Verbosity

Verbosity wastes a portion of the reader’s life.

— Mokokoma Mokhonoana

In the midst of Britain's "darkest hour," Winston Churchill paused to write a one-page memo scolding his war cabinet ministers for verbosity.

"Clarity and cogency can be reconciled with a greater brevity," he told one of them. "It is slothful not to compress your thoughts."

That memo, entitled "Brevity," is one of Churchill's most famous.

It demanded that all ministers and their underlings avoid "officialese" in writing, and keep all memos brief—no more than a page long.

Brevity, Churchill promised, would save readers time—time better spent outsmarting their Nazi adversaries.

Churchill singled out pompous and clichéd gobbledygook as particularly wasteful.

"Let us have an end of such phrases as these: 'It is also of importance to bear in mind the following considerations,' or 'Consideration should be given to the possibility of carrying into effect,'" Churchill wrote. 

"Most of these woolly phrases are mere padding, which can be left out altogether or replaced by a single word. Let us not shrink from using the short expressive phrase, even if it is conversational."

Brevity, Churchill promised, would not only save the government time, but "prove an aid to clear thinking."

Churchill was right, on both counts. 

Concise usually is precise—provided you avoid clichés.

I once had a boss who traveled a lot. 

When responding to draft sales copy or ideas and suggestions from me while she was out of town, she'd send me extremely concise emails.

But they consisted of nothing but clichés like "Off brand," Wait, what?'' and "Meh."

Concise, but not precise.

I always had to await her return to the office to learn what she expected me to do. 

She both wasted my time and set back my projects.

Clichés are fine when you have nothing but praise or approval to offer. "Lovin' it!" for example. "Good stuff!" Or, my favorite, "Boffo!"

Clichés are also fine when you can't help out. "Sorry, haven't a clue." "Sorry, not in my wheelhouse. "Sorry, no can do." (Churchill, for example, telegrammed FDR asking for help with the evacuation of Dunkirk. FDR replied simply, "Good luck.")

If you want to be a good boss or colleague—a helpful, thoughtful one—take the time to write concise, but precise, directions. 

"Ask Legal to review the entire contract one more time before you send it to the customer. The sales guy changed a lot of our boilerplate. Not sure that's kosher. Ask for it back within 24 hours."

"Make the subhead the major headline. It's stronger. And add a call to action."

"Ask Meghan whether she wrote code for another client that calculates shipping costs. You can just plug her code in. But be sure it can handle Euros."

In The Plato Cult and Other Philosophical Follies, Australian philosopher David Stove argued that verbosity is more than long-windedness and muddled thinking.

Verbosity reflects a grotesque "character defect;" a trait he calls "pathology of thought."

Verbosity, Stove says, signals "a simple inability to shut up; a determination to be thought deep; a hunger for power; and fear—especially fear of an indifferent universe."

I've certainly observed that character defect during my career.

The best bosses I've ever had were also succinct and enviable writers; the worst were inarticulate psychopaths who couldn't think their way out of a paper bag. 

The memos they produced were long, flatulent and inscrutable. 

The next email you write, please, take a few moments to edit yourself. Kill the clichés. Get to the point. Be specific. Then trim every third word. 

Your reader will thank you. 

Tragic Finale

The stupid, crazy, irresponsible bunglers. They've finally done it.

— Bill Maguire in The Day the Earth Caught Fire

If you need a refresher course on Donald Trump's inexhaustible loathsomeness, Nightmare Scenario is the book for you.

Authors Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta, both reporters for The Washington Post, present a gripping, 450-page account of Trump's "handling" of the Covid-19 pandemic.

To cut to the chase, Trump handled the virus like Captain Smith handled the Titanic. Never once did he consider Covid-19 to be anything more than an annoying crimp in his reelection plans, the book confirms.  

Villains in the play—Alex Azar, Jared Kushner, Scott Atlas, Peter Navarro, Stephen Moore, Mike Pence and, center stage, Trump—abound. They far outnumber the heroes, so don't expect to be anything but despondent at the end. Samuel Beckett is cheerier.

As I paged through Nightmare Scenario, I felt as if I were reading the script for a never-made Hollywood film, the concept for which was "All the President's Men meets The Day the Earth Caught Fire."

Based on White House emails, documents and 180 interviews, Nightmare Scenario is a study in hidebound leadership and more: fear, fantasy, sycophancy, infighting, betrayal and ineptitude—especially ineptitude.

You learn that, while the villains' roguery meant that their chances of ever stopping the virus were nominal, their contempt for critics and rivals—and America's citizens—was boundless.

