Archives for May 2014

I was talking on the phone yesterday with the resourceful and enthusiastic man who is handling social media for the World Conference of the Professional Speechwriters Association, which takes place in NYC May 22-23, and for which it is not too late to register.

He asked me if I might do some social media work ahead of the conference, to build broad excitement and interest ahead of the event. (Which is already a Who's Who of serious speechwriters. We'll have scribes to CEOs of Fortune 100 companies, national governments, giant nonprofits and revered universities. We're talking leadership communicators from Coke and Pepsi … TIAA-CREF and USAA … Eli Lilly and the American Hospital Association … the European Commission and theNorwegian Shipowners' Association.)

I said I could try to do some tweeting on the conference, but I noted that that as conference organizer, chairman and emcee, my schedule leading up to the conference wouldn't afford me time to "play a lot of grab-ass."

This is the upside of being a natural-born clown: You entertain yourself. I laughed on and off the rest of the day, and I'm still laughing now.

When the late writer Christopher Hitchens visited Cuba as a young man, he had the chance to ask the legendary Cuban film director Santiago Alvarez whether the policies of the Castro government ever impinged on his art.

“Well, he said, almost laughing at the naiveté of my question, it would not of course be possible or desirable to attempt any attacks or satires on the Leader of the Revolution himself. But otherwise, the freedom of conscience and creativity was absolute.”

To which the impudent young Hitchens replied, “If the most salient figure in the state and the society was immune from critical comment, then all the rest [is] detail.”

If you’ll forgive the narrowly relevant substitution of communist Cuba with corporate America—corporate communicators' audiences are all Hitchens, whether they have his temerity or not. And communicators are all Alvarez, whether we have his haughtiness or not.

(So let's not.)

In a promo video for their World Conference in Toronto, IABCers outdo even their formidable selves with intellectual flaccidity, near-farcical conventionality and overall dipshittery.

May the IABC members who are more creative, tasteful, literate, professionally purposeful and with-it than a 1950s elementary school receptionist secede from IABC and start the IARBC: The International Association of REAL Business Communicators.

And yes, I realize this post is mean-spirited. What did 1950s elementary school receptionists ever do to me?