Michael Jackson 1958-2009

June 26, 2009 is the first day in four decades where Michael Jackson won’t be around to release new music, surprise fans with a performance alongside younger groups, or—perhaps mercifully—extend the national punchline he became in his later years.

I argue that when Michael Jackson died June 25, 2009 in Los Angeles, a new generation understood how it felt when John Lennon died in 1980. While many musicians have come and gone in between, both musicians’ deaths impacted the entire world.

You know where you were when you saw your first Michael Jackson video. Doesn’t matter which one it is. You know where you were when you first saw the Moonwalk. And there’s an old videotape of you as a kid floating around, trying to dance like Michael.

Silvio Berlusconi

Niche websites like Adnkronos reported the Berlusconi’s outburst of racism, and rightly in the section ‘politics’.  (http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Politics/?id=3.0.3397030373) The Guardian instead preferred to focus on ‘the tits’, with a passing mention on its Website June 5, concentrated in an 11 lines paragraph. Apparently one of the most discriminating and racist comments released by a government leader are not ‘sexy’ enough for The Guardian’s audience.

The same Guardian, on the printed edition of the day after, recycled the same article in its section ‘International’ on page 24. The article, written by John Hooper and Giles Tremlett, gives details (possibly more than necessary since the images are widely distributed) about the apparently scandalous pictures unmasked by El Pais. The Guardian is all juiced up describing the photos of  ‘topless guests’, ‘one wearing a tanga’, ‘a naked man standing by a swimming pool in what appeared to be a state of sexual arousal’ , ‘Berlusconi ... pictured walking, fully clothed, with an unidentified young woman , also clothed, (...)’  and ‘ poolside statues of naked sirens’.

Chances are good that if you’ve ever worked in an office, you will have heard one or many boring, spine-tingling English words and phrases that won’t be heard anywhere else. Here’s an example: “We need to better leverage our platform.”

Typically, this sentence would come from a company manager or executive. In plain English, the above sentence can be said as: “We need to better use and promote our company strengths.”

It gets on my nerves that words like these are in active use, because the usage of these words actually detracts from the meaning. Whenever I hear these words said, I feel like railroad spikes are being driven into my ears. Words like these make the intended meaning more complicated than it needs to be.

I don’t know where “corporate speak” originated from, and I don’t expect it to go away anytime soon. But here’s the thing: if someone reads up about a company that offers “turnkey solutions,” why is it not easier just to say “working products and services”? In the end, that is a “turnkey solution” anyway.

So I thought it would be interesting to look up some of these bland buzzwords in Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary and thesaurus, and see how their actual meaning converges (I mean, compares) to the business context.