Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

The perfect alibi

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Sam Zell wants us to believe that, as with Karen Carpenter, this world was not meant for one as beautiful as him.


“Over the last year, we have made significant progress internally on transitioning Tribune into an entrepreneurial company that pursues innovation and stronger ways of serving our customers,” Mr. Zell, who holds the titles of Tribune chairman and chief executive, said in a statement. “Unfortunately, at the same time, factors beyond our control have created a perfect storm — a precipitous decline in revenue and a tough economy coupled with a credit crisis that makes it extremely difficult to support our debt."


And another thing: How did businesspeople explain their lack of foresight, their recklessness, their flawed instincts before 1997, when the writer Sebastian Yunger published the book, The Perfect Storm?

Speechwriter Jon Favreau: Obama’s first ‘Brownie’?

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Now look: I'm not actually saying that Obama's communication director Robert Gibbs should have hired me instead of Jon Favreau. 

Writing soaring rhetoric takes a certain type of talent, a talent similar to what it takes to bullshit one's way through a sociology term paper. Grownups can be moved by listening to such rhetoric, but I think we have a hard time keeping a straight face while writing "yes we can" two dozen times in a single speech script.

So Favreau was probably the right man for the campaign. And in gratitude and admiration, Obama named him director of White House speechwriting. But governing is different from campaigning, and now the premium is on prose more than poetry, maturity more than enthusiasm, wisdom more than spunk. 

And of all the hundreds of speechwriters I know, I'm not sure Favreau is the right guy (actually, he's the guy on the left).

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Mr. Gibbs, if you agree that the lad needs some supervision, I'm reachable here at Writing Boots; I can give you lots of recommendations.

The old man and the sea change

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Reports indicate that the Chicago Tribune is preparing to file for bankruptcy.

The Sun-Times is probably next, and after that, what? 

The sun itself, I suppose.

For the next 10 days I'll be taking in such news from Ohio, where I'm staying with my ailing dad. It's by turns more alarming and more comforting to take in the steady stream of bad news in the company of an 85-year-old man.

Alarming: To my dad, who worked for General Motors when General Motors was GENERAL MOTORS, it's utterly earth-shattering to see the CEO begging for the company's life and readily agreeing to government oversight of every phase of the company's operations.

Comforting: He was actually around during the Depression, fought in the war that ended it and rode the quarter century of prosperity that followed. 

And while he's not sure how or whether this current situation will work itself out, he's entirely open to new ideas and ready to throw out and replace long-held notions about the very purpose and meaning of the United States of America.

His attitude seems to be: Whatever works (with the occasional crusty additional clause, "for all these damn people we've got now"). 

It's odd taking lessons in intellectual flexibility from an old man, but I'm doing it.