One of the great aphorisms that I remember from the old country goes like this: Balderdash baffles brains. This is a piece of universal wisdom, applicable to all cultures and places, and close to being a law of Nature.
Everywhere you look, smooth-talking individuals are delivering a polished line of balderdash, thus baffling otherwise intelligent folk and sucking them into the erroneous belief that something sensible is actually going on.
Politicians regularly dash off the balder, so to speak, as do lawyers, corporate spokespersons and, at the risk of stretching belief, journalists.
In Pittsburgh, we are currently in the midst of a balderdash outbreak. (By the way, balderdash is often shortened and known as BS for convenience's sake.)
A 50-person group has spent three months trying to create a brand -- more precisely, a "brand essence" -- for the Pittsburgh region so that our little corner of the world can be better marketed. They hired three companies and paid them a total of $200,000.
A preliminary 45-word statement was produced defining the essence of Pittsburgh -- a piece of prose so stupefying that anesthesiologists, if running low on gas, could read it to their patients and be certain that they would stay comatose. (Because some of you have just woken up, I will not repeat the statement here.)
No doubt the distinguished Pittsburghers on the branding committee were very pleased with the companies' work, giving proof once more that BS Baffles Brains.
Nobody paid me $200,000, but if they wanted to do a decent branding of Pittsburgh, they should have rounded up the population and stenciled "Property of the Pittsburgh Steelers" on their butts. This would certainly attract young people -- which this city constantly frets we don't have enough of -- because they love nothing better than a good tattoo.
As I envisage it, courtesy booths could be set in some central location such as Market Square and the people could file in and have the brand applied. We wouldn't have to brand everybody because undoubtedly some Steelers fans already carry the appropriate message on their persons.
Of course, there could be no hint of immodesty in the branding procedure -- because, as you know, we do not much care for sex in Pittsburgh. If we did, there would be more young people being born here in the first place and the Steelers would have cheerleaders.
As for "brand essence," I suppose a perfume manufacturer could be hired to produce eau de kielbasa, which could be used as a deodorant and thus spread the fame of Pittsburgh wherever Polish sausage lovers congregate.
But this branding business is not really the story. I keep coming back enviously to that $200,000. That is a lot of hot dinners, as they also used to say in the old country.
This is the great unfairness of the brain-baffling syndrome. Some of us have real jobs that produce real results (in truth, not me in particular, but some of us). But even as some people are digging ditches, other well-dressed types are sorting through lots of charts and the results of focus groups and are making everybody glassy-eyed in power-point presentations.
What do people in the babbling arts -- such as marketing and PR -- actually do? Can you put your finger on it? Can anyone define the essence of these professions? Nope, I can't either. All I know is that they get bags of money to do it, whatever it is.
How about the head of a large university? What does he or she do as a practical matter? I was thinking about that the other day because the board of trustees at the University of Pittsburgh gave Chancellor Mark Nordenberg a nearly 14 percent salary increase to $390,000 for the fine job of chancelloring he is doing.
Now, I have nothing against Mr. Nordenberg, who makes a good impression, which I suspect is what his job is really all about. You have to be a master of brain-baffling balderdash in that line of work, which he clearly is because the trustees also gave him a $75,000 bonus for each year he doesn't leave the job.
I suspect you and I won't be getting such a bonus. If we were to ask for one, the boss would deliver a defining statement of 45-words or less -- something to the effect that there's the door and, when you are leaving, don't let it hit you on the Steelers brand.
Reg Henry can be reached at rhenry@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1668.
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