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:: Sunday, June 21, 2009 ::
Product Spin Scores Again: Hear that “Big” Engine Roar
In the PC world of Obama Motors and green cars, Ford is pioneering a way to continue selling muscle cars and simultaneously keep the greenies in the White House happy. Ford’s secret weapon: product spin
To play on the President’s Big Green Team, Ford will have to dump the powerful V-8 engine in its popular Mustang. No problem! When Ford rolls out the four-cylinder Mustang, it is reported ready to install a new sound tube that amplifies engine sounds in the car cockpit giving the driver the feeling that he is still on a NASCAR track or the autobahn to Berlin.
The Engine Sound Amplifier is product spin in the great tradition of such engineering marvels as New Car Smell Spray which enables car dealers to “improve” what once were called used cars but now are upgraded via the magic of spinspeak to being “pre-owned vehicles.”
Incidentally,if you like New Car Smell, get it quickly. The Ecology Center, an environmental group in Michigan, says that New Car Smell is "toxic at any speed." So far, it is not clear what the Engine Sound Amplifier does to your eardrums.
:: James Baar 6/21/2009 11:34:00 AM [+] ::
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:: Wednesday, May 06, 2009 ::
Anonymity for the Unauthorized: spinspeak’s new “reliable source”
As many a wounded pol and other masters of the universe have learned, spinspeak when attributed has always carried a deadly virus that can infect the attributor upon exposure to bright sunlight.
Once upon a time the stealth solution of choice for the pols and other masters was to attribute their spin to an unidentified “reliable source.”
But “reliable source” proved eventually to provide insufficient cover particularly when it was obviously POTUS or more probably some doorman. It gave way to the identifiable and easily disposable “spokesman” and subsequently neutered “spokesperson” whose comment could always be denied.
Now, as this gambit has become increasingly tattered through terminal abuse, deeper stealth is required. The new operative mechanism for spreading spinspeak as gospel is to quote “people” or “persons” who were “granted anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.”
Who might the grantors of anonymity be? The Supreme Court? The FBI? ACLU? ICE? POTUS? We are not told.
Who refused to authorize these ghostly folk to speak publicly? Did they ask for the authority? Are they simply freelancing their biases? Are they enemy agents? We are not told.
Not to worry! Here’s what they said. You can take it to the bank if it’s still in business.
:: James Baar 5/06/2009 12:03:00 PM [+] ::
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:: Friday, April 10, 2009 ::
Obama Lookspin in Araby: the Non-Bow Bow
The White House wants you to know that President Obama’s deep bow from the waist to the Muslim King of Saudi Arabia was not a bow at all.
A White House “aide” says the photo showing the President doubled over in what appears to be an act of unprecedented obeisance for an American Chief of State is being misunderstood. According to the spinspeak from aide, the President “grasped the King’s hand with two hands” and had to bend over because “he is taller than King Abdullah.”
:: James Baar 4/10/2009 09:26:00 AM [+] ::
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:: Monday, March 30, 2009 ::
Spinspeak You Can Count On
Early on the promised new “ transparency” of the Obama Administration is providing you with new spinspeak that you can count on. Some major examples:
man-caused disasters = fogwords for what the relatives of suddenly dead civilians call terrorism. The White House says the new term is broader, presumably to cover such events as worms in hamburgers. Feminist note: Fails to take into account women suicide bombers.
overseas contingency operations = cosmeticspeak for war on terror. Lowers status of WOT to being merely one of many “contingencies” such as plague, high water and outbreaks of salmonella.
private sector partners = temporary wet kiss bizschoolspeak for financially successful citizens whom the Administration and Congress normally refers to as greedy, Wall Street bandits but briefly seeks cooperation (money) before leveling on them new confiscatory taxes.
legacy assets = fuzzball for lousy subprime mortgages and other dodgy loans known as toxic assets that the Administration would like to have private sector partners (see above) take off the hands of “greedy Wall Street” bankers.
now is the time = cry-wolftalk for never mind reading through that 30-pound bill in a worldwide, unprecedented, catastrophic, deepest ever, doomsday crisis, just pass it.
:: James Baar 3/30/2009 10:45:00 AM [+] ::
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:: Friday, February 13, 2009 ::
The Touch of the Spinspeak Leper
GOP Sen. Judd Gregg’s decision to withdraw as President Obama’s nominee for Commerce Secretary in the alleged Cabinet of “rivals” for which we have been waiting fully confirms the corruption and vacuity of the phrases “in a bipartisan way” and “reach across the aisle.”
“Bipartisan” and “reach across the aisle” are clearly spinspeak for “you do it our way and you get to pose with us all smiles on TV.”
To be reached at across the aisle, as Sen. Gregg has made manifest, is truly to extend the touch of the leper and those doing it should be forced, as lepers were in the Middle Ages, to wear numerous little warning bells and be garbed in colorful identifying leper apparel.
:: James Baar 2/13/2009 03:06:00 PM [+] ::
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:: Monday, October 06, 2008 ::
The Spinspeak Restaurant
Sen. Joe Biden, Democratic aspirant for Vice President, gets a Spinspeak Gold Star for his recent invitation to Americans to join him at Katie’s Restaurant in downtown Wilmington, Delaware, to learn about the problems of “the Middle Class.”
But Biden, who styles himself as “Joe Lunchbucket” as he wanders around his lakefront mansion, apparently hasn’t been in downtown Wilmington of late. According to the Wall Street Journal, Katie’s has been closed since the 1980’s.
:: James Baar 10/06/2008 03:44:00 PM [+] ::
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:: Friday, September 12, 2008 ::
Essential Spinspeak for Presidential Elections
Three essential spinspeak definitions needed to understand the run up to the November presidential election of 2008:
kitchen table = nostalgiaspin referring to the oil cloth covered tables that large, folksy Norman Rockwell families sat around in kitchens braving the challenges of the Great Depression; widely used today to give a we-the-people flavor to economic programs by scriptwriters for politicians whose idea of a kitchen table is a $10,000 designer island with a built-in wine cooler.
lipstick = female medal-of-honor spin for 21st Century womanhood. A symbol improperly employed by any male politician at his peril.
lunch bucket = nostalgiaspin referring to the ugly metal receptacle packing the poor man’s lunch of an exploited workman plodding toward another endless day in the satanic mills; widely used today to describe the early childhood of wealthy Ivy Leaguers running for high office.
:: James Baar 9/12/2008 03:38:00 PM [+] ::
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