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On: Choosing Your Words Carefully. (Or: Why a Dead Russian Guy Is Affecting White House Policy.)

Late Saturday night, two days into a Labor Day weekend, a special adviser to President Obama resigned. Now, this blog post isn’t about the politics of the issue, but it’ll be helpful if you watch Newsy.com’s roundup of the issue. Pay particular attention to the one four letter word that keeps coming up over and over again:

Did you catch it? It’s four letters, and it seems to have Americans scared out of their minds:

Czar.

In the same way that the federal government failed to brand the H1N1 virus correctly — leading to the still-used nickname “swine flu,” and causing short-term damage to the pork industry — the White House hasn’t gotten a lid on this “czar” title. And as long as it’s around, it’ll continue to cause confusion for the American public.

The White House does not — in official documents — refer to people like Jones as czars. As Politico points out, “the Obama administration has about 30 czars — a term used as shorthand for long, wonky titles such as Jones’s ‘Council on Environmental Quality’s special adviser for green jobs.'”

What it comes down to is this: for reporters, Jones’ full title takes up too many seconds to say or too many inches to publish. ‘Czar’ seems to get across the point just fine.

The problem is, it doesn’t. Czar isn’t a neutral word; it’s a word that connotes any number of Russian or Slavic leaders who had occasionally-ruthless territorial and economic expansion in mind.

Oddly enough, the word was first used in American politics to attack a rival of President Andrew Jackson, and later used by Democrats against a Republican Speaker of the House. Back then, when Czar Nicholas I was still in power, the phrase carried a significant amount of baggage. Today, it still does.

So here’s where the issue of branding comes in: as long as the American public is still subconsciously connecting Presidential advisers on drugs, climate change and urban affairs with a Russian leader who died in 1855, the White House is going to have a tough haul.

Politico notes that there are more than 30 ‘czars’ in this administration. We have an AIDS czar, a California water czar, a Great Lakes czar and even a Sudan czar.

But in official policy, the White House does not refer to these advisers like that. In speeches, Obama refers to the Sudan czar as Scott Gration, a Special Envoy to Sudan. And the AIDS czar is Jeffery S. Crowley, Director of Office of National AIDS Policy.

But reporters — who don’t really have time to explain to Americans in a 45 second live shot what a special envoy does or where Sudan is — have taken these jobs out of context. From a journalist’s perspective, we’ve caused harm by not explaining who these men and women are or what they do, and it’s the reason why I’m seeing women in El Paso scream out, “I’m here because I love my country. I want to take it back from Obama and his czars!”

Had the White House tried to accurately label their advisers — and make sure that the media reported about them as such — I’d imagine we wouldn’t see revved-up west Texans yelling things like, “I want to take back this country from Obama and his team of mid-level, non-Cabinet policy advisers with no formal budgetary control!”

The White House hasn’t helped their cause. In official releases, they use the formal titles. But during press conferences, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs does slip into informal terms. Prompted by a query about the drug czar, he’ll respond, “Let me address the czar question for a minute.” Or the President, while talking about how he’ll hold his advisers accountable, will mention, “Well, the goal of the border czar is to….”

There’s an easy way for the President’s team to fix this: they need to choose their words carefully. If the media isn’t going to responsibly label non-Cabinet officials — and the onus is on us journalists to do so — then it’s up to the White House to correct reporters. This isn’t spin control; it’s simply an exercise in logic.

Right now, due to poor branding, the White House is letting a Russian leader who’s been dead since the Civil War affect policy decisions. That seems odd.

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Post-script: Turns out that right after Jones took the job, he actually sent out an email saying, “I am not going to be any kind of ‘Czar.'” Guess that didn’t work.

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A Brief Word About Why It Is I Keep Breaking Into Christopher Walken Impressions At Work.

I’ve started commuting for the first time in my life. It’s 25 or 30 minutes round trip on the highway, and for a while, listening to music was enough. Then I started to feel like I was wasting time. If I was going to spend a full 10 hours each month in my car driving to and from work, I might as well do something useful.

So I gave in to my grandfatherly ambitions and decided that I’d listen to books on tape.

I started out with a copy of “Born to Kvetch,” a book about Yiddish, but I couldn’t stand the narrator’s voice; it sounded like a weird cross between Jon Stewart and Stephen Hawking. The narrator took the last vowel of the last word in every sentence and held it two beats too long. I gave up on “Born to Kvetch” after a day.

I’ve since settled in with “Gasping for Airtime,” a memoir by Jay Mohr about his two years on “Saturday Night Live.” It’s not exactly a linguistic challenge, but at 6:15 in the morning, I’m not looking for one. Mohr has a bit of a drone in his voice, but it’s forgivable, because he tends to read lines in the voice of Lorne Michaels or Adam Sandler, and I’ve always been amazed by people who can just break into spot-on impressions.

The only problem with the book is that in the mornings, after 15 minutes of Jay Mohr, I find myself talking like him. We use the same sentence structure. We tell the same stories about Chris Farley. Sometimes, we even start using the same voices.

I want to tell my co-workers, “Look, it’s not me! It’s the audiobook’s fault! I don’t really talk like this!” But I’m not so sure they’d understand.

