thinkness

the novelty of honesty

Okay, clever readers, tell me the connection between: John McCain, Google, and Colin Farrell.

Give up? Of course you do. I have crushed your will. The answer: they have charmed the world and centered their personal-celebrity brands around a bracing, shocking honesty. They have all rebelled against a great body of conventional wisdom, profited from it, and perhaps charted a new course out of this era of overly scripted existence.

• John McCain called his campaign bus The Straight Talk Express. Reporters, collectively dying from boredom after listening to so many careful-what-you-say politicians, ate it up. Lots of people who weren't Republican freakazoids love 'im for it. McCain staked much of his surprisingly effective candidacy on straight talk, although it may have bitten him in the ass when Bush's minions were able to portray him as crazy in South Carolina. And the effect of that successful smear is clear: a president who repeats religious talking points and politico-religious mantras at every opportunity -- whether relevant or not -- and has trouble forming proper sentences, let alone original and honest ones.

  
  

• Google continually spurns the corporate norm, which is surprising because most corporations aggressively pursue a perfectly honed, mechanized process for extracting money from the world. Creativity, at least in terms of governance, attitude, and communication style, doesn't seem to be part of that formula. But Google's fine with it, and seems to be profiting by daring to be different; whether Google users know that the company's slogan is "Don't be evil," they seem to have gotten the gist. And as for its upcoming IPO, take this bit from a recent NYTimes story:

  "As a private company, we have concentrated on the long term, and this has served us well," Page wrote in the public offering statement, which companies must file with the Securities and Exchange Commission before selling shares.

  "As a public company, we will do the same. In our opinion, outside pressure too often tempts companies to sacrifice long-term opportunities to meet quarterly market expectations. Sometimes this pressure has caused companies to manipulate financial results in order to 'make their quarter.' "

  Page pledged that Google would never manipulate its results or allow accounting decisions to dictate its business decisions. Nor will the company provide quarterly earnings guidance, as most public companies have done for the last two decades.

  Neil Barsky, a former analyst for Morgan Stanley who runs a hedge fund in New York, said Google's attitude was refreshing and candid.

  "There is a slavishness that companies feel that they have to play to Wall Street quarter in and quarter out, and that is not the way the real world works," Barsky said. "They're saying, 'Merely because we go public and because analysts will feel the need to comment on every quarter does not mean that we will manage our business for short-term pressures.' I agree to that 100 percent. That's the right way to run a business."

  
  

• I can't really confess to knowing much about Colin Farrell beyond what I learned when I happened to walk into the middle of Swat, which I then proceeded to watch, for some reason. Well, I did pick up a little more from this Slate article, which claims that Farrell is a new breed of Hollywood star who is all too happy to have his personal escapades studied by the world of media whores. This is a departure, Adam Sternbergh convincingly argued, from the previous dominant style -- exemplified by Tom Cruise and his longtime publicity Nazi whom he canned last month -- which was to hermetically control all words spoken, printed or yes, even thought about the personal brand of Tom Cruise or whomever else.

  
  So what's it all mean? It means the world is great and capitalism has some kind of gyroscopic stabilization property and will correct all its excesses of phoniness and deception. Cheers!

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