Editor’s note: Michael Ackley’s columns may include satire and parody based on current events, and thus mix fact with fiction. He assumes informed readers will be able to tell which is which.
Let’s not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
– Honeywell CEO David Cote
There’s your frontrunner for 2009’s Most Vacuous Slogan Award. Cote uttered this gorgeous vacancy with the president of the United States at his site, touting the Obama economic stimulus plan.
Even if we put aside the entire concept of Congress ever producing perfection, it belongs in the ranks of such marketing classics as “The more you spend, the more you save!” or, on the satirical side, B. Kliban’s “Double your IQ or no money back!”
It is difficult to imagine anything topping Cote’s sally in the year’s remaining 11 months, but you are invited to try. (So far, we’ve only come up with “Economic stimulus: Pay nothing until the next generation!”) Compose your own slogan and send it to us. Persons whose slogans are published will be assured their fair share in the coming economic boom.
Among the amusing provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 is a credit for the hiring of “disconnected youth.”
A disconnected youth – among other things – is one, the act tells us, who is “not readily employable by reason of lacking a sufficient number of basic skills.” Thus, businesses will be encouraged to employ people aged 16 to 24 who are not employable. (These should include the congressional phrase maker who wrote this.)
Ah, well. Let us not allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good.
A Democratic congressman explained his party’s view of the “pork” in the $800+ billion stimulus bill. Basically, he said, all spending is good spending because all spending creates jobs. Under this reasoning, even wasteful spending and outright fraud should be viewed as good things, because they put money into circulation. That this is patently false should be no bar to the bill’s passage, because we don’t want perfection to be the enemy of the … Well, never mind. Perhaps we should just make a couple of new entries in the Blind Partisan’s Dictionary:
perfect – adj., inimical to the good.
good – adj., militating toward re-election and consolidation of power.
In the latter regard, many a columnist has recalled some variation of the words attributed to FDR adviser Harry Hopkins to the effect that the federal government would “spend and spend.” But few have included the rest of the quote, “and tax and tax and elect and elect.” Hopkins denied saying it, but it fit in his time, as it fits ours.
(Let us not allow the good to be the enemy of the passable.)
Late comment about Ann Coulter’s appearance on “The View”: Lost in the panelists’ squawking over Coulter’s temerity in suggesting that Barbara Walters’ had been unfair was Walter’s assertion about unmarried mothers that “there are women who do want children … and can take care of these children and give them happy homes and adopt these children.”
This is the Hollywood vision of single motherhood. One wants a child as a cuddly toy, just as one wants a new car or television. This is the view that what (rich) women want is what they should have, and never mind that lack of a father almost guarantees a child will be at best dysfunctional.
(Let us not allow the intelligent to be the enemy of the dull.)
Why should anybody wonder why Caroline Kennedy withdrew from consideration as New York senator? The reason has to be that she discovered politics is a contact sport.
(Let us not allow the passable to be the enemy of the mediocre.)
Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (who may be former governor by the time you read this) trotted out two main lines of defense at his impeachment trial last week. The first was the “everybody does it” defense; the second was the “I was just trying to help” defense, also known as the “overzealous in the discharge of duty” defense. He gets no points for originality. Every mope ever caught with his hand in the public pocket has tried them.
(Let us not allow the bad to be the enemy of the execrable.)
