Language
Palin & Stalin: What Do We Believe? That PR… Thou Art a Shameful Fraud
Sunday, December 6th, 2009It's tough to pinpoint when the PR profession "jumped the shark." But it has, and in spectacular fashion.
Outsiders are seldom privy to the inner workings of the global spin machine. But every once in a while someone leaves the door ajar and you can peer in to see just how twisted are its guts.
Such is [...]
WordPlay Weekend: Cut “Workers’” Wages?… A Vector of Orthogonal Dimensions
Saturday, December 5th, 2009One of our chief entertainments here at LiteralMayhem is the contortion, manipulation and general abuse of language — primarily at the hands of PR and marketing folks. But sins abound throughout the worlds of business, academia, and politics… and when those worlds collide, watch out.
You're certain to get some truly head-spinning, tongue-teasers like this one:
"We [...]
“Safe Sex”…. is there such a thing?
Friday, October 23rd, 2009As LiteralMayhem is very interested in language, and its potential to wreak havoc on human civilization, we offer some thoughts on the quintessential “hot” topic: sex. And more precisely “safe sex.”
Nowadays, at least in much of the Western world, the term “safe sex” is tossed off as easily as one might say… “a side of [...]
Slip of the Tongue? When We End Up Saying More than We Mean
Tuesday, August 19th, 2008Went for a sail in NY harbor over the weekend. Saw this yacht tied up to the pier…
GET A LOAD OF THE BOAT’S NAME…
Hmmm… wasn’t Utopia 1 good enough? The original “Utopia” must not have been all it’s cracked up to be.
Ditto for Utopia 2.
Clearly these people are having trouble finding happiness.
Well maybe “third time’s [...]
Orwellian Olympic PR Deception: Are We Too Dumbed Down to Care?
Monday, August 11th, 2008Stuck for nearly half a day in an airport this weekend, I was browsing the itty-bitty bookstore and stumbled on George Orwell’s 1984. If you haven’t read it in a while, I’d highly recommend it.
We are so inured to the machinations of politicians, business leaders, spin doctors, and even the media that we tend to [...]
Wherein We Offer a New Philosophical Framework for Understanding the Imperatives of PR
Tuesday, March 4th, 2008A recent “60 Minutes” story, originally aired on February 24, claimed that the prosecution of former Alabama governor Don Sielegman was politically motivated and directed from the White House by His Evil Eminence Karl Rove.
On the Huntsville TV station WHNT, most of the 13-minute story was lost in an 8-minute broadcast interruption. The station first [...]
Passive Voices, Passive Minds, PR Failures, and the Teacher Who’s Actually Taking Credit for “Heidi Cee”
Wednesday, February 27th, 2008Wandering the blog-o-sphere, you find so much bad sh…shtuff, sometimes it’s hard to hold down your lunch. But there’s a ton of good shtuff too.
I found a delicious post at the Sandwich Chronicles that sparked a few thoughts about PR and the “Heidi Cee” fiasco. So as suggested by Bill Sledzik over at Tough Sledding [...]
Free Market Malarkey II: Reductionists Gone Wild, the Theorists Want the Lobbyists to Run Your Life
Friday, December 21st, 2007This is Part II of an ongoing series…
The first post in this series got many comments — thank you to all. Especially those who were up for a conversation.
Most comments were from free-marketeers who accused me of being anti-economics. So let’s begin with this: I’m not anti-economics! It’s a wonderful science for managing systems of [...]
The Case of the “Intifada” T-shirt: Don’t Be Niggardly with That Gay Swastika!
Monday, August 13th, 2007When I was a kid, in Boston in the early 1970s, bumper stickers of the “England Get Out of Ireland” variety were not uncommon. And my mother, an Irish ex-pat, while never overtly militant, very much enjoyed playing the spirited and nationalistic records of groups like the Wolftones. We sang with pride about the IRA [...]
Aromatherapy: Catch a Whiff of This PR Obfuscation
Thursday, July 26th, 2007I was thinking the other day, while munching a tuna sandwich, about public relations and its corruptive influence on language.
To be sure, language itself carries intrinsic properties of obfuscation. Mayonnaise is really just a euphemism for “congealed vegetable fat with raw egg.” And if you had to walk into a McDonald’s and order “ground cow [...]