about the amount of assigned homework and the pressure to achieve good test scores. Their children are stressed out, scared and, in some cases, depressed. And these are grade school kids! Imagine what the emotional abyss of junior high school is going to be like for them. That, in my mind, is the appropriate time to be frightened, strung out and depressed.

When I was a kid, I hated school. It was hard for me to sit still in the classroom for hours on end and pay attention. Some of my teachers ridiculed me for this and it affected my self confidence for a long time. And this was in the golden days of the 1980s, when the biggest concern for a grade school boy was getting a bathroom pass at 2:50 so he could sit in the stall until the bell mercifully rang ten minutes later. Now, there is so much more to worry about at school – violence, testing, vaccinations, peer pressure, cyber-bullying, ADHD and zero tolerance for kids doing the kinds of stupid things kids will do. Like nibbling a pastry so it takes the shape of a gun.

Boys love guns, by the way. There is no getting around that. So far, we have successfully kept our three-year-old away from toy guns, but eventually he is going to discover one and want to try it out. That doesn’t mean he is a threat to anyone or will even want to own a real gun someday.

Anyway, I worry about what is happening in American schools, which weren’t so great when I was a child and have seemingly become even more miserable, humorless, demanding places. Especially for active boys who have a hard time sitting still and paying attention. I hope I’m wrong about all this and that my son will get to learn and grow in a supportive, encouraging, relatively safe place. But, like scores of parents and educators these days, I have my fears.