(And yes, I see that goddamn apostrophe.)
Monday Morning, Coming Down
Friday Happy Hour Photo: Scout Murray, Ohio Bobcat
This summer I read the biographies of the tragic 27 Club: Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. I remarked to a friend my sad impression that in their short, confused and furious lives, none of those people ever enjoyed a week’s happiness.
“Well, what about the time they spent on stage?” my friend asked. “That was probably usually pretty good.”
And yeah, I realized, I hadn’t counted that time. And I should have. Because on stage, they must have at least occasionally felt a little something like this photo, taken of my daughter this year, playing college soccer.
I often repeat what a dour man told me on a golf course, a month before Scout was born: “You’ll never be any happier than your least happy child.”
I realized he was right when he said it. But Scout turned out to be my only child, and I can tell you it’s also true that when I look at this photograph, I’m made just as happy as my child, at her happiest.
Get a load of the new dodge—just like the old dodge!
During Watergate, people resigned because “mistakes were made.”
In later years, the big cheese resigned to “spend more time with his family.”
After that, people resigned with apologies for “not living up to my own high standards.”
Now? They still resign not because they shit the bed. But now it’s because they’ve “become a distraction.” To wit, from our Executive Communication Report yesterday (a newsletter you should subscribe to immediately because it’s useful and free and now you can find at a great website of the same name):
Celsius Network CEO Alex Mashinsky resigned from the crypto firm yesterday, according to CNBC. “I regret that my continued role as CEO has become an increasing distraction …” he wrote in his resignation letter, referring to the company’s Chapter 11 filing several months ago.
This one is particularly clever in that it subtly but clearly implies the main problem isn’t the leader’s mistakes or misdeeds, but rather the nattering nabobs who are talking about the situation, and the suckers who listening to them.
And it positions the leader as a hero for sacrificing himself—and I say “himself” because I don’t think I’ve actually seen a woman who quite had the casual rhetorical gall required for this gambit—for the good of everyone involved.
As my old man used to say, when you’re getting run out of town, get out in front, and make it look like a parade.