HOLISTIC HELL
The text from Lara Kaylor’s press release regarding Mammoth Lakes Tourism’s “Virtual Community Coffee” held Thursday morning, August 26:
“This month the topic is housing. We will provide a holistic view of the efforts being put into improving the workforce housing issue from agencies around town.
Our main speaker will be Patricia Robertson, Executive Director for Mammoth Lakes Housing, who will provide a presentation on the Access Apartments project. Located on 283 Sierra Manor Road, this shovel-ready project would create 11 one-bedroom apartments for the local community.
Additionally, the Chamber of Commerce will provide an update on their new Workforce Housing Coordinator and their Workforce Housing Program.
Finally, representatives from the Town of Mammoth Lakes as well as the MLT Board will provide updates on how these agencies are contributing to improving housing conditions for our community.”
“The Chamber will provide an update on their new Workforce Housing Coordinator …”
*Should be “its” as opposed to “their.” Where did Kaylor learn to write?
What else annoys me about this press release? The jargon. “Holistic?” That’s nothing but pitter-patter. But maybe she’s just trying to be efficient. Dysfunctional is too many letters.
And Robertson calling it the “Access Apartments” project. A better name would be the Access Hollywood Apartments, since it’s estimated it’ll cost $8 million to build 11 of ‘em.
I love the end of the presser, where it’s promised the MLT Board will tell you how it’s improving housing conditions.
Didn’t MLT just vociferously object to a proposal to transfer $344,000 in Measure A dollars from marketing to housing?
*Whereas MLT doesn’t object to treating staffers and/or sycophants to free coffee.
But the message really is, a la Trump or any successful politician, that if I repeat something often enough it becomes true.
That’s what I tell my writers. It’s part of staff training. Wake up every morning, look in the mirror, and say “I do not suck” over and over again. Then go call people until someone answers.
Speaking of holistic, the July 31 issue of The Economist had a Barleby column entitled “Jargon Abhors a Vacuum.” Subtitle: The reason behind management gobbledygook.
My favorite passage: “All too often, executives know they have nothing significant to say in a speech or memo. They could confine their remarks to something like “profits are up (or down),” which would be relevant information. But executives would rather make some grand statement about team spirit or corporate ethos. They aim to make the business sound more inspirational than “selling more stuff at less cost.” So they use long words, obscure jargon and buzzwords like ‘holistic’ to fill the space.”
You’re better off “filling the space” with a good sleeping bag and tent.
Other gems in the column. The absurd tendency of companies to tag the word ‘solutions’ onto a product. As in carpet becoming a “floor-covering solution.”
The Sheet, as I’m told, is a “bird cage liner solution.”
Then this one, which will ring familiar if one simply changes “tech” to “marketing.”
“Tech executives spout a very grand vision of how they will reshape society but their rhetoric often clashes with the hard reality of what they are doing, which is selling advertising or monopolizing users time. It is a variation on the old Ralph Waldo Emerson dictum, ‘The louder he mentioned his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.’”
In its conclusion, the column states that a key “element” of jargon, to highlight a favorite Dan Holler buzzword, is to “establish credentials.”
In short, “If you can speak the language of management, you appear qualified to rule.”
Which means this is no longer a column or an editorial or a rant or a weekly pile of BS. No, no. This, dear reader, is a “deliverable.”
So was my “bleephole” song, a reaction to MLT’s doomed “Don’t Be A Bleephole” marketing campaign, which John Urdi maintains still cost just $6,000 because if he repeats it often enough …
The link to the song is available at The Sheet News Facebook page. And yes, I am aware that I can’t sing.
Received my recall ballot in the mail. So bogus. Due to arcane recall rules, a person can get recalled by as few as 50.1% of the voters, and replaced by the majority choice of the remaning 49.9%.
If Newsom is recalled and replacement frontrunner Larry Elder, who leads challengers with 20% of the ‘someone else’ vote, maintains his lead, he’ll effectively be elected Governor by 10% of the electorate.
Newsom’s downfall was his maskless visit to a tony Napa restaurant during the height of the pandemic when he was urging citizens to wear masks and otherwise stay home.
According to the New York Times, recall petitions, which had only 55,588 signatures on the day of the dinner, had nearly half a million a month afterwards.
While an embarrassment and certainly illustrative of Mr. Newsom’s tone-deafness, being a hypocrite is hardly grounds for dismissal.
If that were the case, who’d be left?
I learned last week of Bob Waggoner’s passing, and we’ll have a full obituary next week. Colonel Waggoner spent 6.5 years in the “Hanoi Hilton” as a P.O.W during the Vietnam War.
Over the years, he sent a few emails and messages my way.
For this one, from 2005, simply substitute Afghanistan. for Iraq.
“When we deserted our allies in Vietnam it was a disgrace to our nation but it posed no immediate threat to the security. To fail to stay the course in Iraq, I believe, will for the following reasons.This is a war against radical zealots who have been taught and are still being taught to hate anything western and in particular U.S. There is little chance of that changing until there is some glimmer of democracy emerging in that part of the world. Therefore, we must stay in Iraq until that democracy takes root or their constitutional government asks us to leave.”
Last week, Lt. General H.R. McMaster, President Trump’s one-time National Security Advisor, told PBS’ News Judy Woodruff, “What was fundamentally, I think, wrong about the president’s approach here is that he thinks that a lost war in Afghanistan isn’t going to have consequences. We’re already seeing the horrible humanitarian consequences, but there will be severe political consequences, in connection with our credibility with our allies and partners and other countries who will wonder how reliable we are.”
This is the final weekend to catch some Shakespeare at Dirk’s Dirt (aka The Woodsite).
Performances will be at 7 p.m. Friday through Sunday.