You also learn that, by the time Covid-19 reached our shores, staff-wise Trump was down to the very bottom of the barrel. Anyone with skills had long ago abandoned Trump's foundering ship. Anyone with integrity had been thrown overboard.

The publisher's blurb calls the book "the definitive account of the Trump administration’s tragic mismanagement of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the chaos, incompetence, and craven politicization that has led to more than a half million American deaths and counting."

That sums it up well. The whole point of Nightmare Scenario is a tragic one. The actors in the play should be ashamed, as should the minority of voters who put our government in the hands of a failed reality-TV host. They're collectively guilty of the deaths of a half million citizens—and counting.

Grammatically Incorrect

Your blind or stupid or both.

— Trump follower

More offensive than refusing to get the vaccine or wear a mask, in my book, is refusing to learn grammar.

You can always spot a Trump follower on line: like the boss, he can barely spell and doesn't "get" contractions.

Last week, one of them replied to a comment I posted by saying, "Your blind or stupid or both."

Grammatically incorrect moral outrage is as offensive as anything on the Internet, including insults, slurs, profanities, and untruths.

The tech platforms like Facebook should cancel the accounts of anyone who can't spell can't.

Were they to do that, the nation would be a step closer to preserving democracy—not to mention my sanity.

More fundamental than being politically correct is being grammatically so.

"Change your language and you change your thoughts," futurist Karl Albrecht said.

Mark Zuckerberg, are you listening?

Zoom-Shirt Marketing

Confession is always weakness.

— Dorothy Dix

There's an easily-crossed border between authenticity and unseemliness.

I've noticed a lot of content marketers are crossing it, and am not sure they're making a wise move.

They may soon come to regret the confessional tone they've struck in their writing. One of weakness, wariness, weariness, and regret.

Blame Covid-19 if you want. 

It's forced everyone to examine the inauthentic lives they were living.

But whatever the cause, I can't recommend Zoom-shirt marketing: looking okay on the surface while confessing that—in reality—you're overwhelmed.

Zoom-shirt marketing hopes to build intimacy. 

But more often than not it's unseemly, and no way to build trust—the very foundation of sales.

In your efforts to appear authentic, be careful how confessional your content becomes.

"Confession is good for the soul," an old Scottish proverb holds. 

It's not so good for sales.

Confession is a style of writing better left to literature; to Rousseau and Thoreau; to Lowell and to Plath.

It has little place in content marketing.

FOOTNOTE: Here's an example of Zoom-shirt marketing. Here's another.

Smokescreen

The correct use of propaganda is a true art.

— Adolph Hitler

Petitions are a standard lead-capture tool for fledgling nonprofits, which is why David Brog's digital agency recommended one this week.

Brog's petition-of-the-week targets fellow racists who want to ensure people of color know their place.

But propriety won't let him be completely up front.  

He requires a smokescreen.

The smokescreen he uses consists of, believe it or not, an internal report produced by the National Archives.

The report is innocuous. 

But if you believe Brog, it conclusively proves people of color are about to replace all Whites.

Brog is a busy DC lobbyist and lawyer who pays himself handsomely to generate panic among uniformed and stupid people. The kind of panic that leads them to open their wallets.

A Zionist, Brog believes Wokeness threatens Israel. 

He keeps company with other ultranationalist loonies like Steve Bannon, John Hagee, Yoram Hazony, Tucker Carlson and Josh Hawley.

Brog's new nonprofit—he runs no less than three—is the Emergency Committee for America. 

To pay his super-size salary as the group's executive director, he needs donors—lots of them.

To line his pockets, he's happy to engage you and tell you that people of color will replace you.

And as they do, they'll bring an end to civilization as we know it, take over our government, and impose Sharia law and Chinese-style one-party rule in its place.

Brog preys on you while he lines his pockets, even resurrecting the Nixonian phrase "Silent Majority" to imply he speaks for a whole bunch of Americans.

The gist of his message this week goes like this: 

The Marxist revolution will begin any hour. It kicks off not with a bread riot, but a performance-art piece. Self-respecting whites must stop the revolution and the  "desecration of the National Archives." Okay, I'll stop it, if you can't—but first I need your money. All major credit cards accepted.

A simple answer to a complicated question. 

And pure hooey.

But that's what clever propagandists are all about.

They cynically transform complex questions of social and economic justice into violent dramas involving mysterious forces out to victimize you; and they do it in ways that disguise their true aims. 

For Adolph Hitler, the smokescreen was the Sudetenland. The mysterious forces were Jews. His aim was power.

For Joe McCarthy, the smokescreen was the Department of State. The mysterious forces were Reds. His aim was fame.

For David Brog, the smokescreen is the National Archives. The mysterious forces are people of color. His aim is wealth.

Beware all propagandists.