• "Team of rivals." Good lord, has a lamer colloquial novelty than this ever spread like such wildfire? Doris Kearns Goodwin is the nicest talking head you'll never meet, but I have to say I hated this term when her book of the same title came out two years ago. How can you use the word "team" to describe a group of 19th century guys in muttonchops who lived 40 years before the sports took over United States culture and sports analogies took over our rhetoric. All this is is a new term for a very, very, very, very, very conventional idea: Don't surround yourself with mindless sycophants. Well, of course.

• This "no drama Obama" business we keep hearing about. Yet another new-sounding term for a nonsensical idea. The only way I know of ensuring no drama in an organization is to forbid conflict, and the only way to do that is through a dictatorship. Which doesn't exactly lend itself to a "team of rivals," now does it?

I am sure that in the Obama administration, there will be rivals. To the extent there are rivals, the operation won't always behave like a "team." And when that happens, there will be drama.

You know it, girl.

I'm scooping this Friday's issue of McMurry's eNewsletter, The Executive Communication Report*, but what the hell:

Did you know that New York mayor Ed Koch once grew so weary of a reporter's repeated questions that he said, "I can explain it to you, but I can't comprehend it for you."

* You can sign up for this free weekly eNewsletter—it's really quite good; I write it myself!—by clicking here.

** If there's anything we try to do here at Writing Boots, it's to provide added value for our customers.

So today I interviewed one of my favorite communicators on the planet for an article on analyst calls for McMurry's The Influential Executive.

She remarked sardonically that she works in a "feedback rich" environment, with IR guys who approve everything down to a gnat's ass.

For the same story I also interviewed an IR guy, who with his head shot, e-mailed a request: "Let me know if you’d like me to 'fact check' anything in the story (quotes, etc.) before you run with it."

Love the "fact check" in quotes. (Whereas, if it were me, I'd put "run with it" in quotes.)