Hoarded at http://www.scn.org/newspeak Celebrating cutting edge advances in the Doublethink of the 90's Written by Wayne Grytting

Upstairs, Downstairs in the Friendly Skies

Airlines are responding to the growing gap between the rich and the rest of us by, in the words of Business Week, "making the plush seats even plusher' and catering more to the needs of their business passengers. Socially conscious airlines like TWA will be squeezing coach seats 15% closer so that first class passengers can enjoy more space and seating. (Coach class passengers will presumably enjoy more ... togetherness?) Mark Shields of Mercer Management Consulting says that "Increasingly people will be handled in subtly but importantly different ways." Much of the credit goes to computer software that now allows airline employees to target "profitable" customers and so meet their needs better. (BW 2/23)

The Welfare Avoidance Dept.

With the end of the Cold War, many of you may be wondering why we still need to spend billions so our Trident submarines can run around the oceans with nuclear missiles. Aren't our bombers and ICBM missiles enough now? Dead wrong, according to Rear Admiral Jerry Ellis, commander of our Pacific submarines. Admiral Ellis warned an audience recently at the Bangor sub base in Washington State that "It's only a matter of time until a weapon of mass destruction falls into the hands of a rogue nation or group." Certainly a real threat. But from this our admiral goes on to conclude, "The Trident sub fleet will continue to be needed as a deterrent..." I know if I were a terrorist, a mere 10,000 nuclear bombs and missiles aimed at me wouldn't stop me unless I started seeing periscopes in the harbor. Let's keep those Navy guys employed. (Seattle P-I 2/14)

CEO Watch

It's been a long wait, but finally someone has descended from the country clubs to publicly defend the exorbitant salaries and bonuses our top executives have been raking in. Ira T. Kay--remember that name--came out in the pages of the Wall Street Journal to defend high CEO pay as a "crucial factor making the US economy the most competitive in the world." And why does paying our CEO's roughly 10 times more than their Japanese counterparts help make our companies more competitive? Obviously you're not a professional economist if you need to ask. Because without the incentives, our CEO's would be in the same boat as Japanese managers, with "no economic incentive to face up to difficult management decisions, such as layoffs." So supporting those executive bonuses so we can get ... fired, is Mr. Kay's inspired message. (WSJ 2/23)

Modern Farming

What is the value of a human life? How could we even determine it? Fortunately these age old philosophical questions now have answers. Or at least we know the value of a human embryo, which is, of course, $5,100. That's $5,000 for the egg and $100 for the sperm, which may seem a tad bit unfair until you consider the testing, hormone treatments, and suctioning that women must endure to produce marketable eggs. But how is this value determined? According to Dr. Joseph Schulman, the price is "ultimately determined by the balance between supply and demand." (What else could it be?) And with medical centers willing to ante up big amounts, fertility specialist Dr. Mark Sauer reports that "egg donation is becoming like an auction." That's why it only seems natural that the process of siphoning out women's eggs is now referred to as "harvesting." (NYT 2/25)

American Newspeak appears bimonthly. To get on the e-mail list, write to wgrytt@blarg.net and pose the question "what is the value of a writer's life?"