So I’ve made a decision: I’ll keep listening to audiobooks, but not by writers with usual voices or narrating styles. From here on out, I’m picking audiobooks with cool sounding narrators, guys like James Earl Jones or Samuel L. Jackson, or at least ones that feature inspiring stories from Vince Lombardi or Winston Churchill.

I want to walk into work in the morning, my voice booming, and have co-workers ask: “What the hell happened to you?”

I want to be able to look back at them and cry out: “I commuted!”

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Mojo.

Sorry for the slow week of blogging here at danoshinsky.com. I’m working on a big piece that has to with the photo above — and this book. Should be up later in the week.

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Extreme Makeover, Blog Edition.

Pardon Our DustThe blog has relocated to, well, the exact same address. But it looks different. And the font is a little bigger, which my parents will immediately assume is a backhanded way of me reminding them that their vision is decaying due to old age.

To which I say: I could’ve made a balding joke instead, pops.

I’ll now return you to your irregularly scheduled blogging.

(H/T to Omid Tavallai for the photo of the sign at right, which translates roughly as ‘Pardon Our Dust’ in Japanese. Anyone else a bit weirded out about the cartoon man’s belt-over-the-suit-jacket combination?)

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UPDATE: Why Twitter Has Killed Small Talk.

In April, I wrote a blog post in which I suggested that “we, as Americans, are quickly becoming less interesting. Naturally, I would like to blame Twitter for this decline.”

The diagnosis was simple: as Twitter allows us entry into the lives of friends and loved ones, we’re seeing thoughts both mundane and profound in real time. So when we meet up with a fellow Twitter user in person, we’re finding that the day-to-day details that’d usually make up small talk aren’t really pertinent anymore, because we’ve already read about them on Twitter. And, as such, Americans who use Twitter are finding out that we’re pretty boring.

But now, a doctor — well, a PhD who appears on the “Today” show, at least — is supporting my claim.

He goes on to suggest that social media tools like Facebook are killing couples:

“A sense of separateness and “not knowing” is scary, but it’s also essential to attraction. The conventional wisdom tells us that in relationships there should be no secrets, there should be nothing to hide — but if nothing is hidden, then what is there to seek? When you’re in a long-term relationship, you don’t need more information about your partner, you need less.”

The key to a long-lasting friendship, apparently, starts with de-friending.

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What’s Black and White and Dead All Over? The Early Printed Edition of the Sunday Paper.


I saw something at the gas station today that I didn’t even know still existed: the early edition of the Sunday paper.

On Fridays, the San Antonio Express-News prints an advance copy of their Sunday paper. It’s almost all feature stories, plus the fluffy stuff that stays evergreen: comics, crossword puzzles and coupons.

But as much flack as newspapers get for their printed edition — even my dad’s started to realize that by the time you’ve opened the paper at 8 a.m., that news is a day old — the early Sunday edition seems even more dated.

Here’s proof: this week’s lead story in the Express News‘ early Sunday edition is about the continued success of the ‘cash for clunkers’ program, which — in the time it took to print that Sunday edition — ran out of money and went back to a vote before the House to get extra financing.

So here’s to you, early Sunday edition of the paper: thanks for making the daily printed edition seem so fresh.

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An Open Letter to U.S. Soccer TV Commentators: Stop Selling Yourself as the Little Guy

Dear American Soccer TV Commentator,

I’ve been seeing a lot of you lately. This isn’t really a surprise; I happen to love soccer, and there’s been some great soccer on TV of late, from the Confederations Cup to the World Football Challenge.

But I’m noticing a familiar trend in these games: you keep asking, “Has soccer made it in the U.S.?”

Now, I understand that you’re just trying to sell soccer to the archetypal non-soccer fan in this country.

All I’m asking is that you stop.

Stop, because it’s about time that you started really selling the game, because that’s what real pitchmen do. And what are you selling? There’s a national team that’s experienced some considerable success this decade, including a few highs this summer. There’s a soccer league that’s coming into its own. There’s actual controversy around the game, thanks to Beckham, which is bringing soccer into the national sports conversation. And, most importantly, there’s the massive growth of soccer on TV.

Thanks to HD, soccer not only watchable — it’s also beautiful. Let the moving pictures sell the game for you.

And just wait until August 12, when the U.S. heads down to Mexico City to play Mexico at Estadio Azteca. Here’s the craziest part: there’s no major English language feed for the game, which means there’s actually going to be backlash from the public. Just imagine; people are going to complain because soccer isn’t on TV!

No, soccer isn’t where it could be in this country, but it is reaching critical mass. Next year, when the World Cup arrives, it has the chance to move beyond that.

We’ve been here before, after the World Cup in ’94 and the U.S. team’s run in ’02, with soccer on the brink of mainstream acceptance. But finally, the game has caught up to the hype. It’s being watched — in person and on TV — en masse, and it’s being played at a high level in this country. As a soccer fan, I couldn’t be happier about the state of U.S. soccer today.

So, to you, American soccer commentator, I ask: stopping selling yourself as the little guy. The truth is, you’re not anymore.

Thanks,
Dan

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