I Get Paid to Talk

I've had corporate shilling on my mind quite a bit lately. Probably because I just saw Thank You For Smoking. (The book is Christopher Buckley's best). And it's what I do for my appointed wage-earning toil.

There's a great scene in TYFS where the character Nick Naylor is talking to his son's class about what he does for a living. A little girl pipes up with, "My Mommy said cigarettes are bad for you."

He responds with, "Is your Mommy a doctor?"

"No."

"Is she a scientist?"

"No."

"She doesn't sound like a very credible expert then, does she?"

I almost wet my pants. It was great to see Nick use rhetoric and logic to manipulate people.

As an admirer and mangler of the English language, I've been paying particular attention lately to corpspeak and Engfish and ways we inveigle, miscontrue and obfuscate. I particularly enjoy when we change words to make them into advertising lingo. Crap like incredelicious, crunchtastic or chickenriffic. It sure seems to happen most often for food product introductions rather than other items or goods.

Now I don't usually watch commercials thanks to the life altering technology that is TIVO. So when I heard a Kraft commercial this morning using EMF's Unbelievable, I completely vapor locked. It's for Kraft Crumbles and uses the line "It's crumb-believable." Ow, is that smelly.

I wonder if Kraft knows that EMF stands for Epsom Mad Funkers?

At least they found a use for all those cheese bits that wobble out of the machines and fall on the floor.

Feel free to submit your most hated (or loved) made up advertising language words